Just received my DNA results from ancestry

[IJDisney]

One thing that tney don't mention is the absolute futility of researching your ancestry back more than a few generations because you are eventually going to encounter a non paternal event, i.e. somebody is descended from a secret relationship and this is not recorded anywhere except in your DNA.  You only have to go back 5 or 6 Generations, and you have looked at 100 relationships. You only need one man or woman in those 100 or so relationships to have had an illicit relationship producing a child and it makes a mockery of your further research.

Martin

"Abosulte futility"? Have you given up all research then, Martin?

Do you get 'non maternal events'? If no, or they are less frequent, then following the maternal line of descent would seem a less futile effort!

[Mart 'n' Al]

I J Disney I do appreciate the clear irony, especially as we seem to put more importance on the male line of primogeniture. However, if, in the course of your research, through DNA analysis, you start to suspect that your grandfather or great grandfather isn't who the paper documentation claims, do you continue to pursue what the gentleman's wife knew or what the documentation says?

3 years ago I found out that my grandfather wasn't who I thought he was for 50 years, and I am now researching in a different direction, but, as my grandfather turned out to be actually my great grandfather, I am still researching the original line. I am also investigating the family deception.

If you had a married Victorian lady ancestor who had just one child by a secret lover, wouldn't you be more interested in the background of the secret lover than in that of her married cuckolded husband?  Surely you would prune everyone on the branch of your tree earlier than the husband? You might keep the husband, but surely none of his ancestors?  A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, said Paul Simon.

PS, while I'm on, the link in my comment at 17:15 yesterday is correct. It does not go to the same video that I referred to near the beginning of the thread.

Martin

[IJDisney]

I J Disney I do appreciate the clear irony, especially as we seem to put more importance on the male line of primogeniture. However, if, in the course of your research, through DNA analysis, you start to suspect that your grandfather or great grandfather isn't who the paper documentation claims, do you continue to pursue what the gentleman's wife knew or what the documentation says?

DNA is just one more source for our research - along with oral history, family ephemera/heirlooms, photographs and documents. As with all sources you have to understand the uses and limitations,  evaluate its reliability against other forms of information, and decide what conclusions (if any) you can draw from it. There is also the researcher bias - maybe I, as a family researcher, place more value (rightly or wrongly) on a newspaper report than a family story; or I value Census returns over a DNA analyses (or vice versa of course).   

In your case the DNA suggests something different than the documents and oral history that you have. You have assessed the DNA as being a more reliable source, and so have adjusted your research accordingly. We all do that. It does involve culling lines (I myself spent 5 years researching a line I later found was based on an inaccurate link) - its the nature of the research. We are dealing with humans, after all - who lie, mislead, make mistakes, or perpetuate inaccurate information.

I assume your DNA discovery, however, was not based on following results on ethnicity estimates, but due to autosomal testing with DNA matching with 'cousins'. The two are quite different as sources of information for family research.