Autosomal dna testing is great. I don't understand why people here would not see the use in it? If you are from England, as the poster seems to be, you will be able to match up with many of your relatives in England who have tested. You will also match up with many of those branches of the family who emigrated. As the matches are good out to 4th or 5th cousins, you are talking about the same generation descendants as you of your 4th or 5th great grandparents. You should have 64 or 128 of these ggrandparents (barring cousins who married in your ancestry) who lived ~1775-1825 or thereabouts depending on your particular circumstances. That opens up many possible matches with branches who left to live in Canada, Australia, the US, NZ, SA etc. As a person from Canada for whom the majority of my ancestors emigrated to Canada around 1820-1840 from England, Ireland and Scotland, I anticipate matching up with many of those who test from the UK. It is definitely a numbers game so the majority of those testing come from the US but there are thousands like me who have also done the testing and count on folks from the UK to participate. I believe that any of matches a person from the UK makes with those living outside the UK are even more useful as there is much greater likelihood of being able to zero in on the most likely place that the overlap occurs as I can tell you that with a diverse range of places that my ancestors came from, I can very likely tell you what part of my tree that your ancestry most likely connects with. I'd encourange you to think again about doing a test. The prices have really come done, currently about $99US for the same test that cost me over $250US a few years ago.
Jason
