I’m doing some personal genealogy lately and am considering submitting a DNA test. Have you ever done one of these? Which one? How do the distinct DNA tests differ from each other? Did you discover anything useful? How reliable did you find the test to be (in terms of where your family comes from, for example)? Did you learn any big surprises from your test? Do you recommend having the test in general?
You might want to watch this YouTube Video: I Took 10 DNA Tests and Compared Them | Which One Should You Take?
I did the 23 And Me test. I did learn a surprising thing, that I am about 1/8 Ashkenazi Jewish, which corresponds to my great-grandfather who came from Germany. Although I already knew a fair amount about his life in the US (starting at age 15), there was no indication of him being Jewish, so I suspect he was either ignorant of it (i.e. his parents were non-observant or had converted to Christianity) or hiding it in the US. Especially since he and his American wife, a Protestant, helped to found a Protestant church in Spokane.
Just to let people know, the maker of that video does a lot of well respected stuff and isn’t just some random flake. I trust his observations to a fairly decent degree.
One thing to keep in mind with these tests is the background origins stuff is not very reliable. Esp. when it comes to the sub-10% stuff. That should be considered for entertainment purposes and not actual data.
One relative did 23AndMe a while back and I checked the “family tree” that was produced. All the people in the basic chart could be identified. (People generally don’t provide real names, but there was enough info to id them all.) So no “surprises” there. I found that interesting in and of itself.
In the table listing of potential relatives, once I got to 3rd cousins and such then it was mostly just random names of who-knows-how-related folk.
My wife and I have done the Ancestry and 23 and Me tests. We did the Ancestry test 12 years ago. I soon found out that my father cheated on my mother while she was pregnant with me. I have a sister that is 2 months younger than me. The good part was a sister of mine denying that this ever happened. They finally met about a year ago. They could pass as identical twins, they look that much alike. She changed her mind.
We took the 23 and Me test about 3 years ago, it was the test most of my relatives have used. Through this, found a couple more folks related to me. First was a cousin, my father’s younger brother got a gal pregnant, the child was put up for adoption. My wife and I met her last year, she lives in Idaho. Through her, I finally got to meet another cousin I had never met. I also had a 3rd cousin show up, he turned out to be my older half-brother’s brother. Through him, my brother got to meet his biological father.
Did 23 and me with the kids and wife. In retrospect I should have taken more consideration to sharing my genetic information with a private company, although I do see the value for potential research for marker identification.
Not much of personal value. Get lots of now identified not close cousins but I have no interest in connecting. Origins as expected and no shocking health risks.
My biggest curiosity remains for my youngest adopted from China. Any biological connection found for her will be of interest.
I do think that some of these tests will result in someone having some ‘splaining to do.
From an older sister’s stories (back when she would speak to others in the family) I would not have been shocked to hear from a previously unknown half sibling.
Well,I know two sisters that took the same test and got wildly different results. Such as, one had Jewish ancestry and the other didn’t. They definitely have the same parents.
I think the ancestry part of DNA testing, whether human or canine, is 95% bullshit. But that’s just, like, my opinion. 
I’ve done extensive genealogy and I’ve tested with all the major companies (Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage and FtDNA). I’ve also uploaded, and then deleted, my data on GEDmatch and LivingDNA. I have tests for my father, grandmother, and one paternal and one maternal aunt linked to my trees at MyHeritage and Ancestry.
The ethnicity results that appears to be the focus of the marketing and the reason a lot of people take the tests are oversold. If you click through and look at their detailed information you’ll find that they are “hiding” that 5% Swedish actually means between 0% and 15% Swedish. And even that is the 95% confidence interval, so in one out of twenty cases, it’s outside of that. It is “accurate” if what you want is a thing to chat with your family about. It’s useless for genealogy except if you are getting a result with the lower limit of the confidence interval well above zero and you weren’t expecting any ethnicity from the continent in question.
The cousin matching is good, but not perfect. You will have false positives and false negatives. And you need to be as diligent about double checking any deductions you make from this as from random people’s trees. Even more actually as some people are even worse at interpreting these results than they are at interpreting the hint mechanisms built into Ancestry and MyHeritage. The combination is a recipe for people thinking they have DNA-proof of a wrong link, putting it in their tree and Ancestry and MyHeritage using it to suggest to other users that they have an hypothesis for how the DNA-match is connected.
My results have confirmed all my research back to great grandparents, which isn’t very impressive. I have links confirming some lines further back, but the lack of proof for the others isn’t a strong indication they are wrong, just that that’s the luck of the draw for which ancestors’ DNA has been passed down, and which lines have chosen to do testing.
If you have mysteries in your tree you want to solve this way they better be relatively close, and you need luck or hard work and most likely both.
And though I didn’t find any postmen hiding in my ancestry you might not be so lucky, and DNA doesn’t lie, though amateurs given confusing results may misinterpret them …
I have been doing genetic genealogy for about a year, several times a week. On an iPad while paying half attention to the TV.
Had Ancestry and 23&Me gifts. Have downloaded and done free uploads to MyHeritage (more European testers), FTDNA and GEDMatch (nerdy, low level tools used to prove a common ancestor).
If you want to use DNA to expand your family tree, uploading to as many sites as you can is helpful. Ancestry & 23&Me require testing, no uploads allowed. Ancestry has the most testers by far. 23&Me has better Health analysis.
Testing the older generations in your family helps.
Tests go on sale several times a year. Around the holidays, Mother’s and Father’s Day.
I have found an adopted 3rd cousin (went to school with her father), an unknown cousin of my father (an NPE) and solved a brick wall in my tree by finding matches to descendants of an ancestral couple born in the 1770s.
FB has an active and well moderated genetic genealogy group that has been helpful.
I have paid little attention to the ‘ethnicity’ estimates. They are just guesses and vary quite a bit from site to site, even when using the same test data.
One thing that happens with these tests is: they uncover a lot of well-hidden skeletons in the closet.
You can choose not to believe the results, but the most likely scenario is an affair or a mix-up at the hospital.
FWIW, I was the result of fertility treatments involving a sperm donor. I have 4 half-siblings on 23andMe. One of them is very curious about who (our) father was, one of them ignores it, and one of them actively denies that this is possible, and all the science is wrong, and everything she thought about in her childhood is right, and “la, la, la, I can’t hear you…"
The sisters look alike, and they’re both over 6’ tall. There’s no milkman involved.
There will be no skeletons pulled out of my closet if I take an ancestry DNA test. I looked so much like my father that people would confuse me for him. Same with my mother – comparing baby pictures of her, me, and my brother, there’s literally no possibility that there could have been a mixup. The outside possibility exists that I may have fathered a son or daughter in my late teen/early 20s, but all of the women I had sex with in those days knew where to find me should two lines show up on the pregnancy test, and none ever did. If I took one and some young adult emailed me with “Hi Dad!” I’d do my best to do right by them, but it’s not happening.
HOWEVER, I still steadfastly refuse to have anything to do with those tests. a) My DNA sequence is mine, it’s not data to be bought and sold for advertising or whatever other nefarious purposes the company may have. and b) Law enforcement uses that shit, and, no. Just, no. You don’t get to look at my DNA sequence without a warrant, and I’m not providing it to a third party so that the process can be bypassed.
My father did one and connected with a first cousin he’d never really known. He was able to pass on a whole bunch of letters from the cousin’s mom to my dad’s mom, written when they were young (so the 1940s maybe? I am not sure). To our family, they weren’t really interesting: just day in the life accounts of grandma’s sister. But to this cousin, those are the stories of his grandmother raising his mom and uncles and aunts. Way more interesting. So that was a nice outcome.
I’m with you. My pappy always said, “Don’t give out any information!”. I am surprised so many people are willing to abandon privacy. I didn’t even use my real birthday on Facebook.
AFAIK, this isn’t necessarily a flaw in the tests. You get half your genes from each parent, but not the same half.
Similar appearance doesn’t prove they have the same two parents. I have a half-sister (same mother, different father) who was regularly mistaken for my twin when we went out together.
Moreover, if they have the same mother but she was stepping out on her husband, perhaps she had a “type” and the fathers of both sisters were, for example, tall blonds likely to pass on height and fairness to their offspring.
ETA: The phrase “there’s no milkman” makes perfect sense to me, but I wonder if that’s getting to be an awfully dated reference. Would a 20-year-old understand that phrase? I’m curious.
Have you ever done one of these? 23andme about 10 years ago, and ancestry about three years ago.
How do the distinct DNA tests differ from each other?
So far as ethnicity and geographical areas, they didn’t match up, but they also didn’t differ very significantly.
How reliable did you find the test to be (in terms of where your family comes from, for example)? Pretty dog-gone close.
Do you recommend having the test in general?
I wouldn’t say I’d ‘recommend’ it, but if you’re curious about whether your family’s oral history (should there be one) matches up with the science, or you want to see who else is out there looking for biological relatives, then sure.
Did you learn any big surprises from your test?
Yep, some surprises, and some not. Main thing was that we have no American Indian ancestry. (I think most southerners have been told that “someone” in the family tree was American Indian, but it’s not always provable.)
I ‘met’ a first cousin that I knew existed but had never met as we live on opposite sides of the country.
I ‘met’ a biological first cousin that no one knew existed (half sibling to preceding cousin).
One of my great-uncles fathered a child with a teenage Black domestic.
My older sister is racially mixed. We also identified her grandmother, who was a bit of a mystery.
Found my sister’s grandmother had children from a previous marriage.
Proved the parentage of my older brother. (There was never really any question, but my niece’s results removed any doubt if anyone had any.)
In my wife’s case, she was the surprise when she showed up as a ‘first cousin’ match, as she was adopted as an infant, and knew nothing about her biological parents, whom we were later able to identify.
Regarding 23AndMe’s “health” data. My relative found out they had a low chance of a trait they definitely have. And on and on.
Basically, worthless. If you’re worried about certain cancer genes, get it done via an actual medical outfit.
Wish I could convince my wife about this. Her test came back with about .02% Jewish and she’s convinced that she has Jewish ancestry. Not that it’s impossible, as both sides of her family emigrated from Poland, but relying on what is basically a statistical aberration seems pointless. Mine came back with about the same percentage of Native American, but I’m not about to open a casino anytime soon.
I did my mouth swab right after eating and 23andMe says I am 12% Black Angus with a slight risk of hoof and mouth disease. I am of Scottish descent so the Black Angus connection is great.