Why I deleted my Ancestry.com Family Trees

I have had an account with Ancestry.com since Mar 2002, that is 15 years folks.  Some of that time was via a membership and other times not.  My mother did a DNA test through Ancestry.com and she also got one for me, a few months later.  When my mother first got her test results, I was able to see the PUBLIC family trees managed by people who were related to my mother.  A lot of people don't have them but it was nice to have the option to browse DNA matches tree.

A few months later I did my DNA test through Ancestry.com and guess what.  Yep, I couldn't view the family trees from anyone except my own.  When I click on the link, it sends me automatically to a membership screen (see below).  All I wanted to view was a tree that someone created and posted in the public trees.  Why does this require a subscription?  Why does Ancestry think that my research should only be viewed by members?  

Since my DNA results are there, I do still have an account.  But I will not be purchasing a membership anytime soon. Frankly, Ancestry has gotten so huge that even a basic search returns too many results to manage because it includes tons of internet sites as well.  So if you are interested in finding relatives via DNA testing, I would recommend using a different company.

UPDATE: Aug 20th - just found out why my mother could view trees and not me.  Nothing was changed by Ancestry EXCEPT my mother actually bought a membership.  I'm not even sure she knows what that means.  So still would not recommend Ancestry.com DNA.

Jumping on the DNA bandwagon pt. 4

Now it was my turn to take a test and my mother graciously paid for it.  I went with Ancestry.com (and now regret that) since that is where my mother did her test.  This way I could find out my father's family there too.

So this is my results.  Not surprised now by the Scandinavia.  But confused about the "Thousands of Years ago" heading.  Shouldn't these results be closer to home since my DNA probably doesn't have much left from my great-great-great grandparents?  And the other reason I regret using Ancestory.com.....I am now blocked from viewing public trees of my DNA connections.  When my mother did her test, this was still available.  And was one of the reasons I even liked this service.  But now I have to subscribe to the ancestry mega machine to even see how I might be related to a DNA match?  So not interested.

My next DNA goal is to upload raw results to other sites.  I know very little about this at this time so it will be another journey in my family tree quest.

Jumping on the DNA bandwagon pt. 3

We ended up getting three test kits from 23 & me.  One for my husband, one for my father and one for his wife, who does not know a lot about her biological father and was interested in seeing where she fit in.  Waiting for results can be painful and my father's results took a week or so longer than the other two.  But I was super surprised at the outcome. I seriously consider that the result may have been mixed up with another client.

Seriously???  29.8 % Scandinavian??  And my father wasn't fazed by this at all.  I personally had a bit of a identity crisis.  All my life, I was told "You are Dutch" and now I find out that I'm more Scandinavian?  What is up with this!

But since my father didn't panic, I am just going to keep looking into the dutch lines and see if I can find a Scandinavian transplant.  Because it turns out that a number of Scandinavians did migrate to the Netherlands and took dutch names.

Challenge excepted.

Jumping on the DNA bandwagon pt. 2

Time went fast because of all the holiday stuff.  But when January hit, I was ready to see the results!
(We only had to wait until February.)  My mother's result were significantly different from her brother's.  I knew they wouldn't be the same (not twins) but my mother's largest percentage (75%) was for Europe West. For the same region, my uncle's percentage was 36%.  What!?

This really opens up more questions that I expected.  I have done research on my mother's ancestor's but not much past 1830.  And all of them were from the Europe West region (Dutch/Bentheim) originally. But how does my uncle's results fit into the picture?  And who was born in England and moved to the Netherlands?

So this made me very interested in seeing my father's results.  Maybe I'm not as Dutch as I thought.  Luckily, my husband was open to getting a test for himself and my father.  But I decided to try 23&me instead to see how the two sites compared.

Jumping on the DNA bandwagon pt. 1

So it's not that I don't have any interest in DNA, because I am, but rather not sure how it would contribute to moving my family tree back farther.  Plus the $$ output could get out of hand if you are testing everyone with every kind of test.

But it started Thanksgiving 2016.  My mother's youngest brother had results back from his DNA test.  (His wife had done one also, so thanks to her!)  It was interesting because he was a real mix of European with the largest (put not over 50%) percentage actually British rather than Netherlands.  This does make sense because his surname isn't very Dutch. (Naber = German, British, etc.)  This got my mother very interested to do a test as well.  So she ordered one and sent it out right away.   [They both used AncestryDNA.]  Then we just had to wait for the results.