Myheritage dna

[Mart 'n' Al]

I forgot to add that although my ethnicity is suggested, and I use the word carefully, suggested as being almost totally British, I do have 9% that is described as Albanian or east Mediterranean. I have no such record of anything similar in my research so far, and no facial traits common to that area, but I do accept that something caused this to be reported. You can't deny the data.  I doubt many of my ancestors strayed more than a few miles from their place of birth, and almost inevitably didn't leave the county.  But perhaps somebody from elsewhere met one of my female ancestors, very briefly.

Martin

[Murrell]

Wow lv got the ball rolling on this DNA topic.
1st Hurwoth l am so excited to have been given this kit and must have given the wrong impression to make you think that l was ungrateful.
Yes a little suspicious as freebies don't come to me often.
My husband was going to buy me a DNA but l wasn't sure what l should go for. Once l get this l can then invest further

Lionel l am open minded and l do thank you for your comments, I'm a little worried as all my folk including the elusive brother are Irish- but l keep saying to My husband what if there is an obscure country lm  contacted to! You hit my worry on the head.

Mart'n'Al  You made me feel all would be good in the end.

Of course the Americans are all sorted with ancestors and love that kind of think, which l do too. I live in hopes l find my Brother who l knew nothing about 2years ago. If l don't find him directly he may have a son of daughter who is into family history.🙏
Oh just before l forget Who do you think you are is back on BB1 this week. ☺ Kathleen

[LeeLichtenstein]

Somebody gave me a 23andme test  which I did and uploaded the results to myheritage which has been fun and enlightening but done nothing to help me grow my tree. Myheritage offers very little without payment. I am able to extrapolate some usuable info but I decided to do the Ancestry test also. I am expecting my results in the next week and I have a large tree based at Ancestry so I am hoping to validate/invalidate using my DNA results. If you do go with Ancestry, they tend to run 30-40% off sales around the holidays and I scored a 50% discount when I did mine so it's worth watching for sales.

[hurworth]

As I mentioned earlier I don't use MyHeritage for records.  I simply use it for the DNA tools.

There's been two pivotal genealogy successes thanks to MH DNA.  One was a match with a woman and her second cousin who lives in the USA, but their trees stopped at their Scottish gt-grandmother.  From the chromosome browser I could see that he matched several descendants of my Scottish gtgtgt-grandfather on one segment and she matched us on another segment.  I bought the marriage cert for her grandmother from ScotlandsPeople and her mother had the same surname as this Scottish gtgtgt-grandfather. 

A few more records later we could see that she was descended from my ancestor's sister Grisal (we  already had her baptism record) who was known as Grace when she married in 1825 in a different county from where she was born.     

The tree has progressed since then and we now know that Grisal was a half-sister.

The other one was confirmation that I had found the correct family for a Scottish gtgt-grandmother called Catherine.  Her family emigrated in the 1850s but there was a mistake on her death certificate which had been misleading.  A genealogist on a bulletin board filled in the gaps.  In my excitement I contacted a couple of people with her in her tree who were descended from her siblings but they said she hadn't married a Samuel - she'd married a Thomas when she was 16.  They had her being widowed (no death found for Thomas), remarrying and dieing childless as the other end of the country.

I was increasingly certain that I had found the correct family, but our Catherine was telling porkies when she married Samuel and wasn't the spinster she claimed to be - she was probably still legally married to Thomas!  A generation later (if this indeed was the family) Catherine's brother-in-law was a witness at my gt-grandmother's marriage. 

Catherine's sibling's descendants were still very sceptical that this Catherine was theirs.  I suggested to one that we might solve this with DNA but she didn't think it was necessary.  And then one day a new match appeared at MyHeritage - a descendant of Catherine's older sister Margaret.  Since then there's been others at various sites, but MH gets the prize for the first match.  I was SO happy.  The relative who didn't think a DNA test was necessary matches another descendant of Catherine at Ancestry.  She can't be oblivious to the match because she's copied the photo of our ancestors' grave (I had to do a bit of hacking through undergrowth to get to it and take the photo) to her locked tree.  I delibertately uploaded it to see whether this person's account was still active, and the alacrity with which it was copied to her tree confirmed it was!  Unfortunately for some reason the Ancestry message function doesn't seem to work for her....pass me a Tui beer. 

[Ruskie]

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

Your "20% Scandinavian" might be the Scottish you are looking for. https://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/05/norwegian-or-english-dna-predictions/

Scottish is probably only "missing completely" because none of the descendants of your Scottish ancestors have taken DNA tests, or they have moved elsewhere.

The percentages in the "ethnicity" results change over time as more people take DNA tests. There have been numerous threads on rootschat on the subject. It is suggested that people do not take the ethnicity percentages in DNA results too literally - they are at best a rough guide.

I can't offer any comment on My Heritage search functions as I only have knowledge of the DNA aspect - which I transferred from another company. Ads will only show you the success stories.

Good luck in your search Kathleen!  If you also get someone from the other side of your family to take a test too (not your brother's side), it should help you to eliminate some matches.

[Murrell]

Thanks for your good wishes Rushkie. I will post my updates soon

[Guy Etchells]

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?

Lionel, you seem to misunderstand how DNA is passed down through the generations.

Yes children get half of their DNA from their father and half of their DNA from their mother but that does not mean the child gets half of all the DNA their father has or half of all the DNA their mother has.
It is perfectly possible that the parts of the DNA from earlier “Scottish” descent has not been passed on but the parts of the DNA from earlier “English” DNA has.
It could be the “Scottish” DNA has been labelled as part of the 22% Scandinavian/Finnish due to recombination.
The ethnicity results are based on averages for a particular area developed from the samples used when compiling the regional ethnicity's.
It is similar to the way a blue eyed father and a blue eyed mother can have a brown eyed baby.

Cheers
Guy

[hdw]

I have lots of puzzling matches on MyHeritage. I didn't test with them, I tested with FTDNA, but my results from there have been uploaded to MyHeritage.

Try this one for size. One match is on my mother's side and is a proven 4th cousin by paper-trail research. This man matches me on 32.6cM.

I also have two matches on my father's side who share some of my 3 x great-grandparents - proven by paper-trail research years ago - and these people match me on 35cM and 33.4cM respectively.

So far, so good. I know exactly who these people are. BUT - there is a Swedish woman who matches me on 35.7cM, a Swedish man who matches me on 32.6cM and a Norwegian man who matches me on 30.8cM. Believe me, I have traced all my ancestors back into at least the early 1700s and sometimes much earlier, and I have NO Scandinavian ancestors whatsoever in recorded historical time.

So how do you explain that?

Harry

[hurworth]

So far, so good. I know exactly who these people are. BUT - there is a Swedish woman who matches me on 35.7cM, a Swedish man who matches me on 32.6cM and a Norwegian man who matches me on 30.8cM. Believe me, I have traced all my ancestors back into at least the early 1700s and sometimes much earlier, and I have NO Scandinavian ancestors whatsoever in recorded historical time.


Harry

Are these people matching on a single segment of 30cM, or several segments that add up to 30cM?  If it's the latter then I think it is way way back or a false match.  The imputation at MH may be a factor.

Had a match in Iceland pop up yesterday at MH who triangulates with some known cousins on a 13cM segment.  This shared segment can only have come down to us from Perth/Fife or Dorset/Devon.  But it is very close to a pile-up region.