DNA testing is all about solving genealogy puzzles!
After we test, we need to fully understand what those test results are telling us.
To help, I need to know about your genealogy dreams! Who are you dreaming of finding, and what tools do you need to understand better to achieve that goal?
I have some articles planned for 2024, but I’d like to know what topics you’d like to see covered.
Of course, I always cover “breaking news” in genetic genealogy. I’ll be covering RootsTech as well.
Here are a few articles that I have in the works for 2024.
- DNA and Pedigree Collapse
- Big Y March of the Ages, by Dr. Paul Maier from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference
- Highlights from Ancient Connections, by Dr. Miguel Vilar from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference
- Meet My Extended Family – Leveraging Y DNA Testing, by Bennett Greenspan from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference
Focus
To help focus my efforts, I made a list of my own “genealogy dreams” by reviewing each ancestor and asking myself what I need to know about their life. For example, do I have the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups for each line? How can I figure out who their parents are? Do I have representatives of this line in every database? How can I address each of these things?
I’ve already started my 2024 research from a focus list I created. So far, I’ve:
- Upgraded two cousins who took a Y-DNA test to the Family Finder, so I can use those two tests together. I need to know how closely related those two men might be, and who they match in common.
- Upgraded a cousin to the Big Y-700 from a Y-67, hoping to discover when two lines from our common, unknown ancestor, split. That may help me know where to look, and when.
- Encouraged a 95-year-old cousin to upload their Ancestry DNA test to FamilyTreeDNA and join the appropriate surname project. They did! Now we can compare their results within a project, which may very well solve a long-standing mystery of an unknown father all the way back in 1809! Fingers crossed!
- Asked several cousins to also upload their DNA files to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. You’ll find free step-by-step instructions for how to do that, here.
It’s Your Turn
What mysteries are you focused on solving using DNA? Who are you searching for in your tree?
Please note that already published articles are available by using the search function on the main DNAexplain blog page, here. Those articles may prove quite helpful.
What topics would you like to see covered in 2024 that will assist with your journey?
Here’s to a wonderful 2024 and finding lots of ancestors!
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DNA Purchases and Free Uploads
- FamilyTreeDNA – Y, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA testing
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- AncestryDNA Plus Traits
- 23andMe Ancestry – Autosomal DNA only, no Health
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Genealogy Products and Services
- MyHeritage FREE Tree Builder – Genealogy software for your computer
- MyHeritage Subscription with Free Trial
- Legacy Family Tree Webinars – Genealogy and DNA classes, subscription-based, some free
- Legacy Family Tree Software – Genealogy software for your computer
- Newspapers.com – Search newspapers for your ancestors
- NewspaperArchive – Search different newspapers for your ancestors
My Book
- DNA for Native American Genealogy – by Roberta Estes, for those ordering the e-book from anyplace, or paperback within the United States
- DNA for Native American Genealogy – for those ordering the paperback outside the US
Genealogy Books
- Genealogical.com – Lots of wonderful genealogy research books
- American Ancestors – Wonderful selection of genealogy books
Genealogy Research
- Legacy Tree Genealogists – Professional genealogy research
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Hi Roberta, This might not be a full article but my stepdaughter’s latest autosomal DNA assessment from Ancestry showed her as 50 percent DNA from her father and 50 percent DNA from her mother (my wife), but it showed countries in her heritage that were not in either her mother’s or father’s DNA. Why?
Thanks,
I would love to see case studies (brick walls) that your readers have in their families and how you would approach each mystery and possibly solve it or at best show your thought process to get as far as possible. Oh, and by the way, I am most willing to volunteer my most vexing mystery that involves Y-DNA and an unknown father in the 1750s. 😉
My wish is the same as in past years. Roberta, please think about collecting and organizing some of your classic, foundational articles into a book collection!
I love all of your blogs and posts. I just wish I could understand half of it. I love the DNA painter info too and get monthly emails on that. Are there folks who are reputable that can tell a person what to give them so they can create and interpret the chromosome painter information for for them?
Yes, I recommend Legacy Tree Genealogists. There is a link to them at the bottom of each article in the affiliate links.
I have no male lines to test, can you find your male line GGF some other way?
Dear Roberta, I find DNA as important as you I hope and I have one BIG question that is related to the collection of DNA after death and, specifically, after cremation: Is it all possible?
No luck after creation (I did get an undertaker to get a swab sample taken of my father after death but before aquamation–anyone can buy the necessary collection kit at drugstores). In your case, you can make a collection of artifact DNA–hairlocks/hairbrush. I have worked with the folks at TotheletterDNA in Australia–unfortunately without success so far, but I’ve been trying to get results off envelope seals and stamps from the 1930s so the DNA is very degraded. Check out their site for details. I had heard that MyHeritage was also planning to get into the artifact DNA business a few years back, but don’t know if they did.
I do not recommend working with those companies yet. Many people use the sample and get no results. Plus you cannot upload your matching databases other than GedMatch, and matching is unreliable.
I have a conundrum and maybe it’s something you can discuss. I have two lines where the paper trail is lacking. One has little DNA to help solve it. The other line has good DNA but contradictory evidence. My conundrum is whether I can call line two solved using DNA to address the contradictions/gaps. Both lines daughtered out and mtDNA is also not useable. Autosomal is the only option. Does the unresolved line need to progress first, especially in the DNA area.
Hi Roberta, My question is this — how do you know that you have really found the ancestor for whom you have been searching, using genetic genealogy methods? How much proof do you need to verify that the connection is real (2nd great grandparent level), and that it is OK to actually stop searching and work on a new person? Thanks
2023 was a huge breakthrough for me as, after doing a Y DNA test 20 years ago, I finally got a match to shed light on my paternal line NPE (the new match was recruited to do Big Y by a fellow genealogist I had been collaborating with, but it was still an unexpected delight!). So I volunteered to co-administer the relevant surname project (Kennedy, it’s a pretty big one) and recruited and helped fund 3 more Big Y tests, and am trying to find a mitochondrial descendant in the line to confirm the ancestral couple. Your posts on how Big Y testing works was a big incentive for me to work on that line and another that led to major breakthroughs. For 2024, I am building onto LOB’s comment below, and onto a post I added to one of your extended posts on the Miller family from 2016! I have a Slaughter ancestor from Bedford County PA, and some autosomal matches that point to a Miller family from the same county. So, I would welcome a reprise on your Miller detective work in the county, since so many trees have confused men who have the same name, similar dates, and limited records, and the Miller surname project seems to be an unruly beast (can we encourage people to label their ancestors using Familytree or wikitree IDs rather than names and birth years?)….
Sigh. Those Millers.
Thank you for all of your work and posts! My biggest problem is figuring out the YDNA mystery of my BROWN ancestors. My 2 brothers tested through FTDNA at the 111 level only to discover that there were no matches to Brown in the FTDNA Brown project, but did significantly match several other surnames. I worked with the profile managers trying to sort it out as well as conducted extensive research, but to no avail. Then one of my brothers and a few of the 111 matches upgraded to the BigY. But still no answers. It seems we need more men to test, but at least for my lineage, the male line from my 2nd great grandfather died out and don’t know of any brothers to pursue their descendants. I believe the same to be true for the other 111 and BigY matches. All suggestions to solving this mystery would be most welcomed.
I’ve got Browns too. I sympathize.
“Is it all possible?” should read as “Is it at all possible?” Apologies!
Hi Roberta, when will a tool be available that generates your tree straight from your dna?
Don’t I wish I knew! But great topic.
I am looking forward to your story on pedigree collapse. I think that is what happened on my Norwegian side.
Hi Roberta, I would like to know how easy it is to find out when and where in the UK the first instance of a particular surname occurred. I have spent a lot of time creating a tree starting with my late husband’s biological father, and I traced his family back to Bodmin, Cornwall about 1550, but was shocked to find that there were no matches with his surname in my son’s yDNA test. However when I upgraded my son’s yDNA from 111 Markers to BigY700 one of the FTDNA admins emailed to tell me (in his words) that my son’s yDNA was “as Scottish as haggis”. So I have a surname, that of his closest BigY700 match, who has a Big Y STR Difference of 2 of 582, and a Genetic Distance of 3 steps, and was born in Scotland.
Robyn in New Zealand.
Hi Roberta … a few things come to mind.
I’m working ties to the Cane Creek MM and related Quaker Faith based locations … I’m sure that endogamy is playing a role in what I’m seeing. What are the best methods to understand what we are experiencing there from an autosomal relationship direction?
Real examples of Y-DNA at the Y-700 level (or variations) teasing out relationships by looking at the novel variants between multiple tested descendants.
How to use and interpret RECloh events within a line for genealogical purposes. In work on/in CANTRELL / CANTRALL we have a good example trying to tease the “chicken and the egg” relationship out within at least one line.
When the right test person says no to testing …. to pursue options or to move on to other areas of inquiry ?
Testing advances … such as testing of hair. I have a lock of hair identified by name and signed by the son in an envelope of a multi-great grandmother born 1820’s. Is it simply a novelty or can it provide something of real value genealogically and how to pursue that ?
State of the State with mtDNA as a tool for genetic genealogists.
John F. Smeltzer
Hello Roberta, I want to use my spouse’s DNA results to find cousins who may have researched a common line back farther than I have or who have sources new to me. I am also looking for a “tutor” to help me get off Square One in understanding the data.
Start with the closest matches and work your way back. I wrote a “first glances” series? Have you read those? For assistance, I recommend Legacy Tree Genealogists. There is an affiliate at the bottom of each article
I’m glad you are planning an article about pedigree collapse. I hope you include a discussion about how much shared DNA matches can be expected to have when the pedigree collapse is only in their line. I am trying to confirm 5th great grandparents. My line back to them does not include pedigree collapse. However, other lines of descent from the possible 5th great grandparents have multiple cases of 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 2nd cousins once removed, etc. marrying in different generations.
The article is about how to calculate that. I devised a shortcut but it’s surprisingly complex. That article will be forthcoming soon. I need some quiet time to finish it and I need to finish my RootsTech prep first.
Fantastic! Thank you!
AI seems to be the latest new thing to help with genealogy. I would like to get ideas where it might be helpful. I have read about using it on old script to read each letter and word to create a readable document. That would be very exciting. What about other applications. Could we use it on our auto clusters or some information we have to help us see a connection or an area to research.
That’s a great question. I have taken 5 AI classes and at some point it might be helpful for that. What would you like for it to do with your clusters or the accompanying spreadsheet? Any ideas?
I would like to understand how to figure out how my cousins fit in my tree when they share 25-40 cM and there are few trees to help me. Roberta I’m not sure who else could explain it as well as you!
Great question.
OK, here’s another suggestion that seems like a natural fit for this year–more updates about mitochondrial DNA research! As one example of something that could be explained, I just uploaded whole genome results to YFull, which included mtDNA, and it reports a detailed haplogroup (T2f1a1g) that matches two others with a time to more recent common ancestor of 125 years (325-50 with 95% CI). FTDNA only reports T2f1a1. What’s is YFull doing that FTDNA isn’t, and will the Million Mito project narrow that gap? How much stock should I place in that TMRCA estimate (I can trace this maternal ancestor back to 1801 or 120 years before the tester, but know of no siblings). More generally, it seems that mitochondrial-based research could be aided by providing more linkages to cooperative trees like those at wikitree (even if imperfect). Thank you!
My Y-DNA results posted to familytreedna (37 markers) show two males matching 36 out of 37 markers; their surnames match mine, but they are not directly related to me in the last 200 years as far as I can tell). Even at the 12-marker level, the two aforementioned males are the only ones out of 2,783 matches who share my surname. Also, back to the 37 marker level, there are only six other males within three or four steps in distance. I’ve yet to understand what the Big Y would tell me that I don’t already know. Thoughts?
I would like to understand how to use Fold3. When I search on a common name I get too many hits.
I have the very usual problem of people not replying, or being clueless when they do. Only some of my approach techniques work. What do you know that works? And if you have to approach instead via their social media, is there a way of doing it without appearing too stalkery?
(Having said that, one of my cousins who did reply but was clueless, has come up as a match last year through someone else’s bridging tree. We are both very happy about that.)
I hope someone else has some ideas because I’m particularly bad at the social media aspect of this.
Thanks, as always, for the range of topics you cover. Two possibilities here:
1) Please keep us up-to-date about the ongoing development (or lack of development) of artifact DNA.
2) Are there segments that resist breaking up or resist recombination? A segment of something like 70cm came to me from my great-great-great-grandmother Nancy Holloway. Of all my segments, it brings the greatest number of matches, so not-small parts of it have also come wholesale to distant cousins. Well over a tenth of my matches on 23andMe are/were on this segment. (That may be in part or in large part owing to 23andMe’s algorithm for choosing which few matches to show me.) The segment turns up something like 320 matches on Gedmatch. So far as I have been able to trace the trees of matches along its length, we descend from the C17 intermarrying Holloway and Dillard families of King and Queen and Caroline counties VA, so the segment may come intact from even further back. The longest stretch of this segment I share is 58.1 cm through Nancy’s parents John Holloway and Elizabeth Hudson, 6th and 7th generation ancestors. A second persistent segment of about 58cm comes to cousins from a ninth generation ancestor James Overstreet through separate wives.
I have recently got my Big-YDNA results. Incidentally it took FTDNA four months to produce these. However what I would really like is a step-by-step guide to using the results to get one’s money’s worth from them -Mike
Have you written an article on the new chromosome painter in ancestry?
I’m curious as to how accurate it might be. Since my paternal side is Visually Phased to the great grandparent level on my paternal side, I’m going to see if the chromosome painter results make sense.
I have not because I haven’t seen a use case for it because it doesn’t have segment information. Having said that, DNAPainter has a tool to estimate the segment locations from the image. You might try that if you’re painting your segments. Or you could upload your results to FamilyTreeDNA who provides ethnicity segment information.
Thanks Roberta. I have my segments painted using GDAT.
I would like to see an article or two on the advantages of MitoYDNA and how to get more out of that site.