Using DNA Testing with Ancestry.com and Other Genealogy Databases
Editor’s Note: I asked Joe to confirm that, to be in a position to receive inquiries from DNA matches, he had to choose to make his test results generally available rather than keep them private. Joe agrees, and explains that there are about three main labs, of which he has tested with two. He began with Y chromosome and autosomal testing at Family Tree DNA, then also tested with Ancestry, whose long-standing archive of records gave it a broad following of researchers and thus one of the biggest DNA databases. The difference between the two databases was large, and Ancestry let him confirm suspicions raised by his Family Tree DNA results.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
WJB: Things you had to do, I guess, to be in that position is to make the results of your DNA test available generally, which is a choice that you have when you get a DNA test, to make it generally available or keep it private. That’s correct, yes?
JH: Yes. And generally, there’s about three main labs. And I’ve tested with two of them. I started out with Y chromosome testing and autosomal at Family Tree DNA. And then I’ve also used Ancestry, which is one of the bigger databases, because they’ve always had a broad following of researchers starting from their archives of records, and so that carried on into DNA. And so I wanted to see what the difference would be between Family Tree DNA’s database and Ancestry’s, and there was a big difference. Allowed me to confirm some things about my autosomal results that I got with Family Tree DNA that I had some suspicions about.
