Update (Or Lack of Update) on Ancestry.com’s New Autosomal Test

In case anyone out there is burning up with curiosity on what’s happening with the Autosomal DNA test that I submitted to Ancestry.com the answer is – NOTHING (much.) 

On the first of March I received the below email from Ancestry letting me know that Beta testing would begin shortly.  Turns out it did begin, but only for a select group of people. 

When I emailed them after three weeks of waiting for “shortly” to begin, I got the stock answer that my sample was “in processing.” 

Trying to find more information out hasn’t been particularly easy.  However, CeCe Moore of the blog “YourGenetic Genealogist” has written several posts about this new product.  The latest post, “New Information onAncestry.com Ancestry.DNA Product,” is particularly interesting as it is a result of a phone conference that Ancestry held with several bloggers along with a private call she had made to the Ancestry.DNA team earlier. 

A couple of main points that interested me were: 

1.       1.  Of the current 22 ethnicities being tested for – Native American ethnicity is included.  This is good news for those of us who descend from the Vinton County Group.  (Although, because my own mixed race is so far back, it may not matter.)

2.     2.    North African ethnicity is also included but if I am understanding correctly that there is not yet a lot of detail in the African mixture as of yet.

33  3.    Because there is a reliance on information available on the family trees now on Ancestry for predicting ancestral origins, I am concerned that a lot of “bad genealogy” that I have seen on many trees, will lead  us astray. 

For example, if someone finds that he or she is a match with a Chapman Thacker descendent and in that descendant’s family tree it shows Chapman having been born in West Virginia (he was not!) that would send the “testee” looking in the area of West Virginia when he or she should be searching Louisa County, Virginia.

 4    4,   According to Ancestry.com officials, they said that they "will be getting it out to more and more customers throughout this year".    Which says to me, I could have a long wait to see the results.  Ah well, what can you expect when you are a Beta tester?