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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Zaphod99 on Sunday 28 September 25 11:01 BST (UK)
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I had my DNA tested with Ancestry and My Heritage eight or nine years ago and I have been diligently contacting my matches, usually with a good reply response rate as I write nice letters to them.
None of my matches have ever initially contacted me which just seems odd and I just wondered if anybody had any theories about this.
Obviously, because I've contacted my 20 or 30 highest matches, I don't expect to hear from them unexpectedly but it just seems a little bit odd that I've never heard from a single other one. Needless to say I have checked all my settings and there is no technical reason why people should not have been able to contact me.
Zaph
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I tested on Ancestry only in March 2024. Nobody has ever contacted me either except for one very distant match to a young man who was trying to find the birth parents of his mother who was adopted.
I have contacted quite a few people and it's been a bit hit and miss with the replies just like when you contact someone with an Ancestry family tree connection.
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As I said in my initial comment, I get a good response to my contact attempts, because I write interesting, literate and polite emails. When I see, from various other forums, what some people actually do to try and contact their matches, it's hardly surprising that they don't get replies. It's so important to be polite, and interesting. Just saying, "how are you related to me?' isn't going to get a reply.
I also think it's very important to write a contact letter that is literate and correctly spelled. If you get some gibberish from somebody, you're going to think that's how efficiently they research their own family tree.
Thank you for replying.
Zaph
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Hi My experience of requesting details are some folk reply promptly one person two years!
I have been very lucky with support being given tips & advice.
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You may just have been unlucky, I think you will find that a lot of people are not interested in family relationships, they are only interested in finding their ethnicity.
I have only ever been contacted by one person who had been adopted and was looking for their birth family who were distant relative I knew of but have never met.
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I must have been unlucky 17,000 times. I really find it very very odd that I haven't been proactively contacted by even one of my matches when I do it so enthusiastically and successfully the other way.
I did just check all my settings on both sites, and found all of them perfect for making it easier for people to contact me if they so wish.
Zaph
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Hi Zaph
It's the same for me, not one match has made initial contact.
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Ptdrifter, over what length of time is that? Do you have any theories why nobody contacts you?
I've thought about this for a long time and it's always surprised me that the subject has never come up on anything that I have ever read.
My ethnicity is fairly typical UK with bits of Scandinavia and northwest Europe. I have many DNA matches in the UK, as well as twice as many in the United States. There's nothing remarkable about my list at all.
Zaph
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Zaph.
I think it's been 15 years or more.
I did hear that people are more likely to message you if you have a photo on your profile but I tried that and no difference. It's the same on other DNA sites , the only person who ever made contact was a half 1st cousin on Genes Reunited years ago.
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Over the ten + years since I did DNA tests I can only recall one contact from a stranger. That was a 24cM match with nothing else to link us so I suggested to him that it was likely just MyHeritage piling up many little bits of cM.
It may be that you like me have a fairly complete tree online so when people do see a match they can look at the linked tree and see how they connected and so see no need to make contact. When I look at my matches - if I can work out how they connect I will add the person to my tree with a note added to their name to flag up the DNA but rarely try to contact them. If I cannot work out the connection or spot an issue with their tree I might try to contact them or add a Comment to a parson on their tree but that rarely gets any response.
I'd guess that over 90% of people who take DNA tests have virtually no long term interest in their family history. And of the others 90% loose interest after 6 months and get on with the real world.
Added - As Drifter has said it may be that people are put off making contact if you do not give your real name.
And I have remembered some cousins passed on a contact they had had from a man in Australia who was a DNA match who had contacted them. He was adapted and looking to identify his parents. I gave him some details of cousins who had migrated to Australia some decades back who were likely his family but never heard from him again.
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Ptdrifter, yes, I think a photograph is helpful, as well as text in your profile saying that you are willing to help. A stranger is just a cousin that you haven't met yet!
Spelk, I know your 90% figures were hypothetical, but 17,000 multiplied by 0.9 and again multiplied by 0.9, still means that there are 3,000 people who might just be interested.
Zaph
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I have added to my first message.
Zaph your arithmetic is wrong. 17,000 x 0.1 x 0.1 is 170.
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Hmm. I agree with your multiplications by 0.1, but I'm puzzled why my multiplications by 0.9 and 0.9 come up with a different answer. A paradox, a paradox! Mine should be the total number of people out of my 17,000 matches who are unlikely to contact me.
In retrospect I think I probably needed some brackets. 90% of 17,000 is 15,300, which are the first batch who wouldn't respond, and so I should then be looking at 90% of the difference between 17,000 and 15,300, i.e. 1,700.
I haven't had lunch yet...
Pseudo names have never worried me. I'd never really given it a thought, although it does sometimes seem a little bit odd starting an email 'Dear ', followed by some bizarre nickname.
Zaph
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now you mention it I dont recall anyone contacting me, not everyone I have contacted answers, I did wonder if with my tree I have mixed mine and hubbies and its under my maiden name although I do get more answers from his side than mine. so many people dont make trees or if they do put some names they only put births and of course ancestry put them as living so no names to view. Still have made a few connections.
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It's rare for someone to initiate contact with me though I have had some success when I have started the ball rolling. The main issue is many seem to think DNA is a one click answer to everything and requires no knowledge or understanding, that and the often held belief that if the DNA contradicts the family story then it's simply wrong. My most extreme example is someone denying a link to a match they share over 800cM with because 'granny was a virgin until her wedding night'.
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Glen, yes contacting people myself and getting replies is no problem. Admittedly sometimes it can be a year or two before they realise they've got a message. I just really can't believe that out of 17,000 matches not a single one has chosen to contact me. I know lots of them are below 10 or 20 centimorgans, but there are many above 20 and it just surprises me why they've never bothered contacting me. I accept that some people aren't interested and had just been given DNA tests as presents. And there must be many people that get their results and are just bewildered by them as it is not an easy interest to attack.
Zaph
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I'd guess that over 90% of people who take DNA tests have virtually no long term interest in their family history. And of the others 90% loose interest after 6 months and get on with the real world.
I think this is the case. Keeners like us are still a tiny minority.
I've been contacted twice. The first time was by a man who shares a small amount of DNA and is related to me on my father's side through common ancestors in the 1700s. (I couldn't figure out who the common ancestors were because there isn't enough information in the parish records.)
Even though we're such distant matches on my father's side, this man has hoovered up every bit of data he can find in online trees pertaining to my mother's side, including photos of my mother's parents. He seemed nice enough but weirded me out. I'd rather he spend his time and energy trying to figure out the earlier family lines that we do have in common but, hey, that's just me.
The second time I was contacted was by a descendant of my grandmother's sister. He asked how we were related. When I told him who I am and that we're related through that line, and not through his paternal line, he said thanks and I never heard from him again. I got the impression that he's primarily interested in his paternal line.
I've sent messages to several people and have only had one response. I had been in touch with this woman at least 15 years earlier (through email) because we're both descendants of a family with an unusual surname that settled in a particular part of Canada and the US. We didn't have any paper evidence that our two lines were related but I shared everything I had with her because she was doing an informal one-name study.
When I saw that my brother and I did, in fact, share some DNA with this woman, I looked at her tree, which was now online. I made note of her earliest ancestor by that name (in the US) and tried to find something that would connect him to my earliest ancestor by that name (in Canada), but no luck. I messaged her via Ancestry and told her that we were related, which I would think would be great news for someone who has been so interested in researching that family.
She responded that she wasn't going to rely on DNA results until she had a better grasp of the various "pedigrees" in question. She said she'd look into it when she could. That was three years ago. (This isn't a criticism of this woman. She's obviously busy doing other things that are more important to her.)
Oh, and the next time I tried to look at her tree, I discovered that she'd set it to 'private.'
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Josephine, I'm getting off topic from my original article, but I have had success by following up an email to a match, even a year or two later, as sometimes people seem to miss the message altogether, and sometimes they're just busy with other life activities at the wrong time. I do recommend sending subsequent messages, and of course never being critical that you didn't get an earlier reply.
I never understand people making their tree private. I know they get copied, but why does that matter? If you are confident your research is accurate, then it gets more credence as more people copy it.
Zaph
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That's good advice, Zaph; thanks. I may reach out to her again.
I've noticed that the Ancestry messaging interface will display a tick mark when a message has been read, and this lets me know that one of the messages I've sent recently was read, even though he hasn't responded.
This person has a fairly unique name, and when I subsequently Googled it, I saw some news articles about a man and his spouse who served several years in federal (US) prison for tax fraud. So maybe sometimes it's a good thing when people don't respond, LOL.
I had a small public tree up on Ancestry when my DNA was initially uploaded; that's how that one man (let's call him Mr. Hoover) was able to identify my grandparents and then go bananas finding -- and adding to his tree -- everything to do with my mother's (completely unrelated to him) ancestors.
After Mr. Hoover announced to me that he'd narrowed down the possibilities of my father being Mr. X or Mr. Y, I was totally creeped out, and made my tree private. Even though my parents and I were 'private' on my tree, it's so easy now to trace people, thanks to online obits, etc.
It did make me wonder if sometimes I have creeped other people out when I've contacted them, asking, for example, if they are the grandchild of my grandfather's brother who moved to the US in the 1940s, and explaining that I've contacted them on the basis of information found in online obits, etc. Oh, dear.
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I never understand how and why people get worked up about things that happened in 1940.
I've asked plenty of people about how they are related, usually when trying to verify the parts of ThruLines hints that don't have publicly available clues. So often I find the hints can be verified, back to a common ancestor, apart from the last descent to one of my DNA matches. I've never had negative responses.
Zaph
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Glen, yes contacting people myself and getting replies is no problem. Admittedly sometimes it can be a year or two before they realise they've got a message. I just really can't believe that out of 17,000 matches not a single one has chosen to contact me. I know lots of them are below 10 or 20 centimorgans, but there are many above 20 and it just surprises me why they've never bothered contacting me. I accept that some people aren't interested and had just been given DNA tests as presents. And there must be many people that get their results and are just bewildered by them as it is not an easy interest to attack.
Zaph
I try to be open on my profile and have had some adoptees get in touch who seemed relieved to find they aren't unique but there's only so much you can write in the limited space and it works both ways, I dare say some feel I'm the product of the dregs of society whilst others accept nobody is perfect (assuming they know what NPE means);
Adoptee born in Lincoln in the 1960's, recently discovered my bio mother is an NPE so hundreds of mystery/unknown matches. Bio father may also be an NPE but insufficient matches to prove it, paternal grandmother is a resolved NPE. My tree has lots of wide and deep floating branches as I try to join the dots, if you know which side of your tree we match let me know and let's try to work out the link GEDMatch kit number ******. Raw Data also added to My Heritage, MyLivingDNA and myFTDNA
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I can understand some may want to keep some aspects of their ancestry private so have a private tree (or a public tree with clumsy 'adjustments'), it's often easy to uncover the secret based on matches and a quick bmd search but that just reinforces my belief (whatever that's worth), that DNA to some degree is pushing research underground and discourages collaboration. It's possibly not helped by some of the tv programmes, when a search is successful and the 'lost' family appear on camera everyone loves it but many are quick to moan if a parent wants to remain off camera or chooses not to have contact.
Here endeth my weekly soap box rant. ;D
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Glen, your post reminded me that I recently put up a new public tree on Ancestry based on my speculative relationship to the grandfather of my DNA mystery cousin. (I linked my brother's DNA results to this tree as well.)
This has been very helpful to me when coupled with a subscription to Ancestry plus the extra subscription to its "Pro Tools."
In this new tree, I made sure to have my anonymized grandmother's potential bio dad appear as an anonymized brother of the man whom I believe was her bio dad. (I did this because I don't want to upset any of his living relatives, some of whom are elderly. They might not even be on Ancestry, for all I know, but I'd rather err on the side of caution -- after all, I might be wrong.)
Even so, Ancestry keeps showing me suggestions from trees, and documents, all for the man whom I believe was my grandmother's bio dad. I don't take that as solid proof, of course, but it is interesting.
All this to say that it can be helpful to have a public tree, especially when trying to figure out a DNA mystery.
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Josephine
There were always trees that showed living people and tree owners willing to blatantly copy huge chunks of trees but by and large there was an etiquette that most people followed, that doesn't seem to be the case now. I often help adoptees searching for bio family but everything is done privately by pm though I'm often surprised at posts on social media (sometimes public trees), with warts and all stories with names and addresses of potential parents along with details of their spouse and kids for anyone to read and share. Call me a grumpy old man but the world today seems to include people who think their desperation and perceived need for answers 'right now' over rides common courtesy and respect for others. I've seen many a search turn sour when people have been pushy. Like many things those who abuse the system spoil it for others.
*climbs off soapbox again
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I agree, Glen. I hope your soapbox is big enough for me to fit onto it, too.
:)
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I can understand the frustration of not being contacted but I look at it another way
Why do I need to contact you when I know where you fit? This may come across as rude but its the heart of research .
Thank you for providing your tree and your family links and I hope you get the same benefit from mine. I dont need to know the 3rd cousin that is obviously from that side of the family.
I also recognise that people have many reasons for being on a DNA site.
For my own experience I have sent out and had contact with people . Ironically my first ever message was from someone ( I actually thought it was a bot ) who let me know my DNA was up on site and was I related to this person. Strange way to be informed my wait was over
I welcome messages and will try and help where I can. I spent a few nights combing through my messages because I finally ( after 8 years) found a link as to where this person could fit in. But I couldnt find the original message . It was what I thought it might be at the time but didnt want to outright say '' its this person ''
I always try and help adoptees by providing the best direction as I see it. But I wont message someone if I cant see an obvious link. I would hope they are chasing down better leads than my '' it could be this family but its a guess ''
Again I understand the need for messages helping you out but Ive never found a site where you get zero responses
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I have either contacted or been contacted by 10 DNA Cousins.
In May I even travelled to Manchester to meet a 3C to compare Family Notes, and we are in regular contact with each other.
Messages are very spasmodic, I have more or less stopped initiating contact.
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Zaphod, I think you're just a bit unlucky with your matches.
I've totted mine up and since I tested nine people have contacted me out of the blue on Ancestry and three on MyHeritage. It's been a totally mixed bag ranging from people who basically wanted it done for them to two or three who were really great and helped me a lot. I think of the contact system as a useful but fairly minor part of Ancestry and was using it well before my dna test but only very occasionally. It has been useful to me but very sporadically, my last useful contact was three years ago.
I've initiated contact with sixteen people, and have had a reply from all but two. From what other people have said that looks to be high, but I do try to select carefully and also try to ask a specific question. For me it's never about recent people so that takes the personal out of it I suppose.
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Nine unexpected contacts is very good. Likewise 14 replies from 16.
I read so many things about people not getting replies, and I really put it down to poor quality 'bait'. You MUST make yourself sound like an interesting relative. It's almost like a first date (not that I can remember!). You only get one chance to make a good first impression, as they say.
Zaph
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I’ve not been contacted for my own tree on Ancestry but have for my husband's which I manage. I also built my cousins tree and she has also done a dna test and I think she has had one or two contacts but she knows b all about FH let alone DNA results…. she doesn’t forward their requests either 🙄
I have around 50% response rate, always nice and give far more than I get back but as others have said, unless they are looking for elusive parentage many are not that interested. I have worked out 2 NPE parentages.. one person was very interested as she managed her husband’s tree so not directly emotionally involved and did explain to her husband gently what had transpired (an affair between nextdoor neighbours 🤭) The other one which was managed by a daughter but no response, I think the mother had probably passed away by then and the daughter wasn’t interested in putting the tree right. They had the right first name for the father but wrong man. She would have been my dad’s cousin so a very close rellie and we share absolutely loads of matches on analysis.
I have had good response from FTDNA matches for my husband but he only has handful of matches on there.
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Zaphod - Never really thought about it, I just get these messages from time to time. I suppose it's related to how many matches you have, I started with 16,000 and it''s crept up to 26,000 over the years but I've spoken to Americans who have over 100,000. Some (very small) percentage of them are curious enough to make contact.
It's the two that didn't reply to me that were really strange, one was a 2nd cousin whose grandmother I knew quite well and the other was a self-proclaimed professional genealogist. The latter changed the name of the account, made the tree private, and changed the name on the managing account, all immediately after I contacted them and all very peculiar. My theory is they were charging for their work and didn't want to be seen receiving information from me.
PS. Not sure I would know how to make myself interesting !
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PS. Not sure I would know how to make myself interesting !
"Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such films as..."
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:) :) :) A fellow Simpson's fan
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:D
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If you are confident your research is accurate, then it gets more credence as more people copy it.
Zaph
People might think it has more credence, but if they don't know that it's accurate and have merely copied and pasted it because it was an Ancestry hint, does it really matter, when hundreds or thousands of inaccurate entries have also been copied and pasted?
If data has been copied and pasted into hundreds of trees, does that make it good data?
I have shared several of my well-researched family trees with others, who have then added the information to their trees. My research now appears, copied and pasted, in hundreds of trees. I know where and how I found my own data, but does that automatically mean that everything else these tree owners have copied and pasted is equally as reliable as my own research?
I'm not saying this to argue with you -- I'm just not sure I understand your reasoning. The tree owners who have copied and pasted my data hundreds of times over haven't given me any credit (most won't know it originated with me) and I don't derive any sense of validation from seeing it in their trees.
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I may unlink my dna, fake a photo and claim to have won the lottery.
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I may unlink my dna, fake a photo and claim to have won the lottery.
I made contact with a possible cousin once and one of the first things he asked me was if I was famous or had a high-profile career. When I said no, he was obviously unimpressed and disappointed. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me.
I haven't been in touch with him in years. I've recently proven, through DNA, that he isn't actually a cousin of mine. I'm not going to get back in touch with him to let him know, though, because I don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that such a boring person isn't related to him after all. (LOL.)
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As my old dad would say 'as shallow as a puddle in a drought that one'
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Just look at how many Matches have minimal or no trees - linked or unlinked you have and I would hazard that the lion's share of those dont give a tinker's cuss about who they Match with - hence zero dialogue with Matches, either way.
I also find that many of those who have photographs and/or state that they are willing to help on their profile tend NOT to respond - virtue signalling I guess.
Btw, today I received a new Ancestry message that simply said " How do you know William Saunders, my grandfather?" . That attitude combined with the fact I manage over 40 different trees under my Ancestry name means I'm not particularly eager to help out any time soon
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I had a 9cM match earlier with 190 trees (had to count them twice), at least ten of them contain 750,000+ names. I'm going to pass on that one for now, it's a risk I'll take as I doubt the reward justifies the effort.
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Quote--
I made contact with a possible cousin once and one of the first things he asked me was if I was famous or had a high-profile career. When I said no, he was obviously unimpressed and disappointed. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me. END QUOTE
I would be very suspicious of such a message. It sounds like someone after money. I would never reply to a message like that.
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Glen, it's taken me 10 years to reach 2,000 so I draw the line at 5,000 if I'm looking at somebody else's tree. That might be a mistake, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. If, as it's widely believed, one in a hundred births are not as expected, or rather conceptions not as expected, there's a lot of potential for error in 5,000.
Without DNA I know I would have three mistakes in my 2,000. And that makes everything prior to that irrelevant. If ever I get in casual conversation with somebody who says he's researched back to some obscure Saxon King, I remind him of that fact, and watch his jaw drop.
Zaph
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Hi,
Just to say I agree with taking huge tree’s with a pinch of salt, but there may be gold in there.
I also feel that a cutoff of 5,000 is a bit low. I may have mistakes in there, but a lot seems to be confirmed where possible with DNA matches now, and I have significantly more than 5,000 people.
This may be unusual, but I have source trees from 1860, 1935 and some 50 years of research by my parents, other relatives and myself. It’s amazing how big tree a dedicated ( is that obsessive 🙂) tree bunch of people can generate.
It could be even bigger, but I have a general cutoff at around 1930.
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I also feel 5000 is too low a cutoff these days, but that's probably because my tree currently sits at 15,300. Here's the case for the defense -
It was at 2000 just before I took the dna test, I've always included siblings at every level because I like to research families rather than individuals.
After the dna test I just continued this practice while building down to dna matches.
As the trees going down are multiple and expanding outwards the overall size grew rapidly and I thought about leaving out the siblings but there are two big advantages.
Firstly Ancestry's Common Ancestors often picks up links to these siblings after I have added the match I found, often through private trees or private people in public trees. That actually happened again today.
Secondly I have a confidence test for people in my tree which is if a person has dna links via three of their children I consider them proven (still not sure about that word in a genealogical context, I want to see the maths).
I would say then 20,000 for the cutoff but I do know of one lady in New Zealand whose tree is very, very good who has well over that. She started as a school project and is now in her 60's. She was one of my Ancestry messaging contacts to get back on point.
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I did say " I draw the line at 5,000 if I'm looking at somebody else's tree. That might be a mistake, but you've got to draw the line somewhere."
If there is a 1% chance of pre-dna paternal confusion, that's 50 erroneous entries.
Zaph
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Hi,
On that basis you might as well give up, though in my personal experience the issue is much smaller.
On the other hand, who is our family? The ones who bring us up and give us family stories of relatives? Is this not what really shapes us, not necessarily our genetic makeup?
I think the two trees where they exist run in parallel.
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If there is a 1% chance of pre-dna paternal confusion, that's 50 erroneous entries.
Zaph
That may well be true (I imagine it's a bit worse than that), but we're not looking at the whole tree just the link between the dna match and our tree, one branch, a handful of generations or so. And we know from the fact they are a dna match that there's a link somewhere.
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I regularly get messages from my DNA matches and I've made some very useful contacts. I have written a note on my Ancestry profile saying that I'm always very happy to hear from my DNA matches, so maybe that helps.
I do message matches myself but I'm very careful who I select. I make sure they've used the site recently, that they have a fair size tree, and that it has proper sources on and isn't just copied from other trees. If I contact someone with a private tree I only ever start with a very general question. For example - did they have ancestors from a particular town? I always end my messages with an offer to help them if I can.
This approach seems to have worked for me. I'd say more that half of the people I've contacted have replied and we've had good exchanges of information. Recently one man with a private tree actually replied by sending me a link to view his tree.
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Panda cub, yes that's pretty much how I do it, too.
Zaph
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It's a hard call when looking at the size of a tree, mine is currently around 7,500 but I build wide and deep branches. Do I really need to include children who died young and never appear in a census and add their burials? Do I really need all the dead end ancestors who never had children. After all I'm trying to link to matches so the bloodlines have to carry to the present day. They bloat my tree up but I feel it shows my research goes a little deeper than just census night families but those who delve a little instead of skimming will be able to tell.
I am more of a quality beats quantity type but often find the deeper more detailed research reveals links and answers mysteries that would often be missed.
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Quote--
I made contact with a possible cousin once and one of the first things he asked me was if I was famous or had a high-profile career. When I said no, he was obviously unimpressed and disappointed. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me. END QUOTE
I would be very suspicious of such a message. It sounds like someone after money. I would never reply to a message like that.
This was more than 10 years ago. I had actually phoned him out of the blue (he's in the US and I'm Canada) to ask about his family history, because his grandfather had been married to my great-grandmother. I can't remember now if I'd sent him a letter in the mail prior to calling him. He was kind to me, asked his family members if they knew anything about a previous wife and children for his grandfather, forwarded copies of photos in the mail, etc. But I was taken aback by his question and never forgot it.
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I never understand people making their tree private. I know they get copied, but why does that matter? If you are confident your research is accurate, then it gets more credence as more people copy it.
Zaph
It is important to make 'quick and dirty' trees private precisely because they are created at speed with less regard for accuracy. Their job is to tackle a very precise question e.g. the identity of genetic forbears. It is correct that conventional trees should be far more accurately researched and as such we might be less concerned that they can be seen by others.
On your original question I tested with Ancestry in 2021 and since then have had hundreds of additional matches. I do not recall any of them contacting me until I'd contacted them. I currently have well over 20,000 matches on Ancestry and a similar number on My Heritage (albeit many are duplicates of Ancestry matches). On Ancestry only around 75 of my nearly 9,000 matches are at 40cM or higher and none are above 296cM. That means that the vast majority arithmetically are either very distant cousins or are false matches both of which reasons might explain partly why they don't bother contacting me. There are tables somewhere that show how many 4th cousins and more distant we might all have and it's a lot, which is why they are of less interest.
I am almost exclusively researching my paternal line and mostly my matches are from the USA whereas I am English which could persuade a lot of them that any link is false or weird or whatever. Yet another possible reason for lack of contact.
I also have one very good reason for lack of interest. I am not in my online tree because I do not know who my genetic father was, so anyone looking at my attached tree will only see my maternal side. Nevertheless roughly 40% of my matches are maternal and none of them contacted me until I I contacted them.
Maybe I am an unusual case but I do agree that the large number of matches who do not attach trees, or whose trees are limited to one of two 'private' names, suggests that a lot are only interested in ethnicity. That's their privilege, irksome as it may be to those of us with burning questions.
Tony
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As Zaphod calls it “the patience gene”, it can be very useful if one has said gene.
We did receive a first response to an Ancestry Message 12 years after sending our message.
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Do I have the patience gene? I had a message waiting for me on Ancestry from one of my matches - in answer to my message sent in June 2024! Can't say the reply was worth the wait ;D ;D ;D
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Weirdly in the middle of this thread I had somebody message me out of the blue this morning !
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Spooky :o :o