I'm thinking about doing some genealogy stuff, build out some of my family history. Not DNA stuff, but so-and-so begat so-and-so who begat so-and-so. But I don't know much about the practice. Has anyone done it? Any advice?
You might think about the dna thing anyway. Theyre kind of all linked - the people who are interested in the family tree type stuff have embraced it.
how accurate is this dna testing? especially since there are no paperworks like prior to 1900s (i assume). especially like me as i'm blek.
Seems like it'd be pretty powerful to basically crowd-source this project by linking up with efforts by other people on the platform. But it's a recurring cost. How long will I end up knocking on this thing? And, can I take away a finished project or do I need to keep paying them to see it later?
No you only pay when you want to be more active searching. You can pay by the month and I’ve never had trouble cancelling. You can still log in and see results even when no longer paying.
I used 23 and Me. It continues to refine and update giving more detailed info as to genetic heritage by geographic location as more people do it. It lets you view people who have dna overlap with you, and if you have family who has done it you will see them at the top of the list.
I did DNA for both 23andMe and Ancestry and found them slightly different on genetic ancestry (but all pretty much the same general area) Finding relatives is pretty cool but you’ll swiftly come to realize that a 3% match is pretty good. You’ll also catch yourself checking out your distant cousins. My dad’s half sister who he doesn’t really have a relationship with popped up one day and 23andMe had her pegged as a sister so that was interesting for a few days. When I get alerts that I have new family connections I always halfway expect a surprise kid to pop up and am always a little disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Not really concerned with people having a dna record. If someone really wants it they will get it from your garbage. As for paying for Ancestry, there are a lot of resources there that you can drop in for the free trial or a month and grab then cancel.
I'm just not much interested in genetic history and I'm more invested in memetic history. You get your own history from the people who stuck around, not the sperm donors. I also don't really like the lack of regulation of data privacy around your genetic identity. I don't want to contribute when there isn't enough protections. Though I get a similar, if less intense, feeling about genealogies. On the one hand, I don't want to be forgotten when I die, and on the other I don't really like that a tech company is going to commoditize and monetize information about my life that I volunteer to them.
I feel like there's the higher probability of this happening to me. My dad was very active in the late 1960s up and down the west coast.
Maybe there's a little problem with the paradigm. There is (used to be, anyway) a company called Family Tree DNA who only measures specific segments (like they have a specific tests for only x chromasomes for paternal lineage) and the only measure STR's which are "short tandem repeats' where your ancestor's dna has "studdered" in translation at some point in the past and you get repeating strands of basically "junk dna" that they use to type you with others and they have an option to destroy the dna once their testing is complete. They are able to type you based on how many times specific junk segments in an individual actually repeat over and over. I havent looked closely in like a decade, but thats how it used to be. Not trying to convince you or anything, just giving additional info.
Last year my grandfathers sister got a random call about her 23&me test, a women was claiming she popped up as a genetic relative, that she never knew her father, and wanted to know about her brothers There was only one possibility, my 75 year old grandfather, who was in the military in the 70s, had a night with a women while stationed at military base in the US He only had 1 adopted child in his whole life, so this nearly gave him a heart attack, she looks just like him and is a sweet lady from all accounts, unfortunately the mother passed years back.
Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm not too keen about. If I have a half- sibling because my father was once less than chivalrous, that's not how I want to find out.
The lack of privacy protections makes this a non-starter to me as well. This isn't just a matter of consenting to hand over your own DNA. By extension, you're signing away the DNA rights of your immediate blood relatives. To me this violates the basic concept of informed consent. This stuff shouldn't even be legal absent a very strict regulatory regime.
Yeah, careful what you ask for, right? You can't unring some of these bells. The Mrs. discovered an enormous family secret and has been unwinding that for about 10 years.
My Mom did 23&Me around the time I did. She ended up connecting with a woman and helped her learn more about her father who was a cousin of my mom. It was pretty cool actually. I’m gonna be dead one day. I don’t really care who knows what about my ancestry. I didn’t do the health testing because if there’s a genetic disease monster around the corner for me, I’d rather not know.
