I did mine a number of years ago. Nothing surprising. I'm 95% from Greece, with the remaining 5% in eastern Europe and Turkey. My grandparents came to the USA at the tail end of the great immigration wave during the late 1890s/early 1900s.
My brother has created a family tree of the family that goes back to about the time of that period. There is not allot of record keeping prior to that time, especially for women. My mom came from a big family - she was born at home and never had a birth certificate. She did have a baptismal record at the church.

Yahtzee!

It is both cool, and terrifying.

On the cool side, my cousin, found a FULL BLOOD sister - meaning I gained a new cousin after she did the test.

On the not cool side, all you offspring and relatives are now in a big database.

NEVER EVER EVER trust any co that collects your DNA and "promises" to keep it encoded, secret. whatever. IT eventuualluuy lands in a govtt database and eventually will end up in the public domain. you can bet on it,. The DNA signal for concordance amongst "relatives" in Idaho , Washington in. the Idaho murder cases was less. than 2%..

I imagine that, since my family immigrated from China in the 1950s, ancestry.com isn’t going to tell me much.

There is probably some distant cousin out there that is relieved that you aren't connected to them as well.

You've got it all wrong! The info is as secure as the list of people in CA who are concealed carry permit holders!

is that a joke... porsha911? I hope so .... ��

It's a joke...that list isn't secure...

My mom got my sister and me one of these 23AndMe kits five or so years ago for Christmas. I’ve never sent it in, though I’m not sure why. Probably because I don’t want to be in another database. My family is American into the 19th century on my mom’s side; Colombian on my dad’s side into at least the early 19th century (though one of my dad’s grandmothers was from Curaçao). I’m from Venezuela and am also American. My family name is of Catalan origin but one for which the significant majority of people in the world who have it are in Colombia. That’s all I really need to know, so I suppose I’ve never found a genetic test that interesting. I find fixations on ancestry peculiarly American (“I’m 1/8 Swedish because my ancestors hundreds of years ago came from Sweden”, that kind of thing). It’s tiresome enough to deal with other people who insist on their own ideas of what I “really” am so the whole thing is just a big eye-roll for me.

I submitted my DNA to Ancestry.com about 10 years ago and have been working on my family tree for about 30 years. It is a very complicated tree and there are a lot of surprises! If you do this, you have to take the "good" with the "bad" because you will learn insight to many family secrets that were hidden.

Fun times!

A niece got one as an X mas present from her step mother. A few weeks later, the results came back with devastating results. Seems the man she had known as her father for her entire existence was not her bio dad but, rather, a 1 niter that my SIL had when she was dating her "father". It turned her 38 year life upside down. She is a strong person and is handling it well, has met some of her bio dad's family and wants nothing else.
It has not helped her already difficult relationship with her mother and may just be the final nail.

Like most Americans I would love to know just what the FBI and the Government know about me right now. I know as a baby, my footprints were taken. My dad had Top Secret clearances and the FBI did a full background check on him and even talked to childhood friends of his.

I am sure I am mentioned in his file. To get my Real ID driver's license I had to give them my left index finger print. In the past I have had my thumbprint used for a driver's license. I don't remember ever being fingerprinted with all fingers. I have never been arrested, never had handcuffs on. I have never committed any crimes more than traffic things but I have not had a ticket of any sort since the 1970s.

On the last week as a military dependent I went to the base hospital and requested my medical records, and I have those, and I doubt there were ever any copies made.

I donated blood for many years and gave over 6 gallons total so they have my blood tests, but I don't think the blood institute or the Red Cross did DNA tests, just blood types and antigen tests.

I would love to have the FBI show me what they have on me. It likely would be scary.

I'm more like your dad than like you. I have a TS clearance (have for a long time), AND I know for a fact the government has my DNA on file (gave that to them back in the 90s).

I also know that I have been the "victim" of at least 3 breaches from various government databases, so the nefarious actors who committed those breaches (and whomever they sold the info to) also know everything about me and my family. :eek:

I have no secrets, and really don't care...but I've always been retiscent about doing these ancestry test because I know what the Mormons use the DNA database for :D However, I did just tell my wife that I want to do this. There's some ambiguity about my ancestry, and I kinda wanna know more...and want my kids to be able to know...at least on my side of the family.

Reading the thick book a great aunt had published (mebbe before I was born) was intriguing ... family history, pics, stuff I had no idea about.... all researched through family Bibles, church documents (from Ger), the name change, etc. One ancestor was a prominent land owner (a land grant from before the Revolutionary War) and Inn Keeper .... no one knew this .... no trace of wealth in the family forever.... England lost ;) .... and I reckon he did too :D. My grandfather went to CA as a teen (late 1800s) .... got homesick and moved back here to the family farm... not rich folks.

My dad's side .... a former co-worker's wife did the same lineage research (including DNA) prolly 30 -40 years ago .... well researched and documented.

My niece had her two mutt dawg's DNA work done .... 5 breed mixes in each ...

Me.... I know my family's history .... I don't need to know if I'm 10% Pitt Bull or Poodle....

We're all mutts anyways :D

Woof!

I did it and according to 23andme I had a few surprises.

I thought I was 100% Italian heritage. I was surprised to find out that I was 12.6% Greek, 1.5% Cypriot, .06% Coptic Egyptian as well as 1.4% North African and western Asian.

Seems someone travelled a piece on their way to Italy.

I am lucky and have a lot of family history. This a partial clip of a hand written autobiography my great aunt wrote. So when she mentions her grandfather, that would be my great great grandfather. Now some of this is politically incorrect, but remember it was written by hand 100 years ago by a schoolgirl as an assignment by a girl born in the very late 1800s.

------------------
The Indians were all over the country at the time and did not only steal their horses and cattle, but would often kill people, when they could catch them off by themselves. For this reason the white people built their houses close together and surrounded with high fences made of split logs. Grandfather said, he had seen Indians, peeping through the cracks of these logs, many times.
My grandfather lived in Walker county for 18 years. When he was a young man of 21 years, he with his parents moved to McLennan County Texas. Here he met Jan Bennett, who turned out to be my grandmother. They were married June 7, 1857. Ten children were born to this union; Burnetta, Sterling, John A. Martha Alice, Eve D. Minnie Francis, Luella, William Rush Addie C and Hugh Patrick.
Grandfather fought in the war between the States and was badly wounded in the left shoulder and arm at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. There he was picked up from the battlefield by a woman and carried to her home with three other wounded soldiers. She fed and cared for then until all were able to go to their homes. (She was a Northern woman). Grandfather finally made his way home. His left arm was useless for many years. By the time he got home the South was losing heavily and grandfather had to go back to the Services. They put him to guarding the Penitentiary at Huntsville, Texas and there he stayed until the close of the war. He was preparing to come home when he received a letter instruction him to bring some horses that this brother-in-law had loaned to a man in the vicinity. When he went after the horses the man was not a home, but grandfather got the horses anyway and started on his way. This angered the man he had Grandfather arrested and thrown in the guard house. This was a man grandfather had taken into his own home and had fed and clothed for several years. Grandfather was kept in the guard house for 5 or 6 months. Finally, one night, he managed to dig his was out with the help of the other two men. He then managed to find a friend, who put him on a horse. This friend also sent a negro with him to help him on his way as his shoulder was still causing him great pain. He arrived home in the fall of 1865 ragged, dirty and full of cooties.

I had mine done, but I paid extra for the 23andme 'previous lives' version. Of course I was powerful royalty in almost every instance, (exception is a food taster for Peter Stuyvesant, Former Director of New Netherland,) but the one that really caught my eye was that at one time my mother was the sister of Cleopatra, (this made me a prince, by blood) and my father raised Asps, and apparently trained a few for the queen.

I'm not sure how that eventually worked out. I'll have to look into it.

Hell, there's been people under my own roof that wish they weren't. Especially when we go out in public...