fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1959 ]

[ SECRET POST #1959 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1959 ⌋

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Okayyy...question. As I know the F!S crowd is fairly mixed. Has anyone ever done the genetic testing thing to know what your heritage/ethnicity is? I have like family stories, but I'm basically not sure where my family originally comes from and I'd really like to know. But, how precise are those things? Are they reliable? Anyone with experience?

Johnny Depp, is that you?

I had to Google the Johnny Depp thing. And while I'm probably many things, I'm pretty much 100 percent sure that Native American isn't one of them...

No experience as of yet, but I'm of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and will have to get the blood panel to test for extremely scary genetic diseases soon, if I can find a private testing company (damn insurance doesn't consider "Being of Ashkenazi Jewish descent" a good enough reason to test for the Tay-Sachs gene.)

I do know the blood panel for these genes is supposed to be very accurate. But of course that's not exactly what you're talking about. Sorry I can't be of help.

Original poster here.

I know of the blood disease. Friend of mine recently got tested. I wish you all the best with your test!

Thanks!

Oh yeah, exciting genes we are blessed with. :\ Wish you all the best. I have torsion and cervical dystonia, another fun Ashkenazi disorder.

I'm so sorry to hear that. It's amazing the sheer amount of awful crap that can be hidden our genes.

And thank you! I wish you all the best as well!

That really sucks, I hope you haven't got it! All the best :(

But done properly, those tests are pretty accurate. Not sure how private companies work, but check around that they're legit and hold high standards in their labs.

Thanks for the advice! :)

My grandparents got the National Geographic genetic test. Turns out that in distant past, my grandfather had a Japanese ancestor. And by distant, I mean in the last 300ish years. That was a bit of a surprise. Other than that, though, I think it just gave us a general "mostly Western European" label.

If you don't know, I think it's a pretty good (and fun!) idea. The test wasn't that expensive--under 200 dollars, I think?

Edited 2012-05-14 23:59 (UTC)

If you're talking about that DNA thing that National Geographic is doing, it doesn't really tell you what your ethnicity is, it just traces your DNA back to your oldest ancestor, which can be a lot different than your recent ethnic heritage (recent being like, within the last thousand years)

I've always heard that if you want to find out anything about your ancestry that the Mormons have a lot of genealogical information on EVERYONE (in fact I've heard from Jewish people that they're basically your best bet for researching maternal ancestry)

Even non-US citizens?

Oh, you meant the Mormon thing. I'm not sure but I think so. LDS is a global religion you know, they have missionaries all over the world

Edited 2012-05-15 00:37 (UTC)

The Mormons have indeed scanned a heck of a lot of church records from all over the place. Part of the religion is connecting your ancestors to yourself and sealing them to you so they and you can both be in heaven together (or something along those very broad lines). So genealogy is a Really Big Deal.

Most of the records they have tend to be from European church records, and some South American records, though they also had lots of Jewish records.... except that many of those have been removed due to controversy over baptizing people of non-Morman religion who are not direct ancestors of members of the Mormon faith. Ditto some Catholic church records.

Other areas are less well represented. And there's a big difference between scans of original documents (the bestest sources), transcriptions of original documents (good, but not perfect), and the "Ancestry File" and "Family Group Sheets" which I think are both member-submitted but I can't remember and I can't find the definitions anywhere right now. :P So you do need to be careful in looking at the records, just as you'd need to be careful assuming that someone in the 1920 census has to be your ancestor just based on the name and location.

You can look in the indexes online, though, and you can often request microfilms be sent to a local Family History Center. Some public libraries are also able to request these images via inter-library loan. My parents did a lot of this-- my husband searched https://familysearch.org/ to find good leads, then my parents would request the films by calling a Family History Center near them (yay retirement!) and drive up there once they were notified that the films had arrived. They saved copies of the images, and we later were able to check whether the images did have the info we needed and whether it turned out to be the ancestor we needed.

I just started working with the State of Texas (weird I know) today and their state archives are like, literally a few blocks from where I work now. Since my mom, maternal grandmother and great-grandmother were both born in Texas I thought I might find something that way -- do you have any tips for using state archive resources for genealogical research? I haven't the slightest idea how to go about doing that except I do know that tracing your matrilineal line is really difficult because of marriages and so forth. I've been in archives several times to do research in college but never anything like that before

(no subject)

kateshort.livejournal.com - 2012-05-15 05:37 (UTC) - Expand

Also this is kind of non-sequitur but I find it pretty strange that when I googled my great-grandmother's name I found her grave (along with birth and death dates) listed on http://www.findagrave.com/ by some completely random stranger who just likes to list birth and death dates from cemeteries ... and that was the only way I found out where she was even buried, since my mother didn't even ask me if I wanted to come to the interment and wouldn't tell me where exactly she was buried

ETA: AND her maiden name is different depending on which site I check which is confusing like it's one thing on the grave site I linked to, and that familysearch.org has it listed as a separate name. The names are similar though, so ... it's just so confusing

Edited 2012-05-15 02:18 (UTC)

(no subject)

kateshort.livejournal.com - 2012-05-15 05:46 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

searabbits.livejournal.com - 2012-05-15 12:21 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2012-05-15 20:21 (UTC) - Expand

ancestry.com is run by mormons. Those folks are creepy stalker levels of knowledge, but I gotta admit it comes in handy now and then.

You have to pay to use that site though :/

(no subject)

pimpmytardis.livejournal.com - 2012-05-15 03:01 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

kateshort.livejournal.com - 2012-05-15 05:37 (UTC) - Expand

Never done it myself but I do know someone who had one done several years ago (not sure what company she used though, sorry), and it not only confirmed a lot of the family history she did know, it showed a Spanish ancestor about 500 years back that the family had NO idea had been in there.

Hope that helps? :-)

Depends on the type of test you get done. Generally, men can get the Y-chromosome test to trace their male lineage way back, and men and women can both get the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test to trace their female lineage way back. What the exact test is depends on which company you have do it.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/techniques/ lists four different techniques that can be done, depending on your gender:

"One, Maternal Ancestry, traces your maternal lineage back through time from you to your mother, her mother, and all the way to the mother of all humans. Paternal Ancestry does the same for your paternal* lineage, tracing from you back to the father of all fathers. A third, Ancestry Painting, tells you where in the world each stretch along each of your 22 autosomal pairs is likely to have come from. The last, Global Similarity, assesses your relatedness to 10 regions that include more than 50 populations worldwide, as measured by the similarity of your DNA to people from those groups.

[snip]

* Paternal lineage information can only be obtained from male DNA. A female can learn about her paternal lineage from a male relative who shares that lineage and has been genotyped."

http://africanancestry.com/matriclan.html talks about one of two tests: "The MatriClan Test traces maternal ancestry by analyzing the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) women and men inherit exclusively from their mothers. We use the Hypervariable Segment 1 (HVS1)."

http://africanancestry.com/patriclan.html talks about the male test: "The PatriClan Test traces paternal ancestry by analyzing the Y-chromosome men inherit exclusively from their fathers. We use nine markers including the YAP.

Since only men carry a Y-chromosome, women CANNOT take the PatriClan Test. But luckily, women may trace their paternal lineage by having a male relative with their father’s last name take the test for them.

We find African ancestry for approximately 65% of the paternal lineages we test. The remaining 35% of the lineages we test typically indicate European ancestry. If our tests indicate that you are not of African descent, we will identify your continent of origin."

Both of the above sites have been featured on the PBS series "Finding Your Roots" which is really cool for discovering celebs' genealogical history.

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html allows you to choose either of the two tests if you're a man, and the maternal test if you're a woman: "*Kits that are marked "maternal lineage" receive the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test to reveal direct maternal ancestry. We test the Hypervariable Region 1 (HVR1: 16001 to 16569) and compares your results to the Cambridge Reference Sequence.

*Kits marked "paternal" receive the Y-chromosome test to reveal direct paternal ancestry. (Males only.) This is a 12-marker test. Additional testing such as a SNP test may be run on a Y-chromosome sample if analysis of the 12 STR values does not conclusively indicate a Haplogroup assignment."

Finally, http://dna.ancestry.com/ purports to have an updated test that looks at more than just the maternal or paternal lines: "Our new AncestryDNA test uses some of the latest DNA autosomal testing technology as a more comprehensive way to find family across all lines in your family tree. So one test covers both sides—maternal and paternal—and is equally effective for both men and women."

I haven't gotten any of these tests, but I think I'd like to at some point.

Do those mitochondrial tests really tell you all that much about your more recent relatives though? I thought the general consensus was that they didn't give you much specific information about your great-grandmother's mother's mother for example, other than maybe what general part of the world they're from

IDK I had a friend who did this recently and I asked her about it because I have been wondering about my maternal lineage for like, my whole life and it's difficult to find anything (I keep hitting a dead end at my great-grandmother's mother, I don't even know her maiden name) but she told me it wouldn't help at all for that.

I mean if all it comes back with is something like "European ancestry" I'd just be like DUH, I mean that is not helpful at all

The mitochondrial and Y-dna tests won't do recent generations, but the autosomal test possibly can.

The Ancestry DNA test is an autosomal test that purports to show you matches to your dna; close matches can reveal people who are 3rd / 4th / 5th cousins, giving you someone who fits into your tree somehow and who may have done research on the same line of people. Of course, they only show you links to ancestry.com people who have taken the test.

The 23 and me Relative Finder https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/relfinder/ uses the autosomal dna and apparently allows people to connect to others with dna matches on their site.

But in either case, if you find a match, there's a *chance* they could be related to the side you're having the most trouble with. On the flip side, they could be related to you on a side you have researched thoroughly, giving you no new info.

My family did one this winter, actually - we had my brother do it, to test out the idea of "Is the man my grandpa called grandpa REALLY my ancestor or were the gossips right?" that's been floating around family lore for the last few generations. Turns out great-great-grandma had a few secrets she didn't tell us... :P

Far as I could tell, they're pretty accurate. But then, we already knew roughly where it was gonna end up, so.

My fiance's father was never in the picture- as in his uncle saw his father once in passing nearly twenty years ago and my fiance's mother died in a car crash when he was three years old without ever telling anyone his dad's name- so just to be safe there will be a whole barrage of tests done (in case there's anything we need to look out/prepare for) before we have kids.

~~...The likelihood of us having twins naturally I'm already aware of. (At least I'll never be 'surprised' by that, I suppose.)~~

Other than this, I support researching your heritage anon- my future sister-in-law has been studying this as part of her anthropology degree, and it's really amazing what they've been able to do.

Related, Genghis Khan (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/12/descendant-of-genghis-khan-sequenced/) really got around (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html) and they have the research to prove it (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/).

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