Genetic Ancestry companies
Discussion
SlimRick said:
I received an Ancestry DNA kit for Christmas and it was quite an eye opener. I'm not particularly British apparently.
I think bar the Welsh and Irish, many people from the rest of the UK will have strong DNA markers linked to mainland Europe (on account of all that immigration stuff around the time of the Vikings 
)Ive used Ancestry.com and it can be interesting tracing your tree back. Ive mainly concentrated on the male blood line on both sides of the family;
My dad always believed his family where born'n'bred' London but ive traced his roots back to a farmer in 1600's @ Silverstone, along the way theres been romany gypsy + hugoneut blood. Luckily not in my blood line but there was abit of incest going on back in the 1700's. There are other 'well-to-do' names in the tree as well but ive not traced them to find out
My mums side traces its roots back to Wales, upon which it starts getting abit muddled as the Welsh didnt take surnames like the English did. And it can either go 2 ways, either i can be linked back to a Welsh Prince in the 1300's or not basically.
My brother in laws sister has traced her roots and is linked to King Charles 2nd apparently.
Though alot of it is based on a good Samaritan doing the leg work and visiting the churches and copying up the records. Then theres a few fake leads whereby another family tree is similar to yours and it pops up, ive had someone email me telling me my info is wrong yet i google each name and date to see what else the net throws up and it suggests that the other person is wrong but as theyve copied someone elses tree etc.
My Step-mum asked me why havent i followed each lead but she forgets that ages ago, people had 8 kids who had 8 kids and so on. Also, i thought everyone died at 40/50 but it shown me that alot of the family reached 70+, one guy who was a lord didnt have any kids until 70, married a 20 year old and popped 3 out the subsequent years before dying at 73 lol and that people where having their first kid in the 40's.
Now i pay £13 a month for it and dont use it
My dad always believed his family where born'n'bred' London but ive traced his roots back to a farmer in 1600's @ Silverstone, along the way theres been romany gypsy + hugoneut blood. Luckily not in my blood line but there was abit of incest going on back in the 1700's. There are other 'well-to-do' names in the tree as well but ive not traced them to find out
My mums side traces its roots back to Wales, upon which it starts getting abit muddled as the Welsh didnt take surnames like the English did. And it can either go 2 ways, either i can be linked back to a Welsh Prince in the 1300's or not basically.
My brother in laws sister has traced her roots and is linked to King Charles 2nd apparently.
Though alot of it is based on a good Samaritan doing the leg work and visiting the churches and copying up the records. Then theres a few fake leads whereby another family tree is similar to yours and it pops up, ive had someone email me telling me my info is wrong yet i google each name and date to see what else the net throws up and it suggests that the other person is wrong but as theyve copied someone elses tree etc.
My Step-mum asked me why havent i followed each lead but she forgets that ages ago, people had 8 kids who had 8 kids and so on. Also, i thought everyone died at 40/50 but it shown me that alot of the family reached 70+, one guy who was a lord didnt have any kids until 70, married a 20 year old and popped 3 out the subsequent years before dying at 73 lol and that people where having their first kid in the 40's.
Now i pay £13 a month for it and dont use it
Edited by lemmingjames on Wednesday 3rd May 10:34
lemmingjames said:
Ive used Ancestry.com and it can be interesting tracing your tree back. Ive mainly concentrated on the male blood line on both sides of the family;
My dad always believed his family where born'n'bred' but ive traced his roots back to a farmer in 1600's @ Silverstone, along the way theres been romany gypsy + hugoneut blood. Luckily not in my blood line but there was abit of incest going on back in the 1700's. There are other 'well-to-do' names in the tree as well but ive not traced them to find out
My mums side traces its roots back to Wales, upon which it starts getting abit muddled as the Welsh didnt take surnames like the English did. And it can either go 2 ways, either i can be linked back to a Welsh Prince in the 1300's or not basically.
My brother in laws sister has traced her roots and is linked to King Charles 2nd apparently.
Though alot of it is based on a good Samaritan doing the leg work and visiting the churches and copying up the records. Then theres a few fake leads whereby another family tree is similar to yours and it pops up, ive had someone email me telling me my info is wrong yet i google each name and date to see what else the net throws up and it suggests that the other person is wrong but as theyve copied someone elses tree etc.
My Step-mum asked me why havent i followed each lead but she forgets that ages ago, people had 8 kids who had 8 kids and so on. Also, i thought everyone died at 40/50 but it shown me that alot of the family reached 70+, one guy who was a lord didnt have any kids until 70, married a 20 year old and popped 3 out the subsequent years before dying at 73 lol and that people where having their first kid in the 40's.
Now i pay £13 a month for it and dont use it
I did something similar with findmypast.com, got a months free trial and got back to 1550. Victorian research is easiest because census records are available, last one you can see is 1911. No royal roots for me just farmworkers around Birlingham near Worcester who then moved to the glass factories in the West Midlands. My dad always believed his family where born'n'bred' but ive traced his roots back to a farmer in 1600's @ Silverstone, along the way theres been romany gypsy + hugoneut blood. Luckily not in my blood line but there was abit of incest going on back in the 1700's. There are other 'well-to-do' names in the tree as well but ive not traced them to find out
My mums side traces its roots back to Wales, upon which it starts getting abit muddled as the Welsh didnt take surnames like the English did. And it can either go 2 ways, either i can be linked back to a Welsh Prince in the 1300's or not basically.
My brother in laws sister has traced her roots and is linked to King Charles 2nd apparently.
Though alot of it is based on a good Samaritan doing the leg work and visiting the churches and copying up the records. Then theres a few fake leads whereby another family tree is similar to yours and it pops up, ive had someone email me telling me my info is wrong yet i google each name and date to see what else the net throws up and it suggests that the other person is wrong but as theyve copied someone elses tree etc.
My Step-mum asked me why havent i followed each lead but she forgets that ages ago, people had 8 kids who had 8 kids and so on. Also, i thought everyone died at 40/50 but it shown me that alot of the family reached 70+, one guy who was a lord didnt have any kids until 70, married a 20 year old and popped 3 out the subsequent years before dying at 73 lol and that people where having their first kid in the 40's.
Now i pay £13 a month for it and dont use it
One thing with Ancestry is the abysmal transcription errors of the census returns. That's bad enough, but there's little or no effort put in to implementing user-submitted corrections.
I have Ancestry set to ignore suggestions from user-submitted trees, it's more fun to do it yourself, but a lot of people just copy stuff blindly without checking it. The LDS Family History site is also bad for this.
I have Ancestry set to ignore suggestions from user-submitted trees, it's more fun to do it yourself, but a lot of people just copy stuff blindly without checking it. The LDS Family History site is also bad for this.
Halmyre said:
One thing with Ancestry is the abysmal transcription errors of the census returns. That's bad enough, but there's little or no effort put in to implementing user-submitted corrections.
I have Ancestry set to ignore suggestions from user-submitted trees, it's more fun to do it yourself, but a lot of people just copy stuff blindly without checking it. The LDS Family History site is also bad for this.
Theres that as well, looking at and trying to decipher someones handwriting from a scanned image or whereby over time, the spelling has changed, ie my surname now uses i whereas theres references to it in the past of it being a y. Also its been known that some of the ladies in my tree go by different names, for example, my dads aunt is known as Mary but her real name is something else and Mary is her 2nd name. I have Ancestry set to ignore suggestions from user-submitted trees, it's more fun to do it yourself, but a lot of people just copy stuff blindly without checking it. The LDS Family History site is also bad for this.
Then sometimes blood lines just end and there numerous references to ladies not having surnames.
For me the Welsh where by the far, the hardest to figure out
Me and my younger sister have had a go at our family tree but seem to hit a dead end about 1850.
I'm thinking of doing the AncestryDNA kit as I've been reading up about their kit and the 23andme one and quite fancy seeing graphs of where my DNA comes from. I always believed we were English but my red hair (which nobody else in the family has had in the 1900-2017 period) tells me that somewhere we possibly have links to Scandinavia or similar.
I'm thinking of doing the AncestryDNA kit as I've been reading up about their kit and the 23andme one and quite fancy seeing graphs of where my DNA comes from. I always believed we were English but my red hair (which nobody else in the family has had in the 1900-2017 period) tells me that somewhere we possibly have links to Scandinavia or similar.
there was a programme on a little while ago, where Eddie Izzard traced his family- that was quite interesting and brought up unknown surprises.
prob worth finding if yr into that kind of thing.
must admit my mother actually compiled her own files- of both sides of our families. nice charts and lots of inserted photos- I guess both sides of the families had photos taken and they managed to survive over all these years too.
not a lot of surprises, we know which countries etc both sides of the families are all from.
as mentioned though- the size of families and of course child deaths etc is something shocking and sad too.
prob worth finding if yr into that kind of thing.
must admit my mother actually compiled her own files- of both sides of our families. nice charts and lots of inserted photos- I guess both sides of the families had photos taken and they managed to survive over all these years too.
not a lot of surprises, we know which countries etc both sides of the families are all from.
as mentioned though- the size of families and of course child deaths etc is something shocking and sad too.
The ancestry thing is a bit dubious though. All they actually do is compare your DNA to the DNA of other modern humans who live in various parts of the world. In other words if you find a large percentage of your DNA is Scandinavian it doesn't mean you're ancestor was a viking, only that you share a percentage of DNA that is similar to people currently living in Scandinavia.
Without reliable historical data it tells you virtually nothing about your actual ancestry that couldn't already be summed up by your external appearance. It's good if you have some desperate need to belong to some ethnic group or another (maybe you want to play for Ireland) for some mis-founded social or political reasons, but as far as providing any actual data about your ancestry it doesn't really tell you anything.
Without reliable historical data it tells you virtually nothing about your actual ancestry that couldn't already be summed up by your external appearance. It's good if you have some desperate need to belong to some ethnic group or another (maybe you want to play for Ireland) for some mis-founded social or political reasons, but as far as providing any actual data about your ancestry it doesn't really tell you anything.
RTB said:
The ancestry thing is a bit dubious though. All they actually do is compare your DNA to the DNA of other modern humans who live in various parts of the world. In other words if you find a large percentage of your DNA is Scandinavian it doesn't mean you're ancestor was a viking, only that you share a percentage of DNA that is similar to people currently living in Scandinavia.
Without reliable historical data it tells you virtually nothing about your actual ancestry that couldn't already be summed up by your external appearance. It's good if you have some desperate need to belong to some ethnic group or another (maybe you want to play for Ireland) for some mis-founded social or political reasons, but as far as providing any actual data about your ancestry it doesn't really tell you anything.
Some critics compare it to astrology:Without reliable historical data it tells you virtually nothing about your actual ancestry that couldn't already be summed up by your external appearance. It's good if you have some desperate need to belong to some ethnic group or another (maybe you want to play for Ireland) for some mis-founded social or political reasons, but as far as providing any actual data about your ancestry it doesn't really tell you anything.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/debunking/companies
Know it's a thread revival but didn't see need to make a new thread. There's a few new companies about since the tread started. Any better or worse than others? I got gifted an AncestryDNA and confirmed what I knew that it's 95% Celtic with it mostly being South Wales and Ireland, which all makes sense from stories from past relatives. Any others worth trying? I did health based ones last year to confirm what I was intolerant to etc which was good.
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