*SUCCESS* Autosomal DNA Test - my experience

[weste]

I've also been thinking about an autosomal one as I can't take the male ones either. At some oint I may suggest one of my brothers has one with one or 2 of the family links.

[DudleyWinchurch]

Not much news, but been away for a few days and came back to find that the status is now "batched" on 16th October and "in progress" on the 17th.  Results expected mid-December.

thanks jc26red, all seems to be going as you predicted.

[Redroger]

Though perhaps not directly relevant to this thread I am currently reading a book "DNA for archaeologists" published by Left Coast Press USA. One point made in the book so far which I think has a relevance to family historical DNA is the statement made "that there is more variance of DNA within a population than between populations". Interesting; as it suggests to me that my DNA which is of a Scandanavian origin may have more in common with that of people from a different ethnicity eg Oriental, than with that of other members of my own ancestral group. A very interesting thought in my opinion.

[supermoussi]

One point made in the book so far which I think has a relevance to family historical DNA is the statement made "that there is more variance of DNA within a population than between populations". Interesting; as it suggests to me that my DNA which is of a Scandanavian origin may have more in common with that of people from a different ethnicity eg Oriental, than with that of other members of my own ancestral group. A very interesting thought in my opinion.

Without reading more of the book I think they just mean that most modern day populations are made up mutliple ethnicities. Your (relatively recent) "Scandinavian" DNA will have more in common with other people of "Scandinavian" DNA whether they are still in Scandinavia, America or New Zealand than it has with other British people of relatively recent French, Spanish, German, Asian or African DNA.

There are very few large populations that are not very mixed up genetically. I suspect they did not mean that you are more closely related to an Oriental than to a Dane!

[Redroger]

Thanks, this one needs further thought.

[AngelaR]

Just to add my two-pennorth..... I wanted to encourage Dudley about timescales. I was given an 'expected results'  date of the end of November, but the mtDNA results arrived yesterday and the autosomal ones today, so nearly a month early!

The not-so-good part of it all is that I can't make head or tail of the (fairly remote) matches  I see I'm going to have to read up about this even more than I have!

[supermoussi]

The not-so-good part of it all is that I can't make head or tail of the (fairly remote) matches  I see I'm going to have to read up about this even more than I have!

Bear in mind that single autosomal matches are not enough to prove which surname the DNA belongs to. For example, say you match someone on a chunk of autosomal DNA and you each have someone of the same surname and from the same area as one another as follows:-

 Person 1) descendant of Elias SMITH b.1812 Chelsea
 Person 2) descendant of Jonas SMITH b.1792 Fulham

Great! Or is it?

Say in our example the matching result was really:-

 Person 1) descendant of Elias SMITH b.1812 Chelsea s. Jn SMITH & Mary RANDALL
 Person 2) descendant of Jonas SMITH b.1792 Fulham s. Wm SMITH & Ann RANDALL

How can you tell whether your matching DNA comes form the SMITH or RANDALL family? You can't easily..

If someone was to just assume that the two SMITH families were the same they could end up researching the wrong family if they were really unrelated and the common DNA came from the RANDALL family.

This is even more tricky when you get out into the Pre-Industrial Revolution countryside where the frequent marriage of country cousins means that people shared bits of DNA with most other people in the village!

Autosomal DNA is very very iffy...

[AngelaR]

Thanks supermoussi ..... I think   

[DudleyWinchurch]

Thanks AngelaR,

I've been a bit busy recently but trying to check every couple of days and will let you all know when the results, if any, begin to appear.

I'm fortunate not to have any replicated family names back as far as Great-Grandparents, nor any of the known ones in the previous generation, so I'm hoping that any that pop up will either be obvious which line, or will indicate that I have matched to one of my gaps, so will know where the further research is necessary.

Beyond that level, I understand that there will be little confidence in which generation we are looking at anyway, so will just be hints to store for later, I assume.

And yes, supermoussi, there are still unknowns out there, as well as the main test that I was hoping to make, so there could be some serious sleuthing yet to do.

Meantime, it's rather nice to know that while I am too busy with other things to do much family history research at present, the test is grinding its way through all the numbers to try to find me some results. So maybe just another week or two to wait?