Genealogy & Ancestry

I see a lot of people getting some small percent of African dna on their results but when I did a 23&me I got 0% sub Saharan African



Feels good to finally get a perfect score on a test

I've had success with LINK I've traced my dad's side back to the 1600's

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I've had success with LINK I've traced my dad's side back to the 1600's

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Be careful with FamilySearch. It's a useful tool, but it's community-researched data, so there are a LOT of errors.

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Be careful with FamilySearch. It's a useful tool, but it's community-researched data, so there are a LOT of errors.

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I've noticed that on a few entries but I try to fact check as best as I can and compare other websites.

I did it to find my biological family. I was adopted and figured all of it out after many years of research. I have multiple brothers and sisters on both sides and no one knew that I existed except for my bio mom. I even met my 93 year old grandmother in person and was able to learn about her and where she and her family came from. It’s a long story, but I know a lot about the different services.

Ancestry is the best and most complete database. Get the PRO service if you are serious about making your family tree. It will allow you to see which matches are on maternal and paternal side, which is the biggest first step in sorting things out.

23andme is supplemental. I did have some matches there that helped. So I would recommend doing it after you submit to Ancestry and get results there.

Myheritage.com is a European database, mostly, that is 2nd to Ancestry in completeness. If you’re going back to 1800s it might be wise to look here as well as you will probably have common ancestors with someone there.

Then last resort submit your DNA file (you can download it from any of the services above) to GEDMatch and it will compare against a bunch of seldom used DNA services from around the world.

FTDNA is also a good service to find more matches but not as complete as the above.

You will have to spend a lot of time finding wedding documents to see who married who and who their parents were. The most useful tool is finding a death notice. This is a government document that tells you with high accuracy who someone’s kids were. You cant just rely on some rando’s family tree because they are not reliable. Only a good direction to start with. When you find a death notice to confirm the members of a family thats like striking gold in this process.

The idea is simple - find your DNA matches and determine where they belong in your family tree, i.e. 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, 1st cousin 1x removed, etc. You do this by contacting them and hopefully they cooperate and tell you about their family where you can determine who your common ancestors are. 2nd cousins share one set of great-great grandparents out of 4 sets of great grandparents that you have. 3rd cousins share one set of great-great grandparents out of 8 sets that you have. And so on.

There will be lots of "half" relatives out there which complicates things because they will have less DNA in common with you than you would expect. In my research one thing that was surprising to find was how much infidelity there is in the world. People would have children from someone who was not their spouse and just carry on either having it as a secret or just a cultural norm. For example my closest match was a half-uncle that did not know his dad was not his real dad. His actual dad was my bio grandfather.

If you get stuck, research “clustering” and use the tools there, I used the one on GED match to get past some roadblocks. It is a statistical tool that finds clusters of your dna matches to see who also shares DNA between them. The PRO feature of Ancestry also does this.

Good luck and be patient, people take decades to build their family tree, sometimes never getting there. It took me a couple of decades to find my biological family after I started to look.

I am very happy with ancestry.com and got a lot of high-quality research done. I coupled it with a subscription to newspapers.com. Having access to the newspapers allowed me to confirm links with more confidence because I had access to images of wedding announcements obituaries etc.

I did ancestry as has a lot of my dads side. My aunt has traced our family all the way back to Belfast when my direct ancestor left on a boat and landed in Charleston harbor in 1762. He was part of the massive ulster Protestant migration from Northern Ireland. That man eventually fought in the revolution for the good guys and his son moved down to the Mississippi territory following the war

Pretty cool stuff and my aunt did a ton of research and found old family pictures of my greatx3 grandfathers that fought in the civil war. 2 of them were in confederate cavalry units and 2 in infantry. They look like some serious baws

That’s just my dad’s side. My mother’s side of the family is a complete mess. Both her parents were orphan kids born to new immigrants from Ireland so we have very little information there other than they were Irish Catholics. Funny how one side is Irish Protestant (with some German/french mixed in) and the other is Irish catholic (with some heavy Scandinavian ancestry somehow)

I am a heavy mix of 100% Northern European ancestry. I don’t have a lick of Italian, Spanish, Greek etc so yea I don’t tan well and like to drink

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Ancestry.com or 23&me

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my mother in law did Ancestry. It told her she was 90% Italian and 9% African. She badmouth Ancestry about how wrong it is for a year saying she is 100% Italian/Sicilian. She eventually did 23&Me to try and prove herself. And of course it said she was 9% African.


So long story short, they are both full of shite according to my Mother in Law

Italy’s not far from Africa…?

I found my great grandmothers obituary and it listed her parents. I clicked their names and did the same for their names and so on until I found a 6th great grandfather who was born in 1732 and great grandmother born in 1740.