Dna ancestry?

Question:

Dna ancestry?

I would like to know the places that I am from and I want to know the best Dna place out there. My great grandfathers died young and nothing much is really known about there side of the family (one comitted suicide, one fell off a telephone pole, etc). And also, do these tests trace you back to different countries or actual people? Thanks :)

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: There is FamilyTreeDNA and AncestrybyDNA. Also there is the Sorenson Molecular Genealogical Foundation (just put SMGF in your search engine). They are free but will not send you a report. The results will eventually be posted on their website.

I don't know if they are doing the ethnicity so much right now at FamilyTreeDNA. I am not sure if you can find too much of your great grandfathers.

Y DNA is passed solely from father to son.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it on to their children.

Autosomal DNA is what most of your DNA is. You get it 50-50 from both parents. Right now for genealogy they are not using it. SMGF said eventually they would. It is the only DNA that can prove paternity of a female. Dna ancestory can be very expensive. No it will not tell you about a particular line. All it does is give your %. Like 35% European, 10% Native American etc.

The only true way to find out about a family line is to do the actual research thru documents. This does take a lot of time and energy. Sometimes its very costly depending on what you are looking for.

I started my family tree over 15+ years ago. I started with a book called unpuzzling your past by Emily Croom. It walks you thru step by step and worth its weight in gold.

Some think you can just log on to a website and put in your name and there is your family. This is not true at all. If you manage to find something online its only because someone is working on it and depending on how good a researcher they are it may or may not be correct. That is why it is so important to document everything with birth, death, marriage certificates, obit and cemetery records. Family Bibles if you can find them and old pictures.

It's great that you want to trace your family but understand there is NO magic site that will pop it out to you. It takes hard work on your part and a lot of patience. Think of it as a good mystery and you need to solve it. Piece by piece, clue by clue. The end result is something you can say, I did it myself.

Good luck on your quest. Holly said it best. I just wanted to add that the tests sort of trace to countries, but more to race and tribe, for lack of a better word. Consider a Chinese family that has lived in San Francisco since 1849; their DNA would say "Chinese", not "Californian". Celts lived in France, England, Scotland and Ireland; if your DNA says "Celt", it is anyone's guess where.

If you can get a male son of a son of a son , , , to take the 37-point test, and another son of a son of a son . . . takes it too (It is the same DNA sample; they just run more tests and charge you more for it), and the two match on all 37 points, then you can be 87% sure that the two had a common ancestor 150 - 300 years ago. Then you can work through non-DNA research to identify who that common ancestor is. This helps when your research has gaps, and everyone's does. That is as close to "actual people" as they get.