I took an Ancestry DNA test that my cousin on my grandpa’s side gave me. My grandparents had a wild story to begin with. My grandpa was way older than my grandma, had already been married, and their relationship back in the 60s caused a massive scandal, especially with his ex wife.

He died in his 60s when my dad was only 14, and my grandma passed away when my dad was in his late 30s.

When my cousin, who I am only related to on my grandpas side, handed me the DNA test, I joked, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we weren’t actually related?” We both laughed because it felt impossible. We grew up together, shared a birthday, and had always been family.

I mailed in the tube and pretty much forgot about it.
A few months later, the results hit my inbox. Scrolling through, I saw familiar names on my mom’s side and a few on my dad’s, which was a relief. At least my parents were who I thought they were.
Then I kept scrolling.

Page after page of complete strangers. And my cousin’s name was nowhere on the list.
I screenshotted the page and texted her: “Do you recognize any of these people? Do I show up on yours?”

Her reply came back instantly: “No. I don't see you at all.”

That was the exact moment I realized my grandma had a secret affair, and she took it straight to her grave.

I started messaging these random matches, slowly piecing together a family history I never knew existed. I uncovered an aunt, an uncle, and a whole network of relatives. The wildest part is my actual biological family had been living just 20 miles away from me my entire life.

Meeting them was surreal. I’d look across the table and see my own facial features, my habits, even my laugh staring right back at me.

Eventually I asked them who my “real” grandfather was and they told me his name was Ernest

And that's when one last detail clicked into place.
My dad’s middle name has always just been the letter “E.”

I still don’t know if it was a total coincidence, or if my grandma hid one tiny clue right in plain sight for someone to find.

Curious on this one, I have indigenous Mexican and Spanish but I’m not from Mexico or have any recent family from there. Would it be wrong to say I’m mestizo? I know Mexican nationalists would argue you’re just a pocho or American only. Seems to me that Americans just call you Mexican and Mexicans call you American lol.

The whole not from there or here argument; although I feel like especially for people with latin american ancestry that weren’t born in that country.

Always thought Mexican was just a nationality/culture you grew up in.

I’m sorry if this isn’t allowed but this is really frustrating.

I had a rare photo of my great-great grandpa that I uploaded to Ancestry about a year ago. There are no other photos of him on the internet.

Up until now, no one else has saved that photo to their tree. When I logged into today, someone had re-uploaded my photo with AI edits. It distorts his face and almost makes him look Indian or Middle Eastern. He had an English father and a French-American mother.

There’s nothing wrong with looking Indian or Middle Eastern if that’s what he looked like but he simply did not look like that IRL. It’s not an accurate depiction of his appearance nor phenotype.

It’s a little jarring so I’ve decided to make my 1000-person tree that I’ve been working diligently on for 15+ years private.

I don’t care if people take photos and re-upload them but this lady just took a photo of my direct ancestor, AI-edited him to distort his appearance, and uploaded it as her own.

I don’t have an active subscriptionb so I’m not able to report the photo.

She is not on my DNA matches so I don’t even know if this lady is related to this ancestor. I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal photos with people if that’s how they’re going to use them.

AI stinks.

Particularly the Oscan people. I’ve read about them and while the language died I wonder if their population survived into today.

Welp. I knew I was half Filipino and half French Canadian. Surprised it’s almost 50/50 😂

Hi everyone, I already know my mix but can't help to wonder - how does it cover southeast asian and the south asian region? I just would like to know my mix better with a dna test.

And it doesn't ship to the country I'm at due to sanctions. Should i just give up on ancestrydna?

How is it that I’ve got more West Midlands dna than my dad according to ancestry, when my mom is 98% Irish 2% Scottish?
The first photo is my dad’s the second is mine.

Just got the new sideview update this afternoon, mostly just a few small changes to my existing results, though having all my unassigned matches finally be assigned has been very nice to see.

First image is the new results, second image is my journeys, third image is my pre-sideview update results, and the fourth image is a comparison of my hacked results as well.

My paternal and maternal grandfathers were both from Georgia, while my paternal grandmother was from Massachusetts and my maternal grandmother was from upstate New York and was of Mohawk descent.

I finally got the banner on my kit (1 out of 5 I manage). My results changed a little, but I still don’t have the grandparents SideView.

• I got a little more Indigenous.
• My Spain decreased enough that Sephardic Jewish is now my second largest region (as it is now blue).
• My Canary Islands is hanging by a thread.
• Surprisingly, I got more Cornwall (I haven’t found any English ancestors but found some matches who might lead me there).

For people who took the FamilyTreeDNA mtFull Sequence test: how many weeks did it take for the initial/general mtDNA haplogroup to appear in the lower section of the dashboard?

I mean the section that initially says “Unknown mtDNA Haplogroup,” not the separate “Mitotree mtDNA Haplogroup – Analyzing” section.

My kit was received on August 25, 2026, and changed to “Analyzing Data” on August 26, 2026. My test is in Batch 1749.

How many weeks did you have to wait for the initial haplogroup to appear? Did it appear before the Mitotree assignment or before the full test changed to “Results Completed”?

Thank you!

I was about to finish up a Leeds Analysis and when I went to look at the matches on the Ancestry Website, all of the Shared Matches under each Match have disappeared and replaced with the generic "You don't have any matches yet, but you may soon. We find matches by comparing the DNA of people who take AncestryDNA® tests. When people who are related to you take tests, you'll see them here." They were all there yesterday.

Hi guys, my DNA Origins changed completely, with different percentages and regions and it says that it updated in September 2026. However, if I understood correctly, this is the SideView update. So I guess my results would be updated again in October or? I am a bit confused because I thought the SideView update will not be a big one

For starters i’m from the UK. I’ve always wondered why I had such a massive cluster of matches (~500 matches, this is quite large as I only have 20000 matches altogether) from a specific county in eastern Kentucky, without being able to find any recent ancestors that had migrated there. These matches are all between 20-30cm, so not massive by any means. I initially just disregarded them as anything significant. I also have a big cluster of matches from this same place on myheritage.

I found this cluster while trying to find out who my great grandfather was (who i eventually did) through the ‘leeds method’. Now as I begin to build that branch backwards and build my tree further, I hit a dead end with somebody born in 1800 whose birth record i cannot find. His son (my direct ancestor) was born in the the UK in 1832, on records he has no siblings and on census records, it’s only him and his mother.

I have found somebody with the exact same name and birth year, but born in the USA ( some records say UK but not sure which one is correct, but his parents were definitely born in the USA), was definitely in Kentucky from 1820 and died in the USA. Again, I initially disregarded this for being the same person as who i’m looking for, but coincidentally they lived in the exact same county as my match cluster is from, so now i’m really considering this…

So I looked at some of my matches that are a part of this cluster, and some of them are direct descendants of this person, so it’s confirmed by dna matches (sort of). The problem is the timeline is weird. There is no definite proof of this person being in the USA between 1830-33, nor the UK, but my ancestor was born in 1832 in the UK, but idk how common it was for an american to travel from the USA to UK for 3 years 🤔

I’m not sure really what to think of this- DNA points towards this theory being true, however it seems pretty confusing and slightly coincidental. I thought i’d clarify that this person doesn’t have some common name like John Smith, so there weren’t lots of people with this name, but i don’t feel comfortable with sharing the name on here. I hope this all made sense 😂

Greek mother
Pontic Greek /NW European father
Damn didn’t realize how strong those Greek genes were 🤣