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Anybody Try Ancestry.Com or the like? (1 Viewer)

Chemical X

Chemical X

Footballguy
been seeing a lot of commercials lately on TV for sites like ancestry, 23 and me, etc.  has anyone tried this?  this doesn't appeal to me at all and i am not going to try, but I am curious if anyone has cared enough about their background, heritage, genealogy to give this a whirl.  i know the sites are different, but for 23, do people really care to find out that they are 37% European, 22% Nordic, etc. 

 
My mother went to a lot of trouble to manually document a family tree as much as she could before she died.  After her death, I put all that data on Ancestry.com.  She also had a lot of old family photos - some people I knew, some I had only heard of, and some I had no idea.  But for those I could identify, I digitized the photos and uploaded to Ancestry.  Once you start the process, it gets to be habit forming - at least it did for me.  I never did any of the DNA testing they or 23 and me advertise, but I was able to trace my ancestors back to when they came over from Europe. 

 
johnnycakes said:
My mother went to a lot of trouble to manually document a family tree as much as she could before she died.  After her death, I put all that data on Ancestry.com.  She also had a lot of old family photos - some people I knew, some I had only heard of, and some I had no idea.  But for those I could identify, I digitized the photos and uploaded to Ancestry.  Once you start the process, it gets to be habit forming - at least it did for me.  I never did any of the DNA testing they or 23 and me advertise, but I was able to trace my ancestors back to when they came over from Europe. 
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what was the cost of this?

 
Chemical X said:
what was the cost of this?
Click to expand...
IIRC they charge something like $56/quarter, but don't quote me on that.  Just seems like every few months I get dinged for about that amount.  If I were to stop paying I think the tree would still stand but I might not be able to make changes to it... I don't know enough about their billing protocol to know if that is the way they work or not. 

 
I did the DNA thing and found out I'm indeed part neanderthal, something my wife asked why I needed to spend money to find out something she already knew.  

 
I signed up with Ancestry and played around with it for a while. It was kind of interesting to confirm or disprove various stories that my family had been telling for years and years. (For example: I found out that my mom's grandfather's family wasn't Irish like everything had thought. They were actually Welsh, but they traveled to Ireland to get on the boat to take them to America.)

But it does start to get frustrating after a while. There aren't many records available prior to 1820. Once you go back that far, there's a lot of guesswork involved.

 
johnnycakes said:
IIRC they charge something like $56/quarter, but don't quote me on that.  Just seems like every few months I get dinged for about that amount.  If I were to stop paying I think the tree would still stand but I might not be able to make changes to it... I don't know enough about their billing protocol to know if that is the way they work or not. 
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Boy if that is true that is pretty pricey

 
Standard pricing is $99 for 6 months of access to U.S. files only, or $149 for 6 months of access to their worldwide catalogs. They also have a free option, which allows you to create a tree and see "hints" (but you can't see the actual document linked to the hint).

I only signed up for a free 14-day trial, then I canceled the full membership and kept the free option.

 
I have a coworker that did ancestry.com last month. She said it's $70-$100 depending on the "package" (whatever that means). They send you a kit, you spit in it, they analyze and send you the results in about 6 weeks. She said her results were somewhat surprising. She thought she was all English, turns out she's 20% Greek & misc.

One interesting that she found is that the percentages aren't as clear cut as we would think. For example, if my dad is 100% Congo African, and my mom is 100% Dutch. My results may not show a 50/50 split. If the genes from one parent are stronger than the other, the results may show 55/45 or even 1/99, in theory.

 
I have a cousin on my mother's side that traced our ancestry back to 1099 in England. Seems there are a lot of assassins in the family. I can only trace my father's family back to when great-grandpa immigrated from Germany. Tried free Ancestry.com once - couldn't trace Dad's side back farther, including his mom, who was Pennsylvania Dutch and might have ancestors that came here with William Penn for all I know. It was disappointing that no records appeared before her - you think that would have been easy.

ETA: never did the genetic test. Could be interesting.

 
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Once went to christianbibleancestory.com and they charged me 20 Hail Marys, 5 Our Fathers and $800.  Turns out I'm related to Adam & Eve.  Pretty interesting stuff.

 
I did the 23andme. I have always been interested in my family and heritage. I also wanted to take advantage of the medical uses that are available. I had put it on the back burner as something I would do later because of the price tag. Then when I saw it on sale during Prime Day- I went ahead and did it. 

I selected 23andme over Ancestry.com for two main reasons: 1) I wanted access to the medical side of things (though I later figured out that by using promethease.com you get more medical info anyways... which I will be doing soon. I believe it is only $5) 2) with ancestry they have a lot of features but you essentially have to keep paying into them to use them. 

I know very little (almost nothing) about my fathers side of the family. So, this was another factor on wanting to do this. That side of the family is pretty much a mystery as I really did not know him and almost all of his family had nothing to do with or my sister. I was curious what the heritage on that side was. 

I just got the results back today. Some info I have been told was wrong. No Native American in the bloodline (my grandmother though we had some). Some of the little bit of info I was told on the father side was wrong as well. No German or Russian. I knew I was mostly Irish with good amounts of Scottish/English/Welsh but it turns out that it is about 75% with potentially as much as 90%. A little Scandanavian is thrown in as well as French/German. 98% Northwestern European. 

Health wise there was nothing that popped up as something to look into more. One thing go a "slightly more at risk than average" which is some sort of blood clot thing. Like I mentioned before, I will be doing the promethease using the raw data to dig into the medical more. 

If anyone wanted to do it here is a referral link: https://refer.23andme.com/s/chadstroma I am not sure if you get a discount but I do get a $20 gift card. I would suggest doing the basic one and then doing promethease.com for the medical side. From what I can tell at this point there is nothing extra you get from 23andme that you wouldn't get after doing the promethease.

 
On any of these sites do they show if you have sisters/brothers registered on there? My wife is adopted and all we know is she has 4 siblings somewhere.

 
Courtjester said:
On any of these sites do they show if you have sisters/brothers registered on there? My wife is adopted and all we know is she has 4 siblings somewhere.
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Hmmm.... you might could try to find out her birth parents first and then search them on ancestry.com to find the siblings , possibly. Does she know where she was born?

 
Courtjester said:
On any of these sites do they show if you have sisters/brothers registered on there? My wife is adopted and all we know is she has 4 siblings somewhere.
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I"ve been on Ancestry for a couple of years. I let my membership slide for a few months, but everything was there when I re-upped. I did the Ancestry DNA a few months ago (69% Irish, 27% British, 4% other).

The thing about Ancestry is that you can create a family tree and choose not share it with the other members of Ancestry. Same with DNA. You wife's biological family would have to be on Ancestry and publically share their DNA profile. In my case, the closest relation I have found are two possible 2nd or 3rd cousins. One of the two has only 6 family members in her tree and the other isn't publically sharing their family tree.

Just a couple of things to think about before spending money.

 
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shifty said:
Hmmm.... you might could try to find out her birth parents first and then search them on ancestry.com to find the siblings , possibly. Does she know where she was born?
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She knows her hospital (we actually were born in the same hospital). It is a tough decision for her to make because her parents are still alive and she had kind of decided she wouldn't search for her biological parents until they passed away. Plus our kids have no clue about this.

We were just looking for a subtle backdoor way to maybe find some of her relatives. 

 
I did 23andme. Mostly I was interested because the official family story is that we're English/Irish on one side and French/German on the other. However, my youngest son and I are very, very tan. Like that has to have been some mixing with the Native Americans going. Report came back 99.4% Northwestern European, mostly English/Irish with a little Scandanavian thrown in. The mystery continues.

 
Courtjester said:
She knows her hospital (we actually were born in the same hospital). It is a tough decision for her to make because her parents are still alive and she had kind of decided she wouldn't search for her biological parents until they passed away. Plus our kids have no clue about this.

We were just looking for a subtle backdoor way to maybe find some of her relatives. 
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I might would go with a private investigator in that situation.

 
Courtjester said:
On any of these sites do they show if you have sisters/brothers registered on there? My wife is adopted and all we know is she has 4 siblings somewhere.
Click to expand...
Not sure how it actually works but my wife found her half sister thru ancestry. When you enter your DNA you get a list of other site users who you could be related to. A girl showed up as being a cousin that my wife had never heard of. After contacting her she discovered this girl's mom was a baby my mother in law gave up for adoption in the early 60s. They all meet each other for the first time 5 weeks ago.

 
Raging weasel said:
Not sure how it actually works but my wife found her half sister thru ancestry. When you enter your DNA you get a list of other site users who you could be related to. A girl showed up as being a cousin that my wife had never heard of. After contacting her she discovered this girl's mom was a baby my mother in law gave up for adoption in the early 60s. They all meet each other for the first time 5 weeks ago.
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See this is what we kind of want to test the waters with. 

 
Courtjester said:
On any of these sites do they show if you have sisters/brothers registered on there? My wife is adopted and all we know is she has 4 siblings somewhere.
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Yes, you can opt in or out. The nearest I have is 2nd/4th cousin. If they have opted in you can contact them. 

 
bentley said:
I did 23andme. Mostly I was interested because the official family story is that we're English/Irish on one side and French/German on the other. However, my youngest son and I are very, very tan. Like that has to have been some mixing with the Native Americans going. Report came back 99.4% Northwestern European, mostly English/Irish with a little Scandanavian thrown in. The mystery continues.
Click to expand...
Under the FAQ: 

I know I have Native American ancestry. Why doesn't it show up in my results?

We have extremely high confidence in the accuracy of your results and the science behind them. But 23andMe is a genetic testing service, which means we can only show you what is found in your DNA. If your Native American heritage cannot be seen through your DNA, that doesn't mean that your understanding of your family heritage as passed down through the generations is incorrect, only that your genetic heritage does not reveal Native American ancestry.

 
That's not helpful at all. So Native Americans don't have DNA?
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I think what they mean is that their DNA database does not have samples from every known Native American tribe.

Either that, or they are trying to politely say that you're not really Native American and that your relatives lied to you.

 
bentley said:
I did 23andme. Mostly I was interested because the official family story is that we're English/Irish on one side and French/German on the other. However, my youngest son and I are very, very tan. Like that has to have been some mixing with the Native Americans going. Report came back 99.4% Northwestern European, mostly English/Irish with a little Scandanavian thrown in. The mystery continues.
Click to expand...
My grandma has a very dark complexion, and her side of the family can be traced to the Alsace-Lorraine region, which is about as French-German as it gets. The rest of us trend toward the Scotch-Irish side (I may catch fire during the eclipse tomorrow...), but unless Great Great Grandpa Adolph Klein was an alias, I don't think grandma had any Native American ancestry.

 
bentley said:
That's not helpful at all. So Native Americans don't have DNA?
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My take from it is that there may not be markers (not sure if that would be the right word) that will always be able to differentiate Native American DNA from other groups. There is a part where you can change the degree of confidence in the findings and it changes the percentages. 

 
Rustoleum said:
My grandma has a very dark complexion, and her side of the family can be traced to the Alsace-Lorraine region, which is about as French-German as it gets. The rest of us trend toward the Scotch-Irish side (I may catch fire during the eclipse tomorrow...), but unless Great Great Grandpa Adolph Klein was an alias, I don't think grandma had any Native American ancestry.
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The more you study people groups the more you realize that people groups are not static. We tend to think "British" as being the ancestors of tribal Celts because the Celts were from that area. However, there are massive migrations and conquering etc that change that greatly so the British we think of today really are not just the ancestors of Celts. In the south, Rome had sway and Romans as well as other barbarians were there. Later, you had the Angles and Saxons (Germanic tribes) that settled in the British Isles. And later the Norman conquest which saw the ruling classes ending up largely Norman which Normans were a mix of Viking (North Men = Norman) and those Gaulic tribal ancestors of what is now Normandy. And that is all an over simplistic quick dent into the whole thing of one region of the world in a relative short period of time. 

 
Chadstroma said:
My take from it is that there may not be markers (not sure if that would be the right word) that will always be able to differentiate Native American DNA from other groups. There is a part where you can change the degree of confidence in the findings and it changes the percentages. 
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Sounds like a scam. Pretty sure you are going to be framed for an arson or stealing from Wallmart sometime in the near future.

 
Rustoleum said:
My grandma has a very dark complexion, and her side of the family can be traced to the Alsace-Lorraine region, which is about as French-German as it gets. The rest of us trend toward the Scotch-Irish side (I may catch fire during the eclipse tomorrow...), but unless Great Great Grandpa Adolph Klein was an alias, I don't think grandma had any Native American ancestry.
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Interesting, I've always been told my father's side of the family came from the Alsace-Lorraine region.  Three brothers migrated together to the US.  Wouldn't think there's a lot of people connected to Alsace-Lorraine but I haven't verified through DNA, etc.

 
Chadstroma said:
Under the FAQ: 

I know I have Native American ancestry. Why doesn't it show up in my results?

We have extremely high confidence in the accuracy of your results and the science behind them. But 23andMe is a genetic testing service, which means we can only show you what is found in your DNA. If your Native American heritage cannot be seen through your DNA, that doesn't mean that your understanding of your family heritage as passed down through the generations is incorrect, only that your genetic heritage does not reveal Native American ancestry.
Click to expand...
Try this.

 
Courtjester said:
She knows her hospital (we actually were born in the same hospital). It is a tough decision for her to make because her parents are still alive and she had kind of decided she wouldn't search for her biological parents until they passed away. Plus our kids have no clue about this.

We were just looking for a subtle backdoor way to maybe find some of her relatives. 
Click to expand...
Can you just get her birth certificate?  (This offer is probably not valid in New York State.)

 
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