I took DNA test a few years ago. I am of Italian descent (my surname Laury is of Italian origin), as well as Swedish, German, Austrian, English, Scottish, French, European Jewish, and Irish.

Hi, I am interested in mine. I think it's partly due to the fact that I grew up far away from most of my extended family, so I needed a sense of continuity of family identity, a sense of knowing who I was.

Luckily for me, much of the work had been done by other cousins, and I was able to add their big jigsaw pieces to my basic family tree. Every so often, a new bit of information comes up, such as the Christian names of the great great grandfather in Ireland whose surname I bear.

I started my family tree when I was 15 for a school project. I continued to update it throughout my life and now it's all over the place. I actually discovered a long-lost cousin on 23andme and we're in contact now.

For tracing, I've gone back as far as the early 1800s with accuracy.

Posted by: @cobalt-jade

I actually discovered a long-lost cousin on 23andme and we're in contact now

I actually have met several people through Ancestry DNA and 23andme who are distant cousins.  It's fun hearing family stories about ancestors.  

So my family has had an interesting time looking at our genealogy. One of my great-uncles actually did a lot of research decades ago and wrote it all down. So Mom's side of the family was easy to trace since he had already done so much of the work before my older sister took over. We've made it as far back as the 1600s.

Dad's side has been a little bit harder. My sister was able to put together Grandma's tree without too much difficulty thanks to ancestry sites. However, Grandpa was adopted in an under the table deal in the 1920s so it wasn't until the past couple of years that we were able to figure out who his biological parents were. DNA testing was great for this! At this point I think Dad has taken five or six different types of genetic tests for various sites. We have found a few cousins who were willing to talk to us and we think we've managed to piece together what happened, but we'll probably never know for sure. As for his adoptive family, they immigrated from Germany in the late 1800s and none of us speak German so we weren't able to get very far there either because we can't read the birth certificates and other documents.

Lately I've picked up the hobby of working on genealogy, as well. In fact, one might say I've a bit of an addiction . I have an account on FamilySearch and try to contribute to my tree in any way I can. Though, most of the work has already been done by members of my extended family.

I like to take a look at record hints (which is when the system has matched a record to your ancestor for similarities between their profile and the person on the record) and attach the records to my ancestors if I find they do, indeed, match. I've done quite a lot of that the past month. Actually, I've attached 882 records to people in the tree just this month, which is why I feel justified in calling it an addiction . While doing this, I've discovered through evidence in records and added 32 ancestors to my tree.

Now I'm moving away from attaching records and sorting through record hints, and, instead, I am taking advantage of the volunteer opportunities provided by family search and indexing records so that others can attach them to their trees and use them to find ancestors and information about them. I highly recommend this to anyone who has some spare time, enjoys family history work, and can read cursive on documents (and even if you can't, not all of documents are in cursive)  .

Posted by: @rainyweather

 

Now I'm moving away from attaching records and sorting through record hints, and, instead, I am taking advantage of the volunteer opportunities provided by family search and indexing records so that others can attach them to their trees and use them to find ancestors and information about them. I highly recommend this to anyone who has some spare time, enjoys family history work, and can read cursive on documents (and even if you can't, not all of documents are in cursive)  .

I did this for awhile with Ancestry years ago.  I think it's a very worth while project.