Have any dopers done this? What did you hope to find out?
My family did 23 & me. We did both the genetic & health components. The only surprise on the genetic part was that I thought I was half Irish, but learned that I was 40% Irish & 10% Scandinavian. The real surprise was the health component. I found that I have the gene for Parkinsons & both genes for macular degeneration :eek:.
It shouldn’t surprise. The Vikings invaded Ireland and founded Dublin.
We’ve had at least a dozen thread about this, if you’re curious enough to do a little searching. There was an active one in MPSIMS just a month or so ago.
All those commercials where the testee finds someone noble or adventurous in the family tree. Just once, I’d like to see Charles Manson or Lizzie Borden as an ancestor.
I’ve never done it, but my daughter is extremely interested in it. She’s adopted internationally and I get that she would like to know. Hell, I think it’d be interesting to know mine. I was going to get a kit for her last Christmas, but we ended up adopting another dog and that was the best gift ever. I worry because I get she wants to know her heritage, and I understand she wants to know if she has markers for certain things, but the kid can be a worrier and I don’t want her stressing. I’ve said to her, you know your grand mom had Alzheimer’s, I don’t want to know. Timely though, we were just talking about it last night.
Yes, I’ve done it. A lot of people take the tests just for the ethnicity breakdown, but I did it to track down ancestors.
Found out that my maternal grandfather is not my actual maternal grandfather. My mother was an NPE - Non-Paternity Event.
Considering that situation seems to crop up a lot on genealogy forums, I beginning to think that it may be more common than originally thought.
Being adopted, along with my bio sister, it was very meaningful to us to connect with our biological family members. We were blessed with wonderful adoptive parents and had a good life, but I have much more in common with my other biological siblings, and our associations are easy and unforced. We all fit right in with each other.
There are no big names in our tree, no wildly famous people, no geniuses, no serial killers, no one imprisoned for crimes or addictions or strange behaviors. Just normal, everyday, largely invisible people; some better off than others, but no extremes in any direction.
I did 23 & Me in the US, and was surprised to find that I am 100% European.
Don’t despair. If your ancestors came from Europe, you are almost certainly descended from Charlemagne. And probably Mohammed as well!
I found my biological half-sister. We’re both adopted, shared biological father. Found him too, wants nothing to do with us, so there’s that.
Just reviewed my (adoptive) mom’s Ancestry tests last night. We figured 100% Eastern European. Her mother was 1st generation, family from Poland. Her father was 1st generation, family from the Czech Republic. Her mother’s family spoke Yiddish, so we figured Jewish ancestry.
Turns out she’s 76% Eastern European, 17% Western European, the rest a mixture of Southern European, Scandanavian, British, Irish.
On her family tree, there was only one close hit, and that was a 1st cousin of hers. Tons of 4-6th cousins, lots of long vowel-deficient names.
I have embraced my commonness. 
But, if there was an Uncle Charlemagne or a Grandpa Mohammed, maybe there’s an opportunity to cash in somehow.
This made me laugh because one of my husband’s cousins has an interest in all of this so he did some research on their family. My MIL told my husband, we are somehow connected to Charlemagne 
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Ancestry dot Com just had a Father’s Day sale, so she bought us both a kit. I understand and respect the the technology, but I am skeptical of private companies selling services that they may or not be able to provide. Still, it was free, for me, and I submitted my info. Now here’s the deal. Sister Duck has been doing genealogy for years. A lot of the tree was done years earlier by an uncle who had found us a “Choctaw Chief’s” daughter relative. Heh. Mississippi thing. She says that almost everyone who does this thinks they are related to Pocahantas. She’s been sorting it out, getting us back into early England. Which we knew, of course. On Mama Duck’s side its pure Italian. Except there is no pure Italian. So our tests, submitted separately, and in my case under a fake name, produced results that said we were: English yet no Celtic on the one side, and Italian but mixed with the whole Southern/Northern/Eastern Europe melange. Not a big reach, but okay. They did give us a nice graphic of where the English side landed and migrated into the South which matched, exactly, with the research Sister Duck had already done. Nice. So again, here’s the deal. We spent $200 to find out something We Already Knew. Kind of like a psychic.
Like all good Americans, both sides of my family claim to have American Indian ancestors. Both my sister, several members of her family, and me all took tests. My sister and me don’t have a trace of Indian heritage. I wasn’t really surprised - I never really believed it. But I understand it can ‘wash out’ in about 5 or 6 generations.
Also, mom and dad started a family tree, and I’ve taken it over, and it has about 750 of my blood relations, plus another few hundred who married into the family. I’ve managed to trace a few lines back to Europe. So far, everything matches as predicted. The only surprise was a bit of India Indian. I understand that might ‘echos’ from the time the British Empire included India.
Another thing that has been interesting - my sister, her husband, their kids, the kid’s spouses, the grandkids and me all took tests. Comparing the results and seeing how the different segments line up has been educational, almost as much for me as it was for the young ones.
I’ve never claimed to have even a remote ancestral relationship with Native Americans. 23 & Me disagreed, saying that I had a 7th great grandfather (or so) who was full-blooded Indian, giving me a <0.03% shot at it.
Ancestry DNA found no such connection.
It certainly is possible, as I had a lot of very early arrivals in America in my family tree, including two Mayflower travelers. But I don’t place any significance or even much credence in it. Other than that surprise, the results of both were pretty much consistent with my expectations.
Count me as someone whose family, and I mean both sides, has never mentioned any Native American heritage. But I do recall it was fashionable back in West Texas to claim such. Rednecks would use it as an excuse to get stinking drunk, then claim it was their Native American ancestry. “Hey, I can’t help it, it’s the Indian blood.”