About six weeks ago, Ancestry had a meeting with a few bloggers and educators in the genetic genealogy community and brought us up to speed on a new feature that was upcoming. Ancestry showed us their plans to expand the DNA Circles feature, although to be very clear, to the best of my knowledge, none of us were involved in any type of beta testing with Ancestry.
Today, Ancestry assigns you to DNA Circles based on a combination of your DNA results and your tree, based on common ancestors shown in trees of matching individuals. I wrote about Circles and how they are calculated in the article, “Ancestry’s Better Mousetrap – DNA Circles.”
As an enhancement to DNA Circles, today Ancestry rolled out their new feature which is called “New Ancestor Discoveries” where Ancestry assigns ancestors to you based on DNA matching alone, without matching ancestors in your trees.
And, in my case, they are wrong. Unquestionably wrong. What I hate the most about this situation is if you’re not a genetic genealogist, and you haven’t done your homework, you’ll be thrilled with your new wrong ancestors, “proven,” of course, by DNA.
We received a quick glimpse of the pre-beta product – and truthfully – if this was accurately done and appropriately portrayed as a DNA match with people who shared common DNA and maybe a common ancestor – I could be excited. In fact, I was excited.
I do believe this type of matching can be done accurately – but Ancestry has missed the mark – not just with me but from other early reports in the community as well – with lots of people. Portraying this match as a “new ancestor” is wrong and it’s terribly misleading.
Here’s what Ancestry has to say about the New Ancestors matching.
Ok, what does Ancestry have to say about Diedamia Lyon, my New Ancestor who is not my ancestor?
Clicking on the green “Learn About” button shows me the “facts” that ancestry has gleaned from their trees about Diedamia Lyon.
What this tells you that isn’t immediately evident is that Diedamia Lyon was married to John Curnutte, my second “New Ancestor.” There is a “Facts” tab that shows you the sources that Ancestry used to create Diedamia’s story. They have used compiled data from 215 trees. I cant’ speak for Diedamia, but I know several of my Circle Ancestor’s stories are wrong – based on the compiled trees – substantially wrong in fact. Because the trees are wrong.
So, in essence, Ancestry is saying that I descend from both Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte, an ancestral couple. This would be invaluable, if it were accurate. Ok, how did Ancestry connect those dots to arrive at that conclusion?
Clicking on the “See Your Connection” button under the Circle icon shows you the members of the Diedamia Lyon Circle.
I have DNA matches with Don and Michael who are members of the Diedamia Lyon circle. Clicking on Don, I can see that he has DNA matches to Michael and three other individuals who I don’t have DNA matches with in the Diedama Lyon circle. However, all of those individuals also share a pedigree chart and Diedamia Lyon is their shared ancestor.
I can click on any of these people and see who they match in the circle, or I can see a list.
What I can’t see is how Ancestry drew those DNA conclusions. There are no tools, no chromosome browser, and obviously, “trust me” isn’t working.
I want to share with you how I know, beyond any doubt, that Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte are NOT my ancestors. I am a long-time meticulous researcher. I would invite you to search for any of my ancestors’ names on this blog. I have been writing about one ancestor per week now for more than a year in the 52 Ancestors series and, if I have written about them, you can see the types of information we have on each one. I know which of my ancestors are proven and which are questionable. So, let’s see why Diedamia and John cannot be my ancestors.
First, we can eliminate my mother’s line. My mother’s ancestors are from Holland, Germany, Canada/Acadia and one line from Vermont/Connecticut. They are all accounted for and I know where they were, shown below.
The 6th generation shown above is the generation into which Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte, both born about 1800, would fall. Mother’s generation 6 ancestors, at the far right, were all born between 1766 and 1805, many in Europe. You’ll note there are no blank spaces for missing ancestors and the geography is not southern – meaning no place near Wilkes County, NC where Diedamia was born in 1804. So, my mother’s side is immediately eliminated.
My father’s side, however, does have several lines that come through Wilkes County, NC and many other southern lines. So the connection would be through my father’s side of the family.
Again the 6th generation would be where Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte would have to fit if they are my ancestors, and there are no blank spaces here either. All of these ancestors were born between 1759 and 1804.
Of the above generation 6 ancestors, the following have a Wilkes County connection:
- Elijah Vannoy born in Wilkes County about 1784
- Lois McNiel born in Wilkes County about 1786
- William Herrell born about 1789 in NC, possibly Wilkes County where he married in 1809
- Mary McDowell born 1785 NC, possibly Wilkes County where she married in 1809
Looking at the pedigree chart of William Herrell and Mary McDowell, you can see that indeed there are some unknown wives. John Herrell was born in about 1760, possibly in Frederick Co., VA and Michael McDowell in 1747 in Bedford Co., VA. While the connection may be through these lines, it’s clearly not from any two people born in 1800 and is at least in the 7th generation – IF the connection is through these lines. At this point, this is the most likely connection because it’s in the right location and there are two unknown wives. If I had triangulation tools, I could probably tell you immediately.
Now let’s look at the pedigree chart of Elijah Vannoy and Lois McNiel, also from Wilkes County.
As you can see, this pedigree is even more complete than the Herrell/McDowell pedigree. Not only is there no room for a couple born circa 1800, there are no unknown parents for another 3 generations prior, not until the 9th generation. The only individual here through the 8th generation not proven via both paper and genetics, meaning triangulation, is Sarah Coates.
So, not only are Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte NOT my ancestors, it’s very unclear how they are related to me, IF they are related to me. It’s obvious that the only way we are related is that someplace upstream, I do share a common ancestor with both Don and Mike who share the Lyon/Curnutte tree with each other and several others as well, but that does NOT mean that I descend from Diedamia and John, nor that I share a common ancestor with them.
Now, if I share the SAME DNA segment with Don and Mike that could be triangulated to the Curnutte/Lyon descendants, then that would mean we do all share a common ancestor someplace along the line. But wait – Ancestry doesn’t use triangulation – nor do they give us the tools to do so. So we have NO idea if we actually share the same DNA segments or not.
So, let’s take a look at the trees of both Don and Mike to see if we share any common surnames that might be linked.
Fortunately, Ancestry does provide an easy way to do this. By clicking on your matches name to the right of the circle, and looking at their tree, Ancestry shows you the common surnames.
By clicking on the shared surname, you can see the people in both trees, theirs and yours, with that surname, side by side.
All three of us have a dead end Moore line. That is our only other surname in common, and Moore is very common.
So, it’s possible, given that we have no way to tell which segments are matching whom, that I match both Don and Mike through an entirely different ancestor, or ancestors, known or unknown. It’s also possible that someone upstream of Diedamia and John is a child of one of my unknown lines, and while Diedamia and John are not my ancestors, I do carry some of the same DNA as their descendants because we all share a common, unknown, ancestor. But I have no way of knowing.
What I can do is to contact my two matches and see if they will download their DNA to GedMatch where I can get at the truth via triangulation. It’s a shame we have to do that.
So, what is the net-net of this new tool?
- Ancestry missed, big time, especially by labeling the match as a “New Ancestor.”
- Ancestry can salvage the situation at least somewhat by renaming the “New Ancestor” something like “Common DNA Match.” This would alert people that there is some common ancestry someplace, but not mislead people into thinking that Ancestry really HAS discovered a new ancestor or ancestral couple. In some cases the named couple MAY be ancestors – but that’s certainly not always the case. And I don’t like the label “Potential Ancestor” either because I think it implies a much closer relationship than may be present. I remember how completely thrilled I was to see my “New Ancestors” names and without having enough experience to piece the puzzle together, both genealogically and genetically, I would never have known enough to be as disappointed as I am. I feel terribly sorry for the many people who will take this erroneous information as gospel – and the rest of us who will have to live with the incorrect fallout – forever. This amounts to a new way to create an incorrect ancestor and Heaven forbid, attach them to your tree.
- This would all be a moot point with a chromosome browser, but then again, Ancestry already knows that.
And I was so hopeful….
Fortunately, the New Ancestors feature is still in beta and changes can be made – and I hope they are. I know Ancestry has already incorporated at least one the suggestions made as a result of the meeting a few weeks ago.
As I looked back over the new features and the information I received from Ancestry, I am especially concerned about the verbiage accompanying this information.
Here’s what greets me on my DNA page.
Here’s the e-mail I received.
The problem is – it’s just not true. These matches may be valuable in some cases. But they are not as represented. This match is not my ancestor.
So yes, I do want Ancestry to “Show Me.” Show me the chromosomes. Show me how Diedamia Lyon and John Curnutte are my ancestors. Show me how you put 2 and 2 together and came up with this. Show me.
______________________________________________________________
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Suspected the Ancestry pitch was grossly over confident. Thanks for your article. Hope it is quoted widely.
Darn! They have a message that says that they don’t have any new ancestors for me 🙁 but that they will keep looking.
Don’t feel bad Chuck- you are not alone- I got the same message😥
They should take their wrongness and go into partnership with Geni.com.
I was on Ancestry this afternoon, and while the ancestor was correct, they had incorrect information about him from various “trees” on their system. This is a fairly well documented family, and I know my 3rd great grandfather had one wife and did not have 20 children. His first/real wife was still living when he supposedly married the second wife. I think she actually married his son or nephew.
And, yes, I did take their survey after looking at that.
Sent from my iPad
>
I also got some new “Ancestors” but because I’m not a member I can’t see any extra information on the subject. I think it’s far more likely that if we share common DNA is because I share it with the new “Ancestor’s” ancestors.
My local library has a library subscription so just I go there to see the stuff I want.
Good article. Thank you for stepping through the process of elimination through your tree with screen shots. I think the information is good tool to try to give pointers to dead end lines… a tool, though, not the solution.
They didn’t find any new ancestors for me, but they did take away two of my DNA circles, who were definitely ancestors.
Thanks. Although I have a private tree, they included me and gave me 13 New Ancestor Discoveries, 5 of whom are already in my tree, with the same names, but their computers picked them up because the names had a slight variation, and were not EXACT. Yes, we share dna with these matches, but in this case, no SEGMENT matching has been done, only TREE matching. And tree matching could be riddled with mistakes and NPEs. The proof is in the pudding only with segment matching. DNA does not lie, trees sometimes do……….
Roberta, I got one of these dubious emails purporting to show three new “ancestors.” Was I excited! Well, thanks for nothing, Ancestry.com–another example of misleading genealogy/DNA “answers” from them. None of the three can possibly be my “ancestors”; methinks Ancestry should be more precise and call them “relatives.” One if the three is actually a daughter of one of my sets of third-greatgrandparents, so that’s “sort-of” correct–she IS a DNA relative. But not an “ancestor”, and as for her husband ( also sayeth Ancestry: my “ancestor”) that’s just wrong. The third “ancestor” they mention–I have no idea who he was. Nothing about him is in the least bit familiar, and all three “new finds” are contemporary with my great- and second-greatgrandparents, all of whom I know. (I’ve been researching carefully for almost 50 years and know my paper and DNA genealogy well.)
In my opinion Ancestry has further muddied the genealogical waters with accepting frivolous/careless family tree submissions, failing to clarify any DNA information other than matching customers’ existing submitted trees, and now foisting dubious or wrong “ancestors” on us based on secretive DNA results.
Great analysis, Roberta. My wife had 4 suggested ancestors (actually 2 couples). They, too, were far too recent to represent actual ancestors in her tree – because we had researched her tree pretty thoroughly further back as you did. However, I immediately discounted the wording Ancestry used and tried to figure out what this actually meant. If they had, in fact, triangulated the segments (made sure it was the same segment on the same chromosome in each comparison they made to persons in the circle) then that might be useful, because it might actually mean my wife had a common ancestor with the members of the circle. But I don’t think they even did that. One of the suggested couples that we researched today seems to be related to people who were 2nd marriages for spouses of my wife’s blood relatives (who were the first marriages) – ie. they have no blood connection to her at all, but are related as in-laws – sort of. There have been a lot of people on the discussion boards reporting that their suggested ancestors are in-laws. I suspect that if you have an GGGG uncle in a given area at a given time, it’s pretty easy to find people who married your GGGG uncle who have a connection to a circle that has no blood relationship to you. So, even if you match two of them (randomly and for entirely different reasons – like endogamy, perhaps?) it doesn’t mean that the circle couple is the right one unless the segments are on the same chromosome and the same location on that chromosome. Frankly I’m surprised that Ancestry would say in their blog about this that they tested this with people who had “rich and deep trees” and that 70% of the time it could predict a circle ancestor. I think there is some flawed logic to this. Either that or there are whole lot of people who haven’t weighed in on the blogs yet with successful predictions. So far I haven’t seen even one.
Today, I received a similar email and flew to the “SHOW ME”button… 3 new ancestors: 2 are probably cousins thru my Hutcheson and Russell lines. The 3rd does not fit thru place or time or name…..????
One (Hutcheson) I had located previously thru my own efforts. My Nancy Russel ancestor of Arkansas had 18 children: I remembered one of her daughters was my Margaret Russell Barham and I believe she had a sister named Amanda…. Amanda is my “new” found aunt and her descendent is my cousin . … I guess well GEE…
Many people make errors in their trees because our Southern U.S. Scots/Irish/Welsh ancestors had multiple wives and husbands and kept marrying their first cousins. Yes, a connection can often made by going up one generation to look for intermarriage of the sought for names. Some names are never picked up at all. Keeps one on the toes….
Over all, I Really LIKE what Ancestry is doing with their Circles. This time, “DNA alone” found 2 of 3 correct relationships at least….
Steve in Oro Valley
OK – I take back my “so far I haven’t seen even one.” comment! 🙂
Thanks for your article on “New Ancestors” by Ancestry.com. My family has gone under the names Calvert, Colvard, and Colbert and I have enough problems keeping records straight without following misleading information.
This is why I love Wikitree.com… if everyone had their ancestors entered and linked appropriately, you would know exactly how they were related to you.
I posted about the new ancestors that Ancestry found for my Mom today, too. If you get the chance check it out. It shows what Ancestry “finds’ with this new tool when two siblings of one family marry two siblings of another family.
http://mariegen.blogspot.com/2015/04/my-first-impression-of-ancestrydnas-dna.html
It’s interesting that my wife’s case with the new tool involved two siblings (to whom she was blood related) who married people who had second marriages with two siblings that were related to the people in the circle. It twists my mind in knots to think about it.
My husband had an “Aunt Madge”, a generation older than him who was actually a double cousin as her father was his mother’s brother, and her mother was his father’s sister. How do you like that one? 😉
AncestryDNA’s marketing plan seems to be “over-promise and underdeliver.”
They will continue to do so as long as they are able to convince people to pay $99 for the test and an additional $49 a year for experimental “beta” product.
I am with you on this Roberta!
Show me the proof!
DH got one that was completely wrong. His lines are well documented Southern families in Virginia. At least they didn’t match me to anyone because my lines are all in England.
Thank you for a wonderful explanation. I had just seen the notice from Ancestry but had not opened it. I seen your email and the title and I am glad I did.Now I will not have to worry about possibly obtaining more bad information as I have in the past.Again, thank you for a wonderful and informative article
Ah yes, got a “new ancestor” today…NOT!! I don’t recognize the name or the spouse, and I most certainly don’t have any ancestor that ever lived in McDowell County, North Carolina.
Yep, right, this is some kind of amazing new “better mousetrap”. Snark, snark.
Ancestry has also resumed including those hideous “mini-biographies” in DNA Circles.
Yep, ’bout had ’nuff.
They have only given one of my family members one new ancestor, whose surname, Coleman, is unfamiliar to me and I have a tree of over 40,000 people! One of the other members identified as being connected to the supposed common ancestor does have a surname, Pool, that I do recognize as a shortened form of an ancestral family name, Pettypool, but this living Pool does not have their tree traced back far enough to connect with my known Pettypool ancestor. The bottom line is that Ancestry is likely correct that I share a common ancestor with this living Pool, but they are just wrong about the identified Coleman being the common ancestor! Let’s hope that they get better at this. Maybe if it flops they will re-think their position on a chromosome browser.
A new ancestor was found for my father toady. Problem is, the person that he “matches” is an ancestor of my daughter-in-law. So this person is in my tree but has no relationship with my father. Any DNA they would share would be so minute as to be useless.
This is really disturbing. It’s bad enough when people rely on trees with errors, but now Ancestry itself is promoting that reliance even more and promoting it as scientific. I guess I am glad I didn’t test there. Getting emails like that would drive me crazy! Bad enough getting all those misleading shaky leaves. Thanks for the post!
“Ancestry can salvage the situation at least somewhat by renaming the “New Ancestor” something like ‘Common DNA Match.'”
I don’t know what they should call it, but even “Common DNA Match” seems pretty generous. A DNA Circle can be defined by several segments, none of which necessarily have to be triangulated. How about “speculative ancestral link”?
Like you I disagree with them using the term “Potential Ancestor”. They are falling into the trap that many other people have fallen into: using the word “ancestor” for any relation of any degree whether or not they are your direct ancestor. (I even heard a professional genealogist misuse this term on a popular TV show !)
I have the same exact same thing happen to me today. Ancestry told me that I had 3 ancestors. Two of them were born in North Carolina around 1800. I have a complete tree farther back than 1800 and my family lived in Pennsylvania so Ancestry is way off the mark with those two new ancestors. The third “new ancestor” was actually the wife of the person I am connected to. Guess Ancestry saw that I had DNA matches with 6 people descended from one couple. Ancestry matched me with the wife instead of the husband which is where the DNA match is. I have the husband’s surname in my tree too.
They really shot themselves in the foot this time. All I can hope for is that it causes them eough REAL greif and forces them to actually give us the better Moustrap they prmised. Sort of like the Redo on the Ethnicity Estmate that had us all as Vikings. They so ckearly missed the mark. I hope they are crucified in the blogosphere. They certainly deserve it!
Great article! I had the same experience with my suggested “new ancestor” this afternoon. I am glad I am not alone in experiencing the frustrations with this new feature from Anestry and its especially misleading wording.
Forgive Ancestry, for they know not what they are doing.
I honestly now think the people in charge at AncestryDNA are stupid.
Looks like Ancestry is using FTDNA’s in-common-with matrix. You know, person A matches you on Chr 1 and person B matches you on Chr 22. Therefore, A+B common ancestor = your ancestor.
I am confident in my Dad’s tree. All of his lines are early Mormons starting about 1840. And with large numbers of Mormon testers, all lines have been DNA confirmed. 35 DNA-Circles, two circles with over 50 members. Five circles >20 members. Twenty-Six Circles >10 members.
Look on the bright side, now we KNOW we are smarter than management at AncestryDNA.
Well, at least YOU made me smile today:)
Thank you Adam…I needed a good laugh today!!
This is Adam commenting on my post.
I created a small tree and attached my father’s DNA to it. As expected, Dad lost his Circles. But he gained 12 more “Discoveries” for a total of 14 “Discoveries”. 10 of the Discoveries are correct and previously had Circles.
The 4 incorrect Discoveries are not direct ancestors. One of whom is Dad’s 2nd great grand aunt, which possiby shares DNA. Her husband is also a discovery with likely no DNA in common with Dad. The other 2 incorrect Discoveries are parents of the husband mentioned above.
———– CONCLUSION ———–
Circles remove Discoveries
10/14 = 71% Correct is not bad
Great for people with no trees (ie ADOPTEES)
I just found this page when I went searching for something to verify my suspicions that this new feature is flawed.
I was given a new ‘Ancester ‘. In Mississippi. Three generations or so back, via my paternal line.
The only issue is my father’s family almost to a one comes from either England, or New England – about as far from Mississippi as you could get. While I have some dead ends that could possibly, in some remote way, come from this guy, its about 99.9% unlikely.
I *am* nosy as to how I’m connected to this circle however, since Ancestry obviously is seeing something, somewhere that could tie us. I just don’t know what.
I had a new ancestor match also and guess where from, North Carolina. How many have matches from there I wonder since I see several that posted theirs were from North Carolina? Jesse Bolling 1751 to 1841. My favorite part of it is when I looked at his story it has him listed as having been married to 10 different women. I did look at the 3 people who I match dna with and I am guessing by looking briefly at their trees the match is somewhere else where I see other names in my tree.. Will I figure it out? Maybe or maybe not.
It’s the new One World Tree, and we all know how well that worked out. I’m pretty much convinced now that TPTB over at Ancestry are concerned only with the bottom line. Hopefully the LDS will pick up the pace in getting scanned film up online and put Ancestry out of our misery.
Oh dear. Add this to all the wildly inaccurate Ancestry trees that are copied over and over. It is making a mockery of genealogy, both traditional and genetic. No wonder I have taken so long to decide whether to add a public tree at all.
Agree. Agree. Agree. The inaccurate trees almost made me crazy. And yes, genealogy has been taken in a new direction — into the twilight zone–and I wonder if the truth will ever be recognized. I, too, will never add a public tree. It’s good to hear from fellow sufferers.
Roberta, your rant just gave me an excuse to unsubscribe from your blog. Yes, Ancestry did probably oversell the concept but I scored one out of two on new ancestors. Not bad for a batting average.
It seems to be very popular among “professional” DNA genealogists to bash Ancestry. It’s true that they don’t give you the tools that other sites do but my contention is that most genealogy hobbyists don’t give a rip. They do remain, however, the big fish in the pond.
The New Ancestor discoveries actually solved a mystery in my half-sisters line. We knew she had a Nancy J. Bell, born 1843 in Casey County, KY in her line, but could never tie Nancy to one of several unrelated Bell families in Casey County at the time. The new feature DNA matched my half-sister to both Joseph Abner Bell and his spouse Nancy Carrie Allen, so it appears we may have finally figured out who Nancy’s parents are. Now If I can ever get my DNA results back from FTDNA, I might actually be able to use the tools they offer to find out more exciting things, but for right now I am pleased and anxious to investigate some of the other matches that Ancestry has suggested.
For anyone who is absolutely certain that a DNA match is false and could not possibly be correct, I remind you that marriage is not a guarantee of DNA surety and that men and women have been “messing around” on each other since the beginning of time. It turns out that the man who raised me was not my biological father and the first indication I had was when I took a DNA test at Ancestry.com. A year after I got the results, my 86 year old mother confirmed the fact. Repeat: Marriage is NOT a guarantee of DNA purity. If you receive a suggested DNA match result that seems odd, but matches the same geographical area(s) your family comes from, you should seriously consider the match as at least possible.
I agree with you 100%. However, in my case, I’ve confirmed via triangulation these ancestors with the exception of the Coates surname – and it’s past the 6 generation mark.
Thanks for a great post Roberta. I received a “no ancestors yet” notice – just as well I guess.
When Ancestry announced a new VP in charge (as I remember) of marketing the genetic genealogy division I expect they thought I was being snarky when I suggested he and his underlings take a course in beginning genealogy methodology and in basic genetic genealogy. I was totally serious. (He had, after all, come up with the shaky leaf idea and I am tired of seeing millennium file matches rather than the billions of useful records Ancestry brags so much about)) They just don’t get it – and are too dense? uneducated? bottom-line focused? to understand what they have and how to use it.
My DNA Circles are already FUBAR since I actually have several in GEDMatch and know where and how much we match – or don’t match. This is just another race to the bottom – wasting huge amounts of money on smoke and mirrors rather than a chromosome browser so we could find our own damn ancestors.
I want to cry when I see all the possible useful matches for determining brick-wall ancestors who won’t upload to GEDMatch or FTDNA. A simple chromosome browser could be so useful – and well worth the money I spent on the test. Instead all I am is disgruntled.
Roberta: I had a similar experience today with Ancestry. They found a new ancestor for me, a Martha Patsy Shipley. Since I know my Shipley ancestors fairly well, I knew the most recent common ancestor was not Martha and was never Martha. I looked at the family trees of my potential matches and realized they were a mess. The Shipleys were scrupulous about using family names, thus every generation has an Adam, a Richard, and a Benjamin. The Richards are particularly problematic. As you may know, the Tennessee Shipleys are known as the “Disconnected Shipleys’ since they probably belong to the Maryland Shipleys but the link isn’t exactly clear.
The descendants of Martha Patsy Shipley are struggling with this issue and have conflated several Richards & Benjamins and have Martha born in Sullivan Co TN even though the Richard they have selected/identified as her father never lived in Sullivan Co Tn.
I have Shipleys but if we linked where the other Richard Shipley is, it would be more generations in the past than DNA can test. If I could see how many centimorgans we share, I could probably identify the shared ancestor, probably one of the Richard/Benjamins who migrated to Sullivan Co Tn or one of their sons. This link would be within the ambit of DNA testing. I appear to be the only ‘disconnected’ shipley that they match but there should be others. Interestingly, I suspect this false link could, if pursued, help descendants of Martha Patsy Shipley to identify the correct Richard & Benjamin.
However, I am not a descendant of Martha, although she could be a sister to one of my Shipleys. But she is not an ancestor & her husband is not at all related to me. Very misleading and not helpful!
Candace Cross-Drew,
When you spoke about the Shipleys, you hit the nail on the head about the usage of family names. I have several DNA matches through my grandmother’s Maryland Shipley line. If you are interested to talk more about the Shipleys, we can talk off-line via email. My GEDmatch kit # is A336194 (actually, let me give you my maternal grandmother’s kit # M702845. My email will be listed over there.
Cheers,
Mark Muir
I was alerted to your comments by a cousin (whom I know personally). I am an old-time researcher and gave up on Ancestry about 2 years ago because of the mistakes on trees. Before I left Ancestry, I tried to contact the mistaken tree-posters to ask them about their sources, they either did not reply, or they replied “One World Tree”. I realized at that point that Ancestry was not worth my time. So I did not get involved with the DNA circles, etc. I feel your pain.
According to the new ancestor hints, my grandmother has suggestions that she’s descended from people she’s definitely not descended from.
It seems to be biased because 12 of 15 people who come from the actual common ancestors are from one daughter. It’s suggesting that my grandmother must be descended from that daughter’s husband and his family that she isn’t related to at all just because she matches 9 of the 12 people in that branch. She matches so many of the other branch since my grandmother is the closest descendant to the the actual shared ancestors and therefore seems to carry more of their DNA for more distant cousins to match. Even if it turns out that she’s connected to the daughter’s husband farther up the tree, she’s not descended from that husband, so it’s still wrong.
I was so excited by what this product could be, but it’s turning into a total failure from my perspective. Their video promo for it actually promotes the idea of not needing to do any research to back up their claims, and that’s clearly not the case based on what I’ve seen. Without research, I wouldn’t know just how they were trying to steer me down the wrong path.
Vocabulary! Does Ancestry really not know what the word “ancestor” means? Cousin, relatives, match – all would have been better and not so misleading.
I was also given false ancestors. I was given “New Ancestors” born c1848. All my lines are documented to before 1800. This new “technique” is a mess and will mislead many newbies in genealogy.
Joyce
PS Roberta…thank you so much on all you have written on the Youngers of Halifax County, Virginia. I descend from Alexander Younger through Thomas through Elizabeth (married John LeGrand). I have Palmer, Chandler, Lax, Younger and Owen lines from Halifax. 🙂
Very good article- it is exactly what I’m thinking! Had 2 ‘ancestors’ suggested to me- neither of them can possibly be mine– I looked through the matches and realized EXACTLY who our common ancestor was- it is a close 2nd great grandparents match– They were both from Norway- that is the ONLY connection we all share– from that point our trees go in various different directions- so the ‘supposed ancestor’ cannot be ours
My personal view is that Ancestry are out chasing the $$$$’s and have forgotten about it’s clients, everyone or at least most of us are related at some distant point in the past, just wait till some clued in executive wakes up to the fact that we are very closely related to every lifeform on the planet, then for a measly US$99 i might get the awesome information that i am related to the rose bush in my front garden, really Ancestry has lost the plot, can i recommend they sack everyone above the position of cleaner and start again, such a shame for a once very good company.
My husband had one of these to a male that was married twice. The true match was upstream 3 generation on the second wife’s branch.
Was Diedamia Lyon listed as a “Match to DNA Circle” or “DNA Match” on the list of people in the DNA Circle? In my view, those listed as “Match to DNA Circle” are not confirmed DNA matches. That label is nothing more than a shaky leaf, signifying a hint. The hint may relate to the person I am researching or it may not. It’s up to me to do the research and figure it out.
I can echo the preceding comments in that I received my new found Ancestors announcement and realized it was wrong and in examining my match’s trees, I discovered other surnames that we had in common.. Again ancestry provides the glitter, but no gold.
Roberta very good article! What a cloud of readers with some very good comments. I also received “Ancestor discoveries” for myself and wife which seem to make no sense —I’m hoping to be able to cross-check chromosome info with these “discoveries” on another site. I don’t understand how Ancestry could not be aware of the large number of “false positives”.
I think Ancestry’s new creativity is some type of April Fool’s joke, and worse than unnecessary. The cousin matches in descending order, with or without shaky leaves, are sufficient to initiate appropriate research into the family trees listed (where they’re not private or nonexistent) The DNA Circles add a few more hints but cause some confusion, and now this…..why? To cause us to research blindly into unrelated families? It’s especially upsetting to us adoptees who have yet to establish confirmed pedigrees and will take any hint as ostensibly helpful. This will just result in time wasted climbing the wrong tree.
Regarding the comments from people who don’t like you “bashing” Ancestry.com. My experience with them is that they accept trees without having people “document” their information. So many people want information without the work that goes into it and will take whatever information they see and blindly copy it. Ancestry is FULL of incorrect family trees. Now they are taking this incorrect information and using it in conjunction with questionable DNA testing results. It’s the “big fish” as one person put it because in my opinion it’s mass market geneaology for people who don’t care if it’s accurate or not.
Thank you Roberta for this excellent post about the new Ancestry tool which is so misleading to their testers and gives no proof to those connections.
Ancestry.com give your DNA testers a chromosome segment browser!!
Ancestry needs to get smart and fire it’s entire marketing team. What a farce! They gave me two new ancestors from North Carolina, both born in 1847, and all my line from this period are all well documented in Ohio and western Pa. Ironically, they don’t have me in any in any Ancestry Circles at all!
I fear it is nit the marketing team that is to blame. This is the fault of Ken Chahine and Katherine Ball. He VP and she head of the science end who clearly woukd not listen to more experienced genetic genealogists or the larger community. They promised a better mousetrap (better than a chromosome browser). They get an F for effort and an F on execution and an F for FAILURE!
I can design a proces that will give you a correct ancestor 10% of the time and no DNA is required.
I hope the blogosphere takes them out behind the woodshed and places moustraps on each of their fingers and toes! Let them feel OUR PAIN and OUTRAGE!
Ha! I wrote this after you wrote yours, but before I read yours. https://digginupgraves.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/ancestrydna-has-now-thoroughly-lost-its-mind/
Thank you Elizabeth! Mr. Obediah Pierce also appears in the shadow box for New Ancestor Discoveries for one of the accounts I manage at Ancestry. My reaction was “who the h…” is this, since there are no known Pierce ancestors at all. Unfortunately I believe that Obediah Pierce is just a red herring thrown out there to add to all the other confusion New Ancestor Discoveries is generating.
Just another example of the chaos and confusion Ancestry is now flooding us with!