Has anybody else tested DNA?
 

We got a DNA test for our daughter's birthday and the results were very intriguing. So my hubby bought each of us a test kit for our anniversary. We're still waiting results, but I've started building a family tree and I'm astounded by what I've found. I've been able to go back five generations without paying anything yet. I'm still not finished, but may have found relatives I never knew existed living only a couple hours away. This is fascinating and it's like eating peanuts.....

No. Thanks.

Yes please! People are so scared of this. I love this hobby!

Not me. I'm not giving anyone my DNA to do with as they please, thankyouverymuch.

DH and I did it last year, Christmas gift from DDs. Didn't do much for me, but DH was able to get in touch with a couple of lost cousins. They had a long telephone conversation over the holiday. Good for him as he feels like there is no family left, just him and a sister who has spent more years not talking to him than talking to him.

I have found several cousins thru my DNA and have learned so much more about my extended family. I love my genealogy hobby, and love corresponding with newly found relatives. I have gone back several generations on one side of the family, but I do think my g grandfather was dropped on this earth from out of nowhere! Can't find a single record on him, except a marriage licence. But I keep searching. I don't think you are ever finished. Always something new and interesting pops up. Good luck with your next generation!!

I did it last year and didn't find much new as far as where the family came from. I did a pretty complete search on my mother's family several years ago. Her family was from Sweden; a cousin still lives in the area they came from. He went to the church the family has attended since the last 1700s and sent me all the information he could find. I don't have near as much info on my dad, the the DNA info confirmed his family came from the areas we already knew. It was interesting.

My sister-in-law had hers tested a while back. It came back 37% Native American. She recently got an updated report indicating only 3% NA and is still left wondering about her ancestry.

It is very intriguing. I have several friends who have done it. One friend has a Native American grandmother but her test came back 0% Native American, but the NA database is very, very small, so we all expect this to change over time as more people participate in the testing. Another who was adopted at birth, he knows his birth mother but not his birth father. He did the test and found who his father is. My husband is one-quarter African American, his sister's test came back 16% African. I'm learning some fascinating stuff about DNA!

My daughter has spent money and hours and hours researching our families. We did a DNA test and several cousins on my Dads' side contacted me. She was not able to find out much on that side. I have no desire to keep in contact. No contact from my Mom's side. We didn't do the one with the medical results. I have outlived all my six family members and I know what they died of. I will live as long as I am suppose to.

I can see how it would help people who are adopted find out more about themselves. But, for me, I'm pretty happy with what I know. No need for my DNA to be on record somewhere.

This always sparks a lively discussion. People either love it or say "no way!" I fall into the love it category. I view it as a journey into the past. To me, it is important. I love finding out where my grandfather, great-grandfather, or grandmothers came from. Their travels and adventures are the reason I am where I am, and who I am. I have stood on my great-grandfathers grave, and been overwhelmed with emotion. I have been able to solve a couple of family mysteries regarding people who disappeared. I have great-great-great-grandfathers who enlisted during the civil war. My great-grandfather died in 1907. Married, widower, married and 24 children. Explored out west, and was an early settler in South Dakota. These snippets into the past are fascinating to me. Another relative published a book on my grandmothers family covering the families of my great-great grandfather and one of his brothers.

History is what it is. For me it answered tons of questions, and gave me lots of insight. I found nothing earth-shattering, but we do have our share of ruffians and hooligans to be sure!! Several cousins are also interested and we share info and pictures, and verify information. I'm not afraid of DNA. My grandson has had his DNA sequenced to try to find out the cause of his deafness and other disabilities. The information we have received has been instrumental in the doctors building an effective plan of treatment.

If it's not for you, that's OK too. Everyone has a different story to tell. I view it almost like a book. Some books are not well written and don't have a happy ending.

Enjoy your journey!!

Yes, we did it, we found out that we did come from Europe, I have more Neanderthal than the average person, it is fun but I will not spend very much time with it. I like quilting better.

I agree. I've done some pretty extensive genealogy research at our local genealogy library plus some correspondence. I knew quite a bit about my mom's family before this and know more now. Some day I'm going to delve into my dad's family. I find reading the old documents very interesting. I've even found some pictures of my ancestors which was very exciting.

I've done the genealogy stuff without doing any DNA testing. Have probably more finite results re where in Europe mine and DH's families are from. Lots of free info out there. For those interested in that, I highly recommend downloading Legacy software. There is a free version and I find it's extremely helpful in keeping info easily sorted.

I was shocked to learn that I have a common ancestor for King Richard III. Our maternal haplotype are almost identical.

Where is that tiara????

Mr Stitchnripper did it and it confirmed some suspicions about his father’s origins. My brother just did it and there were no surprises. My cousin is a genealogist so she has done my father’s side back many generations and is in contact with a lot of relatives. My father and her mother are siblings.

I have to say I'm on the "no" side. If I have any relatives I don't know about, I have NO desire to know them.

I already knew my family history well enough for me, there were no surprises. Going back the previous 4 generations was exactly as I believed it would be. I had a long struggle with myself over possibly becoming the next Henrietta Lacks and my typical privacy concerns but finally decided I wanted the health screenings offered by 23 & Me. If it was the ancestry information I wanted, I would have gone with Ancestry.com.

One of my on-going health concerns was a too-high blood iron level, well it turns out I have one gene that tends towards that, if I had two I'd be having more problems but as it is, it's ok with one, not such a concern any more now that we know (and it was retested). The amount of insomnia information wasn't what I had hoped for, but yes -- indications are that I would tend to sleep less than most people.

Like another poster, I do have more neanderthal genes than most people. And I'm related to Otzi the Iceman through my mitochondrial (maternal line) DNA.

My son's dad doesn't know much of his family history past his maternal grandparents and basically nothing about his father's side at all, and pretty much all of his relatives have died out. I've been thinking of getting him a kit and maybe one each for my son and daughter in law. Similarly, my husband actually knows a bit about his father's side of the family but not much past his maternal grandparents and nothing is written down.

Between myself and my DS we'd done the geneology research on both sides and had quite a bit of info verified with census,birth, etc going back to 1600's in some cases. So my Ancestry DNA testing didn't really present any surprises. Did connect with a 3rd cousin that I hadn't seen since I was about 5yrs. He was very appreciative as he had not family history info and my sis able to send him loads of it. I did mine because I was wondering about possible Native ancestry based on a couple of family stories and some ancestral features--nothing came up on it. My DH had his done and he actually found 2nd & 3rd cousins that he never had met on his dad's side--so it was great for him.

Iceblossom's last 4 words really sums it up..."nothing is written down". I waited too long to "get the bug" so to speak. My DH's grandmother had quite an extensive history collected, but hardly anything on my side was written down. Memories faded, or stories were passed on that lost pieces in the retelling. That's one of the reasons I'm determined to find all the info I can. I didn't know about the 23 & Me health screening. Sounds interesting!

I thought about doing this although I am doing genealogy research until I read the fine print. Most companies have the right to do what they want with the results. That bothered me. The health screening would have been beneficial at one time because my blood workup did not match parents or others in my immediate family but it makes little difference to me at this stage.

If I were adopted or perhaps the result of Fertility treatments, that I may be interested, but as far as I know I am the natural child of both my parents.

There have been so many cases of scientist using data collected for one thing for quite another and truth be told I do not trust that the data will be kept private. There have been so many data breaches over the years, that I am not going to give a company my DNA.

I also find it creepy that a company would 'connect' me with others saying they were long lost relatives. Is that something you opt into?

I'm on the "NO" side as well. I don't want any of my DNA showing up in a Asian petri dish growing a genetically altered human baby, like they are already doing!

Many of us have skeletons in our closets & have no knowledge of them. If your ancestry was not legally written down & recorded, the word of mouth you assume to be truth can be false. They kept deep secrets back in the day, to prevent shame to the family. Women had babies out of wedlock, got married later to a different man & the child automatically assumed the mans name. There were no legal adoptions as we know them today. Many born before the early 1900's up to & including the late 1930's have no legal recorded birth certificates. If they went to church, the church kept track of marriages, births & deaths. If they did not attend a church, or moved about a lot, then no legal records were made.

Such is the case in my family. No knowledge of a close relatives father, no name, nothing. All who may have known who he was are gone. So true genes can only be researched if you have legally recorded names to go buy. Many also changed their names when they immigrated, to prevent persecution. I do have some family history, but only a couple generations back on the maternal side, as the rest is lost. More info was recorded on the paternal side. I am Italian, English, Irish, German & Native America. What a mix!

A new family member arrived at my husband's family reunion, with a few of their family in tow. The reunion was posted on FB. They turned out to be the sort of people most of us would not care to associate with. So just because they may be related some how doesn't mean you may ever want to find them or associate with them.

Agree...

and no to trying to disrupt other peoples’ lives and privacy, no discovering family secrets, ( birth mothers and birth fathers, for example...leave them alone!) I believe this crazy is the government logging DNA with willing, paying volunteers. Nope....I know who I beling too. I look into my mirror and se my parents. Chasing dead people is not my idea of fun.

I have long been intrigued by the whole DNA testing thing but I had a lot of reservations when I found out that part of the testing agreement meant giving the company all rights and access to your DNA and it could be used by industry. As it turns out that has already happened as GlaxoSmithKline, the huge pharmaceutical company just bought rights to all the DNA database of 23 and me for 4 years. Here is a link to the news article. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...3andme-n894531

There is a lot of family history I don't know and would love to but I won't find out via DNA testing. Maybe someday I will dig into genealogy history. There was some talk of some of my dad's ancestors being part of the Mormon settlers and recently my cousin, who my brother and I had lost contact with, found us. She sent me a bunch of old photos of my dad and even some old old photos that look to be from the late 1800's and one of them has an imprint from Salt Lake City photographer.

As far as Native American DNA, some tribes are vehemently against it and won't submit samples. Many will not recognize someone as being part of the tribe solely on DNA tests. I read an article recently (now I can't find it) where these particular tribes stated only the family ties and knowledge of family history along with ties to a particular tribal community are what matter and DNA samples are considered part of the person and sacred so they won't participate. Other tribes were taken advantage of with DNA. One tribe in Arizona, the Havasupai, participated in a study of their DNA by University of Arizona to try to determine why there were such high rates of diabetes among members. Later they found out their DNA was being used for other purposes. They closed their borders to all ASU researchers and sued the university for both monetary damages and return of all their samples.

My daughter did Ancestry and all was as expected except that she is 2% Middle Eastern thru the Italian strain. At first I thought someone must have a fling, but on 2nd thought, some poor woman back 3 or 4 generations was probably raped by marauding forces. We will never know and it really doesn't matter. I wouldn't have chosen to do the testing myself. But my daug. certainly had the right to do it. That does put all of us connected to her in the system which is kind of creepy to me.

No, for all the reasons stated, mainly I don't want any records of my DNA out there. If you haven't read about Henrietta Lacks (someone else mentioned her in this thread), then you might be in for an eye-opening surprise about the medicos in this country. There is enough invasion of my privacy as it is. I know enough geneology to be a member of the DAR and my husband's to be a member of the Mayflower Society. Sounds high-falutin' right? Sure, and I buy my groceries just as you do and have bills, and just don't need to know any more. We did warn our son that alcoholism is on the maternal side of my family and the paternal side of his family. Plus his family had a schizophrenic adult who lived on the streets in CA until his three daughters banded together, found him, and took him to their homes. I don't need more grief in my life. Some things are better left alone.
Edited to add: To those who enjoy it and are happy with what they are finding out...go for it. Enjoy the process!

I had mine done but didn't find out too much I didn't already know. On my father's side I'm mostly English with some Scottish and Irish. I'm having trouble finding out much on my mother's side of the family.

My DH always thought his ancestry was German but the test showed his as English and Irish mostly.

What free web sites are you using? I tried a the ancestry.com site but did not get very far before they wanted money.

I agree, no thank you. I know whats important to me. I'm a lot Indian, and then mostly what I call "hines 57" a little of everything. I have tons of relatives that I do know and I'm not impressed so I can't see where it would help me finding a bunch of people that I don't know would enrich my life. There have been lots of DNA companies also selling their info to other agencies and some people have been false imprisoned by the results not being as accurate as they claim. I'm good knowing what I know. How are you to know if the info they give you is correct or not, especially if they are selling your info to others. Who knows which companies to trust or not to trust.

That being said, if one of my kids, grand kids or great grandkids came to me and wanted to search their family background. I'd let them do it to make them happy. But me, I have no need.

There are just too many people out there trying to get rich off of someone elses back. They normally go to the ones that don't have a lot because I guess they feel we don't have all of the identity protection that people with money have to prevent it from happening or to fix it once it did happen.

Not for me! As some others have said, my DNA belongs to me and me alone and I do not want it in the hands of strangers who might have nefarious purpose. Additionally, I wonder how accurate the info is...you could be told anything and how could you prove or disprove it? I'm okay with my own family knowledge...I will soon enough leave this world and who will care where my ancestors came from? I think it is a great hobby for those who enjoy such. Just not me.

This is so interesting, I have not done it but I do know of people that have, a cousin of mine found out about our heart problems on my dads side of the family

I know enough about my family so I am not interested in doing this. My husband did ancestry.com. His fraternal grandmother was full blooded Indian. My husband's info that came back showed zero Indian. So who's to say how accurate this is? Maybe more of a "gimmick" to get more $$$$$$ out of those that do it. Every time my husband logs in to look for something, he is blocked by the "pay for more info" screens.

My genealogy goes way back from others studying it. I know all of my first cousins and most of my first cousins once removed. And in touch with all for some years. My husband's goes back to 800 AD. See no reason for my DNA or his to be out there for anyone to do with whatever they want.

I think in the coming years, it's going to be a scary scenario for many because they put theirs out there. Just like all medical records now online for anyone to hack into. And they will. I'm old now, my grandparents all lived into their 80's and 90's along with great aunts and uncles. My mother turns 96 today. As someone else said, we will all live until the day chosen for Our Maker to call us home.

One website I know of is FamilySearch.org. They are the Church of Latter Day Saints(Mormons) and supposedly have the largest genealogical data base there is.

I have an uncle who tested his DNA just to prove to me, my mother (whom I did not grow up around) has lied to me my whole life. She told me that my grandmother was half Cherokee. Grandma was a naturally dark complexioned person, so I just took it as truth. My mother has no Native American blood. I have no idea why she lied to me, but it is not really unexpected. Now I wonder where my brother, sister, and my oldest DD got their lovely golden complexion.....

oh the way things are going, we all are going to have little "chips" in us. Fitbits galore! the electrical age is here and there will be prices to pay. I can't do anything but go with "what will be will be" . society is changing.
i did our DNA, my son tested quite close to me. so his Father's side was extremely close to my Maternal side. didn't learn much else. had my Mothers history hundreds of years back. wanted my Fathers, but no go with the DNA test for his side.

Besides the Familysearch site, check with your local historical society, and with your state. Public info varies from state to state. Findagrave.com also may have death and burial information. In Minnesota, most marriage information is available for free. Death certificates can be viewed at the History Center and copies made. They have lots of information on them. Cemeteries can help with grave locations.The Historical Society has free info on line. South Dakota marriage info is readily available. Google in many instances has a lot of info. Local libraries have tons of information. Also, keep an eye on Ancestry, once in awhile they offer a weekend of free searching!