DNA tests revisited…

In my post looking at whether DNA tests are worth it, for family history, I concluded:

Will I bother?

No.

Because:

In short, I don’t think DNA testing could tell me anything I haven’t or can’t find out other ways.

But fast-forward a while, and after being pestered by ‘special offers’ on DNA tests on Ancestry, I  decided ‘don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it’.

Not because I’d changed my mind to any great extent about how useful (or not) it might be.

But because I had discovered a ‘brick wall’ on my paternal side – a direct ancestor born to a single mother. And I wondered if maybe, just maybe, a DNA test would help.

Spoiler alert: it hasn’t.

‘Told you so’

In my original post, I said that the main things DNA tests were likely to do was find a bunch of distant cousins etc. And give some idea of geographical origins. But that these wouldn’t be 100 per cent reliable.

I also pointed out that you can (obviously) only match to people who have done the test and uploaded the results to the same website as you.

And that if their online trees are full of errors, you’re not going to learn anything useful from them.

That’s if they have an online tree at all.

What have I actually found?

Well, all of the above.

Geographic origin

While it’s interesting to know I am a few per cent ‘Sweden and Denmark’ (ie Viking), it’s quite useless to be told that my matches have ‘journeys’ that I don’t. Eg, Quebec.

‘Lincolnshire to Cumbria’ as one of my key regions is also useless. Just has me thinking: “That will be Cumbria, then.”

‘Cumbria and Eastern Dumfries and Galloway’ is likewise: ‘tell me something I didn’t know’.

When it comes to Scotland, I get: ‘Your ancestral region estimate is 20%, but it can range from 6 to 30%’.

‘Estimate’ indeed. And given I have some Scottish surnames on my maternal tree, no surprise there. While the Scottish DNA from my father’s line can be explained by someone a few generations back. Or could be the ‘mystery man’ I was looking for. Who can tell?

There was the surprise of a chunk on Mum’s side labelled as Irish.

But then this estimate could apparently range ‘from zero’.

And it could also mean I have ancestors from the Channel Islands, Faroe Islands, France, Iceland, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland… and Scotland.

So pretty meaningless, really. Either an ancient Celt, perhaps from the same time period as my ‘Swedish and Danish’ ancestors. Or another Scot.

Except… 

Since writing the above, they’ve changed it. And made it harder to pinpoint, if anything. The ‘Irish’ is down 3%. But there is a sub-region of the Channel Islands, based on some of my matches having links there (which I don’t)… The Vikings have gone (but been replaced, perhaps, by 2% ‘Germanic region’– which includes Sweden and Denmark.

There’s also a think called Journeys

‘Our closest DNA matches have some journeys you don’t have. You may still be connected to some of these journeys, even though we can’t tell how.’

Well I can. Because, for example, two of my grandfather’s siblings emigrated to Canada; an uncle a few generations back emigrated to Australia. Their descendants married ‘locals’. THAT is my only connection to either.

But I can now say I am 3% more Scottish than I was a couple of weeks ago!

DNA traits

What I didn’t expect, ask for, or want, was Ancestry’s so-called Traits. A list of things I am supposed to have inherited from my parents. All of which are 50:50 options for anyone, really (‘night person’; ‘likely to have a pet’…)

And which is about as accurate as a funfair fortune teller’s cold guessing.

‘Likes to drink a lot more caffeine than average’.

Perhaps, depending on whatever ‘average is’.

But ‘less attractive to mosquitoes’? I wish.

The whole section is annoying, and there’s no option to say ‘wrong’ to any of it. (Though doing so would be giving them extra personal data).

DNA tests matches

As I predicted, these show up a lot of distant cousins. They also show up people whose online trees are works of fiction. And people who haven’t got an online tree, which means the chance of working out how they are related to me is between slim and none.

There’s a thing called ThruLines which shows you how you may be related to your DNA matches through ancestors you share.

But the key words are ‘may be’. Because it’s only as good as the other person’s online tree. And sometimes fills in gaps with suggestions to ‘evaluate’ that turn out to be wrong.

And while it’s very nice to know I have fifth cousins in places like New Jersey and Tasmania, it isn’t that helpful.

I’m not about to try to say hello to every person I match to (there are literally thousands). And filling in the descendants of every bygone uncle and aunt could get silly. I already have some 20,000 names on my ‘big’ family tree. 

The puzzles

Even matches with large trees can be hopeless, if you can’t spot any names on there that could connect to you, and they don’t even have any ‘shared matches’ to help narrow it down.

And in a couple of instances, there are people I’ve found in 18th century land records and parish registers who I feel should be connected to my family, give their names. And people who have them on their trees and have a match to me. But still nothing to show HOW they fit ‘my lot’.

The positives

That said, I have swapped messages with a few ‘new’ people. And confirmed that people I’ve been in touch with for years are truly related to me. It wouldn’t bother me if a female ancestor had played away from home a century back, but it’s kind of nice to know they didn’t!

Present-day matches that could only have come via one person have confirmed a long-held theory as to who my 6x great-grandparents are.

And I have finally resolved a 1700s mystery that years of conventional research couldn’t. Because the ascendancy of a DNA connection has to mean my ancestor and theirs were brothers. And that confirms for sure that my ancestor’s father was the person I thought – but couldn’t otherwise prove – it might be.