Should I take advantage of the Mother's Day deals on DNA testing?

Question

First of all, I know very little about DNA testing,  I am female.  Most of my well-researched direct ancestors in the U.S. are male until more recent generations.  What DNA test would I need to take to tell me the most info?  Or should I both mitochondrial and autosomal, not that I what either one is.  Is there one company that does a better job than others?

Answer 1

I have not had mine done due, primarily, to finances but have ordered an autosomal FTDNA for my 76 yr old mother.  I'm using FTDNA because I can (even after my mother passes away) pay the extra amount to have the sample they already have to have mitochondrial testing done on it.

Autosomal will reach about 5-6 generations whereas mitochondrial will go further but be limited to the maternal line.  My maternal grandmother is from Ireland and with limited records it will be the best way to possibly connect to other who may have more info.

Many people will say use Ancestry because of their database size but I am a supporter of everyone uploading results to GEDmatch and then every type of test company can be compared.  Wiki Tree is obviously a great companion to that.  Ancestry don't do Mitochondrial either.  FTDNA is also only a mouth swab!

And be prepared that there may be no great insights, no skeletons etc.  A cousin did hers and had no new information from it, her tree was exactly what the test confirmed.  She obviously has a good tree then!

Answer 2

I did the Ancestry.com one last year.  The initial result was surprising.  Not geographically, but the percentages.  I had always thought I was more German than Scandinavian, but it said I was more Scandinavian.  Then they updated my information and it's pretty much spot on what I thought I am.  The more people who take the tests, the more accurate it is.

As a member of Ancestry, they have a beta program called Thru-Lines.  It matches your DNA with the names in your tree.  Instead of just a long list of your DNA cousins and not knowing exactly how they fit into your tree, you can use Thru-Lines to find out which branch that person is in.  I've found that the most helpful.  On my husband's side, his paternal grandfather Harvey was a mystery.  We had always thought he was born in Pennsylvania, but then we found a possible match born in North Carolina.  With Thru-Lines, I was able to confirm that it really was him in North Carolina by having a DNA match with a descendant of Harvey's sister Daisy.  So that was a huge break-through since we finally had Harvey's parents' names.

My mom gave me the 23 and Me test at Xmas.  I finally did it and sent it in on Friday.  I added the medical info since she just gave the ancestry test.  I'm eager to learn if it's very different from the Ancestry test and what the medical info says.  Hoping it won't take too long.