AncestryDNA Is $34 Through October 20: Why I'm Asking My Relatives and Friends to Join Me
AncestryDNA Is $34 Through October 20: Why I'm Asking My Relatives and Friends to Join Me
The kit is $34, plus shipping, until October 20. My cousin Melvin, Nica, and Chesca are already linked with me on Ancestry. Jian's kit is next. Here is why your family should be there too.
My cousin Melvin Perseveranda, Tito Maning's eldest, got his AncestryDNA results earlier this year, after I got mine. So did Nica and Chesca. We are all linked on Ancestry now. That leaves Jian. I bought him a kit, and he hasn't taken it or sent it in yet. Jian, this article is partly for you.
Ancestry is running its fall sale, and the kit is $34 through October 20. If you are a relative, a friend, or anyone connected to the Perseveranda, Camposano, or Manlangit lines, I am asking you to take the test and join us. I ordered mine in the November 2025 sale. Here is the case for it, including what the test told me about a guess I made from old family photographs.
Sale ends October 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET. Price excludes shipping.
My results split my 92% Filipino ancestry across three Philippine regions, but it was a FamilySearch parish record, not DNA, that placed Lola Rosita's baptism in Oas, Albay. DNA and paper records answer different questions. You want both.
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Ninuno — nee-NOO-noh
Ancestors: the people who came before us. Every kit in this sale is one more way to listen for them.
The Sale, Straight
Ancestry's sale ends October 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET. Prices below exclude shipping.
| Option | Sale price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| AncestryDNA kit | $34 (regularly $99) | Ancestral origins report and DNA matches |
| DNA + World Explorer | $35 | Adds records access, DNA by Parent, Regions by Grandparent, and Traits |
| DNA + All Access | $44 | Adds Newspapers.com, Fold3, and up to four additional accounts |
Read the fine print on the two bundles. The membership in each one renews automatically every three months, at $99.95 for World Explorer and $149 for All Access, until you cancel in Account Settings. The $1 introductory offer is limited to one per user and is not open to anyone who has already redeemed one. The $34 kit includes both the origins report and the matches. Ancestry says most results arrive within six weeks of the lab receiving your sample, and that can run longer when demand is high.
Sale ends October 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET. Price excludes shipping.
Why I Want You on the Tree
You can only match people who have tested. Every relative who takes the test adds a name that the rest of us can find. DNA matches are how I found a second cousin once removed on the Manlangit line, and how a message I sent to a stranger became a story about an adoption and the Manong generation. You can read more of those in the DNA archive.
Ancestry says DNA by Parent can show which side of your family your matches and origins come from even if your parents have not taken a test. That is a membership feature, but it matters for families where the older generation hasn't tested.
The paper trail is the other half. FamilySearch gave me Lola Rosita's full baptismal name and my great-grandparents' 1910 wedding record. DNA tells me who is connected. The records tell me how. A family tree needs both, and it needs more of us in it.
My Guess, and What the 8% Says
Here is what I expected. When I looked at the faces in our photographs, Lola Rosita's and the line she came from, I guessed we had Chinese ancestry somewhere back there. I had also been reading about the Out-of-Taiwan model of how the Philippines was settled. Then my results came back: 92% Filipino and 8% Eastern and Central China and Taiwan. The full breakdown is in my January post.
That fits my guess. It does not prove it. A regional estimate names a place, not a century. The percentage also doesn't say whose line it came through, and I won't claim it came through Lola Rosita until the records or more matches say so. Someone reading "China and Taiwan" on a screen could be looking at an Austronesian ancestor from thousands of years ago, a Chinese trader or settler from the centuries of Spanish rule, or both.
The leading account of how Austronesian-speaking peoples spread is the Out-of-Taiwan model. Genomic work on Taiwan's Austronesian groups continues to support an expansion out of Taiwan, and archaeological evidence suggests the farming complex began spreading from Taiwan into the Philippines around 4,200 years ago. But a 2021 genomic study of 115 indigenous Philippine communities found evidence of at least five waves of migration, and found that the ancestors of the Cordillerans split from Taiwan's indigenous peoples at least 8,000 years ago, before rice farming arrived. The authors say that contradicts an exclusive Out-of-Taiwan story. So the model stands as the leading account, and it is not the whole account. Large academic genome studies, not consumer kits, are what test these models. A kit gives you one person's regional estimate. I wrote about the competing models last July.
Even Jose Rizal Had Chinese Roots
If the 8% surprises anyone, Rizal is the best-documented answer. Genealogists trace his father's line to Domingo Lam-co, a Chinese migrant from Fujian who arrived in Manila around 1690 and was baptized in 1697. He took the name Domingo, married a Chinese mestiza named Ines de la Rosa, and later took the surname Mercado, which means merchant. His descendants went into farming and local politics, and the fourth generation produced Francisco Mercado, a prosperous tenant farmer and Rizal's father. The family became Rizal after Governor-General Narciso Claveria ordered Filipinos to take surnames from an approved list. Jinjiang, in Fujian, today has a Rizal Square honoring him as a descendant of the Ke clan.
Rizal's relationship to that heritage was not simple. The Chinese-Filipino businessman Alfonso Ang has argued in an essay that Rizal kept his distance from it, and he reads that as a product of the time, when many Chinese mestizos had stopped claiming their ancestry. That is the colonial order at work: names changed at the baptismal font and again by decree, and family memory changed with them. A DNA test won't hand you a Domingo Lam-co. It can tell you that a thread you suspected is there, and it can send you to the records to find out whose it is.
Jian, This One Is for You
Jian, the kit I gave you hasn't been submitted. Register it online, spit in the tube, and mail it back in the prepaid package. Ancestry says most results arrive within six weeks of the lab receiving your sample. Nica and Chesca are already on the tree, and you belong there with them.
What I'm Asking
If you are a cousin, a tita or tito, a kababayan from Oas or Ligao, or a friend who has wondered what your own results would say, take the test while the price is $34. Create your free account, then message me on Ancestry or comment below so we can link up. You stay in control of your data. Ancestry says you can download your DNA data, ask it to delete your results, or have your saliva sample destroyed, and that it doesn't share your name or identifying information with third parties without your consent, except as legally required. Some features need a subscription.
Decades from now, a granddaughter may open this page looking for where the Perseverandas came from. I would like her to find more than my guesses. I would like her to find all of us, matched and linked, with the records beside the DNA.
- Ancestry: AncestryDNA fall sale and FAQ (accessed October 7, 2026)
- Larena et al., "Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years" (2021), via PubMed Central
- Southeast Asian Archaeology: summary of the 2021 Philippine genomic study
- The genomic diversity of Taiwanese Austronesian groups: Implications for the "Into- and Out-of-Taiwan" models, via PubMed Central
- Experience Biñan: School of Dr. Jose P. Rizal site and museum
- Vera Files: "National hero not a fan of China"
- Journal News: Jose Rizal Square in Jinjiang, China
- PinoyBuilt: My AncestryDNA Results Through Filipino History · My Ancestry DNA: Journeys by Parent · Ancestry DNA Sale! Let's All Join
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J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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