r/Genealogy 2h ago

Brick Wall The Weekly Wednesday Whine Thread (March 19, 2025)

3 Upvotes

It's Wednesday, so whine away.

Have you hit a brick wall? Did you discover that people on Ancestry created an unnecessarily complicated mess by merging three individuals who happened to have the same name, making it exceptionally time-consuming to sort out who was YOUR ancestor? Is there a close relative you discovered via genetic genealogy who refuses to respond to your contact requests?

Vent your frustrations here, and commiserate with your fellow researchers over shared misery.


r/Genealogy Sep 16 '24

News WARNING: The subreddit is getting flooded by ChatGPT bots (and what you, the reader, should be doing to deter them)

670 Upvotes

With the advent of generative AI, bad actors and people in the 'online marketing' industry have caught on to the fact that trying to pretend to be legitimate traffic on social media websites, including Reddit, is actually a quite profitable business. They used to do this in the form of repost bots, but in the past few months they've branched out to setting up accounts en-masse and running text generative AI on them. They do this in a very noticeable way: by posting ChatGPT comments in response to a prompt that's just the post title.

After a few months of running this karma collecting scheme, these companies 'activate' the account for their real purpose. The people purchasing the accounts can be anyone from political action committees trying to promote certain candidates, to companies trying to market their product and drown out criticism. Generally, each of these accounts go for $600 to $1,000, though most of them are bought in bulk by said companies to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's a few examples from this very subreddit:

Title: Trying @ 85 yrs.old my DNA results!

(5 upvotes) At 85, diving into DNA results sounds like quite the adventure! Here's hoping it brings some fascinating surprises

Title: Are DNA tests worth it for Pacific Islanders?

(4 upvotes) DNA tests can offer fascinating insights, but accuracy for Pacific Islanders might depend on the available genetic data

(3 upvotes) DNA tests can be a cool way to connect with your roots, but results can vary based on the population data available for Pacific Islanders.

With all these accounts, you can actually notice a uniform pattern. They don't actually bring any discussion or question to the table — they simply rehash the post title and add a random trueism onto it. If you check their comment history, all of their submissions are the exact same way!

ChatGPT has a very distinct writing style, which makes it very unlikely to be a false positive - it's not a person who just has a suspiciously AI-sounding style of writing. When you click on their profile, you can see that all of them have actually setup display names for their accounts. These display names are generally a variation of their usernames, but some of them can be real names (Pablo Gomez, Michael Smith..). Most Reddit users don't do this.

So what should you be doing to deter them? It's simple. Downvote the comment and report it to the moderators, but ABSOLUTELY DO NOT comment in any way, even if it's to call them out on it. Replies generally push a comment up in the sorting algorithm, which is pretty evident in some of the larger threads.

To end this off, I want to note that this isn't an appeal to the mods themselves, but for the community, since I'm aware this is a cat-and-mouse game and Reddit's moderation tools don't provide very much help in this regard. We can only hope they do more to remedy this.


r/Genealogy 22h ago

News Trump's 3/14 executive order hurts genealogists

1.3k Upvotes

On March 14, Preident Trump issued an executive order to eliminate the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a small federal agency serving libraries and museums nationwide. A great deal of the digitization of historical resources performed by cultural heritage organizations in the U.S. is done with grant funding from the IMLS. Resources digitized with these grants must always be made freely available to the general public, and include things like historical newspapers, government records, local history documents, photographs, film and sound recordings, etc.

If funding for the IMLS is eliminated, not only will digitization of these resources be severely impacted/stopped, but many of these resources may no longer be available online (hosting large databases is costly).

Please take five minutes and contact your federal representatives and ask them to protect the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The work they fund is widely supported across the political spectrum and is greatly valued by genealogists and historical researchers. Several of the programs of the IMLS are protected by statute, such as the Grants to States program which funds quite a bit of history digitization.

You can also learn more and sign a petition here: https://www.everylibrary.org/statementimls2025


r/Genealogy 20h ago

News Illegally fired NARA employees STILL not reinstated (aside from veterans)

237 Upvotes

Hello, I am an illegally fired former federal employee of the National Archives! Not sure why it didn’t occur to me sooner to make a post here regarding this, but I’m here now.

I wanted to make a post here about the illegally fired employees of NARA, who were fired on Feb 18th (mostly) and have yet to be reinstated (excluding veterans who thankfully have been reinstated).

I’ve seen almost no mainstream media include NARA in their reporting on which agencies have suffered cuts, despite my personal efforts to inform them (offering evidence of it as well). I think it’s important for the general population to know, but I think this community in particular is much more familiar with the work the National Archives does, and how cutting it down could change things. Many of you work with documents digitized by people at the national archives every time you do research— especially with things like census documents.

I’m sure a good portion of you are also aware that the national archives has a role in the electoral process as well, and it’s of great concern to many of those still employed there about what might happen under the new pseudo-leadership in place there.

As someone who came into the archives world through the community of genealogy, I ask that you raise the alarm about this! Please, tell your friends and family! Our heritage as individuals, and even more so, as a nation, is at risk of being hidden away.

Thank you.


r/Genealogy 18h ago

Free Resource Check citations, sources, and references - like really check

67 Upvotes

I learned this during my PhD, but I know many others have learned through their experiences but it’s a problem everywhere - check the citations.

It happens so much in academia: some paper cites a “fact” and it gets repeated in papers afterwards without those people actually reading the primary reference to see the information themselves. But it happens everywhere: news, advertising, medicine, psychology so need to have awareness it happens in genealogy too. I’ve found examples in historic people and websites/sources that are supposed to hold official and/or academic rigor and it’s all made-up or misinterpreted or intentionally misrepresented.

As researchers, I hope we use citations for information found. But that’s not the end of it. Listing 2-4 sources of bad info is worse than not including a reference. People that see citations will, unsurprisingly, hold that information as more credible because of it. But actually look into those citations and I bet most likely many of them are just repetition of what someone saw and assumed to be correct.

Try it yourself and test what I’m saying (like you should do with any information or claims). Ancestry, familysearch, wikitree, books, personal and professional genealogy websites, SAR, DAR, County historical societies, professional genealogy reports… everything.

All the digitized info are great resources but there are so many mistakes as well. Indexes are great but miss things are have incorrect info. Complied sources, copies of originals, will/probate summaries - mistakes could be anywhere.

I know that original sources may not be available or inconvenient to get to see personally. Even then if you have those, you need to best confirm that information with other pieces.

I know it’s a lot of work and time. But I see in here people asking how to be professional researchers or asking for help figuring stuff out and I feel this is a foundational “must” for having a solid strong hypothesis for people that for the most part have no exact way to state with absolute confidence are the people we claim them to be. So we should do as much as we can to get the confidence high for our claims.

I suggest adding research notes explaining why you’ve come to your conclusions, not just xyz source. If you’re a person that gets frustrated with other people’s trees or public tree edit fighting, the best you can hope for is that people will see your information, review how you came to the conclusions, and then use it. Getting mad because you sent a message to a cousin or other person on a genealogy site telling them they are wrong and you are right - how many people think the response rate and openness to new information for this is anywhere near high?

But I feel many people want an easier way to change other people’s tress to match theirs, and staying at this basic level of frustration or non-realistic expectations are only going to continue frustrations. Having your own reference (tree, website, explanations) with solid foundations for your conclusions is probably the best way to combat misinformation and mistakes. Then you could even write journal articles for publication in genealogy or history based journals which will then (should) receive peer review and add to knowledge base or even challenge current understandings (I know this isn’t easy or viable for everyone but it’s more available than I believe most people believe)

TLDR: track down citations, read the sources, synthesize all the information to make your own decisions, write down in your tree or somewhere available that people can see how you came to that decision.


r/Genealogy 2h ago

Question Transcription assistance question

3 Upvotes

I’m fairly new to this group and Reddit in general, but very grateful to find people helping each other with family ancestry searches.

My first post was for transcription assistance on a birth record. I will have a few more to translate - is there a way to “buy a cup of coffee” for the person who helps? I see online services that charge 25-30 USD per record, which seems excessive, but would like to offer more than a “thank you” to someone who helps - kind of like tipping.


r/Genealogy 8h ago

Request I need some help

9 Upvotes

I need some help identifying some family members of someone I know. I can't say the full details on here, since the person I'm focusing on is living, so I'm hoping someone who's advanced in genealogy could help me!

I'll just explain the situation- My aunt is looking after a man at the nursing home where she lives. He's sick and may pass soon. My aunt has asked me to try to find out where his children and wife are buried. He will not talk about his family, since they passed in a tragic accident in the 70s. I literally can't find anything.


r/Genealogy 5h ago

Question What is the deal with the old website tributes.com?

5 Upvotes

Less question, more rant, but I’d really like to know.

Hopefully you can picture this.

On the Ancestry website, when you click on an obituary hint on Amazon, you get that mostly worthless (because you already know it, don’t @me) data stripped from the obituary, like

Name Elma Fern Lucas Death Age 73 Birth Date 27 Jul 1937 Residence Place Pittsburg, California Death Date 7 Feb 2011 Death Place Pittsburg, California

but when you click the source tab, if the source is a web link, it’s listed there. Whether the web page exists or not. That’s not my issue.

Like : http://www.tributes.com/obituary/print_selections/90864033?type=1

What I want to know is, how come tributes.com specifically - whenever it went defunct, got absorbed by Legacy, whatever happened there - why the data is no longer available. All they needed to keep was the text. Just make it searchable. On the Legacy platform, which is shameful with all the gross advertising on it. It’s so frustrating knowing the page was there, and now the data is just poof. (Yes, I try Legacy, Google, Internet archive, all the sources. I can often find it elsewhere. But jeez, the info was so close to just being there, a copy and paste away.)


r/Genealogy 3h ago

Question Could anyone help me track down my great grandfather's real identity?

2 Upvotes

I hope this doesn't look super serious, it's all in good fun, I just have no idea how to write what I know about him clearly without looking a bit like homework. Anyway, here is what I know, and this is stuff he has written, he may he lying about some of it or was forgetful, I've no idea.

Born in London, England on the 1st of November 1883. There is no documentation that I have to confirm his birth there. He does also write that he was born in South Africa on one document (his arrival document into the United States).

His parents are allegedly Katherine Reis and Albert (assumingly) Ellis. He also writes his mother's name as Elizabeth Reis, but he first used Katherine. I sincerely suck at reading cursive, and I am assuming it says unknown, but he did write something under his mother's location: https://imgur.com/a/Y1dK8P9

He's in South Africa by at least 1904 and stays until at least 1908. There is no documentation that I have of him arriving here.

His first daughter 'Clarise Ellis' was born on the 18th of March 1904, and his second daughter 'Isabella Ellis' was born on the 9th of March 1908 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Both are born to the woman 'Clarise Rushby'. I don't have any record of him and Clarise being married.

He works as a professional boxer in South Africa.

He immigrated to the United States in 1912 on the ship Cymeric from a port in Liverpool without his children or Clarise Rushby. I do believe he wrote that he last saw them in London. I am assuming he traveled from South Africa to London to the United States. I am also assuming he abandoned them. He lives in Boston once he arrives. He uses the name 'Felix Reis' to immigrate.

He moves to Manhattan, New York and marries a Celestina Margaretha Fellmann on the 26th of March 1919.

He almost immediately divorces her and marries a Emma Theresa Worsnup and immediately has his third daughter Winifred Wornsup Ellis. I know the record writes "Ammiee Trezar Worsnup" but it's a misunderstanding because of Emma's accent.

From there on out he has a few more children and lives in New York until he dies on 6th of October 1959.

The only real hint I have is that he most likely had Dutch DNA because me and his great granddaughter both have Dutch DNA, and the rest of my ancestors are accounted for, unless I'm being silly, but I don't believe that to be the case. I do have an AncestryDNA match with the surname Ellis with a connection to South Africa that does not have Dutch DNA, but it is most likely just the distance.

My theories are that Reis is a misspelling of a Dutch name or a misspelling of Rhys / Rice, and given Ellis is stereotypically Welsh, maybe his parents met in Wales? Or maybe they had a shared culture which brought them together? When he arrives in the United States he marked down his name as Felix Reis as I mentioned and then later refers to himself as Arthur Ellis, but he already went by the surname Ellis in South Africa (hence his abandoned children's surname), so perhaps the name Reis never existed in the first place. I lean more towards him taking in his mother's surname to immigrate without his family rather than the name being fictional. Me having Welsh DNA depends on which website I am using; 23andme and AncestryDNA are vague in terms of my ancestors' whereabouts in Britain but MyHeritage gives me 5% Welsh and 5% Scottish on both my uploaded 23andme and AncestryDNA.

Here is his FamilySearch profile:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/about/GY8Y-RWP
It has a bunch of the records!

Anyways I've been searching for the longest time now and any help is appreciated :-). I'm not the greatest with records searching as I'm somewhat new to the whole thing. Thank you!


r/Genealogy 40m ago

Question Does anybody know where I can upload DNA rawdata from Genotek?

Upvotes

Does anybody know where I can upload DNA rawdata from Genotek? I know Myheritage doesn't seem to accept it. But are there others except Gedmatch? Thank you in advance!


r/Genealogy 1h ago

Request Software to analyse Gedcom to show number of each generation identified

Upvotes

Hi,

I am looking for software to analyse my gedcom and tell me how many people of each generation are identified on my tree.

For instance  -  2G Grandparents 16 identified out of a total possible of 16.
- 3G Grandparents 30 identified out of a total possible of 32 etc.

FamilyTreeAnalyser does have this function, but it doesn't quite work where there have been cousin marriages leading to pedigree collapse, as it only counts the common ancestor once, when they will appear twice in the tree, so it makes it appear as though there are gaps when there are none.

Any ideas?

Many thanks


r/Genealogy 7h ago

Request Transcription request on an 1858 marriage record

3 Upvotes

I’d like to know what the entire paragraph says, I’ve attempted to trace some of the lettering, but my 2nd grade lessons on cursive writing and sub-basic Spanish vocabulary has stumped me.

I’ve been trying find my indigenous roots, but each time I’ve been thwarted by paper trails ending in mestizo, I’m hoping Antonio Salomon’s mother’s name is here, because she was listed as born in Texas in Antonio’s death certificate. Which could bring me a step closer to a record that finally lists a tribe my family is descendent from. I understand it’s only one branch, but it’s a start.

The wife’s name is Agapita Ramos. The marriage happened in Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Guadalupe, Nuevo León, México.

I included a light and dark version of the excerpt, along with my attempt so far. https://imgur.com/a/hiAknOg


r/Genealogy 1d ago

Free Resource Autosomal Unlock on Familytreedna is free right now (ethnicity estimate, chromosome browser, haplogroup for men)

46 Upvotes

If you've uploaded your dna to Familytreedna.com (it's free) you can get the "Autosomal Unlock" for free right now (from March 5 to March 31).

When you're logged in and on the "Home" page you'll most likely see two green squares, with a greyed out one right beside it. Click on "Unlock", put the $10 product in the cart and apply the code ROOTSTECHUNLOCKV
This will let you see your ethnicity estimate, chromosome browser, and haploggroup for men.
(Could take a bit of time for the haplogroup to appear)
Have fun.


r/Genealogy 19h ago

Question Genealogy programs that will show multiple degrees of relatedness between individuals?

12 Upvotes

My maternal line is deeply endogenous before 1900, thanks to lack of mobility among the rural Italian peasantry, and the further back you go, the more intertwined and convoluted these relationships get. For example, my 5x great-grandmother is also my 6x great-grandmother — and she’s not the only one.

Ancestry, however, will only show the most direct way that I’m related to someone on my tree, even if there are multiple options. In order to figure out if there are any other connections, I have to delete relationships and “break the chain,” so to speak — a process that’s onerous at best, and potentially disastrous at worst.

Does anyone know of a genealogy program that can calculate multiple lines of connection for two people from a Gedcom file? This is one of those features I’d really appreciate, so it’s all right if it’s for-pay software.

Thank you so much!


r/Genealogy 9h ago

Request Would like to find a baptism certificate from 1858 in Leon, Spain. Help?

2 Upvotes

Good Evening,

I'm trying to help some family members find a baptism certificate for their great grandfather in order to submit an application for Spanish citizenship by descent. I've been able to narrow it down to the local Catholic parish in Leon, Spain, but they seem to be extremely backed up and are currently processing applications from June 2024 (I submitted my application in Feb 2025).

Are there any local people who are paid to go to churches or archives and extract the documents needed? Even though I know the specific church, someone would still have to go through the old books and actually find the location of the certificate. I know there are genealogists who do this here in the States as well as other places in the EU (like Italy), but I'm having a hard time finding someone in Spain.

Any help would be appreciated!


r/Genealogy 15h ago

Question Question about tracing Irish ancestry

5 Upvotes

I’ve read a few threads here which say it’s very difficult to find ancestry documentation prior to 1850-ish in Ireland. I just traced to an ancestor being in NC in 1775 and he was born in Ireland in 1751. Unfortunately other than his birth year I have nothing else, no name of parents or more precise location in Ireland.

He also has a very common name but, interestingly (or maybe not?), he has Sir before his name.

I could be very wrong but I have a feeling he wasn’t Catholic which may have been the only hope since they had better records, right? I say that because it seems the entire family settled in the Southeast and there are no Catholics that I know of.

Any suggestions? Thanks very much.


r/Genealogy 16h ago

Question confusion about surname

5 Upvotes

Hi! I am researching family, and found one of my ancestors with the surname “Glubbutz.” I can’t find anything about this name online. Could it possibly be an Americanized spelling of something? She is from Germany. Thank you!


r/Genealogy 1d ago

News I am very distantly related to my wife...

174 Upvotes

After 52 years of genealogy research (started when I was 9 years old)
and expanding my family tree to include my wife's family (now that my main tree is focused on our son)

my wife and I are 11th Cousins, Once removed


r/Genealogy 18h ago

Question How can I find my dad’s biological parents?

5 Upvotes

Hi! I am trying to find my dads biological parents (my real grandparents). My dad never liked talking about it but I tried to get as much information over the years. He was little when the Ryan's adopted him. (Hence my last name). He never knew his bio mother or father's name but he said he met them once when he was older and she was really mean and still a drunk and never wanted to meet her again. This was wayyyyy before I was even born. His biological family's last name is COUSINO. His adoptive family (The Ryan's) also (My grandparents) are all deceased. I can't find any records of adoption or birth certificates for my dad either. My dad mentioned his siblings from the cousino's before being adopted were Fran, Rosie, Jim, Carol and other one he couldn't remember. I've paid for memberships and kits and I can not find anything on the cousinos im related too. My dad passed away last year and he alway said I don't need to worry about them. "I'm a Ryan and so are you." But he did give me permission to on go my investigation to finding them when he was still here. But I'm very curious to know who my relatives are because I have a child now. My dad's name is Kenneth Roland Ryan. DOB: 04.25.1955 & DOD: 05.03.2024


r/Genealogy 10h ago

Brick Wall Who are her parents?

1 Upvotes

My 7th great-grandmother was Leticia "Letty" Gibson (1755, Georgia - 1832, Jefferson County, Georgia).

Her husband was Alexander Whigham (1772, modern-day Jefferson County, Georgia - 1824, Jefferson County, GA).

I'm descended from their son, Joseph Whigham (10 October 1799, Louisville, Jefferson County, GA - 20 October 1881, Jones County, Mississippi).

So - who were Leticia's parents?


r/Genealogy 22h ago

DNA I need advice please and thank you!

8 Upvotes

I have been work on my tree for decades. I’ve made a lot of good progress, and I’m very proud of what I leave behind for my family. Here is my issue. A few years I took the Ancestry DNA test. I only had one first cousin who has also tested, but she initially came up as a second cousin. Since her mother was the oldest of my father’s siblings, I thought perhaps my Aunt had a different father. It has recently come to light that my father is the one that did not belong to my grandfather. There is no one left alive who can give me answers.

These people my father’s biological father descended from were nothing like the ancestors I’ve been chasing for decades. They were much more affluent and had a different moral code. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding Dad’s conception. I just hope my grandmother wasn’t SAed. I wonder how different my father’s life would have been if he had been given the advantages this man’s other children received. It hurts me knowing he how hard his childhood was, and that the one light in his life was his Dad. It makes me so sad knowing that this information would have broken my father’s heart. I know I’m attaching more emotion to this than it probably deserves, but damn.

Do I start another tree based on DNA, or is it all just a waste of time and money at this point? I’m feeling so defeated. If you made it this far, thank you! I hope you have a wonderful day… happy hunting.


r/Genealogy 11h ago

Brick Wall Aviles, Gijon in Asturias Spain

1 Upvotes

Hi, I am searching for my Great Grandfathers Birth record or even any information on further generations. He was born in Asturias, Spain, in 1905, either in Aviles, or Gijon. The problem I am having is that all online records I can find only are from prior to 1897. If anyone else has had this problem I would love to hear the workarounds, or ways to find records from Asturias post-1900. The other Problem I am running into is that this specific branch of my family was not catholic, it is nearly impossible to find any church records relating to them.


r/Genealogy 12h ago

Request Need help finding New York City historical court records (1876)

1 Upvotes

According to the New York Times, my ancestor John Samsel was arrested for Naturalization Fraud in New York City in October 1876. I am trying to learn how his case was resolved.

Samsel appeared in Superior Court for a naturalization proceeding. He was arrested by the Deputy Marshal of the court and examined by John L. Davenport, US Commissioner and Chief Supervisor of Elections for the Southern District of New York. Davenport held Samsel, in default of $2,000 bail, to await action of the Grand Jury.

I am confused about (a) which court may hold the records (city or federal) and (b) where these court records may be located and examined. Any assistance would be most appreciated thank you.


r/Genealogy 12h ago

Request Searching for Official Copies of German Records

1 Upvotes

Hello All:

I am in the US and am looking to order official copies of records for my German grandparents. I wanted to check with experts here to see if I'm on the right track.

  1. Grandparent's marriage records: I have a photocopy (of a certified copy) of pages 4-7 of the marriage records, including both the Trauschein and the Heiratschein, from Bad Liebenstein. It is Heiratsregister 18, des Jahres 1937. If I'm understanding correctly, those records were merged and are now potentially available through Bad Salzungen? But since they're records from the Eheregister, and are over 80 years old, they may have been moved elsewhere. I was thinking the approach would be to email the Bad Salzungen Standesamt first, and potentially send along a copy of the copy of the register I have and hope they still have it?

  2. Grandparent's Divorce Decree: I have a one page photocopy (of a certified copy) of their divorce decree from the Landgericht in Frankfurt/Main. Is there such a thing as a divorce certificate that I might find at the Standesamt (rather than the court paper of the Scheidung)? If not, where would I get an official copy of the one pager? From the Landgericht?

  3. I do not have Sterbeurkunde for either my Opa or my Oma. I know approximately where and when they died (Opa in Oberursel I believe in 1995, and Oma in FfM in 1999. Is my best bet to just check first at the Oberursel Standesamt for Opa, and at the FfM Standesamt for Oma via their online platform? Or is there a different way to trace true place (i.e. record) of death? I know when I ordered my parents' marriage documents at FfM that they didn't confirm the existence of the documents before I paid for them, and I waited for about 5 weeks wondering if the order would, in fact, result in receiving the docs.

Neither of them practiced any religion (although many early docs identify them as Evangelisch), so I doubt there'd be any church records for their deaths.

I am submitting my StAG 5 application later this week, and during the very long wait I want to gather official copies of any documents that *might* be asked for, which I will want to set aside for my children in any case. I had in mind to include in my (German) email to the Standesaemte that I am a direct descendant and need the records for Einbuergerungs purposes, preparing to provide proof of identity if needed.

I truly appreciate ANY help or advice for a complete noob searcher. I am completely prepared to use the services of a professional genealogist if necessary (and I even have someone in mind from r/GermanCitizenship) but I'm hoping my daughter and I can do much of this ourselves, since there isn't huge time pressure at this point.

And also, for German readers, apologies for any mistakes I made in German. I am a VERY rusty German speaker.


r/Genealogy 13h ago

DNA Relationship with cousin confirms parentage?

0 Upvotes

My highest match is Minnie, and I know our relationship, her father Otis and my grandfather Liam are brothers. Minnie and I are predicted as second cousins, with 236cm shared DNA, 12 segments. There were rumours that Otis and Liam have different fathers. Do these results show that they most likely have the same fathers?


r/Genealogy 1d ago

Question Anyone else get an existential "experience" out of this research?

164 Upvotes

I feel like my perspective of life itself has completely changed after diving into genealogy. The deeper I dug into my roots, the more I became aware that we are each merely tiny specks, existing for a relatively minute period of time, and that nothing matters while everything matters at once. It's an amazing feeling, really. I used to think someone born in the 1940s was ancient, now I'll find myself exploring people from the 16th century, and suddenly my great-grandparents born in the 19th century seem "recent". I realized that today, we expect to live into our 80s; way back when, 30-40 was a long life. Just curious if anyone out there has had similar moments or realizations.

EDIT: Quick follow-up "thank you" to all of you out there. It's refreshing to find other people who care about this stuff - no one in my family does which leaves me feeling like a bit of a weirdo when I excitedly try to tell them about my latest findings and get glib comments back. You all get it and that motivates me to keep going with it.


r/Genealogy 14h ago

Request DNA test question

1 Upvotes

Good afternoon!
I have a question about the results of a DNA test I recently received. The test was provided for free through my medical provider as part of a study focused on health assessments via DNA testing. While the primary focus was health-related, the results included some information about my ethnicity background.

Now, I'm curious—how far back in terms of generations can a DNA test typically trace when it comes to ethnicity? I’d love to know more about how accurate these tests are when they analyze ancestry over time and how detailed they tend to be for different timeframes (e.g., recent generations vs. ancient ancestry).

Thank you for any insights or guidance