"Brick Walls" & Research Challenges

In our genealogy course, the main method of research was done through the results we received from AncestryDNA. This worked very well for some students, especially those with European ancestors, but for me the tools that were helpful to many of my peers did little to nothing for my own family research.

Some of the ways Ancestry failed to help me include:

• ThruLines, an AncestryDNA service that helps connect people to possible ancestors using DNA matches and matching ancestry in family trees, provided me with an underwhelming ZERO suggested ancestors.

• The Ancestry Library has very little data (in terms of records) from South Korea and Indonesia, the two countries where most of my ancestors are from. It was also very hard to find and access records from these countries in broader searches on the Internet.

• I received very few Ancestry "hints" which give users vital records that match the ancestors in their tree.

Additionally, genetic tests for recreational genealogy purposes are not as popular in Korea and Indonesia...This led me to my most striking discovery: the extremely limited reference panel Ancestry has for Asians in their database.

Compared to the 1907 samples for the England & Northwestern Europe region, the Southeast Asia region only has 287 samples in Ancestry's reference panel.

According to Ancestry, I have 30% "Southern Chinese" DNA, but I am very suspicious of this number because Ancestry's label of "Southeast Asia & Southern China" is way too broad!

In Ancestry's reference panel, "Southeast Asia & Southern China" covers Guangdong, Guangzhou, Southeast China, Malaysia, Southern Central China, Thailand, Cambodia, Western Indonesia, Peninsular Malaysia, and even a few regions beyond this list!

The umbrella term "Southeast Asian" is way too broad and until Ancestry expands their sample size to be able to create distinct regions in their "Ethnicity Estimate," people with Asian ancestry should know that their ethnicity estimates may be misleading and are definitely subject to change!

See: https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/List-of-AncestryDNA-Regions#Asia & https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Reference-Panel