Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Ancestry.com DNA test - results marginal

A ways back in the article [ http://weekendgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/01/going-for-my-y37.html ] I blogged about sending in my autosomal DNA kit for my Y37. I also did an Ancestry.com autosomal test too. I'm sure you all have been dying to know what I've learned. So I'll share it with you below. Sadly its not too much, but there are some interesting aspects.

First, my ethnicity estimate was about what I expected. Irish plus Eastern Europe. I expected to see more Germany from my Great-Grandfather Albert Herman Schmidt (from Lehe, Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany b 1894 ) but that didn't surface. I realize Bremerhaven is Prussian, and actually sits inside the circle for Eastern Europe in my results so ithe Western edge of the Eastern Europ area makes sense.


So what about the DNA results matching me to individuals. For me, sadly, not much good. Ancestry is only just now accepting DNA tests from outside the USA, which limits them to who is engaged.  Being a relatively 'recent' immigrant clan (1900s) I'd hoped for more European.   My biggest frustration was people don't upload trees or names so you cannot correlate data. Pretty much limits the usefulness of the DNA test to only whatever name they have now.



Some folks keep their trees 'locked' so you can't see their data. I submitted a suggestion to ancestry to let me lock out those who lock their trees to me, but didn't hear anything back. A user named 'bandito2007' emailed me to ask what I knew about a 'Maytor Healy'. I emailed him back, with 'hey, you let me look at your tree and I'll have some ideas'. Total silence. I now call the locked tree in ancestry the bandito007 effect.   Aka locked out of good information that should be shared. All in all, I didn't get much out of ancestry, across my tree, or my mother and father in laws. Probably won't buy any more Ancestry DNA test.



So did I get anything good out of my Ancestry DNA test. Yes, I transferred my autosomal test to http://www.familytreedna.com . There I have gotten some very interesting results. But that's another story, along with my Y37 followons.

Anyone out there had any luck with Ancestry.com DNA tests?