‘I thought all my family was from Cheshire but a DNA test found a long lost cousin’

MyHeritage DNA matches members with distant relatives around the world and uncovered some fascinating details about my family history.

I don’t know much about certain branches of my family tree, so I’ve always been keen to do some digging and see what I can uncover. I do know one side of my family has been in and around the same Cheshire town for around 200 years, while another came down from a small Scottish village on the Isle of Lewis.

There’s even some compelling evidence suggesting I’m related to a certain ‘orange’ President – and not that distantly either. To try and find out more I ordered a DNA test online from MyHeritage DNA and found relatives I never knew existed.

Access to the service is currently more than £50 off when customers use the discount code MyDNA by 11.59pm on December 21. This provides a DNA test kit and a 30-day free trial of the whole platform for £25 – down from £79 – plus free delivery.

MyHeritage says it has access to 37.4 billion historical records and boasts a DNA database of 10 million, so chances are many people will reveal some interesting results. After receiving the test kit, one has to simply rub the swap against the inside of the cheek for 60 seconds, before breaking off the end in a secure vial ready for posting to the laboratory.

It felt a little daunting at first, the risk of doing something wrong and damaging the sample, but there’s clear, step-by-step instructions and it was actually completely straightforward. After sending off my DNA sample there’s a three to four-week wait for the results, during which MyHeritage sends regular email updates on its progress.

When I received confirmation of my results, MyHeritage found I had matches with more than 19,000 people across the world, including the UK, Australia, Canada and Denmark. All this from my tiny bit of DNA.

Of the matches on one’s profile, the site displays the most probable relationship and the quality of your shared DNA. This includes the percentage of DNA you share, the number of shared DNA segments and the longest shared segment – in layman’s terms, how closely related you are.

Now clearly not all of those 19,000 members will be close relatives, but I was surprised to connect with a distant cousin on the first try. On the MyHeritage website, members have the option to send and receive messages to each of their matches, allowing them to share more details on any potential connections.

Within a couple of days, I’d received a message from a man named Dave, who asked if I have links to certain English cities to figure out if we’re connected. The information he gave meant nothing to me, so I passed it along to my grandmother, herself a keen family tree tracer.

As it turned out, Dave and I are in fact distant cousins, sharing a great, great, great, great-grandfather who lived on the Isle of Lewis in the 1800s. There’s still some research left to do so we can fill in the gaps, but it’s an interesting start.

So far, I’ve only spoken to two of my possible connections, but each of these include links spanning generations and continents. It’s easy to see how the hook of uncovering your ancestry and finding long-lost relatives can become addictive as one goes down the MyHeritage rabbit hole.

Another fascinating aspect of the site is the breakdown of one’s ethnicity in percentages, which revealed that – as well as a large amount of Scottish and English, I’m actually part Danish, Dutch and Norwegian. There’s also 1% French thrown in for good measure.

When signing up to MyHeritage, it asks for basic information of one’s parents and grand-parents to begin forming a family tree. Using this, combined with information provided by my grandmother, I was able to build my family tree going as far back as the 1700s.

One niggle I found with the site is that, after receiving my DNA results, certain information can only be seen behind paywalls. This means members must pay for premium subscriptions to unlock details such as the ‘ancient history’ of one’s DNA, full historical records and health information based on genetics.

Similarly, viewing automatic ‘smart matches’ between one’s family tree and that of another member also cost extra, although the subscription tiers start at an affordable £4.92 per month (was £7.42). However, with the current deal of the 30-day free trial, members can unlock the complete site for a month.

But even without these extras, MyHeritage DNA offers a fascinating exploration of one’s history. While it unsurprisingly didn’t confirm my Trump connection, I can already feel myself gripped by the prospect of uncovering more previously unknown branches of my family tree, of which I’ve only scratched the surface.