Genealogy

If you have been considering buying a DNA test to use for genealogy, here are a few things to consider. First, have you found most of your ancestors through old-fashioned research? If not, DNA might not yield you much information. That said, even if you are adopted and don't know much about your birth lineage, with a lot of work, you can make some matches, and learn more. However, the more you know, the better you will be able to use what you learn from DNA. Next, what sort of test will help you learn the most? If you want to learn more about your "surname line," that of your birth father, his father, and on up -- then you want a yDNA test, and FamilyTreeDNA is the only place to get it. You will need a male of this line to do the test; daughters do not inherit their father's yDNA. Of course, you can test a male in *each* of your surname lines, but again, this only tells you about the male lines. You will want to test as many markers as you can afford; at least ...

Given the way that autosomal DNA tests for genealogy work, there are two things that are important for success in using that DNA data to find matches: finding your ancestors back to ten generations, and finding all possible descendants from them. I came to this conclusion after reading the excellent blog post, How Much of Your Family Tree Do You Know? And Why Does That Matter?   where the author says, whenever we make a conclusion about a particular ancestor or ancestral couple based on segments of DNA shared with a relative, we absolutely must address whether we do, or could, share other ancestors with that relative. The author made a nice little chart summarizing how much he knew, so I did the same thing. Mine is not as pretty, but here it is anyway: Key:   Generation: from me; Relationship: to me; Date of Birth: roughly averaged; Matches: description; # Poss. Anc.: total number of possible ancestors in each generation; # Identified: number of ancestors identified...

* Outreach - finding cousins and other relatives * Research - answering questions and solving mysteries * Paying respect - finding and telling the stories of those who can no longer speak All of these aspects of family history research have energized my interest in the past, and I'm liking the new tools available to support that. A few years ago I was fascinated by the new use of DNA in genealogy research, and have used 23andme, Ftdna, and Gedmatch. I started using MyHeritage because 23andme chose to use that site to display family trees. When MyHeritage offered a special deal ($99) for one year of access to their research resources, I bit. One feature I particularly enjoy is that when you find a person in, say, the census, the MH software queues up the rest of the family as well. You can quite easily not just link the family together, but also attach the source attribution to each of them. Another nice feature is their software matching each person in your tree to resou...

Mysteries and questions are what got me hooked doing genealogy, many years ago. My sister had found our great-grandfather in the 1900 Warren County, Iowa census, and with the help of a cousin, we found his will, since he died soon after 1900. But what was described in his will did not seem to match the family we had seen in 1900. And of course there is no 1890 census to consult, so real digging and thinking was required. And so it has continued. Every time I've gone back over stuff I've found before, I see it with new eyes, and it both teaches me to see what I didn't see before, and always also raises more questions. The latest: one of my mother's cousins was listed as a widow, living with her family of birth and young child in rural northern Missouri in the 1900 census. So of course once I found the name of her first husband, I searched for their marriage record and his death. And then I found him, apparently alive and well, living with his family, in the same coun...

It's been about a month since I gave up waiting and started "making something happen" on 23andme . I have 983 "DNA Relatives" there, and Gedmatch shows me my top 1000 matches. I've messaged all of the 23andme matches, with mixed results. First, only about one-third of the cousins have a name or profile that I can see on 23andme. Those people I have messaged by name, and if they have surnames and/or localities listed, I often mention those if they sound interesting or familiar. Many people have nothing listed in their profile but a name. Those folks without a name can be messaged, but it has to be generic. A few of those nameless people have accepted contact, and some "sharing", which is what 23andme calls comparing genomes. Of course sharing genomes is the whole reason I'm doing this, so it has been a lot of work just to get to starting line. For those who are not interested in doing this work to get matches, my advice is: use FTDNA or An...

I've loved the search for genealogy and my family's history since my children were young. I wanted to understand my roots, and why some of the difficulties my family endured happened, and how those events changed all those who were touched by them. I found young orphans, babies born before marriage, rape, and tragic death by fire among the more normal events. I've also found some family lines that are rather well-researched, which took away the challenge. For some years other projects took my time. Then, the yDNA tests became affordable, and I bought an Family Tree DNA kit for my dad for Father's Day. Because those "beginner kits" don't tell you much, and have far too many meaningless matches, I kept paying for upgrades, all the way up to 67 markers. This took his high-quality matches down to under 10, but as we followed up on these matches, we realized that this line of Cowans came from Stirling, in Scotland. The recorded part of the family went to t...