Ancestry: Family History & DNA 4+

I can’t complain about the amazing range of relatives I’ve discovered going back centuries. But sometimes the hints I get are a little frustrating, because my tree will tell me that “Joseph Smith” is the father of “Sara Brown” while the hints show that Sara is the daughter of “David Jones.” And often it’s hard on the app to navigate your way back to the more remote branches of the tree.

That being said, if you’re lucky enough, as I am, to have two parents going back to pre-Revolutionary days (who happen to be light-complected), and suspect that your parents might be distant cousins, you can sometimes find out they are, and also discover Jewish nth-degree great-grandmothers; darker-complected cousins; pastors and poets and actors; Mary Queen of Scots; a slave overseer for Thomas Jefferson 😔; figures such as Robert E. Lee and Martha Washington; Irish criminals deported to the Americas; and an assortment of French Huguenots by way of the British Empire.
Your husband might have the DNA test confirm that yes, despite a Greek name and an immigrant from Germany, he is nearly half-Jewish and is attached to storied family fur-trading company owners from Kastoria in Greece who immigrated to the US via Germany.
And your children won’t have inherited the same percentages of genes as their siblings. Viva la difference!

Ancestry App New 2023 interface update needs work. My one star review is a reflection of this update. I am a heavy user of the app. I will list the following issues and include suggestions: Ancestor Profile Page issues Profile image for ancestor is too small Font size for Ancestor Name is too small The top portion of Ancestor profile is too small. Place of birth and death is no longer on top of profile. “Share your discoveries with story” takes up too much space. Suggestion: Increase Font size for Ancestor name Increase profile size for ancestor image Add Place of Birth & Death back to top of Ancestor profile Create a tab for “share your discoveries with stories” on top of profile, next to “Search” & “Hint” Tabs. Genealogy is already hard. These suggestions are important because most of the work on the ancestors tree is done by looking at ancestors profile. The name, place of birth and death are important factors when conducting research, which is why it should be on top of ancestor profile. These should be clearly visible. I understand that your team is wanting more people to add to the “Share your discoveries with stories,” which I applaud. However, adding a tab for it and moving it to the top of profile next to the “search” and “hint” tabs will make it more visible for users to notice it and create the stories. This tab can even be slightly larger than the others. Please strongly consider the above mentioned suggestions.

This information was apparently available and I believe that, but I also believe it is predatory to not make this explicitly clear. I am out $64 for an app I didn't like, and that's not because I'll have to figure out how to buy groceries this month because of that, it is the experience I've had with the product. I also realize that IS my fault, I agreed to something in which I apparently missed the clause about refunds.

But for a premium app in 2022, this really didn't impress me. Maybe I didn't give it enough time, but it felt limiting in what I could do. Perhaps it just wasn't intuitive, but I should have been able to find my great grandfather's "profile" and add him as a family member. I also couldn't figure out how to remove myself as the child of my step great grandfather which was frustrating and a tad upsetting - I'm not that man's daughter. I really hadn't looked at ancestry too much until now, heard about it for years though, and so with the policy I greatly disagree with as well as a dissatisfactory experience with the product, I don't recommend it personally. I believe it can be a great tool for those that are really dedicated, but I just find it too frustrating and unfulfilling to persisit with my own endevors.

Perhaps too it would be a much better experience with a DNA kit. I want to convey there may be a lot of reasons this seemed like a poor product to me that are just things I didn't do right.