Get the latest genealogy news!

Join me on Thursday, Oct 24 at 7:00pm Eastern (US) to catch up on all of the latest genealogy news, including changes to AncestryDNA!

[bevleeming]

No not listed, FamilySearch full text search has been adding Canadian probate end and land records since mid-August.

[jholmansky]

Your 52 Ancestors Challenge has completely changed and enhanced the way I do genealogy. I haven't been participating as much this year because I'm struggling to find topics to fit the prompts after a few years of doing it, but I AM writing every week even if it's not something I post on my blog. I credit you with making me a better, more engaged genealogist.

[rwssinor]

Re: FamilySearch, I’ve found some incredible probate records on my Hamilton County Ohio ancestors that has shed light on several relatives I’ve not known ! Love it as much as I enjoy your channel. Thanks, Amy !!

[ajalicea]

To me genealogy has always been a journey and an adventure into the past

[KimberlyGreen]

I.T. professional here. A DDoS attack is not always conducted by "a bunch of people who have more time on their hands ...". Very often it is a small group of cyber-criminals who infect the computers of innocent people with malware. The malware lets the criminals covertly use innocent computers to conduct their attack. That's why it's important to keep your computer up-to-date with security patches, use robust antivirus software, etc.

[Judiith]

I am watching from Melbourne Australia

[BrownsFaninIowa]

We had the same Channel Island and northern Scotland islands weirdness show up both my wife's and my regions in the first update a couple weeks ago -- they've disappeared from both with later revisions.

[MrKenRury]

My DNA Regions were updated in July and on Oct 10th I wrote a post about the update and how it seemed to report my dad's side on my mom's origns. My dad's side reported 0% Scotland and my mom 20%, but my dad is the Scottish side. England portion within the month lost the Channel Islands even though my Update still says July. They seemed to have tweaked the subregions without letting us know.
Origins:
49% England & Northwestern Europe
>Channel Islands are Guernsey, Jersey
>South East & East of England

But I checked it 10/31 and my sub regions are reported differently now.
49% England & Northwestern Europe
>South East & East of England

[grayfan]

The new dna update feels less accurate than all updates before. It removed a big chunk of my Turkish heritage and replaced it with Italian. It completely got rid of all my English and German ancestry. My great grandma Violet was from England so I know this is incorrect

[SockGrlz]

Mine totally flipped the Irish and Scottish sides of my famly & makes no sense! & conflicts w/ Throughlines. The update puts the Irish on Dads side and Scottish on Moms side and polarized them, so instead before they were slightly mixed with the Irish and Scottish predominant on one side or the other. The change is diametrically opposed to the names in the Throughlines tab.

[tristanmills]

Full text searching is fantastic. I've found Kentucky court records and Norfolk UK probate and wills. It's helping with FAN research too.

I suspect they haven't announced everything added, or record groups in progress are available.

[lindaireland]

South Afrca (PITERMARITZBURG NEAR DURBAN)

[traceyholt]

My DNA - original was Scottish 40% which went down to 34%. The fact that has me scratching my head is my English DNA. My paternal grandmother is English. My maternal great-grandparents are English (convicts to Australia) and yet my English DNA has now reduced to 13%. Since one out of 4 of my grandparents is English, I thought it would be higher. I can trace her English heritage back a few generations as well. The 13% comes completely from my Dad, while my mother shows 0% English but her 2nd great grandparents were English and their descendants were born in Australia.

[geneannd]

My Irish percentage from my father disappeared and I added 4% Wales!

[JaneMiller]

Would be great if Ancestry could accept autosomal file transfers.

[conniekessinger]

I would live to be involved in the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks but cannot find information on how to get the prompts.

[joannekearney]

I am confused about the ancestral journey/community category. I have assumed that these communities would be based on your direct ancestors' movements..however... I have a community in Missouri. I have no direct ancestors who went to Missouri... however...the brother of my great great great grandfather did settle near Joplin sometime in the 1850-60s... so are these communities dealing with direct ancestors or does it go broader? If broader..I am surprised I do not have more communities.

[rayeisenstein]

Please talk about Eastern European Jewish People

[brenaevanslathan]

I’m in Southern California. My husband knows he has some Native American on his mother’s side but the results don’t show it.

[mattpotter]

A few comments I'd like to make. Finally I the term Ethnicity Estimate because I think it made it clearer that it wasn't precise (even though a lot of people seem to think it's very accurate). I also they'd make the ranges more visible. I also question your thousand of years accuracy for these estimates because we far as I'm aware they are using the DNA from people in reference groups who have all confirmed (as best they can) that all their grandparents came from a fairly small area within one of their defined regions. So the earliest these can go back to the early 1800s at best. I'm sure we do all have DNA from unknown regions, long before we can get back to with record based genealogy. I do suspect that some of our distant matches do from common ancestors a long way back.

Secondly, I wish Ancestry make more use of parents and grandparents ethnicity results when running their algorithms. I have also gained Cornwall, which I thought was from my dad's male line, some of which came from Dorset, a county not too far away. I find Cornwall a bit of a dumb region because even though I know it historically was separate from the rest of England, they have their own customs, their own language, I don't know how you can distinguish Cornish genes from say Devon, Dorset, or even Somerset ones. Anyway my dad doesn't have any Cornwall show up on his results so I don't think this is correct.

Lastly, in addition to what I said about them using the ethnicity results of relatives who have also taken tests, why don't they remove incorrect matches when a parent tests? This would be extremely helpful. I guess this only if you've had both parents tested, but I expect that once both parents have tested they shouldn't have to guess so much as to which chromosome pair came from which parent and so where they've assumed after analysis it comes from one parent and now know that's not correct it would remove any matches using that incorrect assumption, and maybe find others. I would also expect the match list to change and you either add or lose certain matches (likely distant ones) as they change and enhance their matching algorithm? That would be really useful as I still think the Ancestral Regions are just a gimmick. Oh, and when you look at these on the app they don't seem to show the ranges anywhere, which is where I suspect a lot of the more casual test takers will be viewing their results.