There’s around 40 odd company’s out there offering a wide range of ancestry tests, there are even companies that specialise in your pets DNA ancestry! Here's the full A-Z list of tests you can buy on-line.
The important thing to remember is they all use the same basic technology, but look at different parts of your DNA to answer various questions. So once you’ve set yourself a budget, you need to ask yourself why you’re doing it, what you want/hope to find out, and choose the best test for you based on the answer to those questions.
Why?
I’ve never been big on genealogy although I’ve thought about doing this for a while. Maybe because I’m geek who loves technology; I’m too lazy to do the leg-work genealogy requires; perhaps it’s an age thing (the older you get the stronger the urge to connect with your roots?); I wish I’d spent more time listening to my parents family stories when they were alive; I went through a phase as a teenager believing I was adopted; or a combination of all of the above and more.
The things I know and don’t know about my family and hope the test might provide some answers to can be summarised as follows
Motherline ancestry
My mother comes from a long line of whiting makers (the precursor of whitewash) with an ancient Anglo-Saxon surname Turp. It’s believed to be a corruption of the old English word thorp, meaning village or hamlet, so would have been used to identify people from a specific location. It has its own coat of arms and motto ‘Super antiquas vias’ (on ancient tracks).
It’s predominately found in South-East England which makes sense as many years ago a distant relative in America shared the Turp family tree with my mother. Our earliest known relative Thomas Turp married in 1760, the year the industrial revolution began, suggesting the Turp family had lived in and around Sudbury Suffolk here in the UK for at least three centuries. I recall my mother was quite disappointed at the time as she believed there was a German connection more recent than that suggested by an old Anglo-Saxon name.
If you look at the global distribution of Turp, it seems a number of people bearing that surname migrated to American, Canada, and Australia, nothing surprising there. However the largest concentration of the name and its derivatives occurs in Turkey. Could this be a result of the crusades or perhaps that mysterious Germanic connection my mother spoke of is actually Turkish? Perhaps the DNA test will reveal something our America cousin missed?
Fatherline ancestry
Information on this side of the family tree is much more limited. According to my father, my Grandfather, who grew up in Sora a small town in central Italy, stowed away on a ship to Southampton around the turn of the 19th century as he had no desire to spend his life as an Italian peasant. He then walked to Birmingham where he made a living selling ice-cream, roast potatoes and chestnuts, a tradition my father followed. Incidentally when my father retired from the trade in the mid 1970’s he was the last independent street trader in Birmingham at the time.
All the available records seem to support this. My Grandfathers WWII ID card shows he arrived in the UK in 1897 and he is listed on subsequent census records as living in Birmingham as a mosaic worker. If you look at the census record there appear to be several clusters or family groups of Alonzo’s living in the UK, there’s one cluster in Leicester for instance. It’s unknown if we’re related to any them.
However it’s also possible my Grandfather may have arrived in the UK by an alternative route. His ID papers show he had an Italian passport issued in Sora, issue number 130. Local historian Carl Chinn’s paper about Italian migration to Birmingham entitled ‘We all come from Sora’ states the first immigrants from Sora to arrive in Birmingham arranged accommodation and work for the young sons and daughters of the families back home before bringing them over. They were in effect gang-masters and it was an exploitative relationship with them pocketing most of the money their compatriots earned for board, lodging and cost of travel to the UK. Although the practice had declined somewhat by the time my Grandfather arrived in Birmingham it ensured most Italian communities across the UK were linked back to specific communities in Italy.
Sadly these links don’t appear to have been maintained in my family’s case, suggesting my Grandfather may indeed have run-away from home, so there’s no family tree established beyond him back to Italy. Perhaps I should also go to Italy, visit Sora, and see if I can trace any connections?
There are also rumours of a branch of the family in South America, including a famous concert pianist. Interestingly in terms of global distribution there are a significant number of Alonzo’s in South America.
I also had this romantic(?) notion when walking Hadrian’s Wall a few years ago, while eating my sandwiches in the ruins of Milecastle 97, I was sitting in a castle once inhabited by a Roman ancestor tasked with patrolling the wall. Although I doubt a DNA ancestry test will confirm that!
Which test?
Given all the unknowns I’ve opted for a combined test covering
Family Ancestry
An estimated breakdown of current family ancestry today, placed in its historical context showing how it’s evolved through history. The test I’ve chosen also shows where within Britain and Ireland my ancestry comes from as well as globally.
Motherline Ancestry
This traces my motherline from the point in Africa when we all shared the same DNA until recent times, and claims to highlight any famous people who share the same motherline group as me.
Fatherline Ancestry
This traces the paths of my male ancestors from the point in Africa when we all shared the same DNA until recent times and again claims to highlight any famous people who share the same fatherline group as me.
I’ve also opted for the results to put into a personalised book as a family keepsake and sharing my results with other users of the service and their partner organisations which offers the potential to find family matches around the world.