Well here I am, 5 DNA tests under my belt and SO much still to learn. I'll start off with all of the test results I have. Click the image for a larger view.
Here's a recap of my own results:
My sister's results:
My dad's results:
My mom's results:
My maternal grandmother's results:
Goodness, we are all over the place! I think I'm the only one who doesn't have less than 1% of something. Even Ancestry puts a disclaimer on those < 1% answers. It makes me wonder just how accurate these things are, but since it's all I've got at the moment, what can I do but take it for what it is?
This, of course, has led me into the realm of DNA-aided research. I said just this morning in a Facebook status that I did a report on Gregor Mendel back in probably elementary school. After which, I promptly "data dumped" most of what I learned. Today I've been reading up on DNA and genetic matching for genealogy purposes. God has a unique sense of humor.
I've been hearing about GEDmatch for a while, so I finally decided to check into that. I uploaded my personal DNA test earlier in the week, and finally added all my tests there today to see what kind of information and connections are available. I already noticed one "cousin" with whom I've previously made contact has shown up as a match. I'm hopeful that there will actually be more for me to find on GEDmatch than ancestry.com, especially since GEDmatch is free. In the meantime, I'm doing some reading on DNA and genetics because while GEDmatch is free, it's also a very "basic" and information-based website with not a lot of frilly graphics. So I feel like I need to have a little bit of knowledge under my belt to understand what I'm looking at.
If there's anyone out there reading this, and you are a GEDmatch veteran, or know a little something about genetics and DNA in genealogy research, I'd appreciate a comment with your best advice. In the meantime, I'm going to try to find some time to read up a little on this stuff so I can make sense of what I'm seeing. :)
