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Ancestry.com/23andme3.com Thread

If you don't mind sharing, what kind of information did you learn about your ancestry - similar stuff to what others have posted? How did you find the half-brother?

My father was adopted, and I know literally nothing about his biological ancestry (aside from him visibly being a white guy). I'm interested in these tests because I just don't know anything.

Shoot me a pm with your email address and I'll share more - but here's a quick summary. My mom was adopted during WWII. Never knew her parents. Died young, at 47. Never wished to learn anything about her background. My paternal grandmother (still not sure how she did this) somehow got a hold of what she said was my mom's original birth certificate. We never believed it was real, but what was purported to be her birth mom had a very Scandinavian name. Did my ancestry test, which came back nearly 50% Viking. OK. I opted into the shared info, and had one "first cousin" (which means that it's a direct relative, such as brother, parent, grandparent, etc...). I had a number of seconds. The first cousin didn't respond to my inquiry, but a second cousin, who also matched the first, did. My mom's birth mother was born in a small town in the Finger Lakes of NY. The woman wrote me and said "let me guess, your mom's birth certificate show's her mom's being born in ________." Boom. Then she shares with me her great uncle's info...which includes my grandmother, with the same name as what's on my mom's birth certificate.

We're pretty sure that my grandmother got pregnant during the war (my birth grandfather was in the US Army) and was sent to the big city - Buffalo - to have my mom and give her up for adoption. Afterward, she returned to the Finger Lakes and led a normal life. Got married, had a child - the first cousin, who happens to be my mom's half brother - and died in 1997.
 
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23andme identifies people that are related to you. These people may not share any identifying data or wish to be contacted, but you can see who all there is. I have 1167 "DNA relatives", though most of these are "3rd to 6th cousins" sharing like 0.5% DNA. They'll show which side of the family you're connected through, and which other relatives you have in common.
 
Cracked.com has your collective backs: Inside the shady world of DNA testing.

LOLZ

"A few new adopted people even called me to say how the test ruined their lives, because it encouraged them to dig or confront their parents. I had a woman who was OK with being adopted, but mortified to know that she had been born in South Carolina, and she threatened to sue us because she found that out. We had to let Legal handle it as soon as 'suing' was said, but I really couldn't believe she was crying over being born in South Carolina."
 
Just got my results:

37.2% British/Irish
23.4% Italian
18.6% French/German
15.3% Broadly Northwestern European (more British/Irish/French/German, I assume)
3.0% Broadly European
2.1% Eastern European (Iberian/Balkan)
0.2% West African (out of nowhere)
0.1% East Asian / Native American

Bolded what I knew going in (based on grandparents).

Results were funny (to me) because my wife thought she was more of a mutt and she came back like 100% Northwestern European (British/Irish & Scandinavian).
 
I had similar, but not identical, results from two services. The problem is that their regions tend to overlap.

From Ancestry:

50% Europe West
26% Ireland/Scotland/Wales
14% Iberian Peninsula
6% Scandinavia

From FTDNA:

50% West & Central Europe
37% British Isles
10% Scandinavia
0% Iberia

Obviously, the Iberia thing is suspect, but FTDNA's definition of Iberia looks like it pretty much consists of Spain and Portugal, while Ancestry's includes about half of France. FWIW, the Ancient Origins portion of FTDNA indicates some Iberian ancestry about 7000 years ago. My own research turns up none. I'm pretty strongly British Isles (Scotland and UK primarily) and German, which would include modern day Netherlands, Belgium, Alsace Lorraine, etc... The only Scandinavian I can trace is on my mother's side in the 16th or 17th century and on my dad's side the 9th or 10th century, but obviously the Northmen were having their way with the Scots, Irish, and Brits for a while. No evidence of Guido or Spaniard, though nobility was always intermarrying with foreigners.
 
Most of the members of my family, including myself, have done Ancestry.com DNA. My sister has been working on our genealogy since the early 90s and our tree is VERY large. *Nothing is added to the tree without supporting documentation. (The French have great records BTW). While we were in Edinburgh for the holidays, we spent sometime at the National Records of Scotland doing more research and discovered a lot of interesting tidbits. Anyway, most know that my son was from surrogacy and anonymous egg donor. We wanted to know what his other half of ancestry was so we also included him in the DNA sampling. What I didn't expect to have happen (and rightfully should have) was that the DNA matches from the donor side connected and ended up leading to the identity of the anonymous donor.
 
I had similar, but not identical, results from two services. The problem is that their regions tend to overlap.

From Ancestry:

50% Europe West
26% Ireland/Scotland/Wales
14% Iberian Peninsula
6% Scandinavia

From FTDNA:

50% West & Central Europe
37% British Isles
10% Scandinavia
0% Iberia

Obviously, the Iberia thing is suspect, but FTDNA's definition of Iberia looks like it pretty much consists of Spain and Portugal, while Ancestry's includes about half of France. FWIW, the Ancient Origins portion of FTDNA indicates some Iberian ancestry about 7000 years ago. My own research turns up none. I'm pretty strongly British Isles (Scotland and UK primarily) and German, which would include modern day Netherlands, Belgium, Alsace Lorraine, etc... The only Scandinavian I can trace is on my mother's side in the 16th or 17th century and on my dad's side the 9th or 10th century, but obviously the Northmen were having their way with the Scots, Irish, and Brits for a while. No evidence of Guido or Spaniard, though nobility was always intermarrying with foreigners.

Would the Scandinavian come from the Viking raping and pillaging, and be present in all English and French ancestry?
 
Would the Scandinavian come from the Viking raping and pillaging, and be present in all English and French ancestry?

Well, I don't know at what point something like that would wash out and no longer be detectable. But I'm guessing there's a bit of it. All I know is that my family tree doesn't really start to get any question marks until I get to my 4th great grandparents. Out of my 32 great great great grandparents, there are only 6 where I have not been able to ID their parents. Two are for sure off the boat Irish, 3 likely Brit or Scot descendant dads at least, and one is a question mark because I'm unsure of the maiden name. It's possible she's an Anderson.
 
Both sides of my family have done quite a bit of genealogy. My Dad’s mother was a member of Daughters of the American Revolution, and we have my Mom’s line traced back into the 1600s in Scotland.

My mom’s sister recently did the 23 And Me thing, and the results were about what I expected. 99.8% European, with 72.5% British and Irish. The semi-surprise was the 0.2% Sub Saharan West African.
 
Both sides of my family have done quite a bit of genealogy. My Dad’s mother was a member of Daughters of the American Revolution, and we have my Mom’s line traced back into the 1600s in Scotland.

My mom’s sister recently did the 23 And Me thing, and the results were about what I expected. 99.8% European, with 72.5% British and Irish. The semi-surprise was the 0.2% Sub Saharan West African.

Everybody gets that under 1% African and/or Asian. That's just noise, in all likelihood, and can be ignored.
 
... What I didn't expect to have happen (and rightfully should have) was that the DNA matches from the donor side connected and ended up leading to the identity of the anonymous donor.

Wow! Does that mean she sees the connection, too? Do you have to give permission for links like that to be revealed? Also, is it all one big database? That is, if someone did it through Ancestry and someone else through 23andme, would you still see the link? So many questions...

You're the third person I know who has had some pretty big piece of info revealed through a DNA thing like this.
 
I got my 23andme results back a couple of weeks ago. The big difference between them and ancestry were re: Scandinavia. Ancestry - 40%; 23andme - 23%. The answer is somewhere between, methinks. I know that I'm at minimum a full quarter Danish - both of my mom's maternal grandparents were from Hjorring in northern Denmark. The rest of my results are pretty similar.

Lots of success, as I stated earlier, finding and communicating with my maternal grandmother's family. I've spoken four or five times since December with my half uncle, and via email with my mom's two half sisters. On my maternal grandfather's side...not much. My mom's half siblings on that side are all gone (my half uncle just passed in August - sad that I couldn't find him earlier). I contacted one of his daughters, my half first cousin, and she initially seemed interested in helping me, then disappeared. Not surprising and I understand. Imagine getting a call that after 40 years, you have first cousins you knew nothing about...or nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts.
 
I had similar, but not identical, results from two services. The problem is that their regions tend to overlap.

From Ancestry:

50% Europe West
26% Ireland/Scotland/Wales
14% Iberian Peninsula
6% Scandinavia

From FTDNA:

50% West & Central Europe
37% British Isles
10% Scandinavia
0% Iberia

Obviously, the Iberia thing is suspect, but FTDNA's definition of Iberia looks like it pretty much consists of Spain and Portugal, while Ancestry's includes about half of France. FWIW, the Ancient Origins portion of FTDNA indicates some Iberian ancestry about 7000 years ago. My own research turns up none. I'm pretty strongly British Isles (Scotland and UK primarily) and German, which would include modern day Netherlands, Belgium, Alsace Lorraine, etc... The only Scandinavian I can trace is on my mother's side in the 16th or 17th century and on my dad's side the 9th or 10th century, but obviously the Northmen were having their way with the Scots, Irish, and Brits for a while. No evidence of Guido or Spaniard, though nobility was always intermarrying with foreigners.

ELC, are you familiar with GEDMatch? You can upload your raw DNA data there and it connects you with others who have done the same - for example, you find connections who took other tests such as FamilyTreeDNA, Heritage, etc...
 
I used ancestry. Process was easy and results timely. The UK/Irish 50% was no surprise. The Norway/Sweden 20% and the Iberian Peninsula 20% was cool. The rest was central/western Europe (Germany/France).
 
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