DNA testing

[Jillie42]

Ancestry are currently offering a half price deal for having your DNA tested and added to the ancestry database with the idea of actually linking you up with posssible relatives who share similar DNA.

Hubby and I have just signed up for this and are awaiting the arrival of our kits from the US.

Has anyon else actually taken part in this and if so, have you actually discovered any distant "cousins"?

[Matilda SP]

My husband did the testing a couple of years ago--I think it was through Family Tree Maker.  He did the Y DNA test and is now the leader of a small discussion group of men with the same Y chromosome markers. 

And yes--he found two cousins, but on his mother's side!  It was a coincidence, and they are distant cousins, but on the male DNA, his father's side, he's found no cousins yet. 

He's had a positive experience with this and encourages others with interest to do it.  I don't know how Ancestry compares with Family Tree Maker as far as price and type of test offered.

[MarkyP]

I did think about using Ancestry, but in the end found this site

http://www.familytreedna.com/

They claim to have the largest surname base on the web and you can link up with people specific to your surname directly.

Mark.

[Matilda SP]

Familytreedna:  That's the one my husband did.  (He's not home right now--I'll have to ask later.)  He started out with the 12-marker Y-DNA test and later did the 37-marker. 

[Jillie42]

Since I'm female and have no living close male relatives I've had to take the mitochondrial test. This is ok since it's my mother's family I'm having more trouble with.

Hubby is taking the paternal Y46 test which hopefully should give him the greatest number of markers possible at the moment.

[Jillie42]

Hubbies paternal tests are in. Closest match is 30 generations or approx. 750 years for a family called Fenn in the USA.

Does anyone think it's worth contacting them? It seems unlikely that they would have searched as far back as 30 generations

[john franks]

Earlier this year I had my yDNA done by Family Tree DNA, who I would recommend by the way. I went into this out of curiosity - I did not have some carefully thought through objectives. To my surprise I turned out to have a very close match with another person on another continent with another surname. The statistics say that we are likely to have a common ancestor not more than ten generations back. My contact has traced his ancestry back to 1800 in USA; my surname line goes back to 1715 in England. In fact my contact has a cousin who has also been tested and I am nearer, in dna terms, to one of the cousins than they are to each other. I have a rare surname. The cousins name is fairly common but families bearing the two names have lived together in the same English parish for a long time.

It is quite possible that there has been a case of what is delicately termed "false paternity" in one of our families, after which someone emigrated to the new world. I have done a lot of research on my family already and I reckon there is a near zero chance of resolving the mystery by conventional FH methods. The only possible way forward I can see is to persuade the male descendants of people who have lived in my ancestral area to get themselves analysed - and I don't hold out much hope of achieving this either.

We have always got to remember that this whole thing is based on probabilies and our close results may just be a coincidence however unlikely.

The message to be drawn from my experience for anyone tempted to get their dna tested is not to do it if you don't like surprises!

With regard to Jillie's query about a connection 30 generations back, it seems to me that you are very unlikely to find an actual common ancestor so far back but it may be of interest to the Fenns to know where there ancestors came from.

John