Who Do You Think You Are Magazine Forum

[Norfolk Nan]

In a moment of festivity I bought a couple of these tests at Christmas as got the results back recently. Why did I do it? Purely because I wanted to say I had 'viking' ancestry. My husband claims clear Norman descent and I wanted to win in the argument 'My family has been here longer than yours'. The results were interesting. I am 100% British with regional connections from Devon, across the centre and up the east coast to Northumbria. I wasn't surprised based on the research I've done so far.

I'm not sure what I'll do with the data now, I'm not inclined to go looking for extended family. The test results cover ten generations which means around a thousand people - I'm working my way through populating the fifth and sixth generations with one line going back at least ten and another seven. The question is this: I have three brickwalls that might be resolved by including families from Ireland. Based on the results of the DNA test that makes no connection to Scotland, Wales or Ireland would it be fair to discard these possibilities? They would be in the fifth and sixth generations of a ten generation sweep. Any thoughts?

[Paparico]

ALWAYS go for the extended family! Every day, the odds increase that someone has already researched a sibling and posted their tree online!

Despite the climatic differences between Norfolk and Eire, your research has already uncovered relationships between the two, but remember to double-check the sources!
Aloha! Rico

n.b. I have posted thousands of Norfolk families on the free http://wikitree.com

[Glenmornan]

I took the Ancestry DNA test last year, but am undecided on the results. Like many others I was born in Scotland with a considerable amount of recent Irish ancestry. The result came back as 84% Irish and Scottish, and 16% England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe. I had half expected some English ancestry before the 17th century, so there were no surprises.

Some of my DNA matches have no Irish/Scottish DNA at all, but appear to be related to me through my 16% undefined "mixture", and that conveys to me that English ancestry appears to be probable, but cannot actually be confirmed. Or am I entitled to make an educated guess based on the fact that I have DNA matches that aren't Scottish or Irish?

England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe may be a very small area in the bigger picture, but it contains many different cultures. Ancestry has made comparisons with other peoples' family trees to correctly advise me that I have strong connections to Ulster, particularly Tyrone, Londonderry, and Antrim, as well as Donegal (which was part of Ulster until 1922!), yet anything before reliable records were kept still remains a lottery.

In summary, the test only confirmed what I knew already from family research, but failed to reveal whether I had English ancestry or not. Or did it?

[Mick Loney]

To me, the most important result from a DNA test is NOT ethnicity, which is merely an educated guess by the likes of Ancestry et al and goes no way to proving your genealogical research.

What is more important is finding out where you inerited your various Genes from.
If you find someone with similar/matching Genes as you, the odds are that you both inherited these from the same common ancestor, which may go a long way to proving your research.