General Chat

OH is considering doing a test as Ancestry has a discounted offer this week.

She is not so interested in her ethnic origins but to match potential relatives as one of her recent ancestors was illegitimate and she has no information on the father other than family rumours.

What information would she get on potential matches? Presumably only if a potential match or their relative has also taken the test?

The answer to the last part is - obviously.
Firstly, she needs to have a sub to Ancestry or have her test administered by someone who has. Otherwise she won’t get to see her matches.

She will see how well someone matches, their trees if they have one and the matches that person shares with her.

She does have an Ancestry sub.
We'll ask the possible match if they are on and willing to get tested. They are interested in genealogy so hopefully that will make it easier.

Worth a try it can be interesting I have done mine good luck :-)

Brian - let me tell you a story. :-D

Several weeks ago someone contacted me through Ancestry as our DNA was fairly closely matched with only one match higher to hers than mine. Although she had made contact with that person, she had received no reply and I was next in line.

After looking at the names on her tree, I wrote that none matched my names. I asked for places and whether there was anyone she was particularly interested in.

It transpired that her grandmother, who was born illegitimately, had never known who her father was. Her name meant nothing to me but the place did as one great-uncle lived there for a few decades and, indeed, is buried there.

Still not anywhere near enough proof but as she had given me her phone number, I rang and asked whether the person whose DNA match was higher than mine was a certain person. She was quite surprised that I had mentioned this name but I had been in touch with him a couple of years previously because of our DNA and, so, I knew where the connection lay.

Rightly or wrongly, because of these two strong matches (one higher than mine), we came to the conclusion that this lady's great grandfather was my great-grandmother's brother (my great-uncle).

It spurred me on and I have gone some way to identifying or ruling out the person whom I think could be my own great-grandfather on the other side of my family.

I did not pay anything to open my own Ancestry site to hold my DNA results and updates. The matches still come in and when they do, I use my husband's site to search for information. Indeed, my main tree is on his site but I wanted to keep my DNA results separate, on my own site so on my site I simply entered shortened versions of my parents' names in order to begin a tree.

Your wife can do the same and she need not pay anything. When her matches come onto her site, she can do what I did - use your site to view their trees.

This year, because I found a lot of overseas connections (a lot of seafarers in my family) I paid for one month's access to overseas records (just under £20) so I could get at more records.

That was interesting JL. I thought that you couldn’t see matches if you didn’t have a sub. It seems that it was just my brother being difficult. He was always unable to answer questions so I gave up asking . so :-P to him

I was able to work out the likely grandfather of my OH it proved to be right when my BIL took a test with another site and came up with a first cousin once removed.

When I bought an Ancestry DNA test for my Granddaughter last Christmas, we arranged for me to manage her Tree / Matches so that she did not need her own subscription.

I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to think that since then they changed it so that an Ancestry Subscription is no longer necessary in order to contact your matches. It is worth checking this out :-)

You can also upload your Ancestry DNA file to other sites and get matches with their members.