Myheritage dna

[Lionel-W]

Any support welcome especially folk who have done DNA with myheritage.

I had a DNA-test done by MyHeritage and while waiting for the results also paid for a search of their almost 10 billion documents. The DNA came back with ca. 70% English (not British), 22% Scandinavian/Finnish and 8% Iberien (Spain-Portugal). They also found more than 5.300 possible "cousins", half of which are in the US.

My grandparents were half Scots / half English with both families (as of now and still searching) going back to the late 1700s. As of 1780 we have had neither Scandinavian/Finnish nor Iberian influence and the mass of dozens of family members in Scotland doesn't even appear in the results. Neither did anybody emigrate to the US, only 1 cousin to Canada. The whole thing is a complete failure, can not be used for further study and is an absolute waste of money. Explanation from MyHeriatge: the connections to these countries probably come from Roman and Viking invadors; the Scots disappear due to intermarriage with the English (but they didn't). What does this company think I am - an American tourist trying to impress the locals back home?

Then we come to the "seek and search" function. Despite trying everything offered, I couldn't find anybody in Scotland at all, although they are very much there (for example in the census of 1881 with 12 members and 3 servants in the house). In the meantime friendly helpers here have gone to a lot of trouble to assist me, even to visiting the grave of my g-g-grandfather in 1850 and taking photos. The names of the entire Scots family are included in the censuses of 1881, 1891 etc. Another entry from the 1911 census in England reveals my grandparents and my father in London, leaving for Australia. MyHeriatge can't find anything, has no Scots censuses in their files and is absolutely useless.

Worse still is the "search" function which doesn't work - despite putting in complete details of my grandmother (and later many other relatives) to include exact dates of places for birth and death, complete name, husband and child with details etc, the result in a general search (allowing for slight differences) was 32.000; the "exact" search with all details taken in to consideration was "0", not found. Explanation from MyHeritage: customers don't really want an exact search! If one goes further and searches amongst the 32.000 connections, one finds a motley collection of completely different names, different dates of birth and death (sometimes 100 years apart, different children and siblings etc.) And included are interresting connections back to the American Civil War when no-one had even left Great Britain (for Australia)!

So just keep away from MyHeritage, I'm completely disgusted and they should be charged for fraud.

[Craclyn]

Lionel-W, Findmypast have transcriptions of Scottish census records, but if you want to see images the only site to use is Scotlandspeople.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Lionel,
Try and look at it this way. My parents both came from the same town. Their parents, i.e. my four grandparents, all came from that same town as well. When I started my research I was sure that I had solid ancestry in that one area. Once I started going further back I found that none of my earlier ancestors came from that town and in fact not even from that part of the country. It just depends how far you go back.  In the same way that I referred to towns and counties, the same applies to countries, or even continents.

I had my DNA analysed by MyHeritage and I have found them exemplary.

Re ethnicity tests in general, there are not enough reference populations available at present to give meaningful results. The companies don't make that clear, but basic research will show you that.  I don't think you fully understood what you were paying for.

Martin

[Ruskie]

Lionel, your matches, or lack of results where you expect them to be, will probably be as a result of none of your living closest relatives in Scotland or England, having taken a DNA test, or they may have taken one with another company.

Loads of Americans take DNA tests, hence the large number of Americans in your matches.

Just because you can’t find the connection to your family does not mean there is not one - you just haven’t found it yet.

Keep in kind too that illegitimacy was common.

Check the females marrying into your male lines. I find that surnames I don’t recognise often come through the female line, perhaps a sister of one of your direct ancestors who you may not even have included in your tree.

I have found My Heritage excellent and easy to use.

[Lionel-W]

Lionel,
Try and look at it this way. My parents both came from the same town. Their parents, i.e. my four grandparents, all came from that same town as well. When I started my research I was sure that I had solid ancestry in that one area.
Martin

Hi!

Thanks for your comment - however, without any great help from MH on either the Scots or the English side of the family, we are now back to the late 1700s and nothing in the DNA results show any 20% connection to Scandinavia, Finnland or Iberia - and Scotland is missing completely although there must be hundreds of unknown cousins, 10th removed, up there. If I misread the MH advertisments (which I doubt I did) then I was intentionally given misleading information. And that especially applies to their "data search". That I certainly did not misunderstand.

Lionel

[Lionel-W]

Lionel, your matches, or lack of results where you expect them to be, will probably be as a result of none of your living closest relatives in Scotland or England, having taken a DNA test ...

Hi - and thank you for your comments.

However your logic is a bit off base. Based on the assumption that nobody in the family has taken a DNA test and this accounts for lack of feed-back, then where does the other 20% false information come from. Of course nobody in Scandinavia, Finnland or Iberia has done these comparison tests either and the complete result, including Scotland, should be zero. And what do the Americans have to do with it if none of our family emigrated there. We can now go back to the late 1700s on both the 50% Scots / English sides and nothing ties up. So as you see, we have found the connections in the last weeks, but no thanks to MH.

But let's look at the "search and find" function. All the censuses of note in Scotland are missing, although there, and nothing shows on the 1911 English census that my father with his parents was in London. So, as you will see from the included screen shot, MH came up with only 1 "exact" search result for my father, after having ignored every bit of information I'd put in. And this is just one example of many which I sent to MH requiring an answer. This is just disgusting and I'd have more success with Google.

Lionel

[Craclyn]

The censuses for Scotland are on Scotlandspeople as I mentioned earlier. MyHeritage only have record sets that they have purchased the rights to publish. If you want to view Scottish censuses then you need to use a site that has the appropriate rights.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Lionel, the DNA data will help you find most recent common ancestors who have descendants in those coutries.  I recently started conversations with a group of 6 people with whom I matched DNA.  Two of the six who I selected to contact had ancestry in Eire, as I probably do too. I am not aware of any Irish ancestry but I have an open mind and believe the results.  Two of the six are very closely related, and I am so pleased that it was me who put them in touch.

As I said before ethnicity is a limited aspect of DNA testing, but if the facts say that there are specific people in your ancestry, you will one day find it to be true.  Some ancestor of my paternal grandmother has Irish connections. It might puzzle me, but I accept the facts.

Martin

[Jo6100]

I do think ancient dna can persist, as in your Finnish or Iberian. My dna, tested with Ancestry, shows 76 % British, 19% Scots/Irish ( definitely accurate by my family tree to date) and 5%    Germanic. I can’t find any Germanic ancestry but my mother’s family all hail from East Anglia and I am happy to believe that until industrialisation  the population was pretty static hence some Anglo Saxon Germanic dna persists through a small pool population.

Jo