Our goal as genealogists is always to learn what we don’t know and reveal anything we should know.

I’m going to share the evolution of four tests, purchased exactly twenty years ago. I haven’t cherry-picked these, so you’re getting the raw story. Successes, challenges and regrets, plus a few hacks to help you out when you’ve hit a roadblock.

I’m also sharing how I work around some issues – like tests that haven’t been (and can’t be) upgraded to Big Y tests.

DNA testing has come a long way from an infant science two decades ago, when we were tentatively establishing a new industry – one that today has evolved into a staple for serious genealogists.

On New Year’s Eve, 2005, exactly 20 years ago, I was doing the same thing I was doing at midnight in 2025 – genealogy.

That was long before the days of social media and chat groups, so some of us geeky types were discussing our genealogy research on the now-obsoleted RootsWeb e-mail list.

I Was Planning for 2006 Travel

I realized that I was going to be traveling during 2006 and would be asking several men to take a Y-DNA test, so I should purchase several kits while they were still on sale.

Then I got a bit giddy when I realized that I could actually celebrate the New Year by making those purchases right at midnight.

And I did too – I hit it right on the dot.

I mean, for a genealogist, what better way to celebrate? Right?

What I didn’t know is that, quite by accident, I managed to score kit 50,000. That seemed like such a milestone!

And now, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. How is that even possible?

After I went to bed in the wee hours of January 1, 2026, I decided I needed to check in on the kits I purchased on that fateful New Year’s Eve, 2005, and see how they are doing. What were my goals, aspirations and expectations? Did we accomplish them then? Have we now?

What has happened in the past twenty years?

Let’s take a look, beginning with kit 50,000.

Kit 50,000 – Mr. Miller

Mr. Miller is my mother’s second cousin, so the perfect person to represent our Miller line.

Goals and Questions:

• Do we descend from Johann Michael Miller born in 1692 in Germany? At that time, we did not know his birth location, and only knew that the line was German. Later research would add two additional generations and place his grandfather, Heinsman Mueller in Schwarzenmatt, Switzerland before 1655.
• Does the Elder Jacob Miller (born about 1710 in Germany), a Brethren minister, match the Johann Michael Miller line? They were both Brethren, clearly knew each other, and were found in some of the same locations. The answer is conclusively no; the lineages are not the same based on both STR and Big Y-700 tests.

2005 – 12-marker test – $99

• Initial 2006 haplogroup – R-M269 – about 6,500 years old
• 2025 haplogroup – R-BY56132 – about 350 years old, obtained via DNA match to another Miller tester

That a HUGE difference!

2006 matches – no Y-DNA matches.

Remember, this was early, with less than 50,000 results in the database, compared to just under 700,000 SNP-confirmed testers today, not to mention probably double many more STR-only testers.

Haplogroups for STR testers are predicted based on marker values and are not SNP tested or confirmed. The Big Y tests, SNP tests and SNP packs which are no longer available, and haplogroups assigned through Family Finder are SNP confirmed.

2025 matches – 2 (yes two) 12-marker matches, both Millers. At 25 markers, he has 7 matches, all Millers.

I created the Miller-Brethren Project in September 2006 for any Miller line that was of the Brethren faith, hoping to differentiate between families with the same names in the same place.

2009 – upgraded to 67 markers – $148

In 2009, I upgraded Mr. Miller to 67 markers and recruited two other Miller males from our believed line. They all matched at 25 markers and above, confirming the lineage to our ancestor, Johann Michael Miller/Mueller. Whew! That one was close, because there was a great deal of consternation and confusion about these lineages.

2011 – added Family Finder – $289

Mr. Miller’s haplogroup today, confirmed by Family Finder, is still same as his predicted R-M269 from his STR results. Unfortunately, the kit has never been upgraded to the Big Y test, and I desperately want our personal lineage haplogroup. However, all is not lost because he matches several males from the same lineage who have been assigned to haplogroup R-BY56132 through the Big Y-700 test.

Every haplogroup is publicly viewable in Discover, but testers can see additional information and features when they click through to Discover from their own account – including the Match Time Tree, Globetrekker, and more Ancient and Notable DNA Connections.

Discover provides an informative Haplogroup Story, an overview before viewing the dozen reports available in the left sidebar about that haplogroup’s history and lineage. You can take a look, here.

From Discover, we learn that the Miller haplogroup was born (or branches off from) its parent haplogroup about the year 1650 CE, so when the Millers were still living in either Switzerland or Germany. If we match males from either of those locations, they would probably match us upstream at R-BY115568. Their genealogy would certainly help our genealogy!

Ancient Connections, which are ancient DNA matches, extend beyond surnames, revealing connections to both the Yamnaya and Moros cultures and shared ancestry with Bronze Age Balkan burials.

Viewing the Ancient Connections tab, we learn that remains related to or upstream of our haplogroup were excavated in Albania, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, the North Banat and Mokrin in Serbia, and Macedonia. The closest genetic connections are shown first.

New Goal: Would love to test and match with Mueller men from Steindwenden, Germany, Schwarzenmatt, Switzerland, or anyplace near either location.

Kit 49,999 – Mr. Estes

Goals and Questions:

• Do we connect with the Abraham Estes (c1647-1720) lineage?
• Was there more than one early colonial Estes line?
• If so, were they related?
• Did our line come from Kent, England?

2005 – 25-marker test – $150

2006 matches –  54 12-marker matches

2025 matches – 326 12-marker matches

2006 matches – 4 25-marker matches – one to a known cousin, two more to other Estes males

2025 matches – 30 25-marker matches, including several Estes men

Crucial – this tester matched an Eastes male who lived in Kent and whose ancestors never left. This confirmed our oral history and early research suggesting that Abraham Estes’s origins were in Kent.

• Original 2006 haplogroup – R-M269 – about 6.500 years old
• Current Haplogroup – R-L151 – about 5,000 years old, SNP confirmed from the Family Finder test
• Match Haplogroup – R-ZS3700 – about 250 years old obtained from STR match to multiple Big Y testers who shares same ancestor

In 2012, we added the Family Finder test for $199, which answered questions about whether multiple half-siblings were actually descended from a close relative of the tester. Family Finder also allowed people descended from this line, but who don’t carry the Estes Y-DNA to confirm their relationship to the Estes family.

This tester has not upgraded to the Big Y-700, but does match at the STR level with those who have taken that test.

Today, the Eastes male from Kent who subsequently upgraded to the Big Y-700 forms the base of the Estes family genetic tree, and others in the American lines form descendant branches based on the Big Y-700 test!

This includes some men whose genealogy we can’t yet connect vis the paper trail, such as kit 491887, shown in lavender below, but we know where he connects genetically. We were able to place him due to his Big Y-700 test results.

Thanks to the man from Kent whose results appear in the pink column, we know that both the Massachusetts and the Virginia immigrants descend from the Estes line in Kent, based on haplogroup R-BY490.

The Massachusetts line carries only R-BY482, so R-BY490 occurred in the generation between Robert b 1555 and Sylvester b 1600. Because the descendant of Sylvester’s brother Robert, born in 1603, does NOT carry the BY490 SNP, so we know exactly where and when it was introduced.

In Abraham’s lineage, two additional branches have been discovered. R-ZS3700, and within that haplogroup, R-BY154784.

All of this structure was built beginning with kit 9,993, followed by 49,999 (for my line), which is not shown in the chart above because there is no Big Y test, but whose STRs do match with kit 9,993, our very first Estes male to test.

Discover shows that R-ZS3700, the defining haplogroup of the Moses Estes lineage, kit 9,993, was born about 1750, which is within the genetic range of about 1600 to about 1820. Moses Estes, the man in whom this SNP originated, was actually born in 1711. The genetic tree closely matches the genealogy tree.

Ancient Connections reveals that we share distant ancestors from about 4400 years ago with Iron Age burials in Scotland, Cambridgeshire, Denmark, Dorset, Cornwall, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire, and Iceland. In other words, the Estes lineage has been in England for a very, very long time.

One of the upstream parent haplogroups, R-S252, dating from about 4500 years ago, was found in an Anglo-Saxon burial at Cliff’s End Farm, a mortuary and ritual Bronze Age site in Kent, England.

Cliffsend is only about 10 miles from Deal, where many Estes family records are found, and about 5 miles from Sandwich where Abraham Estes, the immigrant, was a weaver, next to the village of Worth, where he was married in 1672.

Kit 49,998 – Mr. Moore

Goals and Questions:

• I was desperate to test a male from my Moore family in Halifax County, VA, and was very fortunate to locate Mr. Moore when I visited in person. I had to work on his genealogy, but once I was able to connect him, he was excited to test.
• Could we connect our line with other Virginia lines, or eliminate them from consideration?

2005 -12 marker test – $99

2006 matches – 37 12-marker matches, two of whom were Moore men. One was a man I believed to be from my James Moore and William Moore line, and one we suspected, but really didn’t know. Many records from that time period are missing, and people were moving to the next frontier, with no connection to where they came from.

Mr. Moore’s matches, combined with his genealogy, confirmed what we thought we knew, but we still needed more.

• Original 2006 haplogroup – J-M172 – about 28,000 years old
• Current Haplogroup – J-M241 – about 8,600 years old, obtained from Family Finder
• Match Haplogroup – J-Z631 – about 2,950 years old, obtained from matches to other Moore men who took the Family Finder test
• Big Y Match Haplogroup – J-BY136349 – about 1,300 years old, obtained from a 111-marker Moore match to a non-Moore man who has taken a Big Y test

In 2012, we added Family Finder for $199, which provided invaluable matches to known Moore lineage family members, including Mr. Estes, kit 49,999. That makes perfect sense, since they are 4C1R.

2025 matches – 276 12-marker matches, of which five are Moore men, none of whom have taken the Big Y-DNA test.

One Moore match, who has not responded to emails, shows his paternal Moore ancestor as having been born in Scotland.

Three of Mr. Moore’s matches whose haplogroups were determined by Family Finder are J-Z631, which is closer to the present time than Mr. Moore’s haplogroup.

Why might that be?

Different autosomal DNA testing chips were used by different vendors at different times. Mr. Moore and the three other Moore men all took a Family Finder test at FamilyTreeDNA, but at different times when different chips were in use. That’s probably why the haplogroup assignment is different. The other reason could be that one of the SNP locations was missed in the autosomal DNA test. The haplogroup designation from the Family Finder test is a recent freebie, so was never actually intended to be a feature.

That’s all fine and dandy, but I STILL need a Moore Big Y tester to reveal more information about my line.

Workarounds for No Big Y Testers

Without a Big Y-700 Moore tester, is there something else we can try to obtain at least a somewhat more refined haplogroup?

Perhaps.

Without at least one Big Y-700 test, the next two things can do are:

• Hope that someone has included at least some genealogy for you to follow.
• One of the 111 marker matches will help by sharing if they have any Moore matches at that level. Remember, this kit, 49,998, only has 12 marker matches.

In this case, there is one match with a tree, but I hit the same genealogical brick wall that they did.

They, and now I am stuck with John Moore, born between 1851 and 1860, possibly in Sullivan County, TN. He was married to Mary, Polly, Mollie (take your pick based on the census and death certificates) Whitaker, who died between 1900 and 1910. John Moore died on September 25, 1936, in Sullivan County, TN, with several children and a brother named Bob Moore who lived in nearby Bristol listed in a brief obituary. I’m doing the “quick and dirty” tree thing, here, hoping to perhaps track his Moore back further than I have my own so we can connect – but so far – no cigar. I’m not finished yet, but this one is challenging. I’m always hopeful that I’ll find some hint about where James Moore (c1718-c1798) came from before Prince Edward and Amelia County, VA.

Eliminating Other Moore Lines

I certainly don’t have as much information as I want about my own Moore line, but I do have something. How can I use this to eliminate other potential Moore lines?

Checking the Moore Surname Project, I use the browser search and located the group of my James Moore testers.

These six men are candidates for Big Y upgrades.

I can also use the browser search to locate other groups of Moore men that have tested and I know we’re not related to.

For example, here’s another group of Moore men that we aren’t related but – but here’s the catch. This is the “other” James Moore that appears in Halifax County, and whose land is located right across the road from my James Moore. I kid you not. I could have SWORN these two Moore lines were the same, but they are not. This line track back to Thomas Moore born in 1720 and who married Mary Farrar. Using genealogy and projects, combined with what we do know, we can eliminate many possibilties.

Ok, let’s set genealogy aside for a minute.

Working With Alternative Haplogroups

What else can we do if we cannot upgrade either our tester or convince other Moore men to upgrade to the Big Y-700?

If a tester has higher level STR matches, meaning 67 or 111, and they match anyone with a Big Y-700 test, they will likely be in the same area of the genetic tree, but probably not the same branch, and possibly not within hundreds to the low thousands of years. This approach is an extremely poor substitute for the Big Y test and should never be used unless there is absolutely no other alternative. Think of it as sitting proxy at home, watching the Jumbotron on your TV, versus sitting behind home plate in the ballpark. It will do if you have no other choice.

That said, let’s see what we have. Our Moore Family Finder SNP is J-Z631, which is about 2,950 years old.

Our J-Z631 haplogroup story shows that the majority are found in Germany, followed by England, and the Ancient Connections are associated with the Roman era in the Balkans and Sicily. Burials from that era were found in Rome, Montenegro, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, and Trapani, Italy.

Next, let’s look at one of the Moore men’s 111 matches, who has been assigned the Big Y-700 haplogroup of J-BY136349.

This is quite interesting, because this haplogroup has few testers, but the Ancient Connections are found in some of the same locations.

Next question – how are these two haplogroups related? Let’s see, using Discover’s Compare feature.

Wow, I didn’t expect to discover that J-BY136349 (111 marker match to a non-Moore man) is a descendant of J-Z631 (Moore haplogroup from Family Finder) and is about 2,200 years closer to the present time. Our Moore men, if we can ever find a Big Y-700 tester, will likely be someplace near J-BY136349.

Goals:

• To upgrade at least one of Mr. Moore’s matches to the Big Y-700, and for some new Moore male to match so we can figure out which Virginia line, and which European line our Moore family descends from.
• To break through the John Moore brick wall in Sullivan County, TN to see if we can track that lineage further back in time – informing us of our Moore line.

Kit 49,994 – Mr. Speaks

Goals and Questions:

• To find and test any Speak/Speaks tester for our line.
• Were the two Thomas Speaks in Maryland in the 1700s related?
• Were various Speaks lines, by various spellings, throughout the country, related?
• Where did we “come from?”

Twenty years ago, we had no Speaks males to test until Joyce, one of our long-time genealogy experts, located one man. She visited him and explained why his DNA was important. I provided a scholarship, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Not long after, another Speaks man tested, but did not match our original tester. Everyone was shocked. No one expected that result, and it only confused matters even more.

We needed tie-breakers, meaning other men from both of the known sons of immigrant, Thomas Speake (1633-1681).

At this point, we had far more questions than answers.

The Speaks Family Association had a whole list of questions, in part due to a lack of early records in Maryland, combined with burned southern states in later generations. That list was growing, not shrinking.

How many Speaks lines were there anyway? Had we stumbled across a descendants from the “other” Thomas Speaks in Maryland? I can’t answer that question now, and the answer is no, we had not accidentally found the other Thomas. That Thomas’s will and estate shows he had no sons other than a son Thomas who is not our Thomas, based on the fact that he died before his father. That also means there are no males from his line to test. You can read more, here, if you’re interested.

Did men with the surname Speak, Speaks and similar spellings all descend from the same Maryland line? Apparently not, or maybe not, based on those early results.

Could we determine through which men various testers descend?

At that time, we didn’t even dream that we’d be able to obtain Y-DNA from various men in the Lancashire villages where we thought our line might have originated. That was still years in the future. Our big breakthrough came after a Speaks man from New Zealand tested, and knew the name of the Lancashire village, Gisburn, where his grandfather was born. Working with local historical societies in England, we made that trip happen in 2014 and learned even more about differing Speaks lines.

In other words, in 2005, we were starting from scratch with pockets of men in various locations across the US who shared the same or similar surnames.

2005 – 25-marker – $150

• Initial haplogroup – I-M170 – about 28,000 years old
• Current 2025 haplogroup – I-FTA13986 – about 250 years old, obtained from a Big Y test

2014 – 111-marker upgrade – $184

2024 – Family Finder and the Big Y

2006 matches – Mr. Speaks had no 12 or 25-marker matches, which was discouraging. In fact, Mr. Speaks wouldn’t have any matches until the Family Association began actively recruiting testers a few years later. As it turns out, the Speaks family line has a rather unique DNA signature.

Today, Mr. Speak has 61 12-marker matches, and 54 25-marker matches, but it’s his Big Y results that confirm his placement in the tree as a descendant of John Speake the Innkeeper, son of Thomas Speake the immigrant.

Initially, we did the best we could, placing people in the tree based on STR results, but STRs did not provide the granularity we needed to define lines conclusively. STR mutations tend to back-mutate and aren’t always reliable.

Fast forward to January 2026.

The Speaks DNA project now has 48 Y-DNA testers, of which 32 fall into the Lancashire Speaks line we were seeking.

The Speak Family Association funded several Big Y-700 tests and upgrades for critical men in known lines.

Additionally, we’ve finally placed the elusive Aaron Lucky Speaks line, found in North Carolina, without any connecting documents back to Maryland. DNA connected him!

We’ve also eliminated several lines that were possibly connected to the Lancashire/Maryland line, thanks to DNA testing.

The Speak Family DNA Project Time Tree shows the Big Y testers with their self-identified earliest known ancestors (EKA) placed on branches of the genetic Time Tree.

Shifting to Discover, we see that Lancashire SNP, I-BY14004, which defines our Speak line, is associated with Medieval Britain, the early Slavs, and a historical Romanian culture.

Checking Ancient Connections, our ancestors are associated with burials from Yorkshire, Croatia, Romania, Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and more, dating from about 4500 years ago.

Today, if a Speak/Speaks male takes a Big Y-700 test, we can assign his location in the tree very closely, and can tell him definitively which lines he does not descend from.

The Speaks project also welcomes all Speaks descendants, from any line, who have taken or uploaded autosomal DNA tests.

Regrets

Yes, I have regrets – learned in the school of hard knocks.

1. My largest regret is that I didn’t test all of “my” kits at the highest level possible initially.
2. My second regret is that I didn’t reach out to matches much earlier (when they still might answer) to inquire about genealogy and offer scholarships for upgrades. My testers need someone from that same line to match at the Big Y level. In some cases, I need that person to upgrade because my tester cannot. The longer you wait, the less likely you’ll receive a response.

Many tests, especially early tests, cannot be upgraded for various reasons:

• Deceased tester
• Lost the ability to contact the tester – obsolete or bounced email
• Tester does not want to upgrade or does not reply to emails
• Last vial available was already used and tester cannot provide another
• Last vial was tested and failed

Solutions

• Buy the most advanced test immediately. I literally have a kit available at all times.
• Upgrade to the newest relevant tests as soon as they are introduced. In this case, that would be the Big Y-700 today and the Family Finder when it was introduced.
• If the tester is deceased and you can contact the family, after offering condolences, ask for brothers, sons, or nephews who would be willing to retest.
• Offer DNA testing scholarships either personally, through family associations, or through surname projects.
• Request extra vials be sent to the tester so they can be returned and stored for future use.

There’s one more thing you need to do too.

Permissions

Testers can grant various forms of permission to other people, which allows their tests to be upgraded later. One man even sent me an affidavit stating I could do so after he died. Today, that’s not necessary because FamilyTreeDNA provides a Beneficiary service.

Permissions can be granted under the tester’s Account Settings.

• Ask the tester to designate a Beneficiary which can be a Group Project Administrator. That means any person who is a group project administrator of a project the tester belongs to, after they are deceased.
• Ask the tester to assign a Kit Manager who literally manages their kit on their behalf.

Under Project Preferences, project members can grant Advanced Access to individual project administrators by name. Advanced Access provides the ability for that specific administrator to act on behalf of the tester, including ordering upgrades and additional tests, so long as the administrator pays for them, which they often do with project funds.

Looking Back

I have absolutely no regrets about purchasing any of the tests I’ve bought over the years.

I look at it this way – if someone told me that a book about my ancestral line was in a library, and it held the undisputed truth about that one line – I’d spend far more than what I’ve spent on any one DNA test to obtain it. There’s simply no other way to conclusively unravel direct paternal vines, both within a genealogical timeframe, and before.

I want to know everything. Not just since the advent of surnames, but where my ancestors came from before that, and before that, and before that. I want to read about the culture and history of the land where my ancestors lived. What did they survive to travel to the next frontier? And where was that next frontier, and when?

Their own Y-DNA, passed down to their direct male descendants holds those secrets, just waiting to be revealed.

What’s Next?

• Check your own and any Y-DNA tests that you sponsor or manage to see how they’re doing and what’s new.
• Check surname projects at FamilyTreeDNA, here, to see if your ancestral surnames are represented any other information, similar to my Moore line.
• Check your ancestor at WikiTree to see if anyone has entered a haplogroup for that ancestor, which tells you that someone has tested. The haplogroup may not be current, but it gives you a connection and someplace to start.
• Check your autosomal matches at FamilyTreeDNA and any other vendor to see if you match surnames of interest. If the match is male, reach out and see if they descend from your line, and if they haven’t taken a Y-DNA test, would they be willing. If your match is female, reach out to see if it’s your line, and if so, if they know of males who have tested or would be willing.
• If you’re a male and have not yet tested your Y-DNA, by all means, order that test now, by clicking here! Then make sure to join your surname project!

Is there something new and wonderful waiting for you?

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