The following post was another that I wrote for The In-depth Genealogist’s blog. I am writing it from the perspective of someone who has done DNA tests with three different companies and who runs a Y-DNA surname project.

DNA testing for genealogical purposes has never been more popular but it is not without its drawbacks. All too often, people bemoan the fact that potential DNA connections have provided no family information to their testing company of choice, or that they fail to respond to emails. There is however a more serious issue. Somewhere in the fairly small print most, if not all, the testing companies warn that those taking a test should be prepared for the results not being what they are expecting. In our excitement, how many of us read, mark and inwardly digest the implications of these caveats? What can possibly go wrong?

Nowadays, for many, it is a DNA test that sparks the research trail but others are experienced genealogists. For those serious researchers, before that test is taken, there has been time, money and most importantly, emotion invested in a particular family line. What happens then when the DNA results suggest that there is no genetic connection to that family at all? If we think, as we scrape our cheeks or spit in our tubes, about the possible outcome at all, have we really come to terms with how we would feel to no longer be a Smith but a Jones? Even if we are intrigued or excited about the thought that, somewhere in our ancestry, a Mrs Smith has had a child by someone who is not Mr Smith (Mr Jones perhaps) this will not just affect us. How will our siblings, parents, cousins, others who share this hiccup, feel? These relatives may or may not have been particularly interested in our genealogical delvings, they may even have been discouraging. Do we tell them and if so how? Will they be interested or appalled? Remember that it may be very difficult to pinpoint the precise point in our ancestry where the genetic pedigree deviates from the documentary. It could be 60 years ago or 600. It might be easier to accept a 6 x great grandmother going astray than a grandmother but in either case, we have lost that genetic link to a family that may have been ‘ours’ for decades.

What about those of us who run surname DNA projects, perhaps with the aim of proving that documentary family trees for a rare, potentially single origin, surname are genetically linked? Hopefully we explain to those who test that they may not match the normal profile for that surname but I suspect those testees all go ahead without really expecting it to apply to them. When non-matching results come back how do we break the news that they do not have a genetic link to that surname at all? To have tested in the first place they presumably feel some sense of belonging to the genetic line. I guess we can approach this in a similar way to those who have been adopted into the family but then it is not usually the family genealogist who has to break the news that someone is adopted and in most cases, there are now options for adoptees to identify their birth parents. Unless our non-matching DNA reveals a connection to a very unusual surname, the chance of finding the birth father of the product of Mrs X’s indiscretion is remote – even supposing that we can narrow down which Mrs X went astray.

When I took my first test, my head was prepared for a non-match, I am not sure that my heart was equally prepared. Fortunately for me, my slightly dodgy documentary direct paternal line was confirmed by DNA. How would I have felt if it was not? If I am honest, I really don’t know. I would be very interested to hear how others cope with DNA dilemmas.

This image is a work of the National Institutes of Health, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.