DNA Testing (23 and Me, Ancestry, etc.)

[Kazmyr]

I think the problem is that you get what you pay for, and I just don't see how much you can feasibly do with DNA testing for about a hundred dollars. A real DNA test (like for crime investigations and scientific research) costs you a few thousand dollars.

In hindsight, that's probably why the FDA said fuck no to the genetic health testing. Watch that video with identical twins getting wildly different results and think about what that would mean for hundred dollar genetic health tests.

This isn't the same thing that happens in a real DNA test that you pay thousands of dollars for.

I think it's something that's just going to be a starting point for me. It's going to be more information than I had before and would be a starting point for my father's family origins. I'm not looking for much beyond that (also, didn't pay a full hundred for this ).

Your genetic history will reveal your family DNA, but not much about your family history. Here's some search tools for parish registers from Ireland and Britain:

http://registers.nli.ie/

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Latter link is a volunteer site and they're only partially through the transcription process. For non-English ancestry, you'd need those language skills in reading their parish registers, especially if they're not transcribed online. You can sometimes find and pay professional firms in Europe for that, but I'd recommend trying to contact the history department of a university in the respective country. Paying a (minimum) 2nd year history student to do the research is likely going to be cheaper.

Thanks for the links.

The DNA/Genetic history is going to be an interesting aside. For my father, he never really spoke about it much and when he did, it was always in approximations ("I think German, maybe some English? I dunno. You wanna go fishing tomorrow?") I've already started doing some preliminary work and have a few leads that I could follow beyond what's scanned in the Ancestry family tree. It'd be nice to tell my daughter about her grandfather and his family.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It'd be nice to tell my daughter about her grandfather and his family.

People underestimate the importance of this for kids right now. It can give them at least SOME kind of cultural/family base to hold onto as the world spins out of control.

[Kazmyr]

It'd be nice to tell my daughter about her grandfather and his family.

People underestimate the importance of this for kids right now. It can give them at least SOME kind of cultural/family base to hold onto as the world spins out of control.

Agreed.

Considering all the crap/nonsense going on with my in-laws, it would be nice to have something point to give her a good sense of family.