My Ancestry DNA arrived yesterday!

I thought about it but went ahead on the basis of nothing to hide. Now if I had committed murder years ago and got away with it …

I'm glad you posted that Crenniemac.

People must remember that DNA tests can't really prove where ancestors came from, but where descendants of the same ancestors live now, which is not necessarily the same.

It's limited because the people in the database are self-selecting. For example, there are few poor people represented, as are people of colour. Jewish ancestry can be especially challenging because Jews moved around Europe as a result of persecution and, of course, a whole generation or more is missing.

‘ GrannySquare. It was illegal until about 40yrs ago to marry your deceased wife/husbands sister/brother. American law was different.’

Oh? That’s an eye-opener.
My GGfather respectably promptly married his SiL after my GGmother died delivering her 8th child.

My GGAunt had just returned from being a nurse in WW1. Marriage offered her, as a middle aged respectable spinster, a stable home, close contact with her own family& the opportunity to bring up the youngest children as their mother. Her attention to detail & standards were legendary & stories rolled down the generations.

I did mine and discovered that my dad who brought me up wasn’t my dad but my Godfather was!! Discovered a half brother and 3 nieces too. Both dads were long gone which was sad as Godfather hadn’t been in my life since I was a baby - the decision of my parents. Two couples were best friends and my daughters reckon they were swingers 🤣

I thought so too but discovered that I an 2% Jewish, only 4 to 7 generations back too so I'm planning to research this ancestor

Mine was fascinating as I've considered myself an English thoroughbred with all sets of great - grandparents coming from London. Yet my ancestry shows I am 14% Irish, 14% Scottish, 10% Swedish and 5% Welsh with other European mixed in. My English DNA is only 5% 😂
The big interest with my result is with my half sister.She is my mum's child but my dad is her step dad. Her DNA came back showing she is related to me on both sides. This means her stepdad (who has been in her life forever and raised her, as she's never known her biological dad) is genetically related via her biological dad's family in a random way. No way of ever knowing how though. All I know is at age 75 she knows she has DNA links to the man she calls dad. He died only 4 years ago when she was 70 and he was 94. There bond was very special. They share DNA (however small) and he would have been over the moon.😍

Ancestry is a good starting point as the raw data can be transferred into many other genetic platforms, but the reverse is not so. Ancestry leads the field by sheer weight of numbers (30Million + users) & ease of use.

My Heritage is well populated with folk researching their Jewish genealogical heritage, some have imported their data from Ancestry & 23&Me.

I'm over 60% Irish ,not a surprise.22% Scottish and the rest is Italian/Greek THAT was a surprise ,my dad was illegitimate and knew nothing about his biological dad so guessing its from him.
I've had several e-mails from Italians asking if I'm their lost link ....who knows? It keeps me amused though .I've had one or two Italian boyfriends in my teens and my OH is dark with deep brown eyes.His DNA threw up a strong French link ,presumably from his Devonshire ancestors.

Another challenge for Jewish genealogy, on top of the lost generations, is the intermarriage between distant cousins. So people with Jewish ancestors may be related or overlap through several cousinships several generations back.

As a matter of interest, does Ancestry give a definition of "English"?

They can pinpoint an English county - I have, as I know to be correct, a big dollop of Essex and Essex/Suffolk border. However with my much smaller helpings of Irish, Scottish and Welsh no areas are specified.

annodomini

My ancestry is quite boring - nearly all Anglo-Saxon and Celtic, with 4% Iberian which I think could be from a Spaniard washed up on the West Coast of Scotland when the storm hit the Spanish Aarmada. At least that's the best explanation I can think of.

My mother always said that about my husband who is very dark and mediterranean looking. However my son bought him a kit and there isn't much of that in him, though a proportion of middle and far-eastern. We knew that there was a Burmese link in his family but though it was by marriage rather than genetic.
He would have lots of Aussie relations as half of his father's 12 siblings went there as £10 poms!

One thing I regret is never asking my mother about her gran, I'm sure she would have been able to tell me something of interest. We don't have enough curiosity about our forebears which is a shame. Good luck with your family tree but remember just because someone has information on their tree, it doesn't mean that it's correct, always do your own research.

Well, I did this recently as I received it as a birthday gift .
The results were not what was expected .

There will be no way to decipher my parentage & all it has done is give more questions than answers ,sadly .

I never knew the man who was I was told was my father & it seems he wasn't the one .
So my advice is if you aren't prepared for a surprise then stay away . As my son says
"Does it really matter" ?

Germanshepherdsmum

They can pinpoint an English county - I have, as I know to be correct, a big dollop of Essex and Essex/Suffolk border. However with my much smaller helpings of Irish, Scottish and Welsh no areas are specified.

I can understand that it can pinpoint living people who share DNA characteristics to a county, but this doesn't necessarily prove origin.

I was born with a very unusual surname. It was an ideal starting point for family history research, which I've been doing for nearly 30 years. I know that every single person born with the same surname since 1766 can be traced back to the same ancestor. Before that, it's a bit more patchy, but I can still link most of the people back to the mid 16th century and I can see the population movements.

The majority of people with that surname still live in an area of North East England. If Ancestry were to show that my origin is North East England, however, it would be wrong. One of my gt grandfathers was born there, but moved to London as a young man. His gt grandfather came from London and was sent to the North East as an apprentice (I have the documents). I can trace the name back to Sussex and the etymology of the name would suggest it's French. That wouldn't be surprising because many French ironworkers moved from Northern France to Sussex and Kent in the 16th century. However, none of that would show on a DNA search.

Another example would be my children. I would expect their DNA to show similarities with people living on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border. They might erroneously jump to the conclusion it's through their father, who was born in that area. However, delving a bit deeper, his grandparents actually came from South Wales and, before that, from Cornwall.

My children have almost certainly inherited East Midlands ancestry from me, even though I have never lived there. However, my maternal grandmother was and I can trace her ancestry back several generations to the late 16th century. It helps that some of them were landed gentry and there are more records available.

I was born in North West England, but I have absolutely no ancestral links with the area. I've traced all 32 of my 3xgt grandparents and many of my "cousins" - we live all over the world and I'm not sure what DNA testing could tell me that I don't already know (unless certain ancestors weren't who they claimed to be on paper!)

Mallin if you're wanting to find out about your GI father this site may be helpful.

www.gitrace.org/

I agree with your son NanaTuesday. It doesn't really matter. Hang on to the relations you have and cherish them.

@Ca ‘ A lot of Spanish ships used to come here to trade, particularly to Cornwall.
I had a friend whose Cornish DH had direct Spanish ancestry and a Spanish surname.’

Indeed. Galway is a long established port for goods from the Iberian peninsula. So it is quite likely that many a sailor took a Galway gal as a wife or partook of the local services.

That said, the Armada shipwreck lore does have some sea legs as wreckage has been found off the coast of Sligo.

My aunt married her deceased husband’s twin brother in 1946.

Ancestry has the potent mix of up-to-date affordable consumer genetic testing, huuuge user database, some sound matching algorithms alongside many many traditional genealogists - who have never been near a DNA test - who have collated loads of sound documentation & built their family trees on those roots.

I have many DNA cousins on Ancestry, & some connections are so slight that I’d have to have sound documentation some 5-8 generations back to make a connection.

What has been fun is to confirm some DNA connections with fellow keen genealogists who have well built family trees & we have quickly found our joint shared common ancestor. In one instance a distance DNA cousin & I could confirm through UK marriage certificates that each of our great grandmothers had been witnesses at each other’s marriage.

Another connection made with distant DNA Irish cousins was due to an elderly uncle remembering a letter sent to my grandmother from someone making an informal claim on her late brother’s estate.

I have a distant DNA cousin who was adopted & through our shared links with my other known cousins we have confirmed many times over that she is from our lot, but we’ve not yet been compelled to download the more specialist DNA tools to work out who is the most likely candidate for her father. It can be done, but takes some effort to collate the data drive the process.

Because I was adopted, and my birth mother was as well, we had little information about the family history. My son decided to join ancestry and we joked about long lost relatives turning up. My grandparents had both died not long after my mother was born hence her adoption. It was brilliant to discover my cousin and wider family and I'd thoroughly recommend it. My cousin is building a family tree which now goes back hundreds of years.

You have a point here. The USA has used DNA in the past from such sources to find criminals - and Ancestry is a US company.

I don’t post my family tree for reasons of privacy - also the site where you post it can claim ownership over it. Like when you post photos to Facebook.

@Loobs . Snap my father was illegitimate and as far as I know my DGM was the cook to a doctor who lived in a big house . She was 20 when my father was born but it was never really spoken about . She died when I was 20 so I knew her very well . She did get married during WW2 and had my dads brother when she was 40 in 1945 .
On my maternal side my mothers grandfather or great grandfather was from Russia so I would like to do my DNA to find out more .
We are another family where there were odd marriages. When my father died and my mums sister died in the 1990s my mother went on to marry her late sisters husband . This meant my uncle became my stepdad and my mum became my aunt 🤪

I have asked a few male relatives to take an Ancestry test as this would help to build the overall family data. they have demurred - understandably- on the grounds of parting with their personal data & protecting their privacy.

Thing is that law enforcement agencies may seek powers to legally search the commercial dbs to match evidence & a direct match may not be needed to make the connection. It is possible to triangulate samples & data - something genealogists do in their sleep or gather in daylight in groups - to narrow down the odds to practical searches of known suspects.

growstuff

Germanshepherdsmum

They can pinpoint an English county - I have, as I know to be correct, a big dollop of Essex and Essex/Suffolk border. However with my much smaller helpings of Irish, Scottish and Welsh no areas are specified.

I can understand that it can pinpoint living people who share DNA characteristics to a county, but this doesn't necessarily prove origin.

I was born with a very unusual surname. It was an ideal starting point for family history research, which I've been doing for nearly 30 years. I know that every single person born with the same surname since 1766 can be traced back to the same ancestor. Before that, it's a bit more patchy, but I can still link most of the people back to the mid 16th century and I can see the population movements.

The majority of people with that surname still live in an area of North East England. If Ancestry were to show that my origin is North East England, however, it would be wrong. One of my gt grandfathers was born there, but moved to London as a young man. His gt grandfather came from London and was sent to the North East as an apprentice (I have the documents). I can trace the name back to Sussex and the etymology of the name would suggest it's French. That wouldn't be surprising because many French ironworkers moved from Northern France to Sussex and Kent in the 16th century. However, none of that would show on a DNA search.

Another example would be my children. I would expect their DNA to show similarities with people living on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border. They might erroneously jump to the conclusion it's through their father, who was born in that area. However, delving a bit deeper, his grandparents actually came from South Wales and, before that, from Cornwall.

My children have almost certainly inherited East Midlands ancestry from me, even though I have never lived there. However, my maternal grandmother was and I can trace her ancestry back several generations to the late 16th century. It helps that some of them were landed gentry and there are more records available.

I was born in North West England, but I have absolutely no ancestral links with the area. I've traced all 32 of my 3xgt grandparents and many of my "cousins" - we live all over the world and I'm not sure what DNA testing could tell me that I don't already know (unless certain ancestors weren't who they claimed to be on paper!)

Thing is, growstuff, my family moved from that area generations ago but had been there from at least the sixteenth century. There have been no family members living there for many years so what is shown on the DNA results is historic.