RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Philezra on Sunday 16 March 25 19:13 GMT (UK)
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I apologise if I am being lazy, unwilling to do the due diligence etc..but is purchasing a DNA kit "worth it" and what are benefits?
I have been lucky enough to be the beneficiary of many helpful people from this site.
Will I have the chance to advance my tree if I go ahead??
Thank you.
Phil
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Putting it bluntly - you won’t know if you don’t try🤣🤣
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I think what I meant...do the results help you go further? Are you relying on "matches"? Or is it merely a summary by percentages and you leave it at that?
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DNA has helped me confirm some suspicions I had as well as break down a couple of brickwalls. Before I took the test I wasn't that interested in the DNA side of things, but afterwards I became quite fascinated with it.
I'm definitely more focused on the matches than the ethnicity updates, but it is still interesting to see how that side of it develops over time.
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Thank you for this - I'm hoping my Irish may be helped!!!
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The ethnicity estimates are to be taken with a pinch of salt- they occasionally get updated and parts you had disappear or new ones reappear... and different sites will say different things. As far as matches go, sometimes they have trees and are responsive, other times they don't have trees and don't respond. It takes time to go through the information presented and for the most part I've been happy to confirm the paperwork through shared matches. When it comes to illegitimate ancestors, I had a suspicion about the father of one (and I have a whole mass of matches on his side of the family) and no information relating to the father of another (but by cross matching shared matches of his descendants and eliminating ones proved to be from the 'wrong' branches, I ended up with an unknown family that I'm quietly confident is the unnamed father's family).
If you are interested in Ireland, it would depend on how far back your Irish connection is- too far back from present day and you may have a slim chance of matching with legitimate cousins / cousins may not have information back far enough to connect on paper- but in theory you might end up with the same surnames and places as other people and start to put together puzzle pieces.
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I manage over 20 DNA accounts. Some have completely changed their family tree by adding greatly where brick walls previously existed and with new half cousins etc. added to the family. Some have barely added any information, but at least often confirm already existing paper trees. Most of these DNA tests sit somewhere in between.
Like CaroleW has already stated, you simply dont know what you dont know. But caveat emptor as always, please make yourself aware of some of the implications you MAY encounter which are very well documented. They cannot be undone.
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Many many thanks for your insight and responses.
It's really appreciated - looks like I'm going for it ;0)
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My wife and I got our DNA's a couple of years ago when Ancestry did a promotion. For myself, it agreed with what I already 'knew' - I have an Irish great-grandmother and the result said 12% Irish, so can't be much more accurate than that.
It didn't add anything much to my wife's tree either, but it meant a great deal to her otherwise, as she made contact with two close cousins she had never met but was aware of (the connection had been slightly shady :-[ ). One of them just happened to get her DNA at the same time. I suppose you might just be lucky in pushing your tree backwards, but I would guess it would come with a lot of doubt ?
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Taking a DNA test has been a very positive experience for me. I knew my paternal great grandfather was illegitimate and had an idea who his biological father was. The test confirmed my suspicions. I have managed to expand several other branches of my tree, and it's been lovely to connect with distant relatives who I previously didn't know.
A completely different experience for my husband though. His DNA test bought the shock that his Dad is not his biological father.
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His DNA test bought the shock that his Dad is not his biological father.
I am intrigued by the responses different people have to unexpected revelations - I would not feel 'shock' but 'surprise'. To me it is just new information. One reason I asked for my DNA was to find whether my maternal granny might have had a fling, as she married in 1897 but her only child arrived in 1904. If that conception had been irregular my mother could have been Anglo-Indian. There were no obvious signs of that, but scientific evidence could only be interesting ?
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I have thought of doing DNA testing for brickwall purposes, but for ethnicity estimates I could be wasting my time as they can all give different results.
Out of all the ancestors each of us have been able to trace, you can guarantee that the odd one will not be a biological ancestor. I guess that increases for ancestors siblings. However it is not all about genetics but who raised your ancestor, and if they shared the same surname and the man (who was not the blood father) was married to the mother, or the baby was part of an informal adoption, then their parents, blood or not, were their parents and played a huge part in your family history.
And often a grandmother passed off an illegitimate grandchild as her last child, a "late arrival".
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Neither my husband's results or mine have produced anything earth shattering, but it allowed us both to confirm our paper trails. I knew one of my 2 x great grandmothers was illegitimate, but not managed to identify her father yet. Otherwise all my ancestors going back four generations seem to have been fathered by the person named on the birth records.
But it has been a useful exercise in that I've been able to find distant relatives and help them.
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One of my brothers and I did the DNA test and I manage them both.
I haven't been able to solve the mystery of my illegitimate great-grandfather. I haven't found any half-siblings or half-cousins (they're probably out there somewhere). Those were the two main reasons why I wanted to do the test and why I asked my brother to do it, too.
No one has contacted me with any great breakthroughs or revelations.
It has been helpful in other ways, though. One of my ancestors had an unusual Irish surname and I had wondered for years if the other people with that surname who had settled in the same small town in Canada were related, and -- lo and behold! -- I do have DNA matches with some of their descendants. It's a bit frustrating for me, because I still can't find our common ancestors -- and I might never find them. Even so, it has provided confirmation of a familial connection, which is great.
I had been in touch with one descendant of one of the other families years ago because she was doing a kind of one-name study (limited to certain areas). I had shared my research with her at the time. When I checked out the DNA matches, and found that she was one of the descendants of the other families with whom I shared a match, I got back in touch with her. She responded eventually and said that she wasn't going to assume that was correct until she could prove it on paper, which is fair enough. Then she made her Ancestry tree private and I never heard back from her. Oh, well.
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Strange how people react to even the thought of a DNA test sometimes. To break down a long-standing brick wall, I could really use one of my second / third cousins on my grandmother's side to test. We're almost certainly going to need one of them to test to have any chance of breaking down the wall! So far, I have found 4 - but 3 of them disappeared back into the woodwork when I mentioned the words "DNA test", and the fourth turned out to be adopted.
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Strange how people react to even the thought of a DNA test sometimes.
My husband was reluctant to do a test - until I did mine and got the results back. Then he couldn't do his fast enough! Too fast I think, because somehow the first one didn't work, but Ancestry sent him a replacement test free. The second was OK. I don't know whether it was fast tracked because it was a repeat, but he got results three weeks after posting it back and I had to wait nearly six. But I was in the Black Friday rush, but his was after that peak.
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Would it be correct to say that as we only inherit 50% of each parent's DNA, some is going to be left behind? A genealogical ancestor from a few generations back isn't necessarily a genetic ancestor, ie we may not have inherited any of their DNA.
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I have a few illegitimate ancestors and one or two cases I have found evidence of a potential father, and may just have to take it that he was, as opposed to looking for a definitive answer. DNA testing may help but as said, you will not inherit DNA from every ancestor, even more recent ones.
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Would it be correct to say that as we only inherit 50% of each parent's DNA, some is going to be left behind? A genealogical ancestor from a few generations back isn't necessarily a genetic ancestor, ie we may not have inherited any of their DNA.
Around 85% of 3rd cousins share dna and around 50% of fourth cousins, the percentages reduce the more distant the relationship. A good benchmark is matches to people where the common ancestor is 5-6 generations back with a lower return beyond that point but the number of distant relatives is much higher so there are still plenty of potential matches out there.
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Would it be correct to say that as we only inherit 50% of each parent's DNA, some is going to be left behind? A genealogical ancestor from a few generations back isn't necessarily a genetic ancestor, ie we may not have inherited any of their DNA.
Around 85% of 3rd cousins share dna and around 50% of fourth cousins, the percentages reduce the more distant the relationship. A good benchmark is matches to people where the common ancestor is 5-6 generations back with a lower return beyond that point but the number of distant relatives is much higher so there are still plenty of potential matches out there.
What I was getting at is that I may not have any DNA from an ancestor 5 or 6 generations back.
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I research my family tree for 15 years before taking a DNA test.
My whole Paternal side was wrong, Dad was not my Biological Father.
I now know who my Biological Father is and I now have a brand new pair of Siblings and all their family as blood relatives.
So yes, DNA will give you more family to include in your family tree.
But there can be skeletons unearthed so be prepared.
The thing is one DNA test is not really enough, ideally at least one First Cousin on each side should also test. Then you can cross reference and validate ancestors by linking other DNA Cousins back to the MRCA (most recent common ancestors).
Finally, if you do proceed then do not be lulled into buying the cheapest, only buy from Ancestry as once you have worked through your DNA matches of note you can copy and upload the results of the test to other sites, but you cannot upload to Ancestry. Plus Ancestry has by far the biggest number of DNA testers.
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Would it be correct to say that as we only inherit 50% of each parent's DNA, some is going to be left behind? A genealogical ancestor from a few generations back isn't necessarily a genetic ancestor, ie we may not have inherited any of their DNA.
Sort of a Yes (ish).
Each person is unique and the DNA process of inheritance is known as Recombination and it is random in the way it works.
Going back to a 4xGGP you may or may not inherit DNA but this is not necessarily true for each 4xGGP. If one does not inherit DNA from a 4xGGP then you do not inherit DNA from and of their forebears. The image shows how it can work but do take note that each of us will have our own unique version of this inheritance tree and we may in fact inherit DNA from each of the forebears shown.
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Great, thanks, that's what I thought.
And I suppose we don't all inherit the same bits of DNA, so it's feasible that we might not have a match with a distant cousin, but do have a match with another cousin.
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Here is what some of us do.
We mark up our tree by either using a printed version of our Pedigree family Tree or add an DNA icon or image to the profile header of each person where we have validated that we have inherited some of their DNA.
Pretty soon we see where there are branches with no DNA Cousins who share DNA with us.
These are the ones to work on.
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Great, thanks, that's what I thought.
And I suppose we don't all inherit the same bits of DNA, so it's feasible that we might not have a match with a distant cousin, but do have a match with another cousin.
Correct, hence why siblings can have variations in their list of matches, whilst both will match around 85% of 3rd cousins it doesn't mean it's the same 85% for both of them. I have a batch of matches that span four generations of a branch but my half sibling only matches three generations.
A non dna tree can at best only ever accurately represent the details on the documents but that doesn't mean the details themselves accurately portray biology.
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Great, thanks, that's what I thought.
And I suppose we don't all inherit the same bits of DNA, so it's feasible that we might not have a match with a distant cousin, but do have a match with another cousin.
I've noticed this. My brother has DNA matches with some people that I don't have matches with, and vice versa, or he'll have a different percentage of a match; for example, he shares more DNA with the granddaughter of our great-grandmother's sister than I do.
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That's where collaborating with other DNA matches is great. As long as you can find people willing to collaborate with you ::)
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A non-dna tree can at best only ever accurately represent the details on the documents but that doesn't mean the details themselves accurately portray biology.
It's a basic distinction, but while actual biological inheritance may be of interest to some, surely the familial upbringing which gave rise to the documents is of more relevance to the Family History ?
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A non-dna tree can at best only ever accurately represent the details on the documents but that doesn't mean the details themselves accurately portray biology.
It's a basic distinction, but while actual biological inheritance may be of interest to some, surely the familial upbringing which gave rise to the documents is of more relevance to the Family History ?
Not necessarily.
You have to experience it to understand it and even then there is strong feelings of not knowing.
I am in my 70’s and only just determined that my Dad was not my Biological Father.
So 15 years of Paternal research does not represent my biological family, yes it is the family that I knew but there was never the familial bond between my Paternal Cousins or any Paternal relative.
It is difficult to explain and I am still coming to terms with not knowing my late Biological Father in person, I am only getting to know him via my New Biological Family.
Whilst paperwork does give familial lines, that is all they are, lines made up of paper.
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A non-dna tree can at best only ever accurately represent the details on the documents but that doesn't mean the details themselves accurately portray biology.
It's a basic distinction, but while actual biological inheritance may be of interest to some, surely the familial upbringing which gave rise to the documents is of more relevance to the Family History ?
A few may disagree with that but I do not. I would still see them as family, blood or not.
For example, if the NPE was in the late 1700s, but a man stepped in and bought the child up and they shared the same surname, then I would see him as part of my family history, just not part of my genes.
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By only accepting the biological relationships, one is approaching genealogy in the same way that pedigrees for horses or dogs are constructed. We are social animals and the social relationships are as important, if not not more important, than the biological.
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By only accepting the biological relationships, one is approaching genealogy in the same way that pedigrees for horses or dogs are constructed. We are social animals and the social relationships are as important, if not not more important, than the biological.
I agree. I was initially I suppose, a little annoyed, a bit dispirited when I realised a lot of the family history research I did on one line I ended up not really having a biological connection to, as revealed by the DNA. But I soon corrected myself and realised, that I was approaching it in a way, in fact, that my own ancestor would have known nothing about. They almost certainly did not know their father was not their biological father, evidenced by them using their family names and middle names for many of their children, presumably it was a secret kept by their mother for her whole life. Their father went to work and put bread on the table and kept them alive for the first 18 or so years of their life. I don't know if the father was good or bad, but perhaps he was a good and kind person. Perhaps he even had a suspicion his son was not his own but said nothing? Perhaps if they had acted differently and abandoned the wife and son, the child would never have survived to adulthood. And what of all the stories passed on and family gatherings that the son may have been part of, presumably they saw aunts and uncles, and many cousins, perhaps loved some, some not! Should we say that is all nullified because of DNA?
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We are discussing the old adage - it's a wise child that knows its own father ?
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By only accepting the biological relationships, one is approaching genealogy in the same way that pedigrees for horses or dogs are constructed. We are social animals and the social relationships are as important, if not not more important, than the biological.
Seconded.
Say for example a woman in the 1780s got pregnant and the father fled or died, or married someone else, and the pregnant single woman married another man while pregnant, and he took the baby on as his and did all the hard work, and was married to the mother, and they shared the same surname, then I would deffo see him as family.
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I have a few dna matches who know they grew up with a step father and it's obvious just looking at their tree that is the case. What I find baffling is why they have public results and public trees that are portraying two things, it's unclear what their motivations and aims are.
Unless a match is a close relative and the shared matches allow things to be worked out nobody benefits. It's a very different scenario when the dna reveals a wrong turn at a parent compared to an ancestor 200 years ago.
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We are discussing the old adage - it's a wise child that knows its own father ?
Maybe 'father' should be defined as the social term as opposed to 'genitor' - the biological term.
*sorry - I'm a bit rusty on Anthropological terms. My tutors would not be pleased :-X
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Do you want a family tree based only on paperwork?
Do you want an accurate family tree that shows your biological line?
I have all the social, economic, lifestyle and documentary records of my “adopted” Paternal Family & and yes that is as far as it goes, it is not my Lineage.
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Do you want a family tree based only on paperwork? Do you want an accurate family tree that shows your biological line?
I think that depends purely on your personal view. The biological line can be traced only on DNA analysis, and beyond that has almost no genealogical interest unless some scandal was recorded at the time. There are often other official records which, although possibly 'incorrect', are at least as interesting and - it seems - more socially meaningful to many.
The family tale I referred to in post #8 above, while being vaguely known to my wife's family, only came to light recently following DNA results. My wife's uncle married on Tyneside in the 1930s (unsuccessfully), escaped to London, and had two daughters with a woman whom he never married and who had started life in a children's home before being adopted. The daughters knew a bit about their father but in essence had no known maternal ancestry. Most of that has now been discovered after seeing the adoption papers. Although the mother had grown up in London she had been given up for adoption in Bristol.
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Exactly, there is nothing more personal than this stuff. I manage the DNA analysis of a friends half sister and she had no interest whatsoever who her biological father was after we found him!
There is no right and wrong answer, only an infinite number of personal preferences.
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Do you want a family tree based only on paperwork?
Do you want an accurate family tree that shows your biological line?
I have all the social, economic, lifestyle and documentary records of my “adopted” Paternal Family & and yes that is as far as it goes, it is not my Lineage.
Option 3, when the dna contradicts the paperwork choose whichever option suits and keep it under your hat.
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There is no hard and fast rule, it is in the eye of the beholder, as in it is personal preference but I always see them as family, no matter blood or not. I often research ancestors siblings spouses as well, as they were the in laws of ancestors. Such as one Oxford ancestor had a son in law from Devon originally and wed one of my ancestor's daughters. That Devon man is my 3xgreat uncle by marriage.
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There is no hard and fast rule, it is in the eye of the beholder, as in it is personal preference but I always see them as family, no matter blood or not. I often research ancestors siblings spouses as well, as they were the in laws of ancestors
Totally agree. Sometimes I think my tree is wider than it is long! I tend to investigate all the affines and the neighbours. When we lived in the Highlands I did a number of studies of my friends and neigbours there. They were all part of my experience.
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It's an interesting thought, I think I'd automatically trace the genetic lineage but also research the step/supposed parent(s) a bit. So far my mother's side of the family hasn't turned up anyone who isn't who they are supposed to be on paper (there's still time... lol) but on my paternal family one of my female ancestors left her husband and children and spent the rest of her life with the lodger, who was her son's legal father on paper and name. Family resemblance in photographs gave the game away long before DNA confirmed her husband had been the father after all. Someone else I spoke to turned out to be related to me biologically, but down her line a mother died young and her child adopted (known about). She recorded both sets of parents on the tree and added the line to link up with me, with a tree preference for the adoptive set of parents.
There are different levels of research and something of a difference between Genealogy and Family History. Some want the bare bones of names and dates, others add more leaves on the tree, right up to scouring newspapers and being proud of your xth great grandfather for winning a prize for his vegetables. My own mother, who started the family history for her side and I took over from her, criticised me for a while for ordering death certificates because she couldn't see the point.
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I think there are simply two ways of compiling one’s family tree - 1) the DNA line, which doesn’t lie but can be hard to trace in the case of illegitimacies (I have quite a few), and 2) everything else, that relates to your family, and whomever you wish to include in it.
I traced a distant relative who married twice and co-habited once, and each relationship produced children. He did not marry his third partner, but later in their relationship she up and married one of his sons from his second marriage. They did not have children, but what a messy human endeavour it all was - he was stepfather to his half-siblings. When the wife from this marriage died, her daughter identified her not as the wife of John Jr. But as the widow of John Sr. (I worked on this family for several months, they were the most awkward bunch in many ways, but fascinating).
If John Jr. and his wife had had children, the DNA would have been as straightforward as anyone else’s, but the “social” family history was anything but straightforward.
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The only thing a DNA tree is is a mapping of DNA relationships of those whose DNA has been tested and match with you. Unless all people have tested it can only be partial and, even then, we know that DNA is not distributed in an ordered way. It is also, by definition, shallow after a number of generations.
What is achieved by this narrow approach? It seems to me that it reduces our humanity in favour of a breeders' stock book of animal pedigrees.
We are social animals and the resulting family bonds are primarily social not genetic.
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The only thing a DNA tree is is a mapping of DNA relationships of those whose DNA has been tested and match with you. Unless all people have tested it can only be partial and, even then, we know that DNA is not distributed in an ordered way. It is also, by definition, shallow after a number of generations.
What is achieved by this narrow approach? It seems to me that it reduces our humanity in favour of a breeders' stock book of animal pedigrees.
It certainly is useful for those who want to find biological parents, grandparents, etc. I was always left feeling there was something missing by not knowing who my grandfather was (but not my great-great grandfather , that was just curiosity). A breeder’s stock book? That’s a little harsh. My grandparents had some kind of relationship, and my mother’s subsequent birth influenced her life enormously, and in some ways, mine too.
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I think you've mixed up your paragraph in the quote, Diana
I wrote:
The only thing a DNA tree is is a mapping of DNA relationships of those whose DNA has been tested and match with you. Unless all people have tested it can only be partial and, even then, we know that DNA is not distributed in an ordered way. It is also, by definition, shallow after a number of generations.
What is achieved by this narrow approach? It seems to me that it reduces our humanity in favour of a breeders' stock book of animal pedigrees.
We are social animals and the resulting family bonds are primarily social not genetic.
You stated:
It certainly is useful for those who want to find biological parents, grandparents, etc. I was always left feeling there was something missing by not knowing who my grandfather was (but not my great-great grandfather , that was just curiosity). A breeder’s stock book? That’s a little harsh. My grandparents had some kind of relationship, and my mother’s subsequent birth influenced her life enormously, and in some ways, mine too.
I agree that for finding an unknown relative via the DNA route is of use. I found my great grandfather using DNA matches, but the subsequent route was by researching these matches via their social family ties.
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The only thing a DNA tree is is a mapping of DNA relationships of those whose DNA has been tested and match with you. Unless all people have tested it can only be partial and, even then, we know that DNA is not distributed in an ordered way. It is also, by definition, shallow after a number of generations.
What is achieved by this narrow approach? It seems to me that it reduces our humanity in favour of a breeders' stock book of animal pedigrees.
We are social animals and the resulting family bonds are primarily social not genetic.
Also, from the simple statistics that we know about, and also the laws of DNA inheritance, there comes a point, with anyone who is, say researching ancestors before 1750, that you are more likely than not to share no DNA of that ancestor that you are looking at. Does that mean there is no point in being interested? Of course that is not the case. And even people here who might take the only DNA matters point of view, I bet still trace what they think is the correct DNA line and carrying on tracing back as far as they can!
Some time ago, there was a discussion about the likelihood of eventually any ancestral line, on the male line, originating with someone of another surname than was passed down on that male line. But none of us could really agree on the maths ;D! So I just asked AI....
To calculate the likelihood that in one of the 10 generations the father was someone other than was known, given a 4% chance per generation, we can use the concept of complementary probability.
The probability that the father is the known individual in any given generation is 1−0.04=0.96.
The probability that the father is the known individual in all 10 generations is 0.9610.
Therefore, the probability that in at least one of the 10 generations the father was someone other than was known is:
1−0.9610 ≈1−0.6648=0.3352
So, the likelihood that in one of those 10 generations the father was someone other than was known is approximately 33.52%.
So everyone has 1/3 chance that by 10 generations back, your male line originated with someone of a different surname.
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Many years ago, I was an MRC Research Officer. Our research area was to examine family patterns. My interest was in the field of infertility - couples who had fertility problems. I interviewed many couples and listened to their description of attempts to have children - fertility treatment, adoption or IVF by donor.
In both those who follow the adoption or IVF by donor route, the child is related to the parent by no DNA or only by one parent. However, the child was part of the social fabric of the family.
Gadget
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When it comes down to it, for most of us, family history is a hobbie, and in most cases with hobbies, there is not a right way and a wrong way to approach it. A hobbie is for relaxation and enjoyment, so do it whatever way suits you.
I like to compare DNA to the boring but necessary side of history (politics, wars) to the more interesting family history research (how people lived, why they migrated, etc). Both have their usefulness.
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The more stories, etc. the better. My interest began by listening to my mother and her sister, sitting by the fire at Christmas with a dish of chestnuts, recalling their shared memories of their parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents and the wider community.
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I quite like finding a few surprises in my family tree. The 1921 census and 1939 register has thrown up some.
One hot summer day in late July 2004 I went to the Society of Genealogists in London on a few day trip there, and used their computers in the basement room, which also had lots of indexes of Boyds Marriage Indexes and census reels. I went on Ancestry to find my 2xgreat gran in the 1871 census in London, and it took some time due to the common name, and I found her aged 7 in Bow, East London and I got a surprised when it said her birthplace was given as Sussex, yet the next sibling aged 6 was said to be born London. Yet great, great gran had said in 1881, 1891 and 1901 census she was born in London, Stoke Newington. I then found her birth cert which proved it was mid Sussex and her parents moved to London soon after her birth, and her father had lived in Brighton for a time, originally from Kent.