Rick T. Wilson, Ph.D. 
After the success of my Big Y-700 Video Learning Module Series, Genealogical Publishing Company honored me with an opportunity to review Roberta Estes’ new book titled, The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA: Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA. As a fellow genetic genealogist, I was eager to review Roberta Estes’ book. While I’m an “Ancestry first” person … Read more
You’ve done the hard work in identifying a genetic network and analyzing the matches (Part 5). Now comes the fun part — conducting documentary research. Not that the other steps were not enjoyable and were void of documentary research, but now we get to apply our prior DNA observations within new record groups and attempt … Read more
In genetic genealogy, the more matches we have, the greater our ability to make ancestral discoveries. Having more data points increases our confidence with the sub-clusters observed within genetic networks as discussed in the previous post in this series (Part 5). It can also help us prioritize our research efforts as we progress into documentary … Read more
In the previous blog posts, I defined genetic networks (Part 1), discussed the inclusion and exclusion criteria for matches within the network (Part 2), described how to find them (Part 3), and demonstrated how to efficiently review your matches’ family trees (Part 4). Now, I describe how to use Ancestry Pro Tools’ Enhanced Shared Matches … Read more
In the previous blog posts, I defined genetic networks (Part 1), discussed the inclusion and exclusion criteria for matches within the network (Part 2), and described how to find them (Part 3). Now, I demonstrate how to efficiently review the family trees for the shared matches within a genetic network to discover your unknown ancestors. … Read more
In the first two blog posts, I defined genetic networks (Part 1) and discussed the inclusion and exclusion criteria for matches within the network (Part 2). Now, I describe how to easily find genetic networks within your list of autosomal DNA matches. As in prior posts, I label these matches as A (test taker), B … Read more
In Part 1 of the Genetic Network blog post series, I defined genetic networks and provided several visualizations for the types of DNA matches forming genetic networks. I labeled these matches as A (test taker), B (match being viewed), and C (matches that match both A and B). As the Part 2 title suggests, there … Read more
If you’re not using genetic networks to evaluate your autosomal DNA matches, then you’re missing opportunities to efficiently mine your matches for ancestral clues. Reviewing your DNA matches can be overwhelming, and it can quickly become daunting to use them to confidently build out your family tree. But it doesn’t have to be this way … Read more
Getting your Big Y-700 DNA results from FamilyTreeDNA can be exciting, but it can also create anxiety. I’ve been there, too, and it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Y-DNA, which is passed down from father to son, is just as helpful or perhaps more helpful than autosomal DNA in answering your genealogical research questions. I … Read more
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming pervasive in nearly every industry, and genealogy is no exception. As genealogists, we wish to understand how to incorporate AI models, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, into our genealogy work. But, before we do, what can we learn from other industries that are already using it? As a marketing … Read more