Maybe we are related! I have lots of ancestors from Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Also many from Germany and Poland, that come from my fathers side. I was surprised to find Scandinavia listed as well. My family were among the Pennsylvania Settlers?

My first cousin also had her dna done and some unknown person popped up on both of our trees as a first cousin. We had never heard of him and we certainly know all of our shared cousins. I have a feeling there was a secret cousin out there! Too many family secrets are exposed on Ancestry.

There sure could be secrets. My best friend's 83 year old Mom had her test done and found she had a half sister. You never know what could happen especially during the war. My Mom thought my Dad might have had a girlfriend somewhere over in England when he was in the navy. Doing my family tree I recently found out one of my friends and her siblings who I had gone all through school with are related to me through my Grandfather's mother's line. We were so surprised. When you compare a picture of her to one of my nieces you can see a family resemblance. I never knew anything of my ancestors being Welsh or even Irish before I started doing genealogy. I just thought my ancestors were from Scotland and England. Some of my Irish surnames are Bell, McClelland, Hamilton, Chase, Woodburn, McLaughlin and Scottish surnames are McClelland, Berry, Hill, Paul, Wilson, McGregor and the rest are English.

No, I haven't, but I need to. My sister had a baby out of wedlock and I have always wanted to find her. I should have done this years ago. She is 3 yrs younger than me....so getting up in age. I didn't want to search until after my sister passed because it was supposed to be a family secret. She didn't want anyone, not even our dad, to know.

I was looking at my dna results just now and noticed that my mystery cousin is 50 percent Vietnamese! I would love to know the story. I do know that one of my uncles married a woman from Taiwan and they had two sons. Thats all I can figure. He was in the Navy , so maybe he had a girl in every port??

I expected to have some half siblings but either they have not taken the tests, Ancestry and 23, or they do not exist. I do find that in the Ancestry ThruLines some names that I was not familiar with but mostly in the 4th generation. I had seen where the ThruLines were updated to go back to the 8th generation but have not been able to update that portion.

Not certain if it is just mine but I clicked on Ancestry and it had a DNA update. It now shows 47% Scottish and 39% England and Northwest Europe 5% Germanic Europe. The last is interesting because my father's family were from Germany such as it was or at least has a German last name Harsel.

I haven't done mine, but have plenty of relatives who did. I've helped a couple of adoptees find their roots. There have been a couple of surprises, but mainly it has confirmed what I know.

The people of Scotland and Ireland traded people back and forth going from one to the other and back again and they all had contact with roving Scandinavians so of course you are going to get all those connections.

I did mine expecting to find the much touted Native American ancestry but did not. I did find 1.2% subsaharan African plus some French which confirmed some Creole ancestry. From Jamaica as it happens. I am also Scots and Irish and more English than expected plus some German. Common mix.

"Not certain if it is just mine but I clicked on Ancestry and it had a DNA update."

I've been notified several times of my Ancestry.com DNA results being updated. They update regularly, as they get more DNA results from new tests that have been taken by people and their information gets added to the master database.

I had suspected that the Harsel connection were a family that was trying to pass, were light skinned blacks, but neither of the tests showed any African ancestry. Unlike the other lines I have been unable to trace beyond when they appeared near Louisville, KY about 1814. They were apparently well to do for the times.

I'd be more inclined to do one of these tests if I felt the results would be private to only the related individuals. They have been a boon to adoptees and others born of 'donated' ova and sperm. I put the resultant individual *first* when considering 'family secrets' (which are rarely secrets anyway). My DH and DS were adopted as infants; they had no say in it then.

I'm Scots, Irish, English, Welsh, and whatever tribe was living in a contested area along the edges of what is now France and Switzerland at a given time.

I had no idea of any Irish roots because my maternal grandmother hid hers beneath her Scottish ones. (She had avoided being labeled 'Dirty Irish' as an immigrant in 19th Century NYC.) She's my only 'recent' immigrant; many of the others were pre-Revolutionary War, with the French escaping conscription only to see their sons serve in the Union Army.

I was ready to read that your sister was your mother lol. Yes, have had my DNA done with 23 & Me and so have my kids and one brother, who I talked into getting it done. We are extreme mutts, all of us.

Not too many surprises for me, 49.2% Japanese, .1% Korean/Broadly Japanese, 29.4% British/Irish, 5.6% Broadly Northwestern European, 3.5% Scandinavian, 11% French/German and 0.3% Nigerian. A little surprised by the French/German and Scandinavian parts. My dad's family came from Ireland and probably before that Scotland. I was surprised that my Japanese DNA came from Okinawa Prefecture.

I always wondered if my kids had Portuguese or Spanish in them and turns out they do. My daughter also has a tiny fragment of Chinese/Southeast Asian, Western Asian and North African DNA, whereas none of the rest of us do, me, my one brother, or my son.

Did you get your test done from Ancestry.com?

I went back to check how many relatives I have on 23 & me, 1500! The closest is a couple of 2nd cousins, once removed.

Yes I did my test with Ancestry which is why I want to try the other test. I have over 20,000 DNA matches with 491 close matches - First-4th cousins

Cherryfizz, I just spent the last hour on Ancestry.com. lol. Found about 50 hints with lots of pictures of my great grandfather and his family. I hadn't been on there in a few years. I added a photo of my great uncle's grave to the site, only to find out later that it was already uploaded and one of the hints waiting for me. I had the gravestone made and placed on his grave after finding his burial plot after my dad asked me to find it years ago. He sadly died when he was only 27 of TB.

It was exciting to see the pictures of my great grandfather and all his many brothers. There are also many pictures of my grandfather's second wife in the hints. I found a possible transatlantic passage to Ellis Island from Liverpool for my great grandfather but no telling if that is him or not. I thought he came from Ireland and there are quite a few with his name and date of birth.

I also ordered another DNA test from Ancestry, just to see what differences there are and if there are any relatives on that site. Thanks for posting this, nice diversion from all the horrible things going on in the world right now.

I would love to be able to find more ancestor pictures!

Yes, I had my DNA tested through 23andMe some years ago. All European, the only real surprise being 3% Italian. My test was done right after 23andMe was told to stop providing medical information, so I had my results run through Promethease for $5, and they gave me all the medical details. I learned a couple of things that were enormously helpful to me, and other things that could be potentially useful to me depending on the circumstances. I think it won't be long before DNA testing is a routine part of medical care.

When I looked at 23andMe earlier today they had posted that they would like people who had recovered from the virus to test.

Not certain when they were told to stop providing medical information because they keep updating mine.

Maifleur, they update mine too, but it's nothing like the detailed, comprehensive report I received from Promethease.

The government stopped the DNA sites several years ago from providing medical information because they thought it might be inaccurate and when people got the information it might cause problems if it was some sort of bad news. So there was a court case and 23andme won their suit and were allowed to give out the information is you choose to get it. It is astonishingly cheap. I had the BRCA genetic tests at my doctor's and it was very expensive (hundreds)but I got the same results from 23andme as a part of the original $99.

I have a cousin that much to our surprise fathered 3 children out of wedlock and they found each other. Had a reunion last summer with out the father. The dad is highly educated and acts it. haha

Kathsgrdn -- Your Irish relation probably sailed to the US from Liverpool. My grandmother, who denied Irish roots, was born in Ireland of an Irish mother and Scottish father. She sailed to NYC from Glasgow -- after boarding in Ireland with her older sister and brother and their widowed (?) mother.

I tested at my daughter's urging a couple of years ago. No surprises in it for me! But, I was able to confirm that my grandfather was indeed the son of his father - something a newly discovered first cousin to my dad had denied (old granddad apparently was quite a scoundrel whom his family, including Grandma, didn't want to own,)

I keep hoping to get matched with someone related to my other great-grandfather; I have reached a brick wall with him, haven't found his immigration, his citizenship (according to 1910 census he was naturalized), his death, or any evidence of family other than his parent's names on his marriage certificate.

Someone did just recently contact me (from another country!!) who thinks he is descended from my great-great-grandmother's brother. He had only spotty documentation, so I haven't yet added his line to my tree, but it seems likely. I have asked him to do his DNA to see it that confirms the connection.

I've read many times that results of less than 4% shouldn't be relied upon as accurate, and less than 2% is just "noise" and meaningless.

My results from 23&me said that I am 99% northern/northwestern European and 1% broadly European. No traces of eastern European or Mediterranean were found, even though my Swiss German great-great-grandmother had an Italian maiden name, and so I assumed she was Italian-Swiss, even though she spoke German and lived in Germany. Relatives of hers still live in Switzerland, however. She was from a very wealthy family, and they kept track of their ancestors and relatives. She married my GGGF in Germany after he inherited a large amount of land in what was then Prussia (later East Germany). Because my GGGF had a sister, she inherited all of the farm equipment and machinery, and so my GGGF rented the land and was part of the idle rich. This was not good enough for my GGGM's family, who insisted that my GGGF work, and so he decided to emigrate from Prussia. His first choice was South Africa, and then he decided on Texas instead because of lot of Germans were moving there at that time, around 1840, when Texas was a republic. I have copies of letters describing the sales of the land in Prussia after he was already in Galveston. Fortunately, I can read German handwriting, but the penmanship is not that good, and so it is a bit difficult and knowing the context is important.

The surprising info from 23&me was that I am about 40% British and most of that is from ancestors who lived in London. I have no family information about any of my ancestors being English, and so this was news to me. The rest of my ancestry is German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and French. I believe my French ancestors came from northern France, probably Normandy, and look Celtic. My fraternal grandmother's maiden name is French, but that doesn't mean any more than my GGGM's maiden name being Italian.

It's a bit boring to be 99% northern European. It also means that I have to be very careful to avoid excessive exposure to the sun.

That's interesting Lars. I love reading family histories and how and why they left their homeland and where they ended up and why. I am very fair haired and fair skinned and can't spend much time in the sun because I burn easily. My Dad had dark hair but fair skin Mom and my siblings except one of my brothers have dark skin and dark hair. haha my Mom used to call me a "throw back" because I probably took after my ancestors

I did the Ancestry DNA thing because I was curious about my father's family. There wasn't much information available; I am the youngest of my generation. As it turns out, I am not very ethnically diverse; all from Ireland and/or Scotland. Yes, the house has mirrors in it, so I had some idea. I do have a mystery 2nd cousin; we have no idea what the connection is.

I did a Y-DNA 37 markers test at FamilyTreeDNA. There were no big surprises. I had researched my line back to colonial Virginia and found my first ancestor had come to Prince William County, VA in about 1724. He had come from Wales. He was granted a large tract of land (over 500 acres). It was surveyed by a young George Washington. By 1737, he was selling out and removing to the south west part of Virginia to what is now Pittsylvania county where he established a 420 acre plantation. Much later, his first parcel of land back in Prince William Co. became part of the Quantico Marine Corps Base.

My parents had said we were Scotch-Irish, but they did not know much about their ancestors except for their grandparents. My genealogy search did find one Scot by the name Hugh McCoy who married an English lady named Jemima Franklin. The ancestor of these Franklin(s) had come from Acton, England. I had not unearthed my Irish. I suspected that my mother's line, Marlow, was rich with Irish, but had met a brick wall in that line after the 2 generations back. I did find that my mother's grandmother was from a Ratliff family who had come from Kentucky to Missouri shortly before the US Civil War. I had not documented a single Irish person, although, there could have been some because the ethnicity of most of my family tree is unknown.

I took the DNA test in hopes of finding an Irish match. I struck out. I got only a couple of matches. That was disappointing but not a surprise since my surname is relatively rare. Before public phone searches were tamped down, a white page search found 250 names in the US, 25 of which had the spelling of my name and 200 were an alternate spelling. (Both spellings has been documented in an early family in Illinois.)

My DNA test showed 100% European ancestors: Great Britain, 74%; Ireland, 23%; and East Slavic, 3%.

Here's the problem: I took the Y-DNA 27 marker test. The Y-DNA is passed from father to son and changes only randomly. Its a good marker for diving back 5 generations. However, it traces only the male line. There could be plenty of Irish hiding in my female line which constitutes 50% of my ethnicity. Also, maybe not many people in my line has taken a DNA test with this particular Company.

I need to take another test, mtDNA. The mtDNA is passed by a mother to all her children. However, this won't guarantee a large number of new matches since it depends on how many persons in my line who have taken the mtDNA test.