23 and Me Question

[AInightingale]

Having hit a brick wall with my research, was wondering about another provider.

Ancestry seems to be having a sale atm and MH is always quite reasonable, but I've already done tests with them. 23 and Me always seems very expensive by comparison. Do they ever offer discounts? Black Friday and Christmas coming up, would this be an occasion with them?

I would consider paying about £50, nothing more. My brother tested with 23 so I might ask him nicely if I can see his results, but it would hardly be a five-minute job. He's not very into family history; he only tested for the ethnicities bit and lost all interest once he realised he was descended from a load of Irish farmers & lowland planters.

I presume you're thinking of getting another DNA test rather than subscribing to another site for access to records etc.

Have you uploaded your Ancestry DNA results to other sites? I don't know if 23&me accept ancestry uploads, but several other sites do.

Also - how far back is your brick wall? Is it too far bank for DNA to be able to help? Have you cross matched your ancestry matches, tried the Leeds method to see if that gives further clues?

Yes, a few more close DNA matches would be helpful. Father was an adoptee so I'm in the dark about how accurate the estimates for my current matches are. Have a fair clutch of second cousins - they were both large families - and am fairly sure of the g-grandparents on one side, but the cM values on the other side are seesawing all over the place! My 'brick wall' isn't very far back at all, to the 1930s, but the people I really need to talk to haven't used the site for ages, naturally. Have what is described as a first cousin but I'm dubious. I have colour coded the matches, cross matched them etc. It's very difficult when it's a big family because there are so many possibles. The fact that some were married doesn't exclude the possibility that someone had a child out of wedlock at some point, for instance.

23 and Me doesn't allow you to upload DNA data from Ancestry and FTDNA didn't produce anything of note.

Didn’t 23 and Me go bankrupt earlier this year?

I thought so too but you can still buy tests!
I might ask my brother if he wants me to 'manage' his account because he's just one of those tiresome people who logs onto the site to get their results and never goes near it again.