holy cow. i sent a message to my nearest dna match. she is adopted.

[myccrider]

36. Yeah, Ancestry has been getting bad,

but I started my tree there in 2008, when they were still pretty good and a whole lot cheaper.

[Edit]Have you tried the community help board? It doesn’t always work, but I’ve resolved a couple of problems with advice from there. I had a more serious problem once and did get a human tech eventually. [scrambles around at Ancestry] Ah, here’s the number! 1-800-615-6560 9am-11pm Eastern, every day. It was still a pain to get through all the hoops, but it got fixed.[edit]

I have sooooo much info, records, pictures, stories, links, etc attached to the 7,000+ person tree that it would take a monumental effort to download it all, then attach all the individual docs/pics/stories/etc to the correct people in my computer program. My computer program syncs with Ancestry but doesn’t download the actual docs, just the Ancestry links to the docs.

Is MyHeritage easy to use? Been thinking I should at least upload my gedcom there, might get some new family info. I have uploaded to 23andMe, but their family tree function isn’t great, imo. Also uploaded the tree to GEDMatch and FamilyTreeDNA. Most of the people who contact and share info with me do it through Ancestry, though.

They have a new feature called ThruLines where they use an algorithm to match DNA results to their millions of family trees and suggest common ancestors with those 3rd-6th cousins (often removed 2 or 5 times ) that you can’t generally find how you’re related to unless you have main surnames in common. I’ve blown through at least half a dozen brick walls using it and have another half dozen that are intriguing possibilities, but need more facts/docs to confirm. Records can be garbled or misinterpreted or get destroyed or never exist, but DNA doesn’t lie, to paraphrase.

In one case, I found that an ancestress (4th great-grandmother to me) that all our family researchers thought was one person turned out to be someone else that no one even suspected. I ended up in a spirited discussion with a family researcher from that new family who wasn’t convinced we were related (we didn’t have DNA in common, too distant to be likely). They finally had to admit that there was no other plausible explanation for me and other cousins on my side sharing DNA with descendants of the brothers and sisters of my newly discovered ancestresses parents!

My new cousin has contacted her biological parents and has been warmly accepted. Hers was a somewhat unusual story in that her biological parents married each other after she was given up for adoption, so there was no big reveal to, or angst or rancor from unsuspecting spouses. My aunt and her husband were shocked but ultimately thrilled to again see their only daughter and her children, they have two sons.

She had already gone through all the steps that someone upthread suggested, so she knew her date and place of birth and had her DNA in all the usual places. She said her adopted parents were wonderful and had let her know she was adopted from an early age (so no shocking revelation), her childhood had been great, but she just couldn’t release the drive to find her biological roots.

Best of luck to your cousin who was adopted. I can only dimly grasp the way adoptees feel, but wish all to find what they need to know.