is Ancestrydna.com for real

SteveMaine

New User
My wife did a dna test to find her ancestry. She is 50% French and report never listed any French ancestry. It looks like a scam . Has anyone else used this.
 
Some ancestor could have "jumped the fence", and brought a new bloodline into the family???
 
I think it's legit, but you can get all the same information yourself without paying them. Also, they make a big deal about checking your DNA and finding familial matches, but that really doesn't do anything for you. It's just interesting, that's all.
If you're trying to trace your roots, do it on your own. Much more rewarding to know you did it yourself. And you'll be reasonably sure the information is accurate, not made up.
 
There were a lot of orphans from European wars. Those orphans often became wards of the church, and ended up crossing borders. My wife believes she is part Ukrainian, but knows that she may just as easily be Czech, Polish or Slav, because of a war orphan in her ancestry.
 
uh oh... she might have been switched at birth. : )

I have wondered how many cans-of-worms and old family secrets such a service will open up.

Like when two siblings do the test and get different results.
 
Yes it is. It told me I was "90% probably" related to somebody I had never heard of. I started asking older relatives and it came out that I was indeed related by common great-grandparents.
On the flip side, my two stepsons who thought they were 1/4 Native American had zero Native American blood. Their grandfather claimed he was Navajo, but never told anyone about his past. We think might have been adopted, and was ashamed about it somehow.
Bottom line it is interesting.
 
What were you expecting? There is no such thing as a genetic standard for what a "French" person is. They are mutts like most of us are. Just "old" mutts. My grandparents were from southern France and have roots from Spain and other parts of Europe. There were several distinct cultures there at the time they were born and raised there - the Basque being one of them.
My grandparents hardly even spoke the French language. Catalan was their main dialect.

As I understand it - Ancestry is developing a large DNA database and comparing DNA to family history reports and that's how they are using inductive reasoning to come up with these ethnicity projections.

So what exactly did your report say?
 
uh oh... she might have been switched at birth. : )

I have wondered how many cans-of-worms and old family secrets such a service will open up.

Like when two siblings do the test and get different results.
 
(quoted from post at 19:54:23 07/23/14) What were you expecting? There is no such thing as a genetic standard for what a "French" person is. They are mutts like most of us are. Just "old" mutts. My grandparents were from southern France and have roots from Spain and other parts of Europe. There were several distinct cultures there at the time they were born and raised there - the Basque being one of them.
My grandparents hardly even spoke the French language. Catalan was their main dialect.

As I understand it - Ancestry is developing a large DNA database and comparing DNA to family history reports and that's how they are using inductive reasoning to come up with these ethnicity projections.

So what exactly did your report say?

I agree. I did mine the harder way through searches. Turns out my family traveled between Scotland, Ireland and Brittany on a regular basis over several generations. So am I Scotch, Irish, French or all 3?
 

DNA is not an exact science. We are led to believe it is, but it is not. It is still someone's opinion whether all those strands actually match, or not. I would not want to be accused of a crime I did not commit, just because someone thought DNA collected from the scene of the crime matched some DNA on file somewhere with my name on it.
 
I do not know if these DNA tests are a good idea. My aunt had one done and found out my grandmother must have been screwing around on my grandfather. Information that was not needed as she is 92.
 
Personally I don't believe the DNA tests work for testing ancestry. Ancestry.com is a good site for someone researching their history. It's just a bunch of amateur genealogists though posting their own information they have gathered so you can't read it as concrete facts. It's good for clues though.
 
(quoted from post at 11:35:22 07/24/14)
DNA is not an exact science. We are led to believe it is, but it is not. It is still someone's opinion whether all those strands actually match, or not. I would not want to be accused of a crime I did not commit, just because someone thought DNA collected from the scene of the crime matched some DNA on file somewhere with my name on it.

There is a lot of truth to that. A few years back the news was that Thomas Jefferson had fathered a child with a slave girl because her descendant's DNA "proved" it. Old Tom got ripped terribly in the press and public opinion, even though that was the only evidence offered. Meanwhile, if you did your home work, you found out the Toms brother had a reputation for fathering children with his slaves. No one ever bothered to note that there is no possible way to tell if it was Tom or his brother that fathered the kid.
 
A friend did it this spring after his grandfather died. What they told him matched what they found in the family bible (when they found it).

There is a certain percentage of unreliable results. Every so often, they do a maternity test and it doesn't even come back right.

I had heard my family just popped up at some point. I signed up, and looking around, the line stops around 1805 with one person, no info any farther back. From the stories I"ve heard there was a feud and part of the family moved on to escape prosecution. Makes sense, the one who moved on changed his first name, if asked about it, "no, that would have been my brother", they didn"t have photography back then.

I'm tempted to try it, but don't like the idea of my info being kept in any kind of database. Ancestry claims they only need a small piece of the Y chromosome to put a family name to any man alive.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top