Which company to use for DNA and Ancestry tracing?
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Anonymous
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We don't know who my mother's father is, or who her mother's father is either. Several branches missing from the family tree. My mother has no idea of her ancestry, only that her mom and grandma are black, but my mom looks white.
On dad's side, we know his dad's side of the family back 5 generations, but have no idea of his mom's ancestry. Granny always insisted she is only black, and she is, but her, all her siblings, and her mom clearly have something else mixed in their blood because they look like straight up Native Americans or something. They all had long shiny straight black hair and high cheekbones. My granny and her siblings also have light hazel eyes. My dad's father side of the family literally look like they came off the boat from Africa. So I've got a lot going on with my gene pool, and I would love to learn the truth, it would answer some questions about what am I and where did my ancestors come from. What companies have you used to do the ancestry testing for your family? Any favorite companies you recommend? Any you suggest I avoid? How much does it cost? How long does it take for the results to come back? |
Anonymous
| Also, is the sample given via blood, hair or mouth swab? |
Anonymous
| Just know it is an unregulated industry and your data can be sold for things we are not even using DNA for currently. Your children could be affected by your choice to do this. |
Anonymous
+1 it’s kinda hard to feel like privacy in America is being stolen from us when people are willingly sending off their DNA for cataloging. |
Anonymous
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Try Ancestry.com?
This is how that rapist in the west coast got caught. |
Anonymous
He got caught using GEDMatch which is public. Also he got caught because his family member did this I don’t think he was stupid enough to put his dna on there knowing he raped a bunch of people. I prefer 23andme but AncestryDNA is also fine for the type of information you are looking for. |
Anonymous
what do you like better about 23andme? I did ancestry, and was sort of disappointed by how non-specific it was. My mother's ancestry was represented, for instance, under "New England settlers" - pretty broad categorization that I already knew. |
Anonymous
| Which service provides the most detailed DNA breakdown? |
Anonymous
The first things Ancestry gives is an "Ethnicity Estimate" (with percentages by region of the world). The "Migrations" information is more like a bonus, in my mind. You had to have gotten information about the likely regions your ancestors came from, right? I don't have experience with 23andme, but I've managed the DNA samples that relatives did through Ancestry. I like that we can link the sample to the basic family tree information we do have, including names and places. Then when we find cousin matches, I can find potential areas of overlap. (Maybe that person also had a "Thompson" relative from the same county born within the same 20 years as my ancestor, so maybe that's the place to look for the connection.) I also like being able to subscribe, even just a month at a time, to the regular Ancestry service so that I can try to find records for our ancestors. Sometimes on a birth or death record, for example, there is valuable information like the mother's maiden name. That said, I don't have any experience tracing African-American lines. If you haven't already, you might want to check out "Finding Your Roots" (on PBS and Amazon Prime) to see the experts in action. |
Anonymous
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Ancestry, but look for a group called DNA Detectives on Facebook. This group has a lot of members like you and, if you need extra help, its DNA angels will give you guidance to find the answers you want.
You are welcome. |
Anonymous
+1 please thinking twice doing this! |
Anonymous
Especially if you plan to commit crimes! |
Anonymous
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I did ancestry a year or so ago and just recently did 23andme. For ancestry info I felt like ancestry.com was more accurate with regard to what I already knew based on where my great grandparents immigrated from. 23andme was a bit more generic. For example, ancestry said I’m 49% Scandinavian which is about what I expected. 23andme said I’m 29% Swedish. True that my Scandinavian ancestors mostly came from Sweden but some also came from Denmark. They allocated a larger share of my dna to generic northwestern European. I feel like the ancestry.com ancestry infor is more accurate. The advantage of 23andme is the health info. Since you’re black, you might feel bad some value in that because I think there are some traits and health issues more common among blacks than other groups. If finding out if you’re predisposed to any diseases or a carrier for certain diseases, then it might be useful to get 23andme.
23andme tells you about a lot of other traits too and is eerily accurate. For example it said I probably move around a lot in my sleep (very true), that I probably don’t sleep deeply (also true), tue test results knew I don’t have freckles, a unibrow, and that my pee smells after i eat asparagus. It also knows in predisposed to weigh more, consume more caffeine, and that my muscle composition is common in elite athletes. It’s crazy the stuff they can find out with DNA. I just logged in to see what else they check and see that they changed my ancestry percentage from 29% Swedish to 35.1%. Huh. Also they look at your maternal haplogroup which tells you when your early ancestors left Africa and where they generally migrated too. They also tell you about your Neanderthal ancestry...I share 4% of my DNA with Neanderthals which is 69% more than other 23andme users. So, overall it’s very interesting and if I were you and curious about your ancestry I’d definitely do it. I don’t know which I’d recommend, I suppose it depends a lot on what you want to find out. 23 and ancestry both have ancestry only versions which are comparatively priced ($100ish but they have sales here and there) but the 23andme with health info is more expensive. I got mine on Amazon for $159 with free shipping. Their website charges shipping. It’s normally $199 but I got it on sale for mother’s day. I don’t know if it was on sale on amazon or if that’s always the price. I was going to order it on the 23 website until I saw the shipping fee then checked amazon to see if they had it and they do. Let me know if you have questions. I’ve always been fascinated by ancestry, even though mine has never been a big mystery. It’s the historian in me, I guess. |
Anonymous
| PP here. Want to add they don’t test for things like predisposition to heart diseas, diabetes, alcoholism, or stroke which I would love to have info on since my family members all have died related to those things. |
Anonymous
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There is a site called Promethease that will analyze your DNA for health issues for $10, if you do 23andMe, FTDNA, or ancestry if you want to save money. It's a little work to figure out though. Sometimes they offer free uploads.
This article is the best I've found on choosing a test; wish I'd read it before I spent any money: https://dna-explained.com/which-dna-test-is-best/ |