Community Chat

[Moonchilde]

And wow - they have already put through my autosomal, i.e. Family Finder, test at no charge and I should have the results in about five weeks. They said my sample should be fine, that the FF test is less sensitive than the mtDNA test - something else to note.

I have to say, they've apologized all over themselves and gone out of their way to make things up to me.

[scotnovel]

I just got my results from Ancestry and actually found them very interesting, a bit surprising, and certainly helpful.

 My Grandmother always told us that the majority of her heritage was from western European countries.  My Mother claimed that my Grandmother was "lying" because she looked down on Eastern Europeans which was really where her ancestors came from.  My Grandmother could be a little eccentric and was known to exaggerate a little about some things so we haven't known for sure and haven't been about  to get a lot through research on her side of the family.    

The Ancestry DNA showed that I have less than 1% Eastern European background and 32% Western European so that old argument between my mother and grandmother has now been solved.   We know a lot about our genealogical history but the DNA definitely gave us a few surprising results. 

[Moonchilde]

I started my entire DNA testing journey because, like many, I was initially curious as to whether family stories were true and/or whether some assumptions I'd made were true. I did a lot of genealogical research on Ancestry well before I did any DNA testing.

Just from genealogy searching I learned one huge surprising thing. I had always assumed that, like so many Americans, my ancestors arrived in the great migration waves in the 19th C. Nope. Both sides had been here since the late 1600s/very early 1700s and one side came on the Mayflower. That was a shock.

Then learned that I had a Swedish great-grandmother and the paternal grandmother my mom thought was French Canadian was 100% Irish.  Some maternal great-greats came from an area that at one time was either France OR Germany with no definitive trace to either country.

It was then that I decided I wanted to do the DNA testing, to verify that my family tree research was correct. Two autosomal tests, from Ancestry and 123andme, totally verified all of this genetically. Yes I have a little Swedish, and yes, French and German which would corroborate the great-greats. So I'm convinced of the accuracy as far as what I'd hoped to find out.

And based on a very old test I'd taken years ago and the recent mtDNA test, the most recent of my "ancient migrations" was from the Near East, the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula.

With the "State of DNA" as it is today, I don't think there's any more I can find out.