AncestryDNA

My results for the most part from Ancestrydna did not surprise me. I was 60% English which is not shocking as most of my aunts, uncles and grandparents still live in England. What surprised me is that I have nothing from France. We live in New Orleans and my mother and her mother were born in France as well so I was expecting some French unless my Grandmothers parents had both immigrated from somewhere else. My mother when she was alive never mentioned that and unfortunately I never asked.

So either the DNA test got it wrong or I am not part French. Weird!

I bought an Ancestry DNA kit a few months ago and the results I got  provided closure for some questions I had. Not what I wanted to be but happy I found out. The whole collection process was easy enough and it comes with a box to mail back your samples. The results took 5 weeks.

I also gave this as a gift for Christmas to my mother-in-law. It was a perfect gift for her and she was very excited to receive it.

As I am 5th generation in Australia to carry the Prussian surname, I discovered that only a small percentage of me was East European. I was ecstatic to find that I am over 50% British (mainly because I could easily research UK and because of this I found that I have 2 Convicts in the family tree plus a free person arriving on the 2nd fleet when Sydney Australia was 1 Year old. (definitely an Aussie! :))

Just recently, i received an email from Ancestry with an update of my DNA and now know that the Eastern European side has been broken down again with someone coming from Lithuania.  I have now confirmed this with my research of an ancestor's christening record.   

Also, I completed the surveys that were emailed to me which as I understand, were looking for the next step; genetic makeup in regards to personality traits and physical attributes EG: short fat toes... etc.  After sighting photos of a family member from 1840's I've learnt that I have his eyelids and he looks remarkably like my brother and my son.

My biggest take knowing this information is, I now know my roots and where I am from.

 I am absolutely loving the journey of discovery so happy to help with any further research.

I did not really find ancestrydan was worth the money. I guess some could if you have no idea what your background is. I found the reports very vague. I already knew I had some Russian and was about half Irish.

 My results where:

48% Ireland/Scottland/Wales
24% Europ West
21% Europe East

and then a few low confidence results.

See it is not very informative at all and noy my genetic DNA is in the Ancestry database. I didn't think they would keep my genetic information after the testing. Not worth it.

I mailed my sample in November of 2017 along with my wife's and got both results 4 weeks later in December.

No insights from my results... very under-whelming. The results showed I was from Europe, either Great Britain or West Europe. [sarcasm]Wow huge surprise.[/sarcasm] I am a caucasian male from the United States so that is basically a given. I really wanted to see specifics in terms of ethnicity and not just a land mass.

With my wife's results as she is Asian and her parents where born in Japan. Her results showed she is from Polynesia and East Asia. This can mean China, Russia, Korea, Taiwan, and a a number of other countries. So nothing really learned her that I could not have told them by just looking at her.

The only really good thing I found is that Ancestry DNA  allows the download of your raw DNA file. This means you can upload it to other services that support it. Hopefully i can find one that makes me feel it was worth spending money on these tests. Reading on this site I see that MyHeritate DNA allows you to upload your Raw DNA data for free it looks like. Maybe I will try them out.