Which Ancestry Kit?

[SiouxsieSiouxStiletto]

They are on offer at the moment and thought of getting DH one for Christmas as he's always white ring on about his family tree.

I can't really see what the benefit of the most expensive one is though. Can anyone help?

On*

That'll be like DH and how mythical Italian ancestors. As far as I've seen on the family tree, they were all yokels from Cambridgeshire

He could be correct, what many people don't know is that these testing kits can only go back about 200 years, to around the 1800s/1820s. Also we don't inherit our DNA equally from all grandparents due to recombination and therefore we lose some of our lines within a few generations.

So for example if your ancestors were French Huguenot refugees or came across to England before the early 19th century and then married English people and continued to do so, you quite likely won't have any French DNA left in you.

Your Dad holds twice as much DNA on your paternal lines as you do so it's worth him testing to see if he gets French in his test. Or your paternal GPS would be even better if they're still alive.

Drop me a line if you need any help as this is my area.

I did one and it destroyed my family. My father was someone else. Mother confessed she didn't know which one my father was and just "guessed". Chaos and family mayhem ensued and I wish I'd never done one now.

I’m adopted and found my lovely biological father and his family using Heritage DNA 🧬

Do you need a paid sub to myheritage to upload an Ancestry DNA test? I've been told myheritage has far more European uploads but not sure how broad the spread is across Europe.

I ds did one as he was interest. I managed his account as he was then 12.

it then gives you percentages of where you’re from. And it changes as more people give their DNA. It’s not so great on Africa/Asia as the product not heavily marketed there.

it had my ds and df listed as cousins🤣

ds has Italian father and they accurately pinpointed the town of origin. This data was not from Italians in Italy but through Italian Americans giving DNA.

found it interesting initially.

good luck!

No you don't need to pay to upload to MyHeritage and see your matches on there.

@DNAexpert thank you that is interesting. I expected to find a little bit of French in there. Here is my ethnicity my late Dm is the Yorkshire link with my Dd mum from Devon.
My Dd lives overseas and they don't have Ancestry in his location yet but he may do one in the future as he was interested in his family tree.

Ancestry DNA has matched a 1st to 3rd cousin to me but they are actually a half brother of my late Dm so should a half uncle to me if there is such a thing?

Yes there is such a thing. Ancestry often suggests relationships that are wrong and it causes carnage. If you know the relationship for sure that is actually correct, then go with that and ignore the Ancestry prediction. If you send me your shared cM with your half uncle I can confirm it for you.

This is one of the main misconceptions with Ancestry. They don't tell you how you are connected to people. They tell you how much DNA you share with the other person and SUGGEST possible relationships.

If you look at the DNA shared cM project, the average DNA shared between first cousins is 866 cM and the average DNA shared between someone and a half aunt/uncle is 871 cM. This is why conventional genealogy still needs to be done in conjunction with the DNA tests.

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

The Germanic Europe is interesting. Is that on the correct side where you were expecting to see French? DNA tests don't actually know modern-day nationalities ; they're based on where your DNA matches came from and where those DNA matched have geographical locations on their trees. It's quite likely that your "French" ancestors came from further towards Germany within the last couple of hundred years or even Germanic areas itself. The ancestors moved to France. Many many people did this for a wide variety of reasons including religious persecution when the Germans decided that only a couple of religions were to be permitted. So the ancestors moved into France but still had Germanic DNA and that is what your test is picking up.
There are other scenarios for this. Drop me a line if you get stuck.

my brother found his biological father’s family through Ancestry and I have confirmed that my father was South Asian . I have not actually traced him yet as there are less people testing in that area . Pre Covid, before I did the test, I planned a trip to the North of India and it’s quite woo that many of my distant relatives came from the area I was due to visit .

Yes the Germanic Europe would be on my DF side. Also have a little Ireland, Sweden &Denmark and Norway from him.
I am watching DNA Secrets this morning and I am sure I just heard you can’t do the Ancestry kits in France.

There's a thread running about DNA Secrets over in the TV Section if you haven't spotted it already

I did one two years ago with Ancestry. Bearing in mind my actual married name put together is Irish, I didn’t think much about it coming back. So it came back that my DNA is from Eastern Europe, Baltic regions, northern Italian, Austria, Germany region which is 100% correct from my parentage.

I currently have some who is 925cm match and for the life of me don’t know who they are?!

@LadyGaGasPokerFace

How fascinating!

Could I ask for some help. My mother wants one of these kits for Christmas. She has a fairly unusual family background with a lot of holes in it so I guess I get her wanting to fill in some gaps.

I was going to get her an Ancestry kit for Christmas but I am a bit confused about exactly what to get. Do I just get the testing kit? Do I have to get a membership for her too? I can see there is an offer on for membership for a quid but then I can't see the way to gift this to her. I can see gift memberships but they are a lot more expensive.

For context this is the woman who wanted Netflix so I got her a voucher and 2 years later it lies expired in a drawer. So I'm not inclined to get her more than the minimum she needs to get started.

I also don't really want much to do with this so I don't want any memberships in my name if I can help it.

It depends what your mum wants to do @cuthbertthecat - you can just get the DNA testing, which will give her the ethnicity breakdown and if she gives permission it will link her to relatives who have also done the test already or in the future. This is regularly updated. The subscription is if she wants to work on her family tree and have access to various databases etc. to populate this, so you have to be quite active to get value out of that bit of it.

Helpful thanks.

We used Ancestry DNA. Some weird matches that we couldn't work out. Considering asking a genealogist we've used before to tell us what one of those matches is as it looks like a half sister for my Dad.

I've sent mine off again! First one didn't reach the lab. Be weeks before I find out.

Oh that's interesting @jackandy.