So on my birthday hubby picked me up one of those 23 and Me DNA kits. I started out by doing some research on which kits gave you what type of results.  I’m to trying to reinvent the wheel so I’ll link to a DNA comparison page that gives you all the pros and cons of each service.  I decided to go with 23 and Me because it offered a referral program that I could share with people AND 20% off any additional kits I purchased.  I was also concerned about the ability to be able to download my raw DNA and share it on other sites.  I’m a member of Ancestry.com however the note about having to be a subscriber for some of the results bothered me.  That is the main reason I chose not to go with AncestryDNA.  Hubby wanted to get access to the medical portion of this, however at this time the FDA has ruled that they cannot provide that.

The interface on 23 and Me left me a little confused.  When I commented on their Facebook page, they recommended that I review the example blog to fully understand the results.  I’ve yet to go back and have a look at that.

My overall results were 99.8% European.  That broke down to 34.2% British/Irish, 1.1% French/German and a whopping 56.8% Nonspecific Northern European.  I had a tiny 0.1% Sub-Saharan African. 

I then found another site that were really helpful with the DNA raw data.  One was GEDmatch.com.  I just uploaded my raw data from the 23 & Me test and for FREE it returned a bit more specific results on my ancestry.

Finally I found a third site that gave me the medical information that was missing from the 23 & Me kit.  Promethease.com will let you upload your raw data and provide you with a pretty detailed medical evaluation for $5.00.   They keep the data on the site for a limited time, but do allow you to download your results at the time of the submission which you can review at any time. 

The site offers a goodnews/badnews set up.

Here is my good news.

 

Screenshot - Promethease.com

Here is my bad news.

Each area can be drilled down and a lot of information is available.  The site owner recommends to check back periodically as new information from DNA is made available to find more information.

Over all it was a pretty interesting experience.  There was much speculation that there may have been Native American blood in my family.  This DNA test pretty much ruled that out completely.  I have 0% American blood.  I am pretty much completely European with a dash of African.  The European part is broken up with a bit the Irish.  According to the records that I have found up to this point, my maternal link to Ireland is Alexander O’Grady who was the father of William O’Grady born in 1680 in Donegal Ireland. 

Earlier this week I had contact with someone who matched my DNA on 23 & Me.  I introduced myself and we discovered that we shared a common paternal ancestor (Micajah Casey).  The very cool thing about this is that there was a story in my family about how my mother had slept with one of my father's uncles and that was who my "real" father was.  Tracing the DNA, with the assistance of my new 23 & Me DNA relative we found that our connection was through my father's mother.  That would mean that only one of her son's would have been able to pass that DNA to me.  NOT from an uncle (my grandfather's brothers).

Screenshot - Ancestry.com

Hope this information is useful!