Ancestry and other such genealogy databases.

[Echo40]

Has anyone signed up for one of these websites only to walk away with even less information regarding their cultural ancestry, heritage, and/or genealogy?

Story Time: A couple years ago I received an Ancestry DNA Test Kit as a Christmas Gift. I never knew much about my ancestry, heritage, or even my family because I've been estranged from them all my life, and honestly cared little for a so-called "family" who clearly didn't care about me, but since it was a gift which obviously cost a fair amount of money, I rolled with it.

The results took a couple months to come back, but were initially pretty darn interesting. As far as I knew, I was of mixed European descent, Italian, Greek, English, and French, but in addition to that the initial test results revealed that I was a small percentage Spanish, European Jewish, Middle Eastern, and Northern African. Shocking, completely unexpected, and even mildly interesting.
However, the initial test results were quickly replaced just a few months later with new results which completely omitted any percentage of Jewish, Middle Eastern or African, but I shrugged it off considering that they were very small percentages below 8%. Strangely though, the percentage of my Italian ancestry dropped from 45% to 38%, while Spanish increased from 3% to 18%.

Exactly one year later I received an e-mail from Ancestry informing me of update on my test results, which I decided to check out because I found it interesting that I would receive updated results to a test I took a year and a half ago.
The results were...Bizarre. Apparently I was no longer Spanish at all, despite being previously 18% Spanish, and the percentage for my Italian ancestry dropped yet again from 38% to 25% as did Greek. For reference here, my mother is supposedly 100% Italian, and in many ways I take more after her than my father, as I share more physical similarities to my Grandfather on my mother's side. So 25% seemed extremely low, too low to make any sense of.
Since then I've received a few other updates which have either increased or decreased percentages by a wide margin, made additions to my regional ancestry, then subsequently did away with them as well.

At this point, I've lost all faith in this testing, as the results have been literally all over the map. There's no consistency in them whatsoever, and a number of regions have been added then completely removed without a trace.
I can understand how percentages could fluctuate, but races appearing and disappearing between updates shows a distinctive lack of accuracy as well as consistency which simply cannot be ignored.

Does anybody else here have any experience with these tests, and if so, what have your results been like in terms accuracy/consistency?

 

[DWalt]

I'm no geneticist, but I have little faith in anything the DNA tests claim regarding geographic origins. One has to be suspicious when test results, which should be stable, change over time. I am personally not interested in getting any DNA tests. Several years back, my (now-deceased) elderly M-I-L became interested in getting her DNA tested. She was from the deep South going way back to the mid-18th Century and the family lore was always that her family probably had significant American Indian blood. The DNA test results came back that she was 100% European white with no trace of Indian ancestry. I think she was a little disappointed.

 

[Roadtrash]

I had mine done and also built a family tree. So far the dna is spot on as the tree backs it up completely. On the Ancestry site as well as a few other places I have found records to prove all of it back to the late 1600s on my fathers side and the 1500s on my mothers side. I'm still working on it to see how far I can go back.

 

[Echo40]

I suspect that using the family tree aids in the accuracy quite a bit, but being estranged from my family, I couldn't possibly build a family tree, nor would I want to since it allows them to contact you, and the last thing I need is to get hassled by my toxic relatives whom I've otherwise severed all ties with.

 

[mtgianni]

Both brothers have had it done. Most of what we expected was there in common, Irish, English and Danish. One showed 5% Jewish, the other 5% Native American which we also knew of.
If Medicine is an "Inexact Science", which is what you acknowledge at every surgery, DNA genetic testing cannot be rock solid.

 

[Bob L]

Growing up, I was told about my Mothers family which came from the Netherlands and my Fathers family was mainly English but had some Irish as well. In the late fifties or so, when the issue of Native American fishing rights in Michigan was all the news, he told me that he had enough blood to qualify for the fishing rights. He never did, of course but would mention now and again about his Native American blood. My older sister was active in the family history and had the DNA test done on me to see what it showed and it same up mainly English, Western European, Irish and Scandinavia.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

No more paella for you Dirty Harry!
I can get my bunch back to Virginia, yes carry me back.
Can’t confirm which who we is back there.
My folks went on the roam just after the Revolutionary War but I found them in Alabama and Miss for sure, maybe GA.

 

[Echo40]

Both brothers have had it done. Most of what we expected was there in common, Irish, English and Danish. One showed 5% Jewish, the other 5% Native American which we also knew of.
If Medicine is an "Inexact Science", which is what you acknowledge at every surgery, DNA genetic testing cannot be rock solid.

That reminds me, my brother also had took the test at the same time, and his results still show that he's a small percentage African as well as Melanesian.

I wasn't expecting exact precision in the results, I'm merely baffled by how much variation there is in the results over time, especially when it comes to percentages changing by up to 20% within a year while certain regional estimates can appear then completely disappear without a trace, as if it either somehow messed up and completely gave entirely false results, then subsequent results revealed that it was in error, but instead of providing an explanation, they just omit the results without saying anything and hope you don't notice.

I can only imagine the sort of issues that could arise if someone under similar circumstances began filling out forms with altered ethnicity boxes checked based on their testing results, only to have subsequent testing results omit all references to said ethnicities in future results.
Thankfully, I didn't do that because obviously I've identified as Caucasian my whole life in such forms, and didn't consider the results of an online DNA Test revealing that I was something other than Caucasian in small percentages an adequate reason to start checking off other boxes when filling out various forms, but others might, especially if the percentages were more significant.

 

[Marshwheeling]

I had mine done about a year ago, when Ancestry.com had a sale for St. Patrick’s day. I had always thought of myself as Welsh and Swedish according to the family lore. The results pretty much confirmed that, with a smattering of other northern European strains.

The one that came as a bit of a surprise was Cameroon, Congo, and Southern Bantu peoples - 1%. It was not a complete surprise, because my sibs and I had always thought our maternal grandfather was passing. Conchita had also had an inkling, for reasons I will not go into here.

I went right to Amazon to see what I could find in a dashiki. I hesitate to get an update for fear that I could lose what little street cred I may have gained.

 

[crazyphil]

My Uncle told me he shook our family tree and a lot of nuts fell out.

 

[DWalt]

I once had a friend who was born in Hawaii, but was not of Hawaiian ancestry (similar to the claims of a former president). He would always check the "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander" racial box.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

I also have zero interest in DNA trsting.
If you want to know your family heritage, start with what you know and work backwards.
Recommend a family tree program so you can plug in folks as you find them.
Lots of info online and elsewhere in public records.
Like US Census, land records - usually at county courthouses.
Like all the land that I know of and can find belonging to my GGreatparents is in the name of my GREAT Grandmother.
Sam was of course a Confederate Vet.
You had to sign a statement to regain full citizenship and own land.
Hmm. Maybe Sam didn’t sign!

 

[GypsmJim]

Many years ago I did the family tree, so I knew where I came from. My research took my roots back into the early 1700's, and my wife's back to the 1600's.

Then I did the spit test and so did my wife. The results came back as expected for both of us.

In my family tree research I found a branch of my Great Grand Aunt. I knew the names and found the descendants, one of which was a girl and I knew her married name. It was a common name with many in the phone book, so I just left it there.

Last year a guy (actually from my very own neighborhood) sent me an email thru Ancestry.com saying that he did a spit test and it showed me as a possible relative. Once getting a release of information thru Ancestry we talked on the phone and asked about who was the Grandpa, etc., and we found out our Mothers were best friends back in the 1930's.

Say what you will, but I now have a lot of respect for DNA testing.

 

[Aggie1906]

I have been using a genealogy computer program for over twenty years. I began using Ancestry.com less than ten years ago. It keeps getting better, and easier to use. When they announced their DNA I did that, maybe four years ago They keep refining their data bases, and updating my results.
Knowing what I already did about my ancestors, I find them pretty much spot on geographically. No doubt they can link your relatives, as I already know the close ones that show up as DNA matches. Anybody can do this. Better use of my time than parlor games or crossword puzzles in my book.
Oh, and I do their six month deal in the Fall, and sign off in the Spring.
It's an indoor event.
My first test was a hoot, as it showed me less than 10% British Isles, and mostly Western European. We had a good laugh about that. Time went by and they got it better. Well, there was that Frenchman.

 

[DWalt]

For those who may not know about it, the Mormons have an ancestry website which is free, familysearch dot org. It has most of the features of the other ancestry services and in fact it links to them. You have to register, but you needn't be LDS to use it. Easy to use once you get the hang of it (which can't be done overnight). I frequently get notices about ancestors I didn't know existed, most of the time they are so far removed I don't bother to add them to the tree. One surprise, I was able to follow the direct line of my maternal ancestors back to the 15th Century, most of the others went back only to the late 18th to mid 19th centuries when they arrived in the US, mainly from Germany. I did track my wife's tree back to a Revolutionary War soldier, making her eligible to join the DAR. But she has absolutely no interest in doing that. She has many relatives on her mother's side who fought for the lost cause in the War Between the States. I found that my wife's great-grandmother went through six husbands, but all but two of her 10 children were by one man. Maybe she was just too much of a woman for many men, or maybe she poisoned most of them. No idea what happened there.

 

[CB3]

DNA is an evolving science. It depends on recording test results from increasing numbers of people to get increasingly accurate. I’ve done mine with both Ancestry and My Heritage. They use two different methods and came up with very similar results. Most interesting is that I am over 30% Scandinavian. I have traced seven lines back over 300 years without one Scandinavian appearing. Must have been ancestors of the English and Germans I know back to the 1500’s.

Generally those two sets of DNA results are supported over the last 400 years by my family trees in both Ancestry and Family Search. Here again these databases have different approaches.

In Ancestry your tree can be private, public, or shared with a chosen few. By sharing you can usually build your tree faster than going it alone.

The digitized databases that Ancestry has are rivaled for research only by the files that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been compiling for over a hundred years. Ancestry’s algorithms help you search for digitized documentary evidence that 40 years ago was only a dream.

Family Search takes a different approach. There is only one family tree, and it springs from Noah after the flood. Prior to that Adam and Eve started the first family on earth. The Church of Jesus Christ of a Latter Day Saints has millions of member volunteers adding info, and the Church has spent substantial sums writing and updating Family Search software to make this tree available to anyone.

Thus each of us is way, way down that one family tree. No one has ever found or even claimed (that I know of) any provable ancestry outside of this line that far back.

So Family Search is a worldwide collaborative effort with some privacy only for living individuals. Basically everyone can contribute, and sometimes family lore gets put in instead of provable facts. The Tree is constantly being corrected and updated with documentary evidence.

Ancestry and Family Search can be linked to share research results. Ancestry is the Johnny-Come-Lately compared to the Church efforts, but it is a great example of a private enterprise identifying a commercial niche and filling it profitably. There are other similar software sites out there that some folks prefer for personal reasons.

DNA is currently one of Ancestry’s newer efforts that is probably more a “loss leader” than a profit center, but the DNA database will be significant in the near future and probably so helpful that it will become profitable.

 

[DeathGrip]

TMI,

I know someone who gained an adult daughter from a DNA test.

Just sayin'

 

[Walter Rego]

TMI,

I know someone who gained an adult daughter from a DNA test.

Just sayin'

And a woman who claimed she was my half sister, according to her mother's deathbed confession, turned out not to be related to me after recent Ancestry.com DNA testing.

It stirred up quite a commotion with my family when she first came forward as you can imagine. I wish she had done the testing years ago when she first made contact but it wasn't as inexpensive as it is now.

Inspector Callahan: I can trace my family only about as far back as the mid-1800's. My father's family from the region outside of Naples and my mother's from Sicily. I have not yet done a DNA test but given the history of those two regions, I will not be surprised to have a percentage of Greek and Spanish and even some northern African from the Moorish influence in Sicily. And on my dad's side, I'll bet there is some Irish from when the Roman empire occupied that region which will certainly explain why his sister had red hair and freckles among the rest of the family that looked like extras from The Godfather.

 

[Deuce Caboose]

I'm no geneticist, but I have little faith in anything the DNA tests claim regarding geographic origins. One has to be suspicious when test results, which should be stable, change over time. I am personally not interested in getting any DNA tests. Several years back, my (now-deceased) elderly M-I-L became interested in getting her DNA tested. She was from the deep South going way back to the mid-18th Century and the family lore was always that her family probably had significant American Indian blood. The DNA test results came back that she was 100% European white with no trace of Indian ancestry. I think she was a little disappointed.

Elizabeth Warren, call your office...

 

[bamabiker]

I was contacted by a woman in Arizona that is related to a woman in Oregon that they believed was my half sister from the Ancestry DNA thing.
The lady in Oregon found out that her father was not her biological father after he and her mother had passed. They did the DNA test and they came to the conclusion that my father's parents were her grandparents also and with the process of elimination my father was the only sibling that could have been with her mother.
I sent in the DNA test and it came back that we are 2nd or 3rd cousins and now they think it was someone I'm related to but don't even know that was her father. Woo, mother would have come back to life and whupped dad in the grave.
The Ancestry report shows lots of people that are my 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins and I don't recognize any of them. It did show one 1st cousin and I saw him not long ago at a wedding.
Now every week or two I get emails from Ancestry wanting to sell me more test or sign up for more info. I just delete them and keep moving.