FTDNA DNA test results and transferring to GENI.

FTDNA and GENI have teamed up and you can now transfer your FTDNA DNA test results to GENI for free. There is not charge to maintain a pedigree at GENI. For other GENI services the basic membership is $119.90 USD per year. See the comment below.

I transferred my Y DNA, mtDNA and atDNA (it appears to be Family Finder) to Geni and have some 15 mtDNA and atDNA matches. No Y DNA matches. It will give you a list of people who should match you based on your DNA and the pedigrees. With mtDNA, it seems to give very close readings for people who actually are far far away. So far I am told I have 3rd to 4th cousin mtDNA matches in Finland, Norway, and South Africa based on HVR1 and HVR2 matches. Not likely in my opinion.

Confusingly, GENI says you can transfer your 23andme or Ancestry atDNA results to GENI. The announcement with FTDNA did not mention atDNA, but my Family Finder results seem to have been transferred.

Also GENI is now affiliated to My Heritage. If you have less than 250 people in you pedigree at My Heritage there is no charge to use their service. If you want to add more people to the pedigree you must pay the basic membership price. At GENI you will often get notices of matches in the My Heritage document databases or pedigrees. If followed, these will take you to My Heritage and you will need to purchase a membership to see the information. As My Heritage charges separately for their pedigree and their document databases, this can get expensive fast.

On its own, My Heritage accepts atDNA uploads from 23andme. How these different DNA tests are going to work together in the databases is currently unknown.

There is no chromosome browser at either GENI or My Heritage at this time.

If you have known European ancestry since 1830 or so, this is probably a good deal. Otherwise it is not much use to US colonial descendants. YMMV.

Matches at 23andme, FTDNA, and AncestryDNA

As of tonight I have 1700 matches at 23andme; 486 matches at FTDNA; and 3630 matches at AncestryDNA. I have identified ancestors with about 20 people at 23andme; 16 people at FTDNA and approximately 100 at AncestryDNA. While I keep a spreadsheet of the chromosome and the match locations at 23andme and FTDNA, I can't do that with AncestryDNA until they release match locations later this year. This makes it difficult to determine who I have actually inherited the match from at AncestryDNA. As it is they do not show all of your shared ancestors when they provide the pedigree link. I have been entering all of the common ancestors for every match into my genealogy program. Ancestry really needs to make the match chromosomes, start and stop locations and centiMorgan (cM)lengths available to their customers.