Finding your roots? show and family genealogy

Sriracha said:
I ordered an auDNA and mtDNA test. Woot! Trying to convince my brother to take the yDNA test.
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Is this through Ancestry.com?
 
Gist said:
Is this through Ancestry.com?
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FamilyTreeDNA. They have specials going on. Idk how well it suits people who have not researched their genealogy extensively, b/c it is used for proving and disproving lineage (on a research level.) I don't need to know autosomal DNA, it is only accurate within 6 generations (but it comes standard with the kit.) How I see it is that if you were adopted and are unfamiliar with immediate family the auDNA is what you need or if you have no interest in the research and just want to know your general ethnicity makeup. mtDNA is for males and females (for maternal lineage), yDNA is for males only (paternal lineage) and it is basically more specific sequencing.

If you have roots in Africa, you might want to take the mtDNA or yDNA as they would be able to give you more specific information based on comparisons they have collected from those areas (considering it how impossible it is for blacks to research their lineage in America. No you might not be able to do the genealogy research itself b/c facts are not there, but have to skip a step to know from which cultures your ancestors originated.)

I was able to convince my brother to buy the yDNA kit, I'm so excited! :D
 
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Ooh, that sounds awesome, @Sriracha - I was tooling around on FamilyTreeDNA and saw that they had a matching campaign with 23andme. I loaded my results on there - supposedly if they find anything new, those results will be accessible to me as well. I'm looking forward to that possibility.

If I receive any different results from my last scan, I'll let you know. I've always loved diving into my family tree - especially since finding information on my paternal grandfather is nigh impossible.
 
So I have my Autosomal DNA result ... not surprising I'm 100% white. LOL

100% European
39% British Isles
22% Southern Europe
22% Eastern Europe
18% Scandinavian

I'm hoping that my likely matches use Wikitree.com. I'm so over the moon about this site for genealogists. I am baffled by the 22% Southern Europe and 18% Scandinavian as I have never uncovered ancestors from these areas (or have found surnames to corroborate.)
 
I would love to know my complete ancestry. My father was into this, but he could only trace back so far. I'm really curious, because our family on my dad's side changed their family name.. And that previous name sounds either French, Italian or Russian to me.
 
My paternal name is English and the village my father is from in the west of Ireland has two major families that share the name. It is commonly understood that they were once one family that came there at some point in the last 400 years or so.
I have always been fascinated by this mystery and it has propelled me to look at the history of Ireland, the West in particular and try to figure it out. My fathers brother (one of seven) shared this interest and ran a B&B in the county capital for many years. (well my aunt ran it, he just chatted with the guests). He was fairly convinced that our family had come down from the North. Still it is an English name and most of the back and forth migrations in the North of Ireland have been with Scotland.

So I started learning more about the Normans and how they changed England, Whales, Ireland and Scotland starting in 1066 and am now of the mind that my family was a farmer class that tagged along with a Norman family as it moved from Scotland to Ireland.

I have (or had) 52 first cousins and would love it if we all took dna tests.
 
I've been having to read quite a bit about the subject. My knowledge about dna in general is pretty basic. I actually am very interested in what my brother's test reveals. How it works for females: 50% X from father and 50% X from mother. How it works for males is 50% Y from father and 50% X from mother. Siblings only share 50% of their chromosomes. The only people who have 100% identical chromosomes are identical twins. What bits and pieces each siblings get is varied (which is why siblings vary in appearance.) The results my mother in law took are significantly different than the results from her brother (since I do their genealogy as well.)

If you want more detailed information ... you can upload your raw dna data to Gedmatch.com for free. The site is used mainly for genealogists; however it does give an option to find out what they have to say about your origins (which my guess is based on the comparison of their program and collection of data from ancestry.com and familytreedna users.) The website look entirely primitive (which is a little bit of a turn off), but get past the look of it and see it for the potential in the different features it provides.

How you use the dna matches in your research is finding a match who has uploaded their tree somewhere or share it with you. The two of you have to figure out your common ancestor. Once that is established you work a dna triage ... finding other cousins that match the two of you. If you have hit a brick wall in your general research and cannot go back further in ancestry, finding other cousins with the same dna is what can give you a direction, and that's only if they have already done the work (the clencher.)

So far, the matches I have reached out to have been slightly disappointing. I've only had two matches for someone around the 3rd cousin range, the rest are far off (which is fine.) Most of them are interested in genealogy and want someone else to do the work.

Here is what Gedmatch says about my origins:
47.2 North Atlantic
26.08 Baltic
13.83 West Mediterranean
4.18 West Asian
2.06 South Asian
.68 Siberian
.87 American Indian
.78 Northeast African
 
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I have gotten my mtDNA results back (mitochondrial) ... and I'm not sure I can say it is worth it to have this done. It's extremely difficult to follow the lineage of the mother's mother (and so on) b/c of lack of paper trail. I was aware this is a potential problem. The nice thing is that even though I'm a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information, there are others in my haplogroup that are excited to have a new member (myself) and are looking into seeing if there is any connection at all, since this haplogroup is about 20,000 years old (which is not old compared to others.) I quite honestly see this experience of looking at numbers and data as an INTJ dream world.

My haplogroup is H1b1 (H1 is found throughout Europe, North Africa, the Levant, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and as far as Central Asia and Siberia. The highest frequencies of H1 are observed in the Iberian peninsula, south-west France and Sardinia.) Haplogroup H is a descendant of haplogroup HV.
search
 
It sounds really fascinating, like a detective trail.
There's a programme, that shows people doing the test. I love it when very bigoted racist people sign up for it, waving their union jack around, 1oo% convinced they're anglo saxon and nothing else and then they find they actually have some % African DNA, or Mongolian or something.
Were all more mixed than we believe I think ...and probably a lot of historical fact about people's movement etc. is incomplete.
The book the selfish gene has a lot of interesting stuff in it.
 
Sriracha said:
I've been having to read quite a bit about the subject. My knowledge about dna in general is pretty basic. I actually am very interested in what my brother's test reveals. How it works for females: 50% X from father and 50% X from mother. How it works for males is 50% Y from father and 50% X from mother. Siblings only share 50% of their chromosomes. The only people who have 100% identical chromosomes are identical twins. What bits and pieces each siblings get is varied (which is why siblings vary in appearance.) The results my mother in law took are significantly different than the results from her brother (since I do their genealogy as well.)
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Correcting myself .... females receive the full X from their father, and sons receive the full Y. You'd think I'd know some math by now. :/
 
Adding ... I received my brother's Y results. Totally disappointing, there is no surname on the list of matches that are remotely close to my maiden name. Same goes for my uncle-in-law. You hope to get the Y test to see how your surname might have morphed ... nope/nada. That may change in time as more people submit their tests. So for now, I'll just say getting the Y-dna or Mt-dna is a waste of $$$. Stick with autosomal (which is the basic testing, unless you want to know your haplo-group ... and evenso, there is no point.)
 
So I've just uncovered pretty significant information. My husband's great-grandfather (paternal paternal paternal) is not biological. His surname shouldn't be his surname at all. My father-in-law took the Y-dna test (and autosomal). I finally had found the Y haplogroup that another descendant took in order to disprove/prove a theory where his family came from. Your Y haplogroup is unchanged ... passed from father to son over thousands of years. They are not a match. Out of 4000 matches on his autosomal DNA, not one person has his surname in their name registry. In the general search tab, there are probably 10 pages of subscribers who belong to this family. So now I am on this quest of building his tree, so I can separate which matches belong to which line and single out the matches who are completely unknown. I may not find the actual biological father, but I will find the family. The one thing that does help once I get into more digging of the genealogy, is that it appears they were Jewish ... and in knowing this I can narrow down possibilities.
 
So my last post was a month ago. There is a significant cousin match in this unknown family, I am 90% sure of the father of my husband's grandfather. It took time in messaging this person, building a family tree with his information (because he didn't have one.) This "match" would be considered a full 2nd cousin according to cold data. However, dna sites do not take in consideration that this person is only half related, putting him in closer relationship proximity: the 1/2 1st cousin range or 1C1R (etc). I am 90% sure I know what my husband's last name should really be. I'm still digging for more data and waiting to get some emails answered to solidify my opinion.
 
Gale said:
Any watched these shows such as Finding your Roots, Who do you think you are?, etc. that show celebs learning about their ancestry?
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Love em

Gale said:
Have you ever traced your family background? How was the experience? Found anything interesting?
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My mom has spent a lot of time working on ours. Her parents were Swedish, I wish I got to meet them.

A few things I've learnt:

- My paternal grandfather was a count
- My maternal great-grandfather was a bard
- My family has lived all over Europe. Sweden, Norway, England most notably

I never got to meet my grandparents or aunts or uncles. Most of them died shortly before I was born.
 
Gale said:
Any watched these shows such as Finding your Roots, Who do you think you are?, etc. that show celebs learning about their ancestry? Have you ever traced your family background? How was the experience? Found anything interesting?
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Yeah, I used what I could in Acentey.com before trial ended and I trace back to Germany, Spain, and latin America. Pretty wicked stuff I mean cool..
 
Finally went ahead and did the AncestryDNA kit. They received it and just waiting on the results. I've wanted to do this for so long that I decided to finally go for it. (check one thing off my bucket list) :D
 
Gale said:
Finally went ahead and did the AncestryDNA kit. They received it and just waiting on the results. I've wanted to do this for so long that I decided to finally go for it. (check one thing off my bucket list) :D
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Wow exciting and intriguing!
 
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