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
Just a few days ago, Ancestry launched Enhanced Shared Matches as part of their Pro Tools. Ancestry.com customers need to pay $10 per month for Pro Tools in addition to their regular subscription rate. In this post, I answer the question, “is it worth the extra cost?” Enhanced Shared Matches provides additional information about the … Read more
Our ancestors left us clues in the documents they created to help us with our genealogical research. You just need to follow the “genealogical breadcrumbs” to discover that next elusive generation. However, sometimes the path they left is not so clear, and we can be deceived into jumping down rabbit holes of distracting, irrelevant, but … Read more
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