Ancestry Dot Com

[MarblesMom]

Ok, here is a place to spew the good and bad on the ancestry website.

Mr MM and I have been on it for at least 5 years.  At this point, we have tackled so many branches of our family tree, we have about 15k people in it.  YAY for dead people!

My beeves* with the site: I want the search results to be in a sortable format, so I can re-order what they think I want to look at.  I cannot tell you how many times what I was looking for showed up on page 47.   Life is short, Ancestry folks, ahem, we *are* looking at dead people's records, please don't put me in your database before I find what I want ...

and secondly....

if you make your tree public, every Tom, Dick, and Harry will make sure to (a) copy your hard-found info into their tree (and claim it is their research) and/or (b) comment/email you to tell you some of your info is wrong because Aunt Mable was born in 1819 not 1820, regardless of what the death certificate says.

Humph.  Done now.

*Beeves = many beef = many cattle.  Taken from an ancestor's will from the early 1800's. 

[clueliss]

Oh yes.  Someone messaged me to tell me that I was wrong about where their family member (dead, social security records told me so) died or was buried.  SS said they died once place, their buried elsewhere.  But, you know let's pick at someone researching her extended Germanic side of the family.  

or oooh message me to ask to meet you in person (WTF??) to talk about dead ancestors.  Hello we're eleventy times removed.  go away.  

or - my favorite - try to tell me that my grandmother was married to LH and not TH.  Ummm TH is my grandfather.  Yes he died before I was born but you think it would have made it my way that grandpa was L not T?  (My uncle explained how this misinformation is out there - which is a bit creepy)

[MarblesMom]

I did the DNA thing, which kinda creeped me out, letting some company have my DNA, but WTH, I am innocent () and ever since then, random people email me and say "it looks like you could be my 4th cousin" and I am like, nice, a new neighbor.  One guy even sorta catfished and wrote me that he didn't know who his dad was, but we were connected via the DNA study and he thought it came from my side... (hinting it was my father)... I replied something rude/blunt asking for more info and ... POOF never heard from him again. 

I did the DNA thing to SHUT MY UNCLE UP about his theory that we are Native American.  No paper trail proving anything, so we went all sciency - I paid for his test, and I did one, too, and both came back NA-less.  His comment on the process: "Those DNA tests are wonky and cannot prove anything."

ROFLROFLROFL.

He is still convinced we have NA blood.  I am going to let his ancient mind have the win, but I know the score.

[clueliss]

He needs to watching Finding Your Roots with Dr. Henry Louis Gates.  Dr. Gates seeming favorite thing is to bust the bubble of NA roots - because everyone seems to have those rumors in the family (mine too.  Father's side.  Nothing.)

My DNA results are also at the site GEDmatch.com - I did connect via ancestry/DNA results with folks on a branch of family on my father's side.  Well researched - well up to one point and those in the know rather give up at that point because nothing on his parentage can be proven (this is also a family branch with some odd Finnish/Scandinavian DNA  on one chromosome that we don't quite understand - and you can get that sort of detail at GEDmatch.)  I had someone contact me recently from that branch of the family that sort of felt like cat-fishing.  It was the GEDmatch results.  I could figure out how I related to her but not her cousin.  I pointed her to the expert in the family branch and washed my hands of it.  

[meowmeow19]

2 hours ago, MarblesMom said:

I did the DNA thing, which kinda creeped me out, letting some company have my DNA, but WTH, I am innocent () and ever since then, random people email me and say "it looks like you could be my 4th cousin" and I am like, nice, a new neighbor.  One guy even sorta catfished and wrote me that he didn't know who his dad was, but we were connected via the DNA study and he thought it came from my side... (hinting it was my father)... I replied something rude/blunt asking for more info and ... POOF never heard from him again. 

I did the DNA thing to SHUT MY UNCLE UP about his theory that we are Native American.  No paper trail proving anything, so we went all sciency - I paid for his test, and I did one, too, and both came back NA-less.  His comment on the process: "Those DNA tests are wonky and cannot prove anything."

ROFLROFLROFL.

He is still convinced we have NA blood.  I am going to let his ancient mind have the win, but I know the score.

I will say genetic genealogy is still a transforming science and weirdly kind of like an art form. I know someone that is 50% Cherokee (born and raised on a reservation) and looks Native American. DNA came back and it was 11% Asiatic/NA. Now I know that there could have been generations of mixing ancestry and such but I feel like the admixture wasn't quite 100% Their are people you can send your test results (not ancestry's unfortunately) such as Dr. Doug McDonald that will put your results through his own admixture test. Also, the test can really only do 200 years back (sorta) and that isn't even 100% Technically you have the chance not be related to your own grandparent genetically, it's a small chance in hell but it is possible. To get the best look back in your genetic self, you have to test multiple people in your family and try to get the oldest generations to take the test. DNA doesn't equally divide as it goes down the ancestry line. You could get more DNA from your mother's dad and have very little from your Dad's mother. It's just a chance. Just like if you get dad's eyes and Mom's nose.

I originally did my DNA test with 23andme, I think I was #80,000 and some change out of the some 2 million and counting that have taken the test. Unfortunately they have changed the system and the old guys have to retest or pay to have your test reformulated or something and I haven't done it. I also took the ancestry. com test. I like it but I hate how they made it for the masses and didn't add in any technical information. I call this the Disney effect, for the masses, to simplify and give out just enough to appease the price tag. They did add in the shared CentiMorgans, but no haplogroup data, and you don't get a copy of your file. I find a lot of the new DNA users don't share trees. I get the want to protect yourself or something but if everyone did that , no one would learn a thing about each other. I'm deep in the camp of all about sharing as much as possible. A lot of times people go a little ham into tracking down if they are related to you because their desire to find about THEM not YOU and it's pretty harmless. It can get pretty annoying sometimes but if it makes their search for whatever reason easier, i'm game. 

I love Ancestry and despise it at the same time. My grandmother was a semi-professional genealogist and scoffed at the idea of using Ancestry. In her words, why pay that much for something when you can do it at a fraction of the price. I totally get what she was saying but it's also great for people who don't want to spend their weekends in some dirty annex in god knows where (sometimes that is a thrill). I think they have made some disastrous changes this last few months.

1. The new format, we all know it and we all loathed it. It was pushed out too soon and it was clearly made by eyes that don't do genealogy. The contrast from the dark boarders with the bright background can be painful to the eye, especially when you are hard at concentration for hours. They did however fix this to some degree. They slowly added back important tools- such as the relationship thing.

2. The death of Family Tree Maker. I can't speak much for this, since I am a millennium baby and despise physical software but when it's about genealogy it's a needed thing. God it was a good move for them making money but a serious dick move to the people who have been buying this stuff for decades. 

I am going to admit, I did a interview with the ancestry people and got 6 months free all inclusive for giving about 2 hours of my time answering questions about how I feel about the changes. They want to do more with me, I think they perked up interesting knowing i'm a young person that does trees free for other young people and getting them into knowing more about their past. In my they have a lot more to do, for one they need to phase out the forum section and make it more interactive with the people actually in the tree. It's mostly stuff from late 90's to early 00's. I hope they do a updo on the DNA sides of things (which I see them doing).  All in all it's my main go-to for genealogy work but it's not the only tool I use. I do like their customer service. Just my 2 cents. 

2 hours ago, clueliss said:

My DNA results are also at the site GEDmatch.com

OOOh I love Gedmatch.com! Which test did you use to upload?

[clueliss]

I uploaded mine and my mother's results from ancestry.com  

and I'm annoyed at some of the changes the website has done.   

[PennySycamore]

I have an Ancestry membership and have honestly not done much in the last few months.  I was going research on my dad's side of the family.  The court house in his home county burned down sometime in the 1800s or maybe early in the 20th Century and all the records were lost. I can't search back fro either side of my dad's family.  What's weird is that I can trace one line back to one man but I don't really know anything about his wife.  I only know her last name.  Had she been married before or was Prewitt her maiden name? From this guy back though, I can go back maybe 5 generations.

When I was looking this info up, I noticed that the data that was entered for my dad's family was entered by my own daughter.  She knew more than I did.  A lot of what I do know is from our Family Bible and other stuff is from what other people have done.  Our family tree in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were pretty ell established.

[meowmeow19]

6 hours ago, MarblesMom said:

 

Sorry for tagging you in here @MarblesMom, I don't know what the heck happened. I quoted you and half of my own post.

 

If you ever want another eyes to take a look, just send me a message @PennySycamore, I have a few lines I wish I could have some input on because i'm just stumped. 

[Bethella]

15 hours ago, clueliss said:

He needs to watching Finding Your Roots with Dr. Henry Louis Gates.  Dr. Gates seeming favorite thing is to bust the bubble of NA roots - because everyone seems to have those rumors in the family

We didn't have any rumors of NA ancestry- as far as we knew we were European all the way. I got my ancestry DNA results today and what do I find? 1% NA. Anyone have any ideas about how many generations back that 1% would be so I at least have a clue about where to start looking for this hidden ancestor?

[meowmeow19]

43 minutes ago, Bethella said:

We didn't have any rumors of NA ancestry- as far as we knew we were European all the way. I got my ancestry DNA results today and what do I find? 1% NA. Anyone have any ideas about how many generations back that 1% would be so I at least have a clue about where to start looking for this hidden ancestor?

Did you take the test with Ancestry or some other testing site? If you wanted to do the math on how far back it's more of a guesstimation but going from the simplest terms: Parents 50%, Grandparents 25%, G-grand 12.5%, 2x grand 6.125%, 3xgrand 3.125, 4x grand 1.56% and 5x grand at 0.78%

Now saying this. DNA doesn't always divide equally down the generations.  Technically you have a chance not to be genetically related to one of your grandparents! How weird is that?!

I ask if you tested with ancestry because they don't show your chromosome map, so you could have 2 very,very distant ancestors that were Native American/ Asiatic but it only shows up as the lump sum of 1%. Also you can have just a bad call of 1% and that you really don't have any Native American. Pretty cool though! I hope you find it and share with us. DNA is such a great tool.

[MarblesMom]

27 minutes ago, meowmeow19 said:

DNA is such a great tool.

I will tell my uncle the internet said so. 

[clueliss]

GEDmatch has better tools for telling you where you match by chromsome and such.  Just don't ask me how to do it.  I do know that there is way there to look at who you match to and see what chromosomes of yours match theirs.  Someone I match to (twice, one on each side of my and her family) looked at mine and Mom's DNA.  Because we know from ancestry where we match to and she has both her parents dna.  So with her skill on that site she can see that I inherited a chunk of DNA that goes back multiple generations (through the one non-germanic grandparent of my mothers).

[Karma]

Visiting my SIL and 9yo niece last weekend, and was delighted when my niece showed me her school project question - to present one side of her family tree - and asked me to help her.  I've been researching it on and off since my own school project in 1982, and am lucky to have photos of many of my GGG grandparents.  My SIL migrated here from Asia 20 years ago, but my side of the family has history in niece's country town going back to the 1850s (that's a long time in Australia) and I reckon she's going to have the best tree in the class.  I'll have to remember though that she's only 9 and not get too excited that at last someone in the family isn't falling over in boredom when I tell her stories.

BTW the Australian equivalent of seeking NA ancestry is finding a convict ancestor.  Tragically all of mine (1832-1870, most early 1850s) were law abiding English/Irish/Scottish/German targeted agricultural labourers or free settlers.  

I've subscribed to ancestry for years, but started off researching in our state library on microfilm. Much more convenient to do it in my pjs in the loungeroom!  I've bought several versions of FTM over the last maybe 20 years, and am NOT impressed that Ancestry has made this decision. I haven't been tempted to do the DNA thing.

On the subject of distant relations seeking you out, there's lots of users who want information but then you don't hear back from them.  So annoying, particularly if you've shared certificates ordered from eg England at significant cost.  I did meet one in person though - after we shared a lot of information - and we drove down the coast together to visit a grave.  Have kept in contact and get on really well, so there are some good people out there

[Bethella]

22 hours ago, meowmeow19 said:

Did you take the test with Ancestry or some other testing site? If you wanted to do the math on how far back it's more of a guesstimation but going from the simplest terms: Parents 50%, Grandparents 25%, G-grand 12.5%, 2x grand 6.125%, 3xgrand 3.125, 4x grand 1.56% and 5x grand at 0.78%

Now saying this. DNA doesn't always divide equally down the generations.  Technically you have a chance not to be genetically related to one of your grandparents! How weird is that?!

I ask if you tested with ancestry because they don't show your chromosome map, so you could have 2 very,very distant ancestors that were Native American/ Asiatic but it only shows up as the lump sum of 1%. Also you can have just a bad call of 1% and that you really don't have any Native American. Pretty cool though! I hope you find it and share with us. DNA is such a great tool.

Yes, I got the ancestry test for Christmas from my dad. If I have to guess the NA ancestor is probably on my maternal grandmother's line, she has one line that goes back to the Puritans. We thought it was all nailed down when people had come over from England but maybe they slipped someone in

[HerNameIsBuffy]

On 2/9/2016 at 7:38 AM, clueliss said:

Oh yes.  Someone messaged me to tell me that I was wrong about where their family member (dead, social security records told me so) died or was buried.  SS said they died once place, their buried elsewhere.  But, you know let's pick at someone researching her extended Germanic side of the family.  

or oooh message me to ask to meet you in person (WTF??) to talk about dead ancestors.  Hello we're eleventy times removed.  go away.  

or - my favorite - try to tell me that my grandmother was married to LH and not TH.  Ummm TH is my grandfather.  Yes he died before I was born but you think it would have made it my way that grandpa was L not T?  (My uncle explained how this misinformation is out there - which is a bit creepy)

The meet in person thing scared me off the online thing years ago - before ancestry...this was the rootsweb mailing lists.

They were closely enough related to know they were who they said they were, and they were an elderly couple (gramma's cousins) who seemed just super into family and so I felt kinda bad when I disappeared with a 'no thank you' but I freak out about stuff like that and the invite was to a reunion of several hundred relatives and I'm pretty sure I'd have a stoke just contemplating that.

There is another branch where someone still lives on the property deeded to our whatever great grandfather for his service in the revolutionary war and they have a reunion every few years.  they still have the old graves on the property from the 1700-1800s and I'd love to go and look around...but it's just too many people I don't know.

What I need is for a fellow FJer to be distantly related to these same people so I can meet up with one of you there and it wouldn't be so scary.   So one of you needs to be related to me right now...it's okay...I'll wait.  

[Bethella]

On 2/9/2016 at 1:09 AM, meowmeow19 said:

Did you take the test with Ancestry or some other testing site? If you wanted to do the math on how far back it's more of a guesstimation but going from the simplest terms: Parents 50%, Grandparents 25%, G-grand 12.5%, 2x grand 6.125%, 3xgrand 3.125, 4x grand 1.56% and 5x grand at 0.78%

Now saying this. DNA doesn't always divide equally down the generations.  Technically you have a chance not to be genetically related to one of your grandparents! How weird is that?!

I ask if you tested with ancestry because they don't show your chromosome map, so you could have 2 very,very distant ancestors that were Native American/ Asiatic but it only shows up as the lump sum of 1%. Also you can have just a bad call of 1% and that you really don't have any Native American. Pretty cool though! I hope you find it and share with us. DNA is such a great tool.

Well it looks like I might have tracked down the Native American ancestor- a 5x great-grandmother on my maternal grandmother's line. Someone else on ancestry has her identified as being Iroquois although they didn't have anything to document it.

[meowmeow19]

21 hours ago, Bethella said:

Well it looks like I might have tracked down the Native American ancestor- a 5x great-grandmother on my maternal grandmother's line. Someone else on ancestry has her identified as being Iroquois although they didn't have anything to document it.

Is this your mothers, mothers mothers 5x back? Like that exact line?

[Bethella]

24 minutes ago, meowmeow19 said:

Is this your mothers, mothers mothers 5x back? Like that exact line?

No, the line goes me, mom, grandma, g-grandma, 2x grandpa, 3x grandma, 4x grandpa, 5x grandma. I'm not finding any documentation that actually proves she was NA or any real documentation for her at all- she's only listed as Ms. So-and-so, although several people online list her as So-and-so of the Iroquois. 

[DaffyDill]

I cannot find one single piece of information on Ancestry.com on me, my dad, or my mum.

Mum's side of the family goes back to 1066 and some obscure noble in the Battle of Hastings, so that's pretty cool. No convict @Karma, but we also found my GG uncle who died in Pozieres in France in WW1

I did read somewhere that Northern Ireland are slow to computerise records, so maybe thats why I can't find anything.

 

[Tikobaby]

I had a subscription to Ancestry starting in 2000, (I think), and kept it for about 5-6 years. It was a great research tool and I was able to download images of tons of census & other records so easily. After researching in the 80s and 90s via snailmail and microfilm readers in various libraries for hours, Ancestry was a miracle of ease!   I've been able to help several family members over the years by sharing info and one of them has created an enormous family tree on Ancestry which is great!  I've been able to correct errors and add info to her tree which she appreciates. Really enjoyed doing the research,  but I don't have much interest in DNA testing.

[clueliss]

Just remember some libraries let you access Ancestry for free (although typically at the library)

[ScreamingIzzy]

What are some good places to use for DNA testing? I've heard of Ancestry and 23and Me. Are there better ones?

[clueliss]

Once you have the testing done you can download and then upload your data to GEDmatch (dot com).  I don't fully understand the site but it can be used to compare results to other testing methods and can do some stuff with identifying which DNA strands you are matching from.  (someone in a group for a branch of my family identified some odd Scandanavian/Finn genes floating about on a particular gene and the question is where did it come from).  

[morri]

I hate the fact that they charge you bazillions.

The latter day saints operate an ancestry site too, which doesnt cost an arm or leg.

[clueliss]

Family Search and Ancestry are now more or less co-mingled.  Different sites but a lot of the data at Family Search (the mormon site) goes over to Ancestry.  (An LDS friend told me about the merging)