I know this runs counter to our internal motivation for genealogy, but sometimes we need to pause our genealogical research. Taking a break from cognitively challenging tasks like correlating DNA evidence and documentary research gives our subconscious time to process the vast amount of detailed information and complex relationships between data points. As a marketing … Read more
Imagine finding a DNA match who has the surname you’re researching within their family tree, and their ancestor is a known descendant of your 5x great grandfather, who you have yet to identify. If only you knew this was the match you’ve been waiting for to break down that stubborn brick wall. Well, this is … Read more
I am honored to be a part of RootsTech 2025 with a presentation on Y-DNA testing strategies. Whether or not you have attended RootsTech, you can watch my prerecorded session on my YouTube channel, or the RootsTech 2025 website at no charge by logging into FamilySearch. There are also a great number of other online … Read more
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
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