Originally posted by lesmore49 My wife and I have chosen not to check out our DNA through any of the various organizations that offer to analyze your DNA.
Instead, we checked out our background via Ancestry.ca. We prefer exploring through careful examination of documents, birth certificates, marriage / death records, church records and property documents, etc.
I like a paper trail...focusing on chains of document evidence, etc. Now this does take a fair amount of time and can lead up a lot of different trails. I enjoy this kind of detailed work and the academic pursuit aspect of this type of search... always have. I find it enjoyable, and having a degree in history, that doesn't surprise me.
In both our cases , we are pretty well of British ancestry and our ancestors appeared to either remain in the British Isles, or immigrated to either the USA or Canada. British, American and Canadian record keeping has been pretty good and by using these kind of records , we have found it has not been too difficult to trace ancestors.
We have been quite surprised and pleased with the wealth of information, germane to our individual family trees that we have been able to discover, concentrating on the aforementioned records we were able to access through the voluminous files/records of Ancestry.ca.
In my case , we have been able to trace ancestry back to the 13th century and as we continue through this process of exploration it looks likely that we will be able to go further back in time.
I'm not dismissing DNA consumer tests, I just prefer to follow the other road, delving through historical records to trace ancestry. It has been a fascinating journey to unravel one's own mystery....our greatest mystery...my wife's ancestry and my ancestry.
I've been doing our family tree for about 38 years now, first the old fashioned way, sitting in various archive buildings and poring over microfiche and old books, later, various online platforms including wikitree, myheritage, ancestry and the LDS platform. The DNA tests have shown no surprises in my linage as yet. On the Dutch side, I can trace back to the 1500's, but unfortunately, as the Allieds bombed the churches in Germany, many of the registers were lost so on the German side I only trace back to the 1700's. It's hoped we can find some links with the DNA which is proving impossible with records, as those records are irretrievably lost.