DNA Ancestry

[user1465146157]

Has anyone tried one of those kits you can order to check you DNA?

Would you?
Do they work?
is it a con?

Im really interested but they are pretty expensive

wondered if anyone has had a good experience?

I am gonna follow this thread - I m sooooooo very interested to find out if its true I have Spanish and Viking in my genes and am tempted to try the DNA if its not too dear!

I've had my DNA tested for family history purposes. Not by Ancestry, but Ancestry are a very well thought of company in the industry (one of the big 3 - Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23 and Me).

What you get out of it depends on a number of factors. The more work you have done on your own family tree, the more valuable it will be. It also depends on other people who may be related to you having taken the test.

It's certainly not a con. Beware that there is a company that is called something similar that is a con. The site you want to us is Ancestry.co.uk

What do you hope to get out of it?

You should be paying less than €100 for an autosomal test, there are often sales on at various times during the year (the last was Father's Day). I picked up two teats in January for $59 dollars each during a sale for extended family members.

Two tests, rather than teats

I'm hooked! I've done mine, my mum's, my uncles', and even my daughter's!! You get a lot from it. I did it with 23andme, i got some very helpful information health wise and figured out some of my ancestry. IMHO it has really made a difference in my life to know more or less where I come from

Are you on gedmatch?

Yes I am! super helpful too!

I have found my people here!! Yay! I recently uploaded my results to the gedmatch genesis project as well - nothing of value out of it at this point, but another valuable tool is dnagedcom.com - which breaks down your matches by chromosome segment.

Have you tried dnaland? Their breakdown is interesting... I've heard good things about wegene too but it's in Chinese (literally!). A few people I know test on all three big DNA companies.. I actually consider that a bit of a waste of money considering gedmatch exists!

I have zero matches on dnaland - or at least last time I checked. They reckon that is really unusual. The benefit to testing with all three is that a HUGE amount of people who test aren't aware of gedmatch (did I read that only 10% upload?) so you could have a huge amount of matches on one particular site that you are missing out on.

I think Ancestry has the biggest sample... But 23andme is more accurate (or so I've heard). I haven't been able to go beyond 1850's , so sadly even though I have a lot of "cousins" nobody has a clue :(

Same as - 1820's. Lots of 4 gen matches where there are lots of links and definite clues but nothing concrete. I'm waiting for a few tests to come back and that will narrow things down a bit.

I am doing one as soon as I travel abroad, since these tests aren't avaliable in Brazil.

The results could prove surprising: I was able to trace my mother's family until my great great great grandfather, which is as far as Italian registration goes (it only became mandatory in 1872 in Treviso). In fact, all I have is my great great great grandfather's name: The document is actually his son's birth certificate.

On my father's side, things get a little messy. Surnames changed every generation, and most of the family died a long time ago. We believe they came from Portugal due to the family name...

I am actually wondering if I should pay for the more extensive test, that also covers possible diseases.

I had a test with Britain's DNA, about two years,ago, which gave some I interesting results.
The company changed its name to Global DNA but has just stopped offering the tests if anybody knows why?

I have heard it's rubbish. The reason being that we ALL have some of the same roots and all it does it show you in very broad terms where some of your ancestors came from . There is quite a bit online on this if you want to google.

I should add that as a family we have been able to research our own family tree online and through visiting local churches etc, info provided by the Latter Day Saints, and as they were then, the records office at Somerset House, right back to the 1600s.
It ought to be very easy to go back a few generations; my grandparents were born in the 1890s, so you don't need do much research to get a bit further back.

By DNA Ancestry I thought you meant you were looking for genetic illnesses and predisposition to diseases as this is the general health forum.

One of my siblings did it. It confirmed our boring family history stretched back a long way!

If you have a more varied background it would be more interesting!

By more interesting I mean beyond europe, it really gets that vague.

This is worth reading DNA Ancestry tests branded meaningless

23 and me offers health information - I haven't tested with them so I can't tell you what kind of information it gives. I was able to upload my raw data to another site (Prometheus I think) for a nominal fee, maybe £10 and it gives you the same kind of information. That wasn't my area of interest though so I didn't spend much time on it.

I would certainly contest that it is rubbish. DNA testing has a scientific basis. What you get out of it depends on what you put in though.

My aunt discovered and has since met long lost family through it. Can't remember the exact details but a ballerina who got pregnant before marriage and went to Italy. All very romantic, (not so much at the time I'd imagine).

There's a cute video where they DNA tested a school in London which makes me want to do it.

school of DNA

Yes DNA has a scientific basis but that's being very simplistic over it!
You'd need to spend thousands to have anything that meant anything.

The criticism of these tests is that they don't tell us much we don't know already which is that for most of us in the UK our ancestry covers most of Europe. Mine is a mix of Vikings, Italy and France. In coming to the UK these people settled in the NE and the SW. (not surprisingly.)

This was all found through genealogy- researching records of family tree - not DNA.

You can find out a lot online if you type in search words for your name- loads comes up from people who have already done the research and uploaded it.

As I said earlier, we've got records now through marriages, births death records, going back to the 1600s.

I totally disagree. If you want to find out if you are related to some far distant monarch or famous figurehead, that isn't going to happen through autosomal DNA testing. However, it will identify a range of people who are related to you at various distances. My family are Irish so very little in terms of records, you can go back much further with English records. Its very difficult to go back farther than early 1800's in Ireland, so autosomal DNA testing is an amazing tool for furthering research.

I agree that it is marketed in a clickbaity way, but most people who test have more than a passing interest in genealogy and it is an invaluable tool for making family connections where the records fail.

I agree it's not pointless at all. At least it wasn't in my experience, but I'm not White British, so my ancestry has always puzzled me.