DNA, the Tree, and me

I finally did the Ancestry.com DNA test. I demurred for quite a while because when all is said and done, the test is simply going to tell you that most of your ancestors came from Europe, with a smattering from other areas. Since my tree is well researched, I was pretty sure there would be no great surprises, like being a direct decedent of the Ethiopian Eunuch.

But I got a 25% off offer and my research has been stalled for a while, so I figured I might as well join the DNA age. Ancestry needs to step up its game, though - genealogical researchers tend to be old, and a 2 month wait might not be timely enough for some of us. But I finally got the results. And...

As expected, no great surprises. The big 4 are Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and whatever else makes up Europe West (Germany, in the main). I'm a bit surprised that Scandinavia beat out Germany, but only by a couple of percentage points.

Next is an analysis of where people matching my DNA located in America. That's sort of a no- brainer, too

And then there was a puzzling statement that "We haven't found a New Ancestor Discovery for you yet." I'm still reading all the information and I'm not really sure what this statement means because I'm pretty sure none of my as-yet-unknown grandparents submitted a DNA test back in the 1700s.

What the test did accomplish was to find several hundred 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins. Like Jacob Gann and Chadric Head, who both had their DNA tested, but as of yet don't have any ancestor trees on Ancestry.com. Not sure what's up with that. The other 1,829 4th or closer cousins I have yet to meet. Of those cousins, Ancestry has matched common ancestors between my tree and theirs in about 60 instances and matched common, but not directly related, people in both trees in all the rest.

That's interesting, because I have fewer than 500 ancestors from the tree uploaded to Ancestry; my local genealogy program database has more that 8,000 people! I will add more names to Ancestry, but I'm waiting on an upgrade to my genealogy software that will manage that for me.

Meanwhile, I'm checking out the cuz's with common ancestors, looking for lost relatives.