Genealogy

 Chapter 4: Genealogical Applications for mtDNA Exercises. All the questions refer to diagrams in Appendix A: page 136 1. Which descendants shown inherited the mtDNA of Mary Ann (Smith) Jones (2) : 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 21, 22, 33.  Mary Smith passed her mtDNA to all her children; 3, 4, 5 . Her son 3 Albert, did not pass his mtDNA to his children. His children got their mtDNA from their mother, 6. One daughter, Mary 4 , had only a son, 11 . That son had mtDNA from 2, but did not pass it to his children. They instead got mtDNA from his wife, their mother, 15.  Her daughter Emma, 5 , passed her mtDNA to her daughter Emma, 12 . Emma 12's daughter Mandy 21 gave the mtDNA from 2 to her daughter, Mandella, 33 . Emma Crocker 12 also passed mtDNA from 2 to her son Max 22 . Max had a daughter who had the mtDNA from her mother, 28.  2. Ira Gerball 20 died in Vietnam. ... Which people on the chart share the same mtDNA as Ira for purposes of identifying his remains?  Three peop...

For quite awhile, I've been cautioning people that 23&me did not want genealogists, and was not serving us. Now although they still hide the tools, they are available. First, many people have now "opened" their profiles, allowing matches to see what the match IS. Of course this is the default on all other sites. And I've figured out how to see all those opened matches on your matches page:  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/#people . Sort by Open Sharing . Now for the fun stuff. Go to  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/dna/  and search for your first open match. The code controlling the search is a bit funky, but keep at it and search for the rare part of the name, rather than the common part -- "hiram" rather than "smith". One can compare two other users as well as with yourself. I do that before before writing to people, so I can give them a bit of information. Be sure to scroll down below the simplified chromosome map to the...

This book by Alondra Nelson is only tangentially about genealogy and family history and sheds no light about how to use DNA to do research. It is about how our recent knowledge of the genome has fundamentally changed how we view facts about our ancestors. The modern popularity of genealogy research began with Roots as a mini-series being televised in 1977. Before then, genealogy in the US had been mostly an upper-class pursuit, by white people. Of course, the LDS (Mormon) church had long been encouraging their members to document their ancestry -- also a mostly white project. Roots changed that, and now there are large numbers of black Americans looking for their ancestors both black and white, slave and free. And many want to go beyond the racialized labels assigned by the culture and the records and the African continent to find ancestral countries or tribal groups of origin. Research both archaeological and "coroner's method" removal of graves in the "Negro ...

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 ...