DNA - summary - worth it?

[Biggles50]

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.

[Andrew Tarr]

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.

[SouthseaSteel]

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.   

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

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.   

[coombs]

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.

[Gadget]

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.

[Ayashi]

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.

[DianaCanada]

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.

[Gadget]

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.