I recently stumbled across a 2022 FamilyTreeDNA blog post offering suggestions to improve your Y-DNA age estimates for the time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA). I was intrigued and decided to give the recommendations a try. Some of their suggestions produced a more immediate change, while others were a bit more difficult to discern … Read more
Have you received your Y-DNA test results but don’t feel like you learned as much as you thought you would? This is how I felt, too, until I immersed myself into the scientific details of FamilyTreeDNA’s Big Y-DNA test and designed an “experiment” to refine my test results. The experiment is replicable and can help … Read more
For genetic genealogists, the promise of new DNA matches is both exciting and a necessary component of our research strategy. However, a recent demographic study finds that the number of living kin for the average person will reduce by 38% in the future suggesting we may have fewer DNA matches. The demographic shifts are not … Read more
We are all used to making New Year’s resolutions, but what about genealogical New Year’s resolutions? Can we set ourselves up for being more productive in 2024? To make good genealogical resolutions, we need to approach the process from an informed position keeping in mind the skills and personality traits that make for good researchers … Read more
We’re all looking for the perfect holiday gift for our loved ones, but what if the gift could be enjoyed by you as much as by them and perhaps others as well? A Y-DNA paternal line ancestry test is the perfect gift for someone who has everything – and by everything, I mean they already … Read more
We’ve been told not to rely on segments/matches having small amounts of shared DNA. This warning is true, but in genetic networks, small matches can act like a compass and direct us where to research. I’m not talking about small matches below 6 to 8 cM in length. Testing companies like Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, and 23andMe … Read more
Ping Pong is the perfect metaphor to describe how to use both documentary records and DNA to break down genealogy brick walls. The strategy begins by analyzing evidence from documentary records and then using your findings here to guide the analysis of your DNA matches. Next, use the patterns observed within your DNA matches to … Read more
Our DNA holds the answers to many of our family history mysteries, and simple tools like Google Maps can help make the task of breaking through these brick walls easier. See how my cousin learned the identity of his great grandfather.
#ancestry #familyhistory #ancestrydna #genealogy #ancestors @ancestry
How to break through genealogical brick walls using an EGGOS search strategy with shared or in-common with DNA matches. #ancestry #genealogy #familyhistory @ancestry
In the previous blog post, I introduced the research objective, which was to use Y-DNA testing to determine whether five Wilson men, who were all living in a small rural Meigs County, Ohio town, were brothers. The hope was that if I could do so, I would be able to cast a wider genealogical net … Read more