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Ancestry.com

it's just me

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My wife had her DNA tested through Ancestry.com.

It seems that her mother was a bit of a gadabout who had multiple lovers and more than one husband. My wife had been told that her father was the same father her sister had. It turns out that by the DNA her sister is in reality her half sister.

My wife knows who her father was, she had heard of him and his connection to her mother. She knows where he is buried and when I heard that I said "We must go there".

My wife thinks I should have my DNA tested because we really don't know much about my ancestors past my great grandparents, and I have one of those generic names that could have come from almost anywhere in Europe or the British Isles, like Smith, which can even be an Anglicized version of Schmidt. I told her I have better uses for the 100 bucks. Still, I am curious.

Have any of you done this?
 
I wouldn't, though I'm curious too. DNA can only be matched to other DNA, so your wife presumably had a sample from her actual father. I distrust the process in general when not completed to criminal evidence standard.

" ...The amount of DNA any individual inherits from relatives just a few steps up their family tree is negligible compared with the vast amount we all share from common ancestors.
It means any ancestral "history" identified by a simple genetic test is just one of dozens of possible interpretations, and to try to trace our lineage directly through our genes is "absurd", they claimed.
Private genetic tests have become big business in recent years, with many companies offering tests which claim to identify whether people are related to famous figures such as Napoleon or Cleopatra, or have DNA from specific racial groups.
Last year the website ancestry.com was valued at $1.6 billion (£1 billion) and at least 40 companies offer genetic ancestry tests around the world for prices between £30 and £300...."

DNA ancestry tests branded 'meaningless' - Telegraph
 
I wouldn't, though I'm curious too. DNA can only be matched to other DNA, so your wife presumably had a sample from her actual father. I distrust the process in general when not completed to criminal evidence standard.

" ...The amount of DNA any individual inherits from relatives just a few steps up their family tree is negligible compared with the vast amount we all share from common ancestors.
It means any ancestral "history" identified by a simple genetic test is just one of dozens of possible interpretations, and to try to trace our lineage directly through our genes is "absurd", they claimed.
Private genetic tests have become big business in recent years, with many companies offering tests which claim to identify whether people are related to famous figures such as Napoleon or Cleopatra, or have DNA from specific racial groups.
Last year the website ancestry.com was valued at $1.6 billion (£1 billion) and at least 40 companies offer genetic ancestry tests around the world for prices between £30 and £300...."

DNA ancestry tests branded 'meaningless' - Telegraph

No, she didn't have DNA from her actual father, what she had was a boatload of historical evidence pointing to him, and in fact her mother had told her at one time who her real father was then changed her story, probably because her father by that time was already dead, and she wanted my wife to gain as much as she could from the man her mother was married to at the time. Either that or she wasn't sure herself. Anyway, the genetic predictions pretty much ruled out the second "father", in favor of the man my wife suspected all along, so it wasn't a shot in the dark.

As for me, I suspect my people were mostly from somewhere in the British Isles, we know that much from my grandmother's recollections, so I'll save my money.
 
I've dug a bit into my family history, but never to the extent of getting (or needing) DNA testing. For whatever reason, my ancestors did a good job of keeping track of things. I can trace both sides of my dad's family back to the mid-1700s, my mom's mom's side to the early 1900s in the U.S. and further back in Europe, and my mom's dad's to several decades before he came here from Scotland in the 1930s.

Best of luck to you and your wife on your search. You'll find something intriguing.
 
My wife had her DNA tested through Ancestry.com.

It seems that her mother was a bit of a gadabout who had multiple lovers and more than one husband. My wife had been told that her father was the same father her sister had. It turns out that by the DNA her sister is in reality her half sister.

My wife knows who her father was, she had heard of him and his connection to her mother. She knows where he is buried and when I heard that I said "We must go there".

My wife thinks I should have my DNA tested because we really don't know much about my ancestors past my great grandparents, and I have one of those generic names that could have come from almost anywhere in Europe or the British Isles, like Smith, which can even be an Anglicized version of Schmidt. I told her I have better uses for the 100 bucks. Still, I am curious.

Have any of you done this?

DNA is the way to go for getting accurate recording of ancestry (you can put anyone's name on a BC)

However, sometimes the facts have away of biting you in the ass and are better left untold. Just saying.
 
I've dug a bit into my family history, but never to the extent of getting (or needing) DNA testing. For whatever reason, my ancestors did a good job of keeping track of things. I can trace both sides of my dad's family back to the mid-1700s, my mom's mom's side to the early 1900s in the U.S. and further back in Europe, and my mom's dad's to several decades before he came here from Scotland in the 1930s.

Best of luck to you and your wife on your search. You'll find something intriguing.

That's cool.

I have been doing this off and on for years, but recently my grandchildren have been asking about it. I'd like to give them a better picture before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
 
DNA is the way to go for getting accurate recording of ancestry (you can put anyone's name on a BC)

That's for sure.
 
My dad and his brother do the family genealogy so that side of my history actually is traced back to mid 1500's at one point. There are some really cool stories along the way though.

Haven't done DNA yet but really want to. Just haven't gotten around to it.
 
I've dug a bit into my family history, but never to the extent of getting (or needing) DNA testing. For whatever reason, my ancestors did a good job of keeping track of things. I can trace both sides of my dad's family back to the mid-1700s, my mom's mom's side to the early 1900s in the U.S. and further back in Europe, and my mom's dad's to several decades before he came here from Scotland in the 1930s.

Best of luck to you and your wife on your search. You'll find something intriguing.


That's exactly how far I got, with the exact same sides of the family. I honestly kept getting tired of clicking leaves and adding more. :lol:

One day when I have more time, I'll pick it back up but right now I just don't have the desire to do it. What I did find was definitely interesting.
 
My dad and his brother do the family genealogy so that side of my history actually is traced back to mid 1500's at one point. There are some really cool stories along the way though.

Haven't done DNA yet but really want to. Just haven't gotten around to it.

I did the DNA with FamilyTreeDNA.com and it shows you different hits of people with some of the same genetic makeup. But................ it is still a lot of work on your part to dig through it all.
When I have more time I will have to go back at it again but it is definitely time consuming.

What is interesting is if you are a male you kind of really hang on to the last name you have that your dad had that your grandfather had and so on. But as you trace back 3 or 4 generations and see all the other last names you never knew about you suddently realize they make up the same proportion of you as your last name does.

If I was to list off all the last names that make up my family tree for last 4 generations I would bound to match one of the members here and that could be embarassing.
 
My dad and his brother do the family genealogy so that side of my history actually is traced back to mid 1500's at one point. There are some really cool stories along the way though.

Haven't done DNA yet but really want to. Just haven't gotten around to it.

Wow, mid 1500's, that's really something. Can't find much about my people earlier than the Civil war.
 
Wow, mid 1500's, that's really something. Can't find much about my people earlier than the Civil war.

They've been working on this research for decades. It's mostly going back to Ireland, Scotland and Germany but the 1500's one is my only Spanish relative we've found. Our civil war history is pretty neat. At the battle of Gettysburg I have family on both sides of Picketts charge. And the battle of Antietam partly happened on my family's farm.

Joseph Poffenberger Farm. It's still there preserved as part of the whole Antietam museum. Saw it when I was a kid but just visited it last year with the wife. We've got amazing old family photos.

The family research before the civil war starts getting more difficult because you get back to the immigration era and a lot of the time when immigrants came over they were put on roles with lots and LOTS of misspellings. They'd say their name out loud and whomever wrote names down just spelled it how they heard it. Also a lot of people changed their names on landing like many Irish would drop the "O" in their surname and O'Callahan would just become Callahan. Gets confusing and makes the research more difficult.

I recall my dad telling me we had a relative from Germany who had F U K right there in the middle of his name and it's where the emphasis of the name happened as well so he changed his name after coming here.
 
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They've been working on this research for decades. It's mostly going back to Ireland, Scotland and Germany but the 1500's one is my only Spanish relative we've found. Our civil war history is pretty neat. At the battle of Gettysburg I have family on both sides of Picketts charge. And the battle of Antietam partly happened on my family's farm.

Joseph Poffenberger Farm. It's still there preserved as part of the whole Antietam museum. Saw it when I was a kid but just visited it last year with the wife. We've got amazing old family photos.

The family research before the civil war starts getting more difficult because you get back to the immigration era and a lot of the time when immigrants came over they were put on roles with lots and LOTS of misspellings. They'd say their name out loud and whomever wrote names down just spelled it how they heard it. Also a lot of people changed their names on landing like many Irish would drop the "O" in their surname and O'Callahan would just become Callahan. Gets confusing and makes the research more difficult.

I recall my dad telling me we had a relative from Germany who had F U K right there in the middle of his name and it's where the emphasis of the name happened as well so he changed his name after coming here.

I have a friend who is descended from Polish Jews who had some unpronounceable name when they emigrated here from Europe, and they simply called them "Cohen" at Ellis Island. I wonder about my own name - as I said, it's one of those generic tradesman names like Cooper, Smith, and Tanner.
 
I have a friend who is descended from Polish Jews who had some unpronounceable name when they emigrated here from Europe, and they simply called them "Cohen" at Ellis Island. I wonder about my own name - as I said, it's one of those generic tradesman names like Cooper, Smith, and Tanner.

My husband wanted to trace his ancestry, and no matter what we did, we got to a stumbling block and got no further. Then one afternoon I was looking at our mail, and at how yet again, someone had misspelled his last name, using an A instead of an E. We started thinking about all the mistakes made at Ellis Island, and wondered about that. We started tracing using the A spelling instead of the E spelling, and hit the motherlode.
 
My husband wanted to trace his ancestry, and no matter what we did, we got to a stumbling block and got no further. Then one afternoon I was looking at our mail, and at how yet again, someone had misspelled his last name, using an A instead of an E. We started thinking about all the mistakes made at Ellis Island, and wondered about that. We started tracing using the A spelling instead of the E spelling, and hit the motherlode.

That's a thought, there are several ways to spell my name.
 
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