My Siblings' DNA

I coerced both my brothers into taking the Ancestry DNA test. Even though I now understand why we inherit different DNA from both our parents, I'm still amazed at the differences. Here is a spreadsheet with our matches where a common ancestor can be traced using our trees:

DNA Match Results

Ancestry first runs all of their DNA tests to identify your DNA, then they compare your tree, if you have attached one to your test kit, and identify other public and private trees for which there is a common ancestor. Matches that are unique to one of us are highlighted in yellow. It looks like I'm the odd duck of the family with six unique matches. Of course, we're related to everyone of these people in exactly the same way, but these are the cousins with which we share DNA.

To more fully understand how this happens, I found this blog post very useful.

By the way, my mother is very disappointed that none of our matches are to her side of the family. She doesn't want to hear that her father is one of my biggest brick walls and that what is known about her mother's side of the family disappears into the Russian steppes sometime around 1800 and therefore I don't have many generations in my tree to work with.