In 2017 I sent away for a DNA kit, I had seen Ancestry kits advertised on TV so decided I would buy one of those. My knowledge of DNA testing was zero. I had attended a presentation at Lake Macquarie Family History Group (LMFHG), which aroused my curiosity and showed me what was possible. I had already just started trying to unravel the mystery of my Robert Smith, so DNA seemed a daunting but logical step.

I went online and searched for an Ancestry DNA kit. Up popped one, which I noticed was much cheaper than what I had seen on TV but assumed it was US dollars compared to Australian dollars.  Off I went ordering my DNA kit to realise too late that  I had gone to the My Heritage site by mistake. More about this later. 

I then researched and found the intended site and ordered another kit this time from Ancestry. I did not have a full subscription to either site but was curious to see what both offered.

Ancestry offered many more matches and an enormous database. My Heritage, while still growing its base, had a strong European component. In 2017 I was a bit sceptical about the whole DNA thing. Was it all smoke and mirrors?  I did not have much in the way of a genealogical tree on the site. I was only tracing one 2x great grandfather so only had that direct line up on the sites. No other branches were included.

I remember getting the first email regarding my results and matches. Wow, Wow, Wow!!! I was no longer a sceptic. With a lot of the matches, I could see immediately where there were the family connections, and these were mainly with people whose lines I had not included in my published tree, so the information could not have been created from the information I had loaded, it had to have been from the DNA matching. I was converted but had to learn so much.

Both kits provided worthwhile information with a small variation in ethnicity. In the end, I was not unhappy that I did use both testing companies. I now know that in some instances, I can take my raw data from one of the paid sites and load it to the other but in those days I didn’t even know what “ raw data” was! 

I loved that My Heritage provided lots of DNA matches in mainland Europe, my focus area. Robert Smith was Danish by birth but not Robert Smith by name. The challenge was to find a common ancestor who could lead us to who his parents were.

My next challenge was that my brother and I have another 2x great grandfather who was also Danish. Our task was to sort out the Danish matches into maternal (Robert Smith’s) side and paternal (Carl Tronier’s) side. There was an enormous variation in the numbers of Scandinavian matches between my brother and I. Using the location filter on My Heritage he had seventeen matches, and I had nearly two hundred.

Our next job was to sort our matches into paternal and maternal sides for our Danish matches. My mother’s cousins, who are first cousins, once removed to my brother and me; willingly did DNA tests for us. Their results would then give us a benchmark for that side of the family. Since then, my first cousin on that family side has also tested her DNA.

On my father’s side, my uncle and my first cousin also did DNA tests so we could compare their matches knowing they fitted on the Tronier side. They had no connection, in Australia with Robert Smith’s family until my parents married.

From what I could see, my mother’s cousins family also had no Australian connection with the Tronier side as far as we knew. It is yet to be determined if they ever did have a connection in Denmark.

Now with some “control” kits in place, we started to analyse our matches. And… this is where Charlotte’s and our families connected.