DNA Testing - Why Not

[Helen D]

I'm not sure what would be gained. We all know that the english are an amalgum of lots of races so..............

Helen

[Nick29]

When I told my friend that I'd purchased a test, he got quite agitated, and told me that I was wasting my money. 

Then he opened another £6.95 pack of cigarettes 

[Billyblue]

Well, it was too expensive.

Now, it's just a case of apathy.
A male cousin in Canada had his done a few years ago and it showed deep west of Africa roots which confirmed our negro ancestor Billy Blue, as history says the West Indies slaves came originally from Africa.

Unfortunately, they didn't pinpoint where in western Africa we might have come from.

So I voted 'other'

Dawn M

[nickgc]

Some people seem to have a misundertanding of what current DNA testing may provide the genealogist so I am pasting in a PM that I sent to KGarrad.   There was nothing private about it so it shouldn't be a problem.

"If a person has the same DNA markers as you (1 million locations are tested), you ARE related.  3rd to 5th cousins are almost guaranteed to be found (IF they test), and it falls off from there.  But even a 6th to tenth cousin (that's a lot of years) might have some names of your relatives in their profile.  It just gives you another option when your own paper search runs dry.

It is more of a proven link, in many ways, than a paper trail (non-paternal events for example).   Not all the people who test have excellent genealogies, but in my case I am desperate to find ancestors of a second and 3rd grandfather where no paper trail I have found pans out.  If I find a person who matches my DNA to x degree who has a 5th great grandfather with my 3rd great grandfather's surname, and the time he lived is right and the location/ancestry is likely, then I am a lot closer to breaking down those walls.

If I made a dollar for every hour I've tried to find the predecessors I could buy this DNA test many times over.  I have my own tree well documented in US to mid 1600s (many paternal lines), and equally well documented in Scotland and England to mid 1700s for maternal lines.  The blanks drive me crazy!"

The science of DNA is well developed, and only getting better.  The companies do a computerized comparison and give you ONLY links to people who are related to you in a genealogical timeframe; this can be from dozens to hundreds of people, but there is an empirically true link.  People from historically "inbred" populations, e.g. Ashkenazim Jews, French Canadians, Colonial Americans, etc. get a lot of "hits".  There is then real work involved (he, we're all used to that!) to determine where the actual genealogical connection is.  It is not a magic bullet, just another tool in the family researcher's toolkit.

Off to bed for real now.

Nick

[Ruskie]

It does my head in! Too many numbers, too many statistics, too many percentages, too vague, too expensive, too many weird scientific names, too complicated, too many possibilities, too American, too many different tests and I wouldn't understand the results anyway.   

I have a very unusual surname, and I reckon they'd take one look at that and tell me what I already know. They could take my money and sling any stats and percentages at me and I'd be none the wiser.

Having said all of that, I would be curious to try a test but I would like to do so using a false name. 

[walkerpete]

I've been thinking of paying for a test for several years now but always considered it too expensive. However prices do seem to be coming down steadily and when I receive a small cash inheritance, probably in the new year I plan to go ahead.

I'm fairly happy with the paper trail for my surname back to the early 1700s but then it seems likely there was an illegitimate birth and I could be descended from a man with another common name! It will be interesting to see if testing would support this suggestion.

Pete

[Nick29]

As Nick said earlier, FamilyTreeDNA are doing some 'specials' until 31st December 

http://www.familytreedna.com/

[msallen]

I did the Y DNA test a couple of years ago (thirty some markers, I can't remember exactly how many off the top of my head). I also had a 12 marker mitochondrial done at the same time because FTDNA had a special offer on. I don't expect to ever gain anything useful from the mitochondrial test, but I do hope to someday get something out of the Y one.

The great disappointment though is that despite there being quite a sizeable number of people with my surname registered on the various Y databases, I've never yet had a single match - to anyone, of any surname, and I'm not at all "exotic" in ancestry so far discovered via conventional means - just standard English, with nothing else other than Welsh or French in me, and you have to go back the best part of a millennium for them.

[Redroger]

I had a Y chromosome test done last February in an attempt to get around a likely illegitimacy problem in the late 18th century. A man with the same surname as mine has also had the test, and we compare 33/37 markers, unfortunately we are of very different haplotypes. I think this might well be an error as the surname is rare(ish) 1200 male mearers approx worldwide, and I intend to follow this up withj FTDNA at Olympia next February. Another man in western Canada compares 36/37 markers with me and the same haplotype. As we have different surnames and originate from the same part of the country in the timeframe involved it looks as though there is further illegitimacy involved. So my experience has not been entirely happy. However, having said that, science has to be the way forward, and with an estimated illegitimacy rate of around 10% historically, it must be obvious that over a very short timescale, a paper tree is only as good as the morality of the ancestors concerned.