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
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
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
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
Sometimes the solution to breaking through your own genealogical brick walls resides within the DNA of other people. You could wait around for that “other” person to test, or you could proactively search that person out. Constructing a research plan to find the living descendants of the family to whom you think you are connected … Read more
Have you been fortunate enough to trace one of your American ancestors back to the 1700s but found no records indicating where in Europe they originated? Oh, and what if you are “lucky” enough for this ancestor to have a common or occupationally derived surname, such as Smith or Miller, providing no clues as to … Read more