Ancestry Mother's day offer

I'm not sure how much use DNA kits are - the results will be quite general and there have been cases where people have had a nasty shock!
As for Ancestry, it does have its limitations. I've been using it in conjunction with other genealogy sites (without having full subscriptions to them), especially Scotland's People.

I believe the offer is just for the DNA test. There's an optional charge to access the records database and tree building function.

Good review here of companies offereng tests. Personally, I'm not convinced it's worth the money other than a bit of fun. As Septima says, the results are quite general.

www.expertreviews.co.uk/health-and-grooming/1408009/best-dna-test-uk

Ancestry isn't good for Scottish research. Scotland's People is good but the cost can mount up.

I've been thinking of doing a DNA test and considering Ancestry as it seems the most widely used. It's useful to find out here that it is not good for Scottish records as I would have wasted my money.

I took up the reduced price offer last year. The result was disappointing as 'Northern European' covers a number of possibilities. I'm sure that I must have Celtic and Nordic DNA as well as Anglo/Saxon. One unusual thing did crop up and that was 4% Iberian which confirmed our family's belief that Spanish seamen washed up when the Armada's galleons were wrecked off the coast of the West of Scotland left their genes to posterity. Some of my relatives could only be described as 'swarthy'!

PS - the moral of my story is 'don't expect too much'!

I'm eagerly awaiting my D's DNA result that her husband treated he to for her birthday. They live in Oz so she'll send me an email when it arrives.
We pretty well know my mum's ancestry from the 1600's and are about 27 lines from Henry VIII so it'll be interesting to see if what information we already have tallies with her DNA.

Autosomal DNA testing can only take you back four or five generations. Parents pass down 50% each, grandparents 25% each, great grandparents 12.5% and so on. After that it's not much use.

mtDNA testing testing takes you back further but only through the female line: mother, then the mother’s mother, the mother’s grandmother and so on.