Category Archives: Discover

Michel de Forest (c1638–c1690): Acadian Family Founder – 52 Ancestors #411

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There are some things we know about Michel (de) Forest, and a lot that we don’t. Furthermore, there are myths that, with repeated telling, have become widely accepted and ingrained into genealogy, but now seem to have been disproven. Thankfully, the lives of our ancestors continue to come into clearer focus.

Let’s start with the facts we have, beginning with the trusty census records.

Acadian Censuses

The French Acadians settled in what is now Nova Scotia beginning in 1632, moving to Port Royal in 1635 on the Bay of Fundy.

It’s estimated that by 1653, there were 45-50 households in Port Royal and about 60 single men. Of course, those men would have been very interested in finding wives.

A prisoner in 1654 estimated that there were about 270 residents.

From about 1653 to 1667, Acadia was under English rule, not French. This is actually important for Michel de Forest’s history, because as a French man, he would probably have arrived prior to 1653. We know he was married in 1666, so he would already have been in Acadia before 1667.

The Acadians took periodic censuses beginning in 1671. While there are millions of Acadian descendants today, the founding population was small. Given the challenges they faced, it’s actually amazing that they survived at all and that their descendants thrived, even after the Acadian Removal, known as Le Grande Derangement.

The first record we find for Michel de Forest is the 1671 census in Port Royal, Acadia, transcribed here by Lucie LeBlanc Consentino, where he is listed as Michel de Forest, age 33, wife Marie Hebert, 20, with children Michel 4, Pierre 2, René 1, 12 cattle and two sheep.

This tells us that he has been in Acadia for at least five years, in order to have married and have a 4-year-old child. He would have been about 27 when he married.

This also provides a birth year for him of about 1638.

The next census, taken in 1678, shows Michel as a widower with 4 acres, 3 cows, 2 calves, 1 gun, four boys, ages 12, 10, 8, and 3, plus two girls, ages 6 and 4. His age is not given.

Assuming that all of Michel’s children were born to the same mother, this suggests that Marie Hebert died sometime in or after 1675, when the last child would have been born.

Marie and Michel were only married for between 9 and 12 years. I wonder if she died about 1677 in childbirth. Of course, there’s no evidence for that. If she died giving birth to that child, or shortly thereafter, the child is deceased too.

In 1684, a new governor was appointed to Acadia who described the Acadians as living simply and pastorally. He claimed they lived better than Canadians, never lacking meat or bread, but weren’t as industrious. He said they never put anything away for a bad year, and their dowries were small – a few francs and a cow in calf, a ewe, and a sow.

Maybe that explains at least one of Michel’s cows and sheep in 1671.

In 1686, Michel is once again enumerated in the census, age 47, now married to Jacqueline Benoit whose age is given as 13, but is very likely erroneously recorded. Census takers then were probably much the same as census takers decades later in the US. However, accuracy was probably not deemed to be as important in Acadia. After all, everyone knew everyone else. The entire census consisted of 392 people, but scholars estimate that it was probably closer to 500.

Based on Jacqueline’s earlier family records, I believe she was 17. Michel’s children with Marie Hebert are listed as Michel 19, Pierre 18, René 16, Gabriel 13, Marie 11, and Jean-Baptiste 9. Michel had one gun, 8 sheep, and 4 hogs and was cultivating 5 arpents of land.

Age 47 puts Michel’s birth year at 1639. He was either newly married, or his wife was pregnant, because their only child was born about 1687.

In 1686, Jean-Baptiste, at age 9, fits the same pattern as the child who was 3 in 1678, but the math is slightly off. Age 9 in 1686 would put Jean-Baptiste’s birth year in 1677. Perhaps 1676 is the actual birth year, which puts Marie Hebert’s death sometime between 1676 and the 1678 census.

A 1688 report from the governor states that there was a labor shortage, a shortage of manure necessary for developing the uplands and also a shortage of tidelands that would be easy to dyke. As a result, 25-30 (mostly) younger people had moved to Minas in the last 6 years.

By sometime in 1691, Michel’s second wife, Jacqueline Benoit had remarried to Guillaume Trahan. In the 1693 census, she was listed with him as age 20. Michel Forest’s daughter Marguerite, age 6, is shown with the family, but without a surname, as is Angelique, age 1. Angelique would have been born to Jacqueline and Guillaume.

In May of 1690, Michel’s son, René signed the required loyalty oath, but Michel did not, which tells us that he had died by then.

Therefore, we know that Michel died sometime between the birth of his last child, Marguerite, born about 1687 to his second wife, Jacqueline, and May of 1690.

Michel’s youngest child, Marguerite, married about 1705 to Etienne Comeau and had nine children. She is shown with her mother and step-father in 1693 in Les Mines.

Acadia Land Location

Based on later records and a reconstruction of the 1707 census which includes Michel’s son, René de Forest, we know the probable location of Michel’s land. Further confirming this, Karen Theriot Reader reports that Michel had obtained a considerable concession extending over a mile in depth, a dozen miles to the east of the fort in Port Royal.

The René Forest Village is a dozen miles east of the fort, exactly where we would expect based on the description of that concession. A mile in depth is a LOT of land, which would have begun with water frontage on the rivière Dauphin, now the Annapolis River.

Based on the legend, a mile in depth would extend across 201 and possibly to or across 101, Harvest Highway, as well.

As further evidence, Michel married Marie Hebert, daughter of Etienne Hebert and Marie Gaudet, who lived on the adjacent farm.

The Hebert’s lived in close proximity to the de Forest family, maybe half a mile away, which would make courting easy! MapAnnapolis was kind enough to map these locations, here.

The Nova Scotia Archives shows the Hebert and Forest villages on this 1733 map.

This land remained in those families for a century. It’s no wonder that these families intermarried heavily.

Spousal Candidates

There weren’t many marriageable-age young women to choose from among Acadian families, which explains why some men chose Native wives.

I did some analysis on the 1671 census, which proved quite interesting.

There were a total of 68 families in Port Royal in 1671. With that small number of families, it’s no wonder everyone is related to everyone else within just a few generations. The descendant population is highly endogamous today. WikiTree reports that Michel has more than 28,000 identified descendants.

The 1671 census is unique in that families with older children noted how many married children they had. Then, the married child was also enumerated with their own family.

For example, Marie Hebert’s mother was widowed, and her census entry reads thus:

“Marie Gaudet, widow of Etienne Hebert, 38. She has 10 children, two married children: Marie 20, Marguerite 19, Emmanuel 18, not yet married”…and so forth

Then, Marie Hebert is listed with her husband, Michel de Forest, along with their children.

This provides us with a rare opportunity. First, we can match children, particularly females, up with their parents so long as at least one parent is still living.

This dual listing methodology also provides an unexpected glimpse into something else. Missing married children. At least six married children females in the age bracket that I was studying were noted as “married,” but they are not listed with a spouse anyplace. This could be because they had left the area, but that exodus hadn’t really begun that early and wouldn’t for another 15 years or so. It’s also possible that they were simply missed, but that seems unlikely, given that everyone literally knew everyone else and where they lived. Furthermore, everyone lived along the river.

After matching the married daughters up with their husbands, two name-based matches remained questionable, given that the ages were significantly different. For example, one couple lists Marie Gautrot as their married daughter, age 35, but Claude Terriau’s listing shows Marie Gautrot, age 24, as his wife. Their oldest child is 9. This may or may not be the same person.

My goal was to see how many females were of marriage age and single in 1666 when Michel de Forest married. I calculated the probable marriage date for each female based on the oldest child’s age minus one year.

Based on the women living in 1671, 5 females other than Michel’s wife were married in 1666, so they may or may not have been available for marriage when Michel was looking.

I entered all the women between ages 18 and 35 in 1671 into a spreadsheet, meaning they were between 13 and 30 in 1666 when Michel was about 26 or 27. While 13 is extremely young to marry, it appears that young women began marrying at that age. I suspect they married as soon as they reached puberty or shortly thereafter.

After all, finding a “good” husband was important, and in Acadia, pickings were slim. Plus, you really wanted your daughter to settle nearby, so if her “intended” was a neighbor, so much the better. And if her “intended” also had a farm and a cow – that was the veritable jackpot!

The total number of females aged 18-35 in 1671 was only 41, one of which was a widow whose age I can’t reconcile accurately.

Of those people, only 12 were unquestionably unmarried in 1666, plus possibly the widow. If all of the women who married in 1666 were unspoken for in 1666 when Michael was courting, the absolute maximum number of available spouses in that age range was 18, including Michel’s wife. I did not calculate the number of marriage-age males, but there seemed to be more males than females.

Eighteen potential spouses are actually not many to choose from. “Here are 18 people – pick one to marry for the rest of your life.” Today, we hope and expect to be happy. I’d bet they simply hoped not to be miserable and to survive. The most important qualities were probably selecting someone kind and industrious, although young people might not have realized that.

The priests would not sanction marriages to Native women unless the woman would convert and be baptized in the Catholic church, so the men who married Native women tended to live in the woods among the Native people, adopting their lifeways.

The female Acadian marriage age was quite young, ranging from 13-25. The average was 17 years and 10 months.

Calculated marriage ages of women in that age bracket based on the age of the oldest child, less one year, were:

  • 13 years old – 2 people
  • 14 – 3
  • 15 – 5
  • 16 – 2
  • 17 – 5
  • 18 – 2
  • 19 – 6
  • 20 – 3
  • 21 – 1
  • 22 – 1
  • 23 – 1
  • 24 – 1
  • 25 – 1

It’s clear from these numbers that most people were married by 20, and by 21, few female marriage partners were left. The marriages of the women in their 20s could also be erroneous if their first child or children died before the census.

Church records before 1702 do not survive, so we can’t check further.

Michel probably climbed in his birchbark canoe, wearing his cleanest clothes, and paddled the short distance to visit Marie’s parents, asking permission to marry their daughter. Or, perhaps, he asked them in church. They would have seen each other there, at least weekly, so long as the colony had a priest in residence.

Or, maybe Michel became inspired when he was visiting Marie and just popped the question one fine day when she looked particularly beautiful as they strolled through the fields on their adjoining lands.

Because Michel had no parents in the settlement, he would have established himself as a farmer by that point, proving his ability to support a wife and children. This is probably one of the reasons he didn’t marry until he was 28. Regardless of when he arrived, or under what circumstances, he still needed time to build a foundation that would make him marriage-eligible. That would mean being either a farmer, with land, or a tradesman. Something with a dependable income – as dependable as anything could be in a region torn by conflict between the French and English.

If Michel were already farming when he married, which is likely, Marie’s parents would have been excited because their daughter would be living in very close proximity, literally within sight. Or, perhaps, this is how the de Forest family came to establish their home, then the village, next to the Heberts.

Life and Death in Acadia

Michel died young. If he perished in 1687, he would have been roughly 49 years old. If he died in 1690, he would have been 52. Certainly, he could have died of natural causes, but it’s more likely that something else was responsible for his death.

Of course, without modern medical care, any wound could fester and cause sepsis, or an accident with a horse could end a life in the blink of an eye. An appendicitis attack was a death sentence. Dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases of contamination wiped out entire families.

However, none of his children died, nor did his wife at the time, so something else caused Michel’s death.

One likely candidate is the warfare with the English. Acadia had been settled by the French, but the English coveted the land, eventually taking permanent possession, in 1710. However, they had been trying for decades, and control of Acadia has passed back and forth more than once – and never peacefully.

However, 1690 was particularly heinous.

1690

In 1690, Acadia was once again plundered and burned by the English out of Boston. The church in Port Royal and 28 homes were burned, but not the mills and upriver farms, which may have included the Forest homestead.

The French pirate, Pierre Baptiste attempted to defend Port Royal in 1690 but was unsuccessful. A year later, he was successfully recruiting men in Acadia to join him in capturing British ships.

The Acadians in Port Royal swore an oath of allegiance in May of 1690 hoping to de-escalate the situation. Instead, their priest was kidnapped and taken to Boston. Luckily for us, the priest took the loyalty oath document with him, which tells us which males were alive as of May 1690. I transcribed that list, here.

Michel is not on the list, and neither are his two oldest sons, Michel and Pierre. The eldest was probably married already, but Pierre was not. Michel’s third son, René de Forest, signed the oath and stayed in Acadia to work his father’s land. The older two brothers settled shortly thereafter, if they hadn’t already, in Grand Pre which had been founded in 1686 by the Melanson family.

The English were firmly in charge of Acadia after the 1690 attack.

Emboldened, 2 English pirates took advantage of the opportunity and burned more homes, killing people and livestock.

However, by this time, it appears that Michel was already gone. His children and widow would have been left to fight those battles.

Did Michel die defending his home and family in 1690, along with his son or sons? Was their homestead burned either in the initial attack or by the pirates?

Origins

Michel was the first Forest, de Forest or Foret settler in Acadia – the founder of the Acadian Forest family. He was clearly there before he married in either 1665 or 1666, based on the age of his eldest child.

If Michel was born about 1638 or 1639, he would have been roughly 28 years old when he married.

Forest family researchers are fortunate to have long-time researcher, John P. DeLong, as a family member. John is a descendant and has been studying this family for more than 35 years. He’s been providing his web page for more than a quarter century. Thank you, John!!

John has evaluated the various famous and infamous stories about Michel’s origins, piece by piece, including both a mysterious name and religious denominational change – all of which are without any scrap of evidence other than uncertain oral history. Sometimes facts are morphed or molded a bit to fit the narrative – and that seems to be what happened over the decades, and indeed, centuries, regarding Michel.

There are two long-standing myths, meaning oral history, surrounding Michel de Forest. John goes into great detail, documenting both exceedingly well on his site, “The Origins of the Acadian Michel Forest.”

I’m not going to repeat them herel, but I strongly encourage all Michel Forest researchers to read his extensive research, points, counterpoints, and citations. It’s an excellent piece of work.

Not only is John’s research exemplary, it’s backed up by Y-DNA evidence. Assuming the tester’s genealogy is accurate, our Michel de Forest is NOT a descendant of the French Huguenot family who sought refuge in the Netherlands. Their Y-DNA, documented in the Forest Y-DNA project, here, is entirely different.

One of the theories involves our immigrant Michel being born by another name in the Netherlands to Huguenot refugees, then changing both his name and religion when immigrating to Acadia.

He was also rumored to be related to the Forest family of New Netherlands, now New York. That family descends from the Dutch Huguenot family.

An older story involved being born to another couple from the same line, but that was debunked earlier.

I concur with John DeLong’s conclusion that Michel very likely arrived around 1650 with Governor d’Aulnay:

Governor d’Aulnay was recruiting young men to voyage to Acadia between 1645 and 1650. Furthermore, a marriage delay of sixteen years is understandable. He (Michel) had to mature to adulthood, perhaps wait for his period of servitude to end, maybe spend some time setting up his own farm to become independent, and then had to wait for an eligible bride to mature given the shortage of marriageable woman in the colony. This could take up sixteen years. Surely, the fact that his second marriage was to a girl of 14 or 15 indicates that there was a serious shortage of eligible women in the colony even as late as 1686.

Without any other evidence, this is the most reasonable hypothesis.

What we know for sure is that Michel arrived in Acadia without any known family. This makes me wonder if Michel was an orphan or perhaps an adventurous teenager who set out to see the world.

Michel must have been wide-eyed as he set eyes on Port Royal for the first time. He would spend the rest of his life here, and his bones would rest in this very location.

Forest DNA

Thank goodness for the Forest DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA. Y-DNA for males is passed from father to son, unmixed with the DNA of the mother. Occasional small mutations occur, allowing descendants to be grouped into family lines, but overall, Michel’s direct male descendants will match each other. In other words, de Forest or Forest men will match other Forest men.

Several of Michel’s direct patrilineal descendants have tested, and, as expected, they match each other. They do NOT match the Huguenot/New Netherlands group – not even close. Assuming the genealogy of the New Netherlands descendant is accurate, and no undocumented adoptions have occurred, this dispels any remaining doubt that anyone might have.

Often, stories become so ingrained in families and culture that disproof is hard to accept, especially when the story defines part of the family or cultural identity. One might ask themselves – how could these family stories have been so wrong for so long?

In this case, we know that at least two different de Forest descendant lines dating from a common ancestor in about 1830 carried this oral history, independently. Of course, we have NO idea how that story began. Maybe someone “noticed” the similarities in names and assumed that they were connected. Maybe someone told someone else they were connected. Regardless, it happened.

Then, after 150+ years of being repeated, it was accepted as incontrovertible fact, and everyone believed it. Why wouldn’t they? Those stories had been in the family “forever” so they “had” to be true. In the early/mid 1900s, books were published, further cementing the stories into the family psyche. If it’s in print, it has to be accurate, right? Then, online trees began, and what was previously in print in libraries became easily accessible from home, and the age of click/copy/paste began and continues to this day.

Let me say this again – Acadian Michel Forest’s Y-DNA, meaning his direct paternal line, does not match with the paternal line of the Dutch family, meaning that Gereyt de Forest who was born in 1737 to the wealthy Protestant de Forest family in Leiden in the Netherlands was NOT the Catholic Michel de Forest of Acadia. There are no facts that add up, and neither does the Y-DNA.

What do we know about Michel Forest’s DNA results, aside from the fact that his descendants’ Y-DNA doesn’t match the Dutch line of the same or similar surname who settled in New Netherlands?

Several of Michel de Forest’s descendants have tested, which you can see here.

I wish very much that every tester would enter their earliest known ancestor.

The volunteer project administrators have grouped Michel Forest’s known descendants together, above. You’ll notice that their haplogroups are estimated to be R-M269 based on STR tests, or the much more refined haplogroup R-FT146490 based on a Big Y test taken by kit number N36241.

On the other hand, kit number 939910 is reported to be a descendant of Melchoir de Forest III who was born about 1521 and died about 1571 or 1572. This is the Huguenot branch that immigrated to the Netherlands, then to New Netherlands. This is the line rumored to be Michel’s ancestors. Specifically, Gerryt (Geryt, Geryte, Gerryte) de Foreest/Forest born in 1637 was said to have gone to Acadia where he changed his name to Michel and became Catholic again. The birth year aligns approximately, but that’s all. Nothing more is known of Gerryte, so he was the perfect candidate to morph into Michel. A similar birth year, a continent apart, with no additional evidence, does not the same person make.

Assuming the tester’s genealogy is accurate, the Melchior haplogroup is I-FT413656, and the test can be found in the Ungrouped section.

I would very much like to see another confirmed test from any paternally descended male Melchior Forest descendant, preferably through another son. This would confirm the difference.

The base haplogroup of the Acadian Michel de Forest group is haplogroup R and the haplogroup of the Huguenot group is I. This alone disproves this theory, as those haplogroups aren’t related in thousands of years.

There are several testers in the project’s Ungrouped section. I can tell that the project administrators were actively trying to test all lines with a similar surname to see if any match. So far, they don’t.

The Group Time Tree, available under the project menu, shows all of the testers from both groups, together on one tree by time, across the top.

It’s easy to see that Acadian Michel De Forest’s group doesn’t match any other group of men with the same or similar surnames. I love this tool, because you can view all project members who have taken the Big-Y test, together, with time.

Additionally, the Forest Project has provided a summary, here that is a bit outdated, but the essence is still of value. Michel does not descend from Jesse, who descends from Melchior.

Additional information is available exclusively to members of the Forest Association, which can be found here. I’m not a member, so I don’t know what additional information might be there.

Discover More

FamilyTreeDNA has provided the free Discover tool. One of the Forest men has taken the Big Y test and has been assigned the detailed haplogroup of R-FT146490. Haplogroup R-M269 is about 6350 years old, while the mutation responsible for R-FT146490 occurred about 200 years ago.

This fine, granular information, combined with other men who have taken the Big Y test and have either the same or nearby haplogroups, provides us with significant information about our de Forest family.

It confirms who we are and tells us who we’re not.

The Discover tool provides us with information about the age of Michel’s haplogroup, R-FT146490.

The haplogroup of Michel’s direct male paternal-line descendants is estimated to have been born about the year 1800, which suggests that if more descendants of Michel through different sons were to test, we might well identify another haplogroup someplace between 1800 and the parent haplogroup born about 800 CE. That’s a thousand years. Where were our ancestors?

These dates represent ranges, though, so the 1800 date could potentially be earlier.

Perhaps additional Forest men would be willing to upgrade.

Aside from Michel’s descendants upgrading, it would be very useful to see how closely we match other men from France. But that’s a problem.

A huge challenge for Acadian DNA testing is that DNA testing in France is illegal, so most of the French tests we have are from lines that left for the New World or elsewhere.

Perhaps in time, Michel’s origins before Acadia will be revealed. Where were his ancestors between 800 CE and when we find Michel in Acadia by 1666? That’s a BIG gap. We need more of Michel’s descendants to test, preferably at least one person from each son.

Michel Summary

Michael’s life was short, and while we know who he married and the names of his children, thanks to the census, so much has been lost as a result of the destruction of the early Catholic church records.

That Catholic church that was burned by the British in 1690 assuredly held the records we need. However, the Acadians had much more than church registers to worry about after that attack. They had to bury their dead and provide for the living, somehow.

Under normal circumstances, Michael’s funeral would have been held inside the church near the fort in Annapolis Royal, and he would have been laid to rest in the cemetery beside the church. That may or may not be what happened, depending on when and how he died. The original Fort and historic area, including the church location and cemetery, is shown between St. George Street, Prince Albert, and the Bay, above.

The church no longer exists, and Acadian graves are unmarked today, but we know they were buried in what is now called the Garrison Cemetery, overlooking the Bay that welcomed Michel about 40 years earlier.

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Reminder – Free Discover Webinar Through September 5th

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Wow – has this ever been a week!!! This article should be subtitled, “Never Argue With a Woman Named Idalia.” Trust me, Idalia will be the least popular baby name for 2023.

But first things first.

I want to provide a friendly reminder that the webinar, Y-DNA Discover Tool – What News Can Your Haplogroup Reveal? is free through September 5th at Legacy Family Tree Webinars and will be available in their library for subscribers thereafter.

Discover is a free Y-DNA tool provided by FamilyTreeDNA.

Anyone can use Discover. You don’t need to have taken a Y-DNA test, but the greatest benefit will be realized with Big Y-700 test results. Don’t worry about that now, though, because I explain the differences between tests in the webinar. You can get a lot out of Discover, even if you only know a base-level haplogroup.

Normally, these webinars are live, but those plans were interrupted by Hurricane Idalia.

Idalia developed so quickly – and we really weren’t sure where it was going until just a day or so in advance – or how severe it would be. It was ugly, and as I write this, Idalia is still torturing the east coast.

When I realized the possible impact, and that the probability of having both power and internet were very remote, I contacted Legacy Family Tree Webinars and discussed options.

We really didn’t want to reschedule since more than 2000 people from around the world had signed up for the webinar. We decided that the best option was to record the webinar in advance as a precaution. Then, if possible and Idalia targeted her wrath elsewhere, I would still give it live.

Needless to say, doing anything live wasn’t in the cards on Wednesday. I should add that I am safe and dry with minimal damage – just some branches and small trees down – but others nearby aren’t nearly so fortunate. Flooding was recorded in feet of water, roads are still closed to vehicles, boats rescuing people who didn’t evacuate are zipping down the flooded streets in many places, and there’s just a massive mess. Thousands of people are displaced.

However, as they say, “the show must go on,” and it did. The webinar was presented even though I couldn’t be there for Q&A. Anticipating that possibility, I recorded a lot of detail for you.

I hope I didn’t sound as rattled as I felt, because I was recording in the midst of hurricane prep and the first bands of wind and rain were already lashing the windows. I knew that we were facing a monster storm. That’s very unsettling.. All things considered, I think the webinar went quite well. I was afraid the power would go out while we were recording, but fortunately, it didn’t.

At the end of the webinar, I pulled everything from all of the Discover tools, the Block Tree, and the Group Time Tree together, then added historical migration records along with known, proven family genealogy.

Given that:

  • How did Discover do?
  • Was it useful?
  • Is it accurate?
  • How accurate?
  • What has it done for the Estes paternal line genealogy?
  • What do I know about my Estes lineage that I didn’t know before?
  • What’s the next step?
  • What can Discover do for you?

I really encourage you to tune in and take advantage of this free educational webinar through September 5th, maybe even over the Labor Day weekend.

Please feel free to share this article and information about the webinar with interested groups and organizations!!!

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You’re always welcome to forward articles or links to friends and share on social media.

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Haplogroups: DNA SNPs Are Breadcrumbs – Follow Their Path

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Recently a reader asked some great questions.

If Y-DNA is unchanged, then why isn’t the Y-DNA of every man the same today? And if it’s not the same, then how do we know that all men descend from Y-Adam? Are the scientists just guessing?

The scientists aren’t guessing, and the recent scientific innovations behind how this works is pretty amazing, so let’s unravel these questions one at a time.

The first thing we need to understand is how Y-DNA is inherited differently from autosomal DNA, and how it mutates.

First, a reminder that:

  • Y-DNA tests the Y chromosome passed from father to son in every generation, unmixed with any DNA of the mother. This article focuses on Y-DNA.
  • Mitochondrial DNA tests the mitochondria passed from mothers to all of their children, but is only passed on by the females, unmixed with the DNA of the father. This article also pertains to mitochondrial SNPS, but we will cover that more specifically later in another article.
  • Autosomal DNA is passed from both parents to their children. Each child inherits half of each parent’s autosomal DNA.

Let’s look at how this works.

Autosomal vs Y-DNA Inheritance

Click on image to enlarge

Autosomal DNA, shown here with the green (male) and pink (female) images, divides in each generation as it’s passed from the parent to their child. Each child inherits half of each parent’s autosomal DNA, meaning chromosomes 1-22. For this discussion, each descendant shown above is a male and has a Y chromosome.

This means that in the first generation, which would be the great-grandfather, about 700,000 locations of his green autosomal DNA are tested for genealogy purposes.

His female partner (pink) also has about 700,000 locations. During recombination, they each contribute about 350,000 SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) of autosomal DNA to their child. Their offspring then has a total of 700,000 SNPs, 350,000 green and 350,000 pink contributed by each parent.

This process is repeated for each child, whether male or female (with the exception of the X chromosome, which is beyond the scope of this article), but each child does not receive exactly the same half of their parents’ autosomal DNA. Recombination is random.

In the four generations shown above, the green autosomal DNA of generation one, the great-grandfather, has been divided and recombined three times. The original 700,000 locations of great-grandfather’s green DNA has now been whittled down to about 87,500 locations of his green DNA.

Y-DNA in the Same Generation

Looking now at the blue Y-DNA at left, the Y-DNA remains the same in each generation with the exception of one mutation approximately every two or three generations.

As you can see in the chart, in the exact same number of generations, the Y-DNA of each male, which he inherited from his father:

  • Never recombines with any DNA from the mother
  • Never divides and gets smaller in subsequent generations
  • Remains essentially unchanged in each generation

The key word here is “essentially.”

Y-DNA

The Y chromosome consists of about 59 million locations or SNPs of DNA. STR tests, Short Tandem Repeats, which are essentially insertions and deletions, test limited numbers of carefully curated markers selected for the fact that they mutate in a genealogically relevant timeframe. These markers are combined in panels of either 67 or 111 marker tests available for purchase at FamilyTreeDNA today, or historically 12, 25, 37, 67, and 111 marker panels. The STR test was the original Y-DNA test for genealogy and is still used as an introductory test or to see if a male matches a specific line, or not.

From the STR tests, in addition to matching, FamilyTreeDNA can reliably predict a relatively high-level haplogroup, or genetic clan, based on the frequency of the combinations of those marker values in specific STR locations.

SNPs are much more reliable than STRs, which tend to be comparatively unstable, mutating at an unreliable rate, and back mutating, which can be very disconcerting for genealogy. We need reliable consistency to be able to assign a male tester to a specific lineage with confidence. We can, however, find genealogically relevant matches that may be quite important, so I never disregard STR tests or testers. STR tests aren’t relevant for deeper history, nor can they reliably discern a specific lineage within a surname. SNP tests can and do.

The Big Y-700 SNP test gives us that and more, along with the earlier Big Y-500 test which scanned about 30 million locations. The Big Y-700 is a significant improvement; men can upgrade from the Big Y-500 or STR tests.

The Big Y-700 test scans about 50 million Y-DNA locations, known as the gold standard region, for all mutations. It reports 700 or more STR markers for matching, but more importantly, it scans for all SNP mutations in those 50 million locations.

All mutations are confirmed by at least five positive repeat scans and are then assigned a haplogroup name if found in two or more men.

Y-DNA Testing

If Y-DNA remained exactly the same, then the Y-DNA of men today would be entirely indistinguishable from each other – essentially all matching humankind’s first common ancestor. With no changes, Y-DNA would not be useful for genealogy. We need inherited mutations to be able to compare men and determine their level of relatedness to each other.

Fortunately, Y-DNA SNPs do mutate. Y-DNA is never divided or combined, so it stays essentially the same except for occasional mutations which are inherited by the following generations.

Using SNP markers scanned in the Big Y test, one new mutation happens on the average of every two or three generations. Of course, that means that sometimes there are no mutations for a few generations, and sometimes there are two mutations between father and son.

What this does, though, very effectively, is provide a trail of SNP mutations – breadcrumbs essentially – that we can use for matching, AND for tracking our mutations, which equate to ancestors, back in time.

Estes Male Breadcrumb Trail

I’ve tested several Estes men of known lineage, so I’m going to use this line as an example of how mutations act as breadcrumbs, allowing us to track our ancestors back in time and across the globe.

Multiple cousins in my Estes line have taken the Big Y-700 test.

My closest male cousin matches two other men on a unique mutation. That SNP has been named haplogroup R-ZS3700.

We know, based on our genealogy, that this mutation occurred in Virginia and is found in the sons of Moses Estes born in 1711.

How do we know that?

We know that because three of Moses’s descendants have tested and all three of those men have the same mutation, R-ZS3700, and none of the sons of Moses’s brothers have that mutation.

I’ve created a chart to illustrate the Estes pedigree chart, and the haplogroups assigned to those men. So, it’s a DNA pedigree chart too. This is exactly what the Big-Y DNA test does for us.

In the red-bordered block of testers, you can see the three men that all have R-ZS3700 (in red), and all are sons of Moses born in 1711. I have not typed the names of all the men in each generation because, for purposes of this illustration, names aren’t important. However, the concept and the fact that we have been able to connect them genealogically, either before or because of Y-DNA testing, is crucial.

Directly above Moses born in 1711, you can see his father Abraham born in 1647, along with Moses’ brothers at right and left; John, Richard, Sylvester, and Elisha whose descendants have taken the Big Y-700 test. Moses’s brothers’ descendants all have haplogroup R-BY490 (in blue), but NOT R-ZS3700. That tells us that the mutation responsible for R-ZS3700 happened between Abraham born in 1647, and Moses born in 1711. Otherwise, Moses’s brothers would have the mutation if his father had the mutation.

Moses’s descendants also have R-BY490, but it’s NOT the last SNP or haplogroup in their lineage. For Moses’s descendants, R-ZS3700 occurred after R-BY490.

You can see haplogroup R-BY490 boxed in blue.

We know that Moses and his father, Abraham, both have haplogroup R-BY490 because all of Abraham’s sons have this haplogroup. Additionally, we know that Abraham’s father, Silvester also had haplogroup R-BY490.

How do we know that?

Abraham’s brother, Richard’s descendant, tested and he has haplogroup R-BY490.

However, Silvester’s father, Robert born in 1555 did NOT have R-BY490, so it formed between him and his son, Silvester.

How do we know that?

Robert’s other son, Robert born in 1603 has a descendant who tested and has haplogroup R-BY482, but does NOT have R-BY490 or R-ZS3700.

All of the other Eates testers also have R-BY482, blocked in green, in addition to R-BY490, so we know that the mutation of R-BY490 developed between Robert born in 1555 and his son, Silvester born in 1600, because his other son’s descendant does not have it.

Looking at only the descent of the haplogroups, in order, we have

  • R-BY482 (green) found in Robert born in 1555 and all of his descendants.
  • R-BY490 (blue) found in Silvester born in 1600 and all of his descendants, but not his brother
  • R-ZS3700 (red) found in Moses born in 1711 and all of his descendants, but not his brothers

If we had Estes men who descend from the two additional documented generations upstream of Robert born in 1555, we might discover when R-BY482 occurred, but to date, we don’t have any additional testers from those lines.

Now that we understand the genesis of these three haplogroups in the Estes lineage, what else can we discover through our haplogroup breadcrumbs?

The Discover Reports

By entering the haplogroup in the Discover tool, either on the public page, here, or clicking on Discover on your personal page at FamilyTreeDNA if you’ve taken the Big-Y test, you will see several reports for your haplogroup.

I strongly suggest reviewing each category, because they cumulatively act as chapters to the book of your haplogroup story, but we’re going to skip directly to the breadcrumbs, which is called the Ancestral Path.

The Ancestral Path begins with your haplogroup in Line 1 then lists the first upstream or parent haplogroup in Line 2. In this case, the haplogroup I entered is R-ZS3700.

You can see the estimated age of the haplogroup, meaning when it formed, at about 1700 CE. Moses Estes who was born in 1711 is the first Estes man to carry haplogroup R-ZS3700, so that’s extremely close.

Line 2, R-BY490 occurred or was born about 1650, and we know that it actually occurred between Robert and Silvester born in 1600, so that’s close too.

Scanning down to Line 3, R-BY482 is estimated to have occurred about 1500 CE, and we know for sure it had occurred by 1555 when Robert was born.

We see the parent haplogroup of R-BY487 on Line 4, dating from about 750 CE. Of course, if more men test, it’s possible that more haplogroups will emerge between BY482 and BY487, forming a new branch. Given the time involved, those men wouldn’t be expected to carry the Estes surname, as surnames hadn’t yet been adopted in that timeframe.

Moving down to Line 9, we see R-ZP18 from 2250 BCE, or about 4250 years ago. Looking at the right column, there’s one ancient sample with that haplogroup. The location of ancient samples anchors haplogroups definitively in a particular location at a specific time.

Haplogroup by haplogroup, step by step, we can follow the breadcrumbs back in time to Y-Adam, the first homo sapiens male known to have descendants today, meaning he’s the MRCA, or most recent common ancestor for all men.

Neanderthals and Denisovans follow, but their Y-DNA is only available through ancient samples. They have no known direct male survivors, but someday, maybe someone will test and their Y-DNA will be found to descend from Neanderthals or Denisovans.

Now that we know when those haplogroups occurred, how did our ancestors get from Africa 232,000 years ago to Kent, England, in the 1400s? What path did they take?

The new Globetrekker tool answers that question.

The Breadcrumb Trail

In Globetrekker, each haplogroup’s location is placed by a combination of testers’ results, their identified earliest known ancestor (EKA) country and location, combined with ancient samples, climatic factors like glaciers and sea levels, and geographic features. You can read about Globetrekker here and here.

To view the Globetrekker tool, you must sign it to an account that has taken the Big Y test. It’s a tool exclusively provided for Big-Y testers.

You can click at the bottom of your Globetrekker map to play the animated video.

Beginning in Africa, our ancestors began their journey with Y-Adam, then migrated through the Near East, South Asia, East Asia, then west through central Asia into Europe. The Estes ancestors crossed the English Channel and migrated around what is now England before settling in Deal, on the east coast.

Clicking on any haplogroup provides a description of that haplogroup and how it was placed in that location.

Enabling the option for ancient DNA shows those locations as well, near the haplogroups they represent when the animation is playing.

Clicking on the shovel icon explains about that particular ancient DNA sample, what is known, and how it relates to the haplogroup it’s connected to by a dotted line on the map.

Pretty cool, huh!!

End to End

As you can see from this example, Big Y results are an end-to-end tool.

We can use the Big Y-700 haplogroups very successfully for recent genealogy – assigning testers to specific lines in a genealogy timeframe. Some haplogroups are so specific that, without additional information, we can place a man in his exact generation, or within a generation or two.

Not shown in my Estes pedigree chart is an adoptee with a different surname, of course. We know that he descends from Moses’s line because he carries haplogroup R-ZS3700, but we are still working on the more recent generations using autosomal DNA to connect him accurately.  If more of Moses’s descendants tested, we could probably place him very specifically. Without the Big Y-700 test, he wouldn’t know his biological surname or that he descends from Moses. That’s a HUGE breakthrough for him.

There’s more about the Estes line to learn, however.

If our Estes cousins tested their brothers, uncles or other Estes males in their line, they would likely receive a more refined haplogroup that’s relevant only to that line.

Using Big-Y test results, we can place men within a couple of generations and identify a common ancestor, even when all men within a haplogroup don’t know their genealogical lineage. Using those same test results, we can follow the breadcrumbs all 50 steps back in time more than 230,000 years to Y-Adam.

End to end, the Big-Y test coupled with breadcrumbs in Discover, Globetrekker, and other amazing tools is absolutely the most informative and powerful test available to male testers for their paternal line genealogy.

These amazing innovations tracking more than 50,000 haplogroups across the globe answer the original questions about how we know.

The more people who take or upgrade to the Big Y-700 test, the more haplogroup branches will be added, and the more refined the breadcrumbs, ages, and maps will become. In other words, there’s still more to learn.

Test if you haven’t, and check back often for new matches and breadcrumbs, aka updates.

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Globetrekker – A New Feature for Big Y Customers From FamilyTreeDNA

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FamilyTreeDNA recently released Globetrekker, a great new feature for Big Y customers as part of the Discover tools. You can read about the Discover tools, here.

What Is Globetrekker?

Globetrekker is a new mapping feature that maps your Y-DNA ancestral migration path from Y-Adam in Africa born about 200,000 years ago to where your direct paternal ancestors are found most recently based on:

  • The earliest known ancestor (EKA) locations of you, your matches and other testers
  • Ancient DNA samples
  • Various geographic criteria including elevation, migration corridors, sea levels, and glaciers.

This data-driven model also includes sea levels over time and some climate factors, such as glaciation. Clearly, our ancestors needed access to clean water, food and an environment where they weren’t going to freeze to death. If they had to choose between migrating along a lower level coastal region, or heading straight across the high mountains into the unknown, it’s more likely that they took the lower elevation coastal route with assured food.

Globetrekker displays the “most likely” corridors for you to review.

While you only see your Y-DNA line initially, the map includes 48,000 migration paths for all haplogroups spread across each continent. If you’ve taken the Big Y test, you can view any of the haplogroups in Discover.

And, there’s an integrated tree browser, too.

You can read FamilyTreeDNA’s blog article, written by Goran Runfeldt, head of R&D, here.

Please Note

  • Everyone must sign into their own account to use the new Globetrekker tool. To use the rest of the Discover features, everyone can use the public version of the tool, but Globetrekker is for Big Y customers only, which is why you need to sign in. You’ll also receive more information in other categories, such as Notable and Ancient Connections, if you access Discover through your account. The free public version is limited.
  • If you’re a project administrator and you normally view your project members’ results through your project (with member-granted authorization, of course) you can’t do that yet with Globetrekker.
  • This means that every tester has to sign on using their own kit number and password. FamilyTreeDNA is working on Group Administrator access, so don’t despair if you normally depend on your volunteer administrator to handle things for you and explain. It’s coming.
  • The migration map includes only pre-Columbian migrations. In other words, if your EKA is not Native American and is brick-walled in the US, you won’t see it on the map. You’ll see your closest haplogroup location before about 1500.
  • These routes will change over time with additional testers whose results will shift and refine the paths.

Best Thing You Can Do

The best things you can do, aside from taking (or upgrading to) a Big Y-700 test are:

  • Complete your earliest known ancestor (EKA) information.
  • Be SURE to include a country AND a location of origin because that’s the data Globetrekker draws from.
  • If your cousins test too, you may be assigned a new, more refined haplogroup, so recruit people. If you don’t know anyone specific, looking at your STR matches is a good resource to find candidates.

Adding Your EKA

To add your EKA and their geographic location, sign in to your account and click on your name, which will display a menu.

Select Account Settings.

Select Genealogy, then Earliest Known Ancestors, then complete the information, including Country, which assigns the flag, among other things. Click on update location to complete or change this location.

Search or place the pin in the correct location. Then click Save.

There are three very important pieces of EKA information that need to be completed to reap all the benefits of the Matches Map, Discover, the Time Tree, the Group Time Tree that includes ancestors, and Globetrekker.

  1. EKA Name and birth/death date
  2. Country of Origin field using the dropdown (Please note Native American entries for proven Native ancestors/haplogroups)
  3. Ancestral Location for specific locations for the Matches Map

While you’re here, enter your direct matrilineal ancestor’s information too – that’s your mother’s mother’s mother’s line, which you’ll need for mitochondrial DNA..

Then, click the orange Save button at the bottom of the page.

Your map location will also appear on your STR Matches Map. You may find relevant matches there, even if they haven’t taken the Big Y test.

There’s immense power in collaboration.

I often reach out to STR panel (12-111 markers) matches and men with the same or similar surnames, asking if they will consider upgrading to the Big Y, sometimes providing testing scholarships. The only way to obtain the most refined haplogroup possible and the most accurate migration path is for multiple people in the same lineage to test AND complete the location information.

Now that we’ve completed our housekeeping, let’s look at Globetrekker.

Globetrekker Quick Test Drive

I’ll be writing about Globetrekker results in detail soon, but for right now, let’s just take a quick spin.

Click on any image to enlarge

Sign in to your account and click on the Discover Haplogroup Reports under Y-DNA Results and Tools.

You’ll see your Haplogroup Story, of course, and on the left side, you’ll see the Globetrekker link. Click on Globetrekker.

It Takes Two to Tango

Please note the introduction at the top of the Globetrekker page, and don’t get drawn into the beautiful map without reading this part first, along with the Release Announcement, Caveats, and Survey. Please take the survey after you’ve used Globetrekker.

Click on image to enlarge

  • In order to RECEIVE a detailed haplogroup, it takes at least two people with the variant (mutation) that is then named and becomes the same haplogroup. This is why we recommend that men ask a cousin from the same paternal line to test, or even a father/brother/uncle.
  • To MAP the location of a haplogroup on Globetrekker, it takes at least two people with the same haplogroup who have selected a location. Looking at my cousin’s results, I had already entered his EKA and location, but apparently his Big Y matches have not, so there are not two men with R-ZS3700 who have locations specified. I need to contact his matches.

Be sure to enter all of your EKA info. If your cousins have tested, they need to enter their information as well.

  • Globetrekker cannot use results for the mapping function without locations.
  • Globetrekker cannot use non-Native American haplogroups that are recorded with a location in the Americas. Globetrekker does provide Native American mapping in North and South America when the haplogroup is Native and a location is provided.
  • Globetrekker CAN utilize coordinates in the Americas, but a country of origin in Europe or elsewhere pre-Columbus. Globetrekker defaults to the country of origin. Please make sure this information is accurate and not just a guess or oral history.

Locations or at least countries need to be as accurate as possible. If there are only two men with a specific haplogroup, for example, and one enters England and the other enters France, Globetrekker tries to plot the location of that haplogroup someplace in the middle. In this circumstance, probably neither person is happy – both complaining about inaccuracy. Yet another reason why it’s a good thing to help your fellow genealogists.

Therefore, if you notice that you have a Big Y match on either your Big Y match list, or your STR (12-111 panel) matches, and they don’t have an EKA and country listed, with a location displayed on the matches map, PLEASE email them and ask nicely if they will add that info. You can send them a link to this article to explain why providing that information is critically important for them AND the people they match, just like your information is crucial to them. Without location data, Globetrekker paths can’t be calculated correctly, and sometimes not at all. The more data, the greater the accuracy.

After you enter your EKA information and after Big Y results are back, it will be a week or so before Discover and Globetrekker are up to date. Discover is updated weekly, and if a new haplogroup is added, Globetrekker will be up to date the following week.

Drum Roll Please…..

Here it is. The new highly refined Globetrekker migration map. It’s a beauty!

Your end-of-line haplogroup, or the closest one that can be calculated, will be shown in orange. In this case, it’s R-BY490 (circa 1650 CE) because the location of R-ZS3700 (circa 1700 CE) can’t be calculated.

On the map, you can see the various haplogroups that are upstream of haplogroup R-BY490, meaning parent haplogroups.

The path from Y-Adam in Africa is mapped, with the color changing to represent the birth of each major haplogroup in the migration path.

For example, I clicked on the pin for haplogroup CF, which expanded that haplogroup to CF-P143 and showed information about how the haplogroup pin was located on the map – plus the age and sea level difference at the time.

Scroll down on the map until you see the play button. Clicking on that button animates the migration path, beginning with Y-Adam, then progressing to the most current pre-Columbian migration.

In this case, I paused the video at the formation of haplogroup R1.

Notice the glaciation that both forms and recedes. Clearly, your ancestors weren’t living there during glaciation, but humans moved into those areas after the glaciers thawed and retreated.

You may be surprised at the path your ancient ancestors took, so I encourage you to spend some time with this map, reviewing the approximate path and your parental haplogroups with an open mind.

A legend is located in the far right upper corner to help explain the map details, including Ocean Currents and the various sea level colors.

Notice Doggerland, in dark green, which was a land mass when some haplogroups arrived in what is now the British Isles. Doggerland flooded sometime between 6500 and 6200 BCE, or about 8500 years ago, so it’s sea today. In other coastal locations, some previous land areas are covered by water today. Note the Baltic above, for example. Truthfully, that explains a lot. I knew about Doggerland but not about many of the other coastal regions around the world.

Pay close attention to what’s happening on the map. I noticed that my red pin for the current haplogroup is found in Deal, England, but so is an earlier haplogroup, so the later pin obscures the earlier pin. I enlarged the map and paused the video at 1400 CE so the red pin doesn’t form yet, then clicked on haplogroup R-Z290 that arrived from across the English Channel.

The R-Z290 pin location tells me that my Estes male ancestors arrived from continental Europe around 4650 years ago. My assumption (there’s that word again) had been that the original Estes ancestors arrived, then stayed right in Deal, a coastal village very near Dover, the closest point to the European mainland. According to Globetrekker, that wasn’t at all what happened.

I was initially somewhat skeptical, but then looking at all of the upstream haplogroups, I realized that those 17 haplogroups upstream of R-BY490 had to get into the other parts of the British Isles somehow – and my ancestor clearly descends from those men.

Could my ancestors have crossed back over to the European mainland at some point, then recrossed into Deal? Yes, of course, but without any genetic or other evidence, that’s speculation ONLY, with nothing at all to support it. In other words, that speculation would be based on what I believed all these years and nothing more.

The data-driven genetic scientific evidence tells us that our Estes ancestor arrived in what is today England about 4500 years ago. As you can see, there are a total of 17 points in England that have been reliably placed, not just one or two that might be open to speculation. Additionally, we have ancient DNA evidence.

Notice the functions at the top of the map. Turn on Ancient Connections. You’ll see the little shovels appear when their timeframe and location are relevant to the map migration, then disappear when it isn’t.

Pause the map again, and click on the shovel to display relevant information about the archaeology dig that produced Y-DNA results of sufficient quality to be included. Those ancient samples often anchor haplogroups in a known place at a specific time.

While you’re enjoying different views, try the other options at the top of the Globetrekker map.

Integrated Tree Browser

Scroll down beneath the map to view the integrated tree browser.

This is VERY cool because the tree browser moves in tandem with the map above.

You can see that the migration map shows R-BY487, and on the timeline below, R-BY487 is showing at the top, along with the downstream haplogroups.

R-BY482 (circa 1500 CE), R-BY490 (circa 1650 CE), and R-ZS3700 (circa 1700 CE) are all Estes surname haplogroups. Prior to that, R-BY487 (circa 750 CE) has no associated surname. Surnames hadn’t been adopted yet, but we know approximately where they were living just the same. We can now reference the appropriate historical period in England to determine what was happening when they lived there.

Why the Big Y?

The Big Y test does five things extremely well:

  1. Scans millions of locations on the Y chromosome looking for mutations that, when compared with other Big Y testers, places men conclusively on their branch, and sometimes on their twig and leaf of the Y-DNA haplotree. Men carrying previously undiscovered mutations from the same line establish a newly named haplogroup.
  2. Unambiguously matches testers with men who descend from a common ancestor. SNPs, the mutations measured in the Big Y test are not subject to back-mutations and other occasional instabilities that plague the STR markers in the 12-111 panel tests.
  3. Provides matching to both STR and SNP markers, allowing genealogical connections to men who have taken either type of test. Some people who have taken STR tests have either chosen not to upgrade (yet) or may have passed away. With the Big Y test, those legacy tests, some of which are more than 20 years old, are still useful.
  4. Provides an estimated date of when the common ancestor lived.
  5. Reaches reliably back in time, before the age of surnames, allowing testers to peer into the past based on a combination of genetics and history.

In other words, the Big Y test provides the best of both worlds, genealogy for close surname matches and anthropology for ancient matching and migration.

Lots to Explore

Globetrekker results are available to men who took either the Big Y-500 or the Big Y-700. Those who took the Big Y-500 can upgrade for significantly more refinement and potentially new haplogroups. Men who have not yet tested, or who just ordered one of the STR panels can upgrade to learn about your matches, your haplogroup, and the migration path through history your ancestor trod to arrive where your EKA lived.

I’m looking forward to reviewing all of the kits I manage that have taken the Big Y test. Let me know what you think about your Globetrekker results, and be sure to complete the survey and let FamilyTreeDNA know too.

If you’d like to learn more about your Big Y results, be sure to check out both Discover and Globetrekker. Discover is public, but Big Y testers will receive more information. Globetrekker is for Big Y customers only.

Remember, both will change as more people test and new results come in, so check back often.

The FamilyTreeDNA Big Y Facebook Group

A few weeks ago, FamilyTreeDNA introduced their FamilyTreeDNA Big Y Group on Facebook. As of today, just shy of 8000 people have joined. You do have to agree to follow the rules, but you don’t need to have taken a Big Y test. Lots of people join to learn, including many women who manage Y-DNA tests for family members or people who just want to understand more about one of the three types of tests for genetic genealogy.

You’re welcome to join too, here.

The Summer Sale

Several people have asked when the Big Y or the upgrades would be on sale. The summer sale runs from August 1-31, and all Y-DNA tests and upgrades are included, here.

If you’ve already taken one of the STR panel tests, or the Big Y-500, the Big Y-700 is less expensive when you upgrade. Just sign in to your account and click on the orange Add Ons and Upgrades button at the top right of your page, then on “Upgrades.”

Click here to purchase or upgrade.

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Which DNA Test Should I Buy? And Why?

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Which DNA test should I buy, and why?

I receive questions like this often. As a reminder, I don’t take private clients anymore, which means I don’t provide this type of individual consulting or advice. However, I’m doing the next best thing! In this article, I’m sharing the step-by-step process that I utilize to evaluate these questions so you can use the process too.

It’s important to know what questions to ask and how to evaluate each situation to arrive at the best answer for each person.

Here’s the question I received from someone I’ll call John. I’ve modified the wording slightly and changed the names for privacy.

I’m a male, and my mother was born in Charleston, SC. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Jones and a paternal surname was Davis. The family was supposed to have been Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Scots-Irish…only once was I told I was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.

Do I have enough reasonable information to buy a test, and which one?

Please note that it’s common for questions to arrive without all the information you need to provide a sound answer – so it’s up to you to ask those questions and obtain clarification.

Multiple Questions

There are actually multiple questions here, so let me parse this a bit.

  1. John never mentioned what his testing goal was.
  2. He also never exactly said how the paternal line of Davis was connected, so I’ve made an assumption. For educational purposes, it doesn’t matter because we’re going to walk through the evaluation process, which is the same regardless.
  3. John did not include a tree or a link to a tree, so I created a rudimentary tree to sort through this. I need the visuals and normally just sketch it out on paper quickly.
  4. Does John have enough information to purchase a test?
  5. If so, which test?

There is no “one size fits all” answer, so let’s discuss these one by one.

Easy Answers First

The answer to #4 is easy.

Anyone with any amount of information can purchase a DNA test. Adoptees do it all the time, and they have no prior information.

So, yes, John can purchase a test.

The more difficult question is which test, because that answer depends on John’s goals and whether he’s just looking for some quick information or really wants to delve into genealogy and learn. Neither approach is wrong.

Many people think they want a quick answer –  and then quickly figure out that they really want to know much more about their ancestors.

I wrote an article titled DNA Results – First Glances at Ethnicity and Matching for new testers, here.

Goals

Based on what John said, I’m going to presume his goals are probably:

  • To prove or disprove the family oral history of Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (which is actually German,) Scots-Irish, and potentially Native American.
  • John didn’t mention actual genealogy, which would include DNA matches and trees, so we will count that as something John is interested in secondarily. However, he may need genealogy records to reach his primary goal.

If you’re thinking, “The process of answering this seemingly easy question is more complex than I thought,” you’d be right.

Ethnicity in General

It sounds like John is interested in ethnicity testing. Lots of people think that “the answer” will be found there – and sometimes they are right. Often not so much. It depends.

The great news is that John really doesn’t need any information at all to take an autosomal DNA test, and it doesn’t matter if the test-taker is male or female.

To calculate each tester’s ethnicity, every testing company compiles their own reference populations, and John will receive different results at each of the major companies. Each company updates their ethnicity results from time to time as well, and they will change.

Additionally, each company provides different tools for their customers.

The ethnicity results at different companies generally won’t match each other exactly, and sometimes the populations look quite different.

Normally, DNA from a specific ancestor can be found for at least 5 or 6 generations. Of course, that means their DNA, along with the DNA from all of your other ancestors is essentially combined in a communal genetic “pot” of your chromosomes, and the DNA testing company needs to sort it out and analyze your DNA for ethnicity.

DNA descended from ancestors, and their populations, further back in people’s trees may not be discerned at all using autosomal DNA tests.

A much more specific “ethnicity” can be obtained for both the Y-DNA line, which is a direct patrilineal line for men (blue arrow,) and the mitochondrial DNA line (pink arrows,) which is a direct matrilineal line for everyone, using those specific tests.

We will discuss both of those tests after we talk about the autosomal tests available from the four major genealogy DNA testing companies. All of these tools can and should be used together.

Let’s Start with Native American

Let’s evaluate the information that John provided.

John was told that he “was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.”

We need to evaluate this part of his question slightly differently.

I discussed this in the article, Ancestral DNA Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?

First, we need to convert generations to 16ths.

You have two ancestors in your parent’s generation, four in your grandparents, and so forth. You have 16 great-great-grandparents. So, if John was 3/16th Native, then three of his great-great-grandparents would have been fully Native, or an equivalent percentage. In other words, six ancestors in that generation could have been half-Native. Based on what John said, they would have come from his mother’s side of the tree. John is fortunate to have that much information to work with.

He told us enough about his tree that we can evaluate the statement that he might be 3/16ths Native.

Here’s the tree I quickly assembled in a spreadsheet based on John’s information.

His father, at left, is not part of the equation based on the information John provided.

On his mother’s side, John said that Grandfather Davis is supposed to be three-quarters Native, which translates to 12/16ths. Please note that it would be extremely beneficial to find a Y-DNA tester from his Davis line, like one of his mother’s brothers, for example.

John said that his Grandmother Jones is supposed to be 100% Native, so 16/16ths.

Added together, those sum to 28/32, which reduces down to 14/16th or 7/8th for John’s mother.

John would have received half of his autosomal DNA from his mother and half from his non-Native father. That means that if John’s father is 100% non-Native, John would be half of 14/16ths or 7/16ths, so just shy of half Native.

Of course, we know that we don’t always receive exactly 50% of each of our ancestors’ DNA (except for our parents,) but we would expect to see something in the ballpark of 40-45% Native for John if his grandmother was 100% Native and his grandfather was 75%.

Using simple logic here, for John’s grandmother to be 100% Native, she would almost assuredly have been a registered tribal member, and the same if his grandfather was 75% Native. I would think that information would be readily available and well-known to the family – so I doubt that this percentage is accurate. It would be easy to check, though, on various census records during their lifetimes where they would likely have been recorded as “Indian.” They might have been in the special “Indian Census” taken and might be living on a reservation.

It should also be relatively easy to find their parents since all family members were listed every ten years in the US beginning with the 1850 census.

The simple answer is that if John’s grandparents had as much Native as reported, he would be more than 3/16th – so both of these factoids cannot simultaneously be accurate. But that does NOT mean neither is accurate.

John could be 7/8th or 40ish%, 3/16th or 18ish%, or some other percentage. Sometimes, where there is smoke, there is fire. And that seems to be the quandary John is seeking to resolve.

Would  Ethnicity/Population Tests Show This Much Native?

Any of the four major testing companies would show Native for someone whose percentage would be in the 40% or 18% ballpark.

The easiest ethnicities to tell apart from one another are continental-level populations. John also stated that he thinks he may also have Black ancestry, plus Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Scots-Irish. It’s certainly possible to verify that using genealogy, but what can DNA testing alone tell us?

How far back can we expect to find ethnicities descending from particular ancestors?

In this table, you can see at each generation how many ancestors you have in that generation, plus the percentage of DNA, on average, you would inherit from each ancestor.

All of the major DNA testing companies can potentially pick up small trace percentages, but they don’t always. Sometimes one company does, and another doesn’t. So, if John has one sixth-generation Native American ancestor, he would carry about 1.56% Native DNA, if any.

  • Sometimes a specific ethnicity is not found because, thanks to random recombination, you didn’t inherit any of that DNA from those ancestors. This is why testing your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings can be very important. They share your same ancestors and may have inherited DNA that you didn’t that’s very relevant to your search.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because the reference populations and algorithms at that testing company aren’t able to detect that population or identify it accurately, especially at trace levels. Every DNA testing company establishes their own reference populations and writes internal, proprietary ethnicity analysis algorithms.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because your ancestor wasn’t Native or from that specific population.
  • Sometimes it’s there, but your population is called something you don’t expect.

For example, you may find Scandinavian when your ancestor was from England or Ireland. The Vikings raided the British Isles, so while some small amount of Scandinavian is not what you expect, that doesn’t mean it‘s wrong. However, if all of your family is from England, it’s not reasonable to have entirely Scandinavian ethnicity results.

It’s also less likely as each generation passes by that the information about their origins gets handed down accurately to following generations. Most non-genealogists don’t know the names of their great-grandparents, let alone where their ancestors were from.

Using a 25-year average generation length, by the 4th generation, shown in the chart above, you have 16 ancestors who lived approximately 100 years before your parents were born, so someplace in the mid-1800s. It’s unlikely for oral history from that time to survive intact. It’s even less likely from a century years earlier, where in the 7th generation, you have 128 total ancestors.

The best way to validate the accuracy of your ethnicity estimates is by researching your genealogy. Of course, you need to take an ethnicity test, or two, in order to have results to validate.

Ethnicity has a lot more to offer than just percentages.

Best Autosomal Tests for Native Ethnicity

Based on my experience with people who have confirmed Native ancestry, the two best tests to detect Native American ethnicity, especially in smaller percentages, are both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.

Click images to enlarge

In addition to percentages, both 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA provide chromosome painting for ethnicity, along with segment information in download files. In other words, they literally paint your ethnicity results on your chromosomes.

They then provide you with a file with the “addresses” of those ethnicities on your chromosomes, which means you can figure out which ancestors contributed those ethnicity segments.

The person in the example above, a tester at FamilyTreeDNA, is highly admixed with ancestors from European regions, African regions and Native people from South America.

Trace amounts of Native American with a majority of European heritage would appear more like this.

You can use this information to paint your chromosome segments at DNAPainter, along with your matching segments to other testers where you can identify your common ancestors. This is why providing trees is critically important – DNA plus ancestor identification with our matches is how we confirm our ancestry.

This combination allows you to identify which Native (or another ethnicity) segments descended from which ancestors. I was able to determine which ancestor provided that pink Native American segment on chromosome 1 on my mother’s side.

I’ve provided instructions for painting ethnicity segments to identify their origins in specific ancestors, here.

Autosomal and Genealogy

You may have noticed that we’ve now drifted into the genealogy realm of autosomal DNA testing. Ethnicity is nice, but if you want to know who those segments came from, you’ll need:

  • Autosomal test matching to other people
  • To identify your common ancestor with as many matches as you can
  • To match at a company who provides you with segment information for each match
  • To work with DNAPainter, which is very easy

The great news is that you can do all of that using the autosomal tests you took for ethnicity, except at Ancestry who does not provide segment information.

Best Autosomal Test for Matching Other Testers

The best autosomal test for matching may be different for everyone. Let’s look at some of the differentiators and considerations.

If you’re basing a testing recommendation solely on database size, which will probably correlate to more matches, then the DNA testing vendors fall into this order:

If you’re basing that recommendation on the BEST, generally meaning the closest matches for you, there’s no way of knowing ahead of time. At each of the four DNA testing companies, I have very good matches who have not tested elsewhere. If I weren’t in all four databases, I would have missed many valuable matches.

If you’re basing that recommendation on which vendor began testing earliest, meaning they have many tests from people who are now deceased, so you won’t find their autosomal tests in other databases that don’t accept uploads, the recommended testing company order would be:

If you’re basing that recommendation on matches to people who live in other countries, the order would be:

Ancestry and 23andMe are very distant third/fourth because they did not sell widely outside the US initially and still don’t sell in as many countries as the others, meaning their testers’ geography is more limited. However, Ancestry is also prevalent in the UK.

If you’re basing that recommendation on segment information and advanced tools that allow you to triangulate and confirm your genetic link to specific ancestors, the order would be:

Ancestry does NOT provide any segment information.

If you’re basing that recommendation on unique tools provided by each vendor, every vendor has something very beneficial that the others don’t.

In other words, there’s really no clear-cut answer for which single autosomal DNA test to order. The real answer is to be sure you’re fishing in all the ponds. The fish are not the same. Unique people test at each of those companies daily who will never be found in the other databases.

Test at or upload your DNA to all four DNA testing companies, plus GEDmatch. Step-by-step instructions for downloading your raw data file and uploading it to the DNA testing companies who accept uploads can be found, here.

Test or Upload

Not all testing companies accept uploads of raw autosomal DNA data files from other companies. The good news is that some do, and it’s free to upload and receive matches.

Two major DNA testing companies DO NOT accept uploads from other companies. In other words, you have to test at that company:

Two testing companies DO accept uploads from the other three companies. Uploads and matching are free, and advanced features can be unlocked very cost effectively.

  • FamilyTreeDNA – free matching and $19 unlock for advanced features
  • MyHeritage – free matching and $29 unlock.for advanced features

I recommend testing at both 23andMe and Ancestry and uploading one of those files to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage, then purchasing the respective unlocks.

GEDmatch

GEDmatch is a third-party matching site, not a DNA testing company. Consider uploading to GEDmatch because you may find matches from Ancestry who have uploaded to GEDmatch, giving you access to matching segment information.

Other Types of DNA

John provided additional information that may prove to be VERY useful. Both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can be tested as well and may prove to be more useful than autosomal to positively identify the origins of those two specific lines.

Let’s assume that John takes an autosomal test and discovers that indeed, the 3/16th Native estimate was close. 3/16th equates to about 18% Native which would mean that three of his 16 great-great-grandparents were Native.

John told us that his Grandmother Jones was supposed to be 100% Native.

At the great-great-grandparent level, John has 16 ancestors, so eight on his mother’s side, four from maternal grandmother Jones and four from his maternal grandfather Davis.

John carries the mitochondrial DNA of his mother (red boxes and arrows,) and her mother, through a direct line of females back in time. John also carries the Y-DNA of his father (dark blue box, at left above, and blue arrows below.)

Unlike autosomal DNA which is admixed in every generation, mitochondrial DNA (red arrows) is inherited from that direct matrilineal line ONLY and never combines with the DNA of the father. Mothers give their mitochondrial DNA to both sexes of their children, but men never contribute their mitochondrial DNA to offspring. Everyone has their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Because it never recombines with DNA from the father, so is never “watered down,” we can “see” much further back in time, even though we can’t yet identify those ancestors.

However, more importantly, in this situation, John can test his own mitochondrial DNA that he inherited from his mother, who inherited it from her mother, to view her direct matrilineal line.

John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup that will be assigned during testing tells us unquestionably whether or not his direct matrilineal ancestor was Native on her mother’s line, or not. If not, it may well tell us where that specific line originated.

You can view the countries around the world where Y-DNA haplogroups are found, here, and mitochondrial haplogroups, here.

If John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is Native, that confirms that one specific line is Native. If he can find other testers in his various lines to test either their Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA, John can determine if other ancestors were Native too. If not, those tests will reveal the origins of that line, separate from the rest of his genealogical lines.

Although John didn’t mention his father’s line, if he takes a Y-DNA test, especially at the Big Y-700 level, that will also reveal the origins of his direct paternal line. Y-DNA doesn’t combine with the other parent’s DNA either, so it reaches far back in time too.

Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests are laser-focused on one line each, and only one line. You don’t have to try to sort it out of the ethnicity “pot,” wondering which ancestor was or was not Native.

My Recommendation

When putting together a testing strategy, I recommend taking advantage of free uploads and inexpensive unlocks when possible.

  • To confirm Native American ancestry via ethnicity testing, I recommend testing at 23andMe and uploading to FamilyTreeDNA, then purchasing the $19 unlock. The free upload and $19 unlock are less expensive than testing there directly.
  • For matching, I recommend testing at Ancestry and uploading to MyHeritage, then unlocking the MyHeritage advanced features for $29, which is less expensive than retesting. Ancestry does not provide segment information, but MyHeritage (and the others) do.

At this point, John will have taken two DNA tests, but is now in all four databases, plus GEDmatch if he uploads there.

  • For genealogy research on John’s lines to determine whether or not his mother’s lines were Native, I recommend an Ancestry and a MyHeritage records subscription, plus using WikiTree, which is free.
  • To determine if John’s mother’s direct matrilineal female line was Native, I recommend that John order the mitochondrial DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA.
  • When ordering multiple tests, or uploading at FamilyTreeDNA, be sure to upload/order all of one person’s tests on the same DNA kit so that those results can be used in combination with each other.

Both males and females can take autosomal and mitochondrial DNA tests.

  • To discover what he doesn’t know about his direct paternal, meaning John’s surname line – I recommend the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA.

Only males can take a Y-DNA test, so women would need to ask their father, brother, or paternal uncle, for example, to test their direct paternal line.

  • If John can find a male Davis from his mother’s line, I recommend that he purchase the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA for that person, or check to see if someone from his Davis line may have already tested by viewing the Davis DNA Project. Like with mitochondrial DNA, the Y-DNA haplogroup will tell John the origins of his direct Davis male ancestor – plus matching of course. He will be able to determine if they were Native, and if not, discover the origins of the Davis line.
  • For assigning segments to ancestors and triangulating to confirm descent from a common ancestor, I recommend 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, paired with DNAPainter as a tool.

Shopping and Research List

Here are the tests and links recommended above:

More Than He Asked

I realize this answer is way more than John expected or even knew to ask. That’s because there is often no “one” or “one best” answer. There are many ways to approach the question after the goal is defined, and the first “answer” received may be a bit out of context.

For example, let’s say John has 2% Native ancestry and took a test at a vendor who didn’t detect it. John would believe he had none. But a different vendor might find that 2%. If it’s on his mother’s direct matrilineal line, mitochondrial DNA testing will confirm, or refute Native, beyond any doubt, regardless of autosomal ethnicity results – but only for that specific ancestral line.

Autosomal DNA can suggest Native across all your DNA, but Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA confirm it for each individual ancestor.

Even when autosomal testing does NOT show Native American, or African, for example, it’s certainly possible that it’s just too far back in time or has not been passed down during random recombination, but either Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will unquestionably confirm (or refute) the ancestry in question if the right person is tested.

This is exactly why I attempt to find a cousin who descends appropriately from every ancestor and provide testing scholarships. It’s important to obtain Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA information for each ancestor.

Which Test Should I Order?

What steps will help you decide which test or tests to take?

  1. Define your testing goal.
  2. Determine if your Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will help answer the question.
  3. Determine if you need to find ancestors another generation or two back in time to get the most benefit from DNA testing. In our example, if John discovered that both of his grandparents were enrolled tribal members, that’s huge, and the tribe might have additional information about his family.
  4. Subscribe to Ancestry and MyHeritage records collections as appropriate to perform genealogical research. Additional information not only provides context for your family, it also provides you with the ability to confirm or better understand your ethnicity results.
  5. Extend your tree so that you can obtain the best results from the three vendors who support trees; Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage. All three use trees combined with DNA tests to provide you with additional information.
  6. Order 23andMe and Ancestry autosomal DNA tests.
  7. Either test at or upload one of those tests to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, and GEDmatch.
  8. If a male, order the Big Y-700 DNA test. Or, find a male from your ancestral line who has taken or will take that test. I always offer a testing scholarship and, of course, share the exciting results!
  9. Order a mitochondrial DNA test for yourself and for appropriately descended family members to represent other ancestors. Remember that your father (and his siblings) all carry your paternal grandmother’s mitochondrial DNA. That’s often a good place to start after testing your own DNA.
  10. If your parents or grandparents are alive, or aunts and uncles, test their autosomal DNA too. They are (at least) one generation closer to your ancestors than you are and will carry more of your ancestors’ DNA.
  11. Your siblings will carry some of your ancestors’ DNA that you do not, so test them too if both of your parents aren’t available for testing.

Enjoy!!!

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WikiTree Connections, King Charles III, and DNA

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By Copyright House of Lords 2022 / Photography by Annabel Moeller, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117865820

I’m not a royal-watcher, but you’d pretty much have to be dead to not be aware that King Charles III is being crowned this Saturday, May 6th.

Have you wondered if you’re related to Charles? Or someone else?

It’s easy to find out on WikiTree.

Go to King Charles’s profile, here.

Notice that under “DNA Connections,” a WikiTree user has entered the Y-DNA of the line of King Charles via an academic sample uploaded to mitoYDNA. That’s interesting!

Tsar Romanov and King Charles III both descend from a common ancestor and are first cousins twice removed (1C2R.) You can also see more about Nicholas Romanov II in the FamilyTreeDNA Discover tool under haplogroup R-M269, in Notable Connections.

Under WikiTree DNA Connections, I notice no one has entered King Charles’s mitochondrial DNA information. Of course, King Charles inherited his mtDNA from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

If you know of anyone who carries Queen Elizabeth’s mitochondrial DNA through her direct matrilineal ancestors, by all means, enter this information. If you don’t know how, you can click on help at the bottom of the page or click here. WikiTree has lots of truly helpful volunteers.

You can also enter your information if you’ve taken an autosomal, Y-DNA, or mitochondrial DNA test and are descended appropriately from the person represented in the profile.

Here’s an example from my ancestor, Phebe Cole’s profile. I entered where I tested, and my GEDmatch number.

You can add your DNA test information by clicking on the “Add” button in the top header, then DNA Test Information here.

WikiTree DNA Benefits

WikiTree is a wonderful place to:

  • Upload your DNA to the relevant profile, where it will be populated up the tree appropriately
  • Obtain DNA information, including haplogroups, about your ancestors
  • Discover cousins who descend from that ancestor and who have tested their DNA
  • Discover cousins who may not have tested yet, but might be willing

I use WikiTree regularly to fish for Y and mitochondrial DNA information about my ancestors and to see if I match cousins listed as descendants of a common ancestor.

WikiTree works in the opposite direction from the DNA testing vendors.

At the testing vendors, you find the match and then need to determine how they are related. At WikiTree, you check your ancestor and will find a list of cousins who descend from that ancestor and who have DNA tested. You already know at least one way that each person is related to you. Finding cousin matches by ancestor is part of my triangulation process.

Are You Related?

No known DNA testers or don’t match – no problem.

You can determine whether or not you’re genealogically related to any individual on Wikitree.

Just sign in to your account, and select the profile of the person you want to check.

Scroll very near the bottom or do a browser search for the words “your connection.”

Just click on “Your connection” or “Your genealogical relationship.”

Collaborate is Key

WikiTree is crowd-sourced, so be sure to verify your connection pathway results. If the path isn’t accurate, you can correct the inaccurate person or connection. We are all doing the genealogy community a HUGE favor by ensuring this collaborative tree is accurate.

If you’re unsure about a connection, check the sources and evidence for each generation. If you need information, contact the profile manager.

Add a comment, ask a question, add an image, or provide additional information and sources on any profile.

Ancestral Legacy

I regularly update my ancestors’ profiles with additional information when it becomes available. I appreciate everything others have shared with me over the years, and I want to be sure the information about my ancestors is as accurate as possible.

I don’t know about you, but I’m in this for the long game – for posterity. Leaving as much accurate information, including Y and mitochondrial DNA, is the very least I can do for my ancestors. After all, we wouldn’t be here without them.

So, are you related to King Charles? Is your distant cousin being crowned on Saturday?

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You’re always welcome to forward articles or links to friends and share on social media.

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I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

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DNA: In Search Of…Your Grandparents

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Are you searching for an unknown relative or trying to unravel and understand unexpected results? Maybe you discovered that one or both of your parents is not your biological parent. Maybe one of your siblings might be a half-sibling instead. Or maybe you suddenly have an unexpected match that looks to be an unknown close relative, possibly a half-sibling. Perhaps there’s a close match you can’t place.

Or, are you searching for the identity of your grandparent or grandparents? If you’re searching for your parent or parents, often identifying your grandparents is a necessary step to narrow the parent-candidates.

I’ve written an entire series of “In Search of Unknown Family” articles, permanently listed together, here. They will step you through the search process and help you understand how to unravel your results. If you’re new, reading these, in order, before proceeding, would be a good idea.

Identifying a Grandparent

I saved this “grandparents” article for later in the series because you will need the tools and techniques I’ve introduced in the earlier articles. Identifying grandparents is often the most challenging of any of the relationships we’ve covered so far. In part because each of those four individuals occupies a different place in your tree, meaning their X, Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA is carried by different, and not all, descendants. This means we sometimes have to utilize different tools and techniques.

If you’re trying to identify any of your four grandparents, females are sometimes more challenging than males.

Why?

Women don’t have a Y chromosome to test. This can be a double handicap. Female testers can’t test a Y chromosome, and maternal ancestors don’t have a Y chromosome to match.

Of course, every circumstance differs. You may not have a male to test for paternal lines either.

The maternal grandfather can be uniquely challenging, because two types of DNA, Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA matching are immediately eliminated for all testers.

While I’ve focused on the maternal grandfather in this example, these techniques can be utilized for all four grandparents as well as for parents. At the end, I’ll review other grandparent relationships and additional tools you might be able to utilize for each one.

In addition to autosomal DNA, we can also utilize mitochondrial DNA, Y-DNA and sometimes X DNA in certain situations.

Testing, Tests and Vendors

As you recall, only men have a Y chromosome (blue arrow), so only genetic males can take a Y-DNA test. Men pass their Y chromosome from father to son in each generation. Daughters don’t receive a Y chromosome.

Everyone has their mother’s mitochondrial DNA (pink arrow.) Women pass their mitochondrial DNA to both sexes of their children, but only females pass it on. In the current generation, represented by the son and daughter, above, the mother’s yellow heart-shaped mitochondrial DNA is inherited by both sexes of her children. In the current generation, males and females can both test for their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Of course, everyone has autosomal DNA, inherited from all of their ancestral lines through at least the 5th or 6th generation, and often further back in time. Autosomal DNA is divided in half in each generation, as children inherit half of each parents’ autosomal DNA (with the exception of the X chromosome, which males only inherit from their mother.)

The four major vendors, Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage sell autosomal DNA tests, but only FamilyTreeDNA sells Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests.

Only 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA report X matching.

All vendors except Ancestry provide segment location information along with a chromosome browser.

You can read about the vendor’s strengths and weaknesses in the third article, here.

Ordering Y and Mitochondrial DNA Tests

If you’re seeking the identities of grandparents, the children and parents, above, can test for the following types of DNA in addition to autosomal:

Person in Pedigree Y-DNA Mitochondrial
Son His father’s blue star His mother’s pink heart
Daughter None Her mother’s pink heart
Father His father’s blue star His mother’s gold heart
Mother None Her mother’s pink heart

Note that none of the people shown above in the direct pedigree line carry the Y-DNA of the green maternal grandfather. However, if the mother has a full sibling, the green “Male Child,” he will carry the Y-DNA of the maternal grandfather. Just be sure the mother and her brother are full siblings, because otherwise, the brother’s Y-DNA may not have been inherited from your mother’s father. I wrote about full vs half sibling determination, here.

Let’s view this from a slightly different perspective. For each grandparent in the tree, which of the two testers, son or daughter, if either, carry that ancestor’s DNA of the types listed in the columns.

Ancestor in Tree Y-DNA Mitochondrial DNA Autosomal DNA X DNA
Paternal Grandfather Son Neither Son, daughter Neither
Paternal Grandmother Has no Y chromosome None (father has it, doesn’t pass it on to son or daughter) Son, daughter Daughter (son does not receive father’s X chromosome)
Maternal Grandfather Neither Neither Son, daughter Son, daughter (potentially)
Maternal Grandmother Has no Y chromosome Son, daughter Son, daughter Son, daughter (potentially)

Obtaining the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA of those grandparents from their descendants will provide hints and may be instrumental in identifying the grandparent.

FamilyTreeDNA

You’ll need to order Y-DNA (males only) and mitochondrial DNA tests separately from autosomal DNA tests. They are three completely different tests.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the autosomal DNA test is called Family Finder to differentiate it from their Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests.

Their autosomal test is called Family Finder whether you order a test from FamilyTreeDNA, or upload your results to their site from another vendor (instructions here.)

I recommend ordering the Big Y-700 Y-DNA test if possible, and if not, the highest resolution Y-DNA test you can afford. The Big Y-700 is the most refined Y-DNA test available, includes multiple tools and places Big Y-700 testers on the Time Tree through the Discover tool, providing relatively precise estimates of when those men shared a common ancestor. If you’ve already purchased a lower-precision Y-DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA, you can easily upgrade.

I wrote about using the Discover tool here. The recently added Group Time Tree draws a genetic Y-DNA tree of Big-Y testers in common projects, showing earliest known ancestors and the date of the most recent common ancestor.

You need to make sure your Family Finder, mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA (if you’re a male) tests are ordered from the same account at FamilyTreeDNA.

You want all 3 of your tests on the same account (called a kit number) so that you can use the advanced search features that display people who match you on combinations of multiple kinds of tests. For example, if you’re a male, do your Y-DNA matches also match you on the autosomal Family Finder test, and if so, how closely? Advanced matching also provides X matching tools.

X DNA is included in autosomal tests. X DNA has a distinct matching pattern for males and females which makes it uniquely useful for genealogy. I wrote about X DNA matching here.

If you upload your autosomal results to FamilyTreeDNA from another company, you’re only uploading a raw DNA file, not the DNA itself, so FamilyTreeDNA will need to send you a swab kit to test your Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA. If you upload your autosomal DNA, simply sign in to your kit, purchase the Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA tests and they will send you a swab kit.

If you test directly at FamilyTreeDNA, you can add any test easily by simply signing in and placing an order. They will use your archived DNA from your swab sample, as long as there’s enough left and it’s of sufficient quality.

Fish In All Ponds

The first important thing to do in your grandparent search is to be sure you’re fishing in all ponds. In other words, be sure you’ve tested at all 4 vendors, or uploaded files to FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

When you upload files to those vendors, be sure to purchase the unlock for their advanced tools, because you’re going to utilize everything possible.

If you have relatively close matches at other vendors, ask if they will upload their files too. The upload is free. Not only will they receive additional matches, and another set of ethnicity results, their results will help you by associating your matches with specific sides of your family.

Why Order Multiple Tests Now Instead of Waiting?

I encourage testers to order their tests at the beginning of their journey, not one at a time. Each new test from a vendor takes about 6-8 weeks from the time you initially order – they send the test, you swab or spit, return it, and they process your DNA. Of course, uploading takes far less time.

If you’re adding elapsed time, two autosomal tests (Ancestry and 23andMe), two uploads (FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage,) a Y-DNA and a mitochondrial DNA test, if all purchased serially, one after the other, means you’ll be waiting about 6-8 months.

Do you want to wait 6-8 months? Can you afford to?

Part of that answer has to do with what, exactly, you’re seeking.

A Name or Information?

Are you seeking the name of a person, or are you seeking information about that person? With grandparents, you may be hoping to meet them, and time may be of the essence. Time delayed may not be able to be recovered or regained.

Most people don’t just want to put a name to the person they are seeking – they want to learn about them. You will have different matches at each company. Even after you identify the person you seek, the people you match at each company may have information about them, their photos, know about their life, family, and their ancestors. They may be able and willing to facilitate an introduction if that’s what you seek.

One cousin that I assisted discovered that his father had died just 6 weeks before he made the connection. He was heartsick.

Having data from all vendors simultaneously will allow you to compile that data and work with it together as well as separately. Using your “best” matches at each company, augmented by both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can make MUCH shorter work of this search.

Your Y-DNA, if you’re a male will give you insights into your surname line, and the Big-Y test now comes with estimates of how far in the past you share a common ancestor with other men that have taken the Big-Y test. This can be a HUGE boon to a male trying to figure out his surname line.

Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, respectively, will eliminate many people from being your mother or father, or your direct paternal or direct maternal line ancestor. Both provide insights into which population and where that population originated as well. In other words, it provides you lineage-specific information not available elsewhere.

Your Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can also provide critically important information about whether that direct line ancestor belonged to an endogamous population, and where they came from.

Strategies

You may be tempted to think that you only need to test at one vendor, or at the vendor with the largest database, but that’s not necessarily true.

Here’s a table of my closest matches at the 4 vendors.

Vendor Closest Maternal Closest Paternal Comments
Ancestry 1C, 1C1R Half 1C, 2C I recognized both of the maternal and neither of the paternal.
23andMe 2C, 2C 1C1R, half-gr-niece Recognized both maternal, one paternal
MyHeritage Mother uploaded, 1C Half-niece, half 1C Recognized both maternal, one paternal
FamilyTreeDNA Mother tested, 1C1R Parent/child, half-gr-niece Recognized all 4

To be clear, I tested my mother at FamilyTreeDNA before she passed away, but if I was an adoptee searching for my mother, that’s the first database she would be in. As her family, we were able to order the Family Finder test from her archived DNA after she had passed away. I then uploaded her DNA file to MyHeritage, but she’ll never be at either 23andMe or Ancestry because they don’t accept uploads and she clearly can’t test.

Additionally, being able to identify maternal matches by viewing shared matches with my mother separates out close matches from my paternal side.

Let’s put this another way, I stand a MUCH BETTER chance of unraveling this mystery with the combined closest matches of all 4 databases instead of the top ones from just one database.

I’m providing analysis methodologies for working with results from all of the vendors together, in case your answer is not immediately obvious. Taking multiple tests facilitates using all of these tools immediately, not months later. Solving the puzzle sooner means you may not miss valuable connection opportunities.

You may also discover that the door slams shut with some people, but another match may be unbelievably helpful. Don’t unnecessarily limit your possibilities.

Here’s the testing and upload strategy I recommend.

What When Ancestry 23andMe MyHeritage FamilyTreeDNA GEDmatch
Order autosomal test Initially Yes Yes Upload Upload Upload
Order Big-Y DNA test if male Initially Yes
Order mitochondrial DNA test Initially Yes
Upload free autosomal file From Ancestry or 23andMe Yes Yes Yes
Unlock Advanced Tools When upload file $29 $19 $9.95 month
Includes X Matching No Yes No Yes Yes
Chromosome Browser, segment location information No Yes Yes Yes Yes

When you upload a DNA file to a vendor site, only upload one file per site, per tester. Otherwise, multiple tests simply glom up everyone’s match list with multiple matches to the same person and can be very confusing.

  • One person took an autosomal test at a company that accepts uploads, forgot about it, uploaded a file from another vendor later, and immediately thought she had found her parent. She had not. She “found” herself.
  • Another person though she had found two sisters, but one person had uploaded their own file from two different vendors.

Multiple vendor sites reveal multiple close matches to different people which increase your opportunity to discover INFORMATION about your family, not just the identity of the person.

Match Ranges

Given that we are searching for an unknown maternal grandfather, your mother may not have had any (known) full siblings. The “best” match would be to a full or half siblings to your parents, or their descendants, depending on how old your grandparents would be.

Let’s take the “worst case” scenario, meaning there are no full siblings AND there are many possible generations between you and the people you may match.

Now, let’s look at DNAPainter’s Shared cM tool.

You’re going to be looking for someone who is either your mother’s half sibling on her father’s side, or who is a full sibling.

If your mother is adopted, it’s possible that she has or had full siblings. If your mother was born circa 1920, it’s likely that you will be matching the next generation, or two, or three.

However, if your mother was born later, you could be matching her siblings directly.

I’m going to assume half siblings for this example, because they are more difficult than full siblings.

Full sibling relationships for your mother’s siblings are listed at right. Your full aunt or uncle at top, then their descendant generations below.

At left, in red, are the half-sibling relationships and the matching amounts.

You can see that if you’re dealing with half 1C3R (half first cousin three times removed,) you may not match.

Therefore, in order to isolate matches, it’s imperative to test every relevant relative possible.

Who’s Relevant for DNA Testing?

Who is relevant to test If you’re attempting to identify your maternal grandfather?

The goal is to be able to assign matches to the most refined ancestor possible. In other words, if you can assign someone to either your grandmother’s line, or your grandfather’s line, that’s better than assigning the person to your grandparents jointly.

Always utilize the tests of the people furthest up the tree, meaning the oldest generations. Their DNA is less-diluted, meaning it has been divided fewer times. Think about who is living and might be willing to test.

You need to be able to divide your matches between your parents, and then between your grandparents on your mother’s side.

  • Test your parents, of course, and any of their known siblings, half or full.
  • If those siblings have passed away, test as many of their children as you can.
  • If any of your grandparents are living, test them
  • If BOTH of your grandparents on the same side aren’t available to test, test any, preferably all, living aunts or uncles.
  • If your maternal grandmother had siblings, test them or their descendants if they are deceased.
  • If your parents are deceased, test your aunts, uncles, full siblings and half-siblings on your mother’s side. (Personally, I’d test all half-siblings, not just maternal.)
  • Half-siblings are particularly valuable because there is no question which “side” your shared DNA came from. They will match people you don’t because they received part of your parent’s DNA that you did not.

Furthermore, shared matches to half-siblings unquestionably identify which parent those matches are through.

Essentially, you’re trying to account for all matches that can be assigned to your grandparents whose identities you know – leaving only people who descend from your unknown maternal grandfather.

Testing your own descendants will not aid your quest. There is no need to test them for this purpose, given that they received half of your DNA.

I wrote about why testing close relatives is important in the article Superpower: Your Aunts’ and Uncles’ DNA is Your DNA Too – Maximize Those Matches!

Create or Upload a Tree

Three of the four major vendors, plus GEDMatch, support and utilize family trees.

You’ll want to either upload or create a tree at each of the vendor sites.

You can either upload a GEDCOM file from your home computer genealogy software, or you can create a tree at one of the vendors, download it, and upload to the others. I described that process at Ancestry, here.

Goal

Your goal is to work with your highest matches first to determine how they are related to you, thereby eliminating matches to known lineages.

Assuming you’re only searching for the identity of one grandparent, it’s beneficial to have done enough of your genealogy on your three known grandparents to be able to assign matches from those lines to those sides.

Step 1 is to check each vendor for close matches that might fall into that category.

The Top 15 at Each Vendor

Your closest several autosomal matches are the most important and insightful. I begin with the top 15 autosomal results at each vendor, initially, which provides me with the best chance of meaningful close relationship discoveries.

Create a Spreadsheet or Chart

I hate to use that S word (spreadsheet), because I don’t want non-technical people to be discouraged. So, I’m going to show you how I set up a spreadsheet and you can simply create a chart or even draw this out on paper if you wish.

I’ve color-coded columns for each of my 4 grandparents. The green column is the target Maternal Grandfather whose identity I’m seeking.

I match our first example; Erik, at 417 cM. Based on various pieces of information, taken together, I’ve determined that I’m Erik’s half 1C1R. His 8 great-grandparent surnames, or the ones he has provided, indicate that I’m related to Eric on my paternal grandfather’s line.

You’ll want to record your closest matches in this fashion.

Let’s look at how to find this information and work with the tools at the individual vendors.

23andMe

Let’s start at 23andMe, because they create a potential genetic tree for you, which may or may not be accurate.

I have two separate tests at 23andMe. One is a V3 and one is a V4 test. I keep one in its pristine state, and I work with the second one. You’ll see two of “me” in the tree, and that’s why.

23andMe makes it easy to see estimated relationships, although they are not always correct. Generally, they are close, and they can be quite valuable.

Click on any image to enlarge

The maternal and paternal “sides” may not be positioned where genealogists are used to seeing them. Remember, 23andMe has no genealogy trees, so they are attempting to construct a genetic tree based on how people are related to you and to each other, with no prior knowledge. They do sometimes have issues with half-relationships, so I’d encourage you to use this tree to isolate people to the three grandparents you know.

In my case, I was able to determine the maternal and paternal sides easily based on known cousins. This is the perfect example of why it’s important to test known relatives from both sides of your family.

My paternal side, at right, in blue, was easy because I recognized my half-sister’s family, and because of known cousins who I recognized from having tested elsewhere. I’ve worked with them for years. The blue stars show people I could identify, mostly second cousins.

My maternal side is at left, in red. Normally, for genealogists, the maternal side is at right, and the paternal at left, so don’t make assumptions, and don’t let this positioning throw you.

I’m pretending I don’t know who my maternal grandfather is. I was able to identify my maternal grandmother’s side based on a known second cousin.

That leaves my target – my maternal grandfather’s line.

All of the matches to the left of the red circle would, by process of elimination, be on my maternal grandfather’s side.

The next step would be to figure out how the 5 people descending from my maternal grandfather’s line are related to each other – through which of their ancestors.

On the DNA Relatives match list, here’s what needs to be checked:

  • Do your matches share surnames with you or your ancestors?
  • Do they show surnames in common with each other?
  • Is there a common location?
  • Birth year which helps you understand their potential generation.
  • Did they list their grandparents’ birthplaces?
  • Did they provide a family tree link?
  • Do they also match each other using the Relatives in Common feature?
  • Do they triangulate, indicated by “DNA Overlap” in Relatives in Common?
  • Who else is on the Relatives in Common list, and what do they have in common with each other?
  • Looking at your Ancestry Composition compared with theirs, what are your shared populations, and are they relevant? If you are both 100% European, then shared populations aren’t useful, but if both people share the same minority ancestry, especially on the same segments, it may indeed be relevant – especially if it can’t be accounted for on the known sides of the family.

Reach out to these people and see what they know about their genealogy, if they have tested elsewhere, and if they have a genealogy tree someplace that you can view.

If they can tell you their grandparents’ names, birth and death dates and locations, you can check public sources like WikiTree, FamilySearch and Geni, or build trees for them. You can also use Newspaper resources, like Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive and the newspapers at MyHeritage.

I added the top 15 23andMe matches into the spreadsheet I created.

You’ll notice that not many people at 23andMe enter surnames. However, if you can identify individuals from your 3 known lines, you can piggyback the rest by using Relatives in Common in conjunction with the genetic tree placement.

Be sure to check all the people that are connected to the target line in your genetic tree.

You’ll want to harvest your DNA segments to paint at DNAPainter if you don’t solve this mystery with initial reviews at each vendor.

Ancestry

Let’s move to Ancestry next.

At Ancestry, you’ll want to start with your closest matches on your match list.

Ancestry classifies “Close Matches” as anyone 200 cM or greater, which probably won’t reach as far down as the matches we’ll want to include.

Some of the categories in the Shared cM Chart from DNAPainter, above, don’t work based on ages, so I’ve eliminated those. I also know, for example, that someone who could fall in the grandparent/grandchild category (blue star,) in my case, does not, so must be a different relationship.

Second cousins, who share great-grandparents, can be expected to share about 229 cM of DNA on average, or between 41 and 592 cM. First cousins share 866 cM, and half first cousins share 449 cM on average.

I have 13 close matches (over 200 cM), but I’m including my top 15 at each vendor, so I added two more. You can always go back and add more matches if necessary. Just keep in mind that the smaller the match, the greater the probability that it came from increasingly distant generations before your grandparents. Your sweet spot to identify grandparents is between 1C and 2C.

I need to divide my close matches into 4 groups, each one equating to a grandparent. Record this on your spreadsheet.

You can group your matches at Ancestry using colored dots, which means you can sort by those groups.

You can also select a “side” for a match by clicking on “Yes” under the question, “Do you recognize them?”

Initially, you want to determine if this person is related to you on your mother’s or father side, and hopefully, through which grandparent.

Recently, Ancestry added a feature called SideView which allows testers to indicate, based on ethnicity, which side is “parent 1” and which side is “parent 2.” I wrote about that, here.

Make your selection, assuming you can tell which “side” of you descends from which parent based on ethnicity and/or shared matches. How you label “parent 1,” meaning either maternal or paternal, determines how Ancestry assigns your matches, when possible.

Using these tools, which may not be completely accurate, plus shared matches with people you can identify, divide your matches among your three known grandparents, meaning that the people you cannot assign will be placed in the fourth “unknown” column.

On my spreadsheet, I assign all of my closest matches to one of my grandparents. Michael is my first cousin (1C) and we share both maternal grandparents, so he’s not helpful in the division because he can’t be assigned to only one grandparent.

The green maternal grandfather is who I’m attempting to identify.

There are 4 people, highlighted in yellow, who don’t fall into the other three grandparent lines, so they get added to the green column and will be my focus.

I would be inclined to continue adding matches using a process known as the Leeds Method, until I had several people in each category. Looking back at the DNAPainter cM chart, at this point, we don’t have anyone below 200 cM and the matches we need might be below that threshold. The more matches you have to work with, the better.

At Ancestry, you cannot download your matches into a spreadsheet, nor can you work with other clustering tools such as Genetic Affairs, so you’ll have to build out your spreadsheet manually.

Check for the same types of information that I reviewed at 23andMe:

  • Review trees, if your matches have them, minimally recording the surnames of their 8 great-grandparents.
  • Review shared matches, looking for common names in the trees in recent generations.
  • View shared matches with people with whom you have a “Common Ancestor” indication, which means a ThruLine. You won’t have Thrulines with your target grandparent, of course, but Thrulines will allow you to place the match in one of the other columns. I wrote about ThruLines here, here and here.
  • ThruLines sometimes suggests ancestors based on other people’s trees, so be EXCEEDINGLY careful with potential ancestor suggestions. That’s not to say you should discount those suggestions. Just treat them as tree hints that may have been copy/pasted hundreds of times, because that’s what they are.

I make notes on each match so I can easily see the connection by scanning without opening the match.

Now, I have a total of 30 entries on my spreadsheet, 15 from 23and Me and 15 from Ancestry.

Why Not Use Autosclusters?

Even with vendors who allow or provide cluster tools, I don’t use an automated autocluster tool at this point. Autocluster tools often omit your closest matches because your closest matches would be in nearly half of all your clusters, which isn’t exactly informative. However, for this purpose, those are the very matches we need to evaluate.

After identifying groups of people that represent the missing grandparent, using our spreadsheet methodology, autoclusters could be useful to identify common surnames and even to compare the trees of our matches using AutoTree, AutoPedigree and AutoKinship. AutoClusters cannot be utilized at Ancestry, but is available through MyHeritage and at GEDmatch, or through Genetic Affairs for 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.

Next, let’s move to FamilyTreeDNA.

FamilyTreeDNA

FamilyTreeDNA is the only vendor that provides Family Matching, also known as “bucketing.” FamilyTreeDNA assigns your matches to either a paternal or maternal bucket, or both, based on triangulated matches with someone you’ve linked to a profile in your tree.

The key to Family Matching is to link known Family Finder matches to their profile cards in your tree.

Clicking on the Family Tree link at the top of your personal page allows you to link your matches to the profile cards of your matches.

FamilyTreeDNA utilizes these linked matches to assign those people, and matches who match you and those people, both, on at least one common segment, to the maternal or paternal tabs on your match list.

Always link as many known people as possible (red stars) which will result in more matches being bucketed and assigned to parents’ sides for you, even if neither parent is available to test.

I wrote about Triangulation in Action at FamilyTreeDNA, here.

You can see at the top of my match list that I have a total of 8000 matches of which 3422 are paternal, 1517 are maternal and 3 match on both sides. Full siblings, their (and my) children and their descendants will always match on both sides. People with endogamy across both parents may have several matches on both sides.

If your relevant parent has tested, always work from their test.

Because we are searching for the maternal grandfather, in this case, we can ignore all tests that are bucketed as paternal matches.

Given that we are searching for my maternal grandfather, I probably have not been able to link as many maternal matches, other than possibly ones from my maternal grandmother. This means that the maternal grandfather’s matches are not bucketed because there are no identified matches to link on that side of my tree.

If you sort by maternal and paternal tabs, you’ll miss people who aren’t bucketed, meaning they have no maternal or paternal icon, so I recommend simply scanning down the list and processing maternal matches and non-bucketed matches.

By being able to confidently ignore paternally bucketed matches and only processing maternal and non-assigned matches, this is equivalent to processing the first 48 total matches. If I were to only look at the first 15 matches, 12 were paternal and only 3 are maternal.

Using bucketing at FamilyTreeDNA is very efficient and saves a lot of work.

Omitting paternal matches also means we are including smaller matches which could potentially be from common ancestors further back in the tree. Or, they could be younger testers. Or simply smaller by the randomness of recombination.

FamilyTreeDNA is a goldmine, with 16 of 20 maternal matches being from the unknown maternal grandfather.

Next, let’s see what’s waiting at MyHeritage.

MyHeritage

MyHeritage is particularly useful if your lineage happens to be from Europe. Of course, if you’re searching for an unknown person, you probably have no idea where they or their ancestors are from. Two of my best matches first appeared at MyHeritage.

Of course, your matches with people who descend from your unknown maternal grandfather won’t have any Theories of Family Relativity, as that tool is based on BOTH a DNA match plus a tree or document match. However, Theories is wonderful to group your matches to your other three grandparents.

MyHeritage provides a great deal of information for each match, including common surnames with your tree. If you recognize the surnames (and shared matches) as paternal or maternal, then you can assign the match. However, the matches you’re most interested in are the highest matches without any surnames in common with you – which likely point to the missing maternal grandfather.

However, those people may, and probably do, have surnames in common with each other.

Of the matches who aren’t attributed to the other three grandparents, the name Ferverda arises again and again. So does Miller, which suggests the grandparent or great-grandparent couple may well be Ferverda/Miller.

Let’s continue working through the process with our spreadsheet and see what we can discover about those surnames.

Our 60 Results

Of the 60 total results, 15 from each vendor, a total of 24 cannot be assigned to other columns through bucketing or shared matches, so are associated with the maternal grandfather. Of course, Michael who descends from both of my maternal grandparents won’t be helpful initially.

Cheryl, Donald and Michael are duplicates at different vendors, but the rest are not.

Of the relevant matches, the majority, 12 are from FamilyTreeDNA, four each are from Ancestry and MyHeritage, and three are from 23andMe.

Of the names provided in the surname fields of matches, in matches’ trees in the first few generations, and the testers’ surnames, Ferverda is repeated 12 times, for 50% of the time. Miller is repeated 9 times, so it’s likely that either of those are the missing grandfather’s surname. Of course, if we had Y-DNA, we’d know the answer to that immediately.

Comparing trees of my matches, we find John Ferverda as the common ancestor between two different matches. John is the son of Hiram Ferverda and Eva Miller who are found in several trees.

That’s a great hint. But is this the breakthrough I need?

What’s Next?

The next step is to look for connections between the maternal grandmother, Edith Lore, who is known in our example, and a Ferverda male. He is probably one of the sons of Hiram Ferverda and Eva Miller. Do they lived in the same area? In close proximity? Do they attend the same church or school? Are they neighbors or live close to the family or some of their relatives? Does she have connections with Ferverda family members? We are narrowing in.

Some of Hiram and Eva’s sons might be able to be eliminated based on age or other factors, or at least be less likely candidates. Any of their children who had moved out of state when the child was conceived would be less likely candidates. Age would be a factor, as would opportunity.

Target testing of the Ferverda sons’ children, or the descendants of their children would (probably) be able to pinpoint which of their sons is more closely related to me (or my mother) than the rest.

In our case, indeed, John Ferverda is the son we are searching for and his descendant, Michael is the highest match on the list. Cheryl and Donald descend from John’s brother, which eliminates him as a candidate. Another tester descends from a third Ferverda son, which eliminates that son as well.

Michael, my actual first cousin with a 755 cM match at one vendor, and 822 cM at a second vendor, is shown by the MyHeritage cM Explainer with an 88% probability that he is my first cousin.

However, when I’m trying to identify the maternal grandfather, which is half of that couple, I need to focus one generation further back in time to eliminate other candidates.

The second and third closest matches are both Donald at 395 cM and Cheryl at 467 cM who also share the same Ferverda/Miller lineage and are the children of my maternal grandfather’s brother.

On the spreadsheet, I need to look at the trees of people who have both Ferverda and Miller, which brought me to both Cheryl and Donald, then Michael, which allowed me to identify John Ferverda, unquestionably, as my grandfather based on the cM match amounts.

Cheryl and Donald, who are confirmed full siblings, and my mother either have to be first cousins, or half siblings. Their match with mother is NOT in the half-sibling range for one sibling, and on the lower edge with the other. Mother also matches Michael as a nephew, not more distantly as she would if he were a first cousin once removed (1C1R) instead of a nephew.

Evaluating these matches combined confirms that my maternal grandfather is indeed John Ferverda.

What About X DNA?

The X chromosome has a unique inheritance path which is sometimes helpful in this circumstance, especially to males.

Women inherit an X chromosome from both parents, but males inherit an X chromosome from ONLY their mother. A male inherits a Y chromosome from his father which is what makes him male. Women inherit two X chromosomes, one from each parent, and no Y, which is what makes them female.

Therefore, if you are a male and are struggling with which side of your tree matches are associated with, the X chromosome may be of help.

Your mother passed her X chromosome to you, which could be:

  • Her entire maternal X, meaning your maternal grandmother’s X chromosome
  • Her entire paternal X, meaning your maternal grandfather’s X chromosome (which descends from his mother)
  • Some combination of your maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather’s chromosomes

One thing we know positively is that a male’s X matches are ALWAYS from their maternal side only, so that should help when dividing a male’s matches maternally or paternally. Note – be aware of potential pedigree collapse, endogamy and identical-by-chance matches if it looks like a male has a X match on his father’s side.

Unfortunately, the X chromosome cannot assist females in the same way, because females inherit an X from both parents. Therefore, they can match people in the same was as a male, but also in additional ways.

  • Females will match their paternal grandmother on her entire X chromosome, and will match one or both of their maternal grandparents on the X chromosome.
  • Females will NEVER match their paternal grandfather’s X chromosome because their father did not inherit an X chromosome from his father.
  • Males will match one or both of their maternal grandparents on their X chromosome.
  • Males will NEVER match their paternal grandparents, because males do not receive an X chromosome from their father.

The usefulness of X DNA matching depends on the inheritance path of both the tester AND their match.

When Can Y-DNA or Mitochondrial DNA Help with Grandparent Identification?

If you recall, I selected the maternal grandfather as the person to seek because no tester carries either the Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA of their maternal grandfather. In other words, this was the most difficult identification, meaning that any of the other three grandparents would be, or at least could be, easier with the benefit of Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA testing.

In addition to matching, both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA will provide testers with location origins, both continental and often much more specific locations based on where other testers and matches are from.

Y-DNA often provides a surname.

Let’s see how these tests, matches and results can assist us.

  • Paternal grandfather – If I was a male descended from John Ferverda paternally, I could have tested both my autosomal DNA PLUS my Y-DNA, which would have immediately revealed the Ferverda surname via Y-DNA. Two Ferverda men are shown in the Ferverda surname DNA project, above.

That revelation would have confirmed the Ferverda surname when combined with the high frequency of Ferverda found among autosomal matches on the spreadsheet.

  • Maternal grandmother – If we were searching for a maternal grandmother, both the male and female sibling testers (as shown in the pedigree chart) would have her mitochondrial DNA which could provide matches to relevant descendants. Mitochondrial DNA at both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe could also eliminate anyone who does not match on a common haplogroup, when comparing 23andMe results to 23andMe results, and FamilyTreeDNA to FamilyTreeDNA results at the same level.

At 23andMe, only base level haplogroups are provided, but they are enough to rule out a direct matrilineal line ancestor.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the earlier HVR1 and HVR2 tests provide base level haplogroups, while full sequence testing provides granular, specific haplogroups. Full sequence is the recommended testing level.

  • Paternal grandmother – If we were searching for a paternal grandmother, testers would, of course, need either their father to test his mitochondrial DNA, or for one of his siblings to test which could be used in the same way as described for maternal grandmother matching.

Summary

Successfully identifying a grandparent is dependent on many factors. Before you make that identification, it’s very difficult to know which are more or less important.

For example, if the grandparent is from a part of the world with few testers, you will have far fewer matches, potentially, than other lines from more highly tested regions. In my case, two of my four grandparents’ families, including Ferverda, immigrated in the 1850s, so they had fewer matches than families that have been producing large families in the US for generations.

Endogamy may be a factor.

Family size in past and current generations may be a factor.

Simple luck may be a factor.

Therefore, it’s always wise to test your DNA, and that of your parents and close relatives if possible, and upload to all of the autosomal databases. Then construct an analysis plan based on:

  • How you descend from the grandparent in question, meaning do you carry their X DNA, Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA.
  • Who else is available to test their autosomal DNA to assist with shared matches and the process of elimination.
  • Who else is available to test for Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA of the ancestor in question.

If you don’t find the answer initially, schedule a revisit of your matches periodically and update your spreadsheet. Sometimes DNA and genealogy is a waiting same.

Just remember, luck always favors the prepared!

Resources

You may find the following resource articles beneficial in addition to the links provided throughout this article.

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Beethoven’s DNA Reveals Surprises – Does Your DNA Match?

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Beethoven’s DNA has been sequenced from a lock of his hair. That, alone, is amazing news – but that’s just the beginning!

The scientific paper was released this week, and the news media is awash with the unexpected surprises that Beethoven’s DNA has revealed for us. Better yet, his DNA is in the FamilyTreeDNA database and you just might match. Are you related to Beethoven?

His Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA have been recovered and are available for matching.

You can check your autosomal results if you’ve taken a Family Finder test, or you can upload your DNA file from either AncestryDNA, 23andMe or MyHeritage to find out if you match Beethoven. Here are the download/upload instructions for each company.

But first, let’s talk about this amazing sequence of events (pardon the pun) and scientific discoveries!

Beethoven’s Genome is Sequenced

Everyone knows the famous, genius composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. He was born in 1770 in Bonn on the banks of the Rhine River and died in 1827 in Vienna. You can listen to a snippet of his music, here.

We are all about to know him even better.

Yesterday, amid much media fanfare and a press release, the genome and related findings about Beethoven were released by a team of renowned scientists in a collaborative effort. Research partners include the University of Cambridge, the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, the American Beethoven Society, KU Leuven, the University Hospital Bonn, the University of Bonn, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and  FamilyTreeDNA. I want to congratulate all of these amazing scientists for brilliant work.

Beethoven’s Hair Revelations

In the past, we were unable to retrieve viable DNA from hair, but advances have changed that in certain settings. If you’re eyeing grandma’s hair wreath – the answer is “not yet” for consumer testing. Just continue to protect and preserve your family heirlooms as described in this article.

Thankfully, Beethoven participated in the Victorian custom of giving locks of hair as mementos. Eight different locks of hair attributed to Beethoven were analyzed, with five being deemed authentic and one inconclusive. Those locks provided enough DNA to obtain a great deal of different types of information.

Beethoven’s whole genome was sequenced to a 24X coverage level, meaning the researchers were able to obtain 24 good reads of his DNA, providing a high level of confidence in the accuracy of the sequencing results.

What Was Discovered?

Perhaps the most interesting discovery, at least to genealogists, is that someplace in Beethoven’s direct paternal lineage, meaning his Y-DNA, a non-paternal event (NPE) occurred. The paper’s primary authors referred to this as an “extra-pair-paternity event” but I’ve never heard that term before.

Based on testing of other family members, that event occurred sometime between roughly 1572 and Ludwig’s conception in 1770. The reported lack of a baptismal record had already raised red flags with researchers relative to Beethoven’s paternity, but there is nothing to suggest where in the five generations prior to Ludwig von Beethoven that genetic break occurred. Perhaps testing additional people in the future will provide more specificity.

We also discovered that Beethoven was genetically predisposed to liver disease. He was plagued with jaundice and other liver-related issues for much of his later life.

Beethoven, prior to his death, left a handwritten directive asking his physicians to describe and publicize his health issues which included progressive hearing loss to the point of deafness, persistent gastrointestinal problems and severe liver issues that eventually resulted in his death. Cirrhosis of the liver was widely believed to be his cause of death.

In addition, DNA in the hair revealed that Beethoven had contracted Hepatitis B, which also affects the liver.

The combination of genetic predisposition to liver disease, Hepatitis B and heavy alcohol use probably sealed his fate.

Additional health issues that Beethoven experienced are described in the paper, published in Current Biology.

It’s quite interesting that during this analysis the team devised a method to use triangulated segments that they mapped to various geographic locations, as illustrated above in a graphic from the paper. Fascinating work!!!

As a partner in this research, Cambridge University created a beautiful website, including a video which you can watch, here.

Beethoven’s Later Years

This portrait of Beethoven was painted in 1820 just 7 years before his death, at 56 years of age. By this time, he had been completely deaf for several years, had stopped performing and appearing in public. Ironically, he still continued to compose, but was horribly frustrated and discouraged, even contemplating suicide. I can’t even fathom the depths of despair for a person with his musical genius to become deaf, slowly, like slow torture.

His personal life didn’t fare much better. In 1812, he wrote this impassioned love letter to his “Immortal Beloved” whose identity has never been revealed, if it was ever known by anyone other than Beethoven himself. The letter was never sent, which is why we have it today.

FamilyTreeDNA

FamilyTreeDNA, one of the research partners published a blog article, here.

The FamilyTreeDNA research team not only probed Beethoven’s genealogy, they tested people whose DNA should have matched, but as it turns out, did not.

Beethoven’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is H1b1+16,362C, plus a private mutation at C16,176T. Perhaps in the future, Beethoven’s additional private mutation will become a new haplogroup if other members of this haplogroup have it as well. If you have tested your mitochondrial DNA, check and see if Beethoven is on your match list. If you haven’t tested, now’s a great time.

According to the academic paper, Beethoven’s Y-DNA haplogroup is I-Z139, but when viewing Figure 5 in the paper, here, I noticed that Beethoven’s detailed haplogroup is given as I-FT396000, which you can see in the Discover project, here.

Viewing the Time Tree and the Suggested Projects, I noticed that there are four men with that haplogroup, some of whom are from Germany.

The ancestor’s surnames of the I-FT396000 men, as provided in public projects include:

  • Pitzschke (from Germany)
  • Hartmann (from Germany)
  • Stayler
  • Schauer (from Germany)

If your Y-DNA matches Beethoven at any level, you might want to upgrade if you haven’t taken the Big Y-700 test. It would be very interesting to see when and where your most recent common ancestor with Beethoven lived. You just never known – if you match Beethoven, your known ancestry might help unravel the mystery of Beethoven’s unknown paternal lineage.

Beethoven’s DNA is in the FamilyTreeDNA database for matching, including Y-DNA mitochondrial and autosomal results, so you just might match. Take a look! A surprise just might be waiting for you.

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RootsTech 2023 – Truly United

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24

Finally, finally, we were on our way, winging our way across the world from near and far – flying and motoring into snowy Salt Lake City for RootsTech. It seemed like we had been preparing forever, and Murphy visited many of us as gremlins trying to keep us away – but we persevered, and Murphy’s ploy just didn’t work.

Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, because you’re going to RootsTech with me!

I started out very early in dense fog which was a precursor to a nightmare at the airport. We didn’t know that yet, and the sun emerged beautifully as we were on our way.

Utah was blanketed with snow a few days before our arrival. We were hoping for no more snow.

The snow cover made for stunningly beautiful photos from the air.

The Kennecott Copper Mine outside Salt Lake City is three miles wide, nearly a mile deep and looked very interesting and beautiful laced with snow. These terraces are actually roughly 500 miles of dirt road. This used to be a mountain that was 8400 feet in elevation.

During the flight, I read about my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins and couldn’t help but think about how shocked he would have been that I flew across the country some 413 years after he was shipwrecked in Bermuda on the way to Jamestown, eventually lived in Jamestown for 4 years, sailed back to England, remarried, then arrived on the Mayflower in Plymouth Colony.

His ships and mine were very, very different.

FamilySearch Library

Some of us arrived early for research or meetings, or both.

FamilySearch took the opportunity presented during the Covid shutdown to remodel and upgrade the facilities significantly. The new library is both beautiful and super-functional.

The workstations now have three monitors.

There’s a lovely new break room with vending machines, tables, and a fridge.

To put things in perspective, the break room is larger than the preserved pioneer cabin that stands beside the library.

I’m struck by the contrast of the small cabin standing beside the FamilySearch library at left, and museum at right, and just a block away from skyscrapers.

Rather than leave and waste valuable research time, we had a picnic lunch in the break room.

I went to Salt Lake City early to visit the FamilySearch Library and attempt to break down a brick wall. I think I might have done that. We will see.

Other researchers did the same thing, and you can view a special GenFriends episode, here, hosted by Cheryl Hudson Passey, where several of us shared our excitement about our research, discoveries and simply gathering together again.

I was very excited to meet my cousin, Audrey Hill, for the first time in person, at the library. We’ve been collaborating for several months on our John Hill (1737-1805) and Catherine Mitchell (1738-1827) line. She’s already following up on a lead I never did (my bad.) Go Audrey!!

I spent two days perusing book after book after book in the Virginia and Maryland counties where my Dobkins and Johnson ancestors were known to have lived, then moved to the historically adjacent counties.

I was incredibly discouraged, but on the evening of the second day, back at my hotel again, I reviewed all of the library resources and noticed that I had missed one book that was shelved elsewhere.

Glory be, I *think* I’ve found him and his family.

My Peter Johnson line’s Y-DNA matches the Jochimsson (Yocum) line, so I have a LOT of work to do. But now at least I know where to dig!

I needed this entire book, not just a few pages.

Fortunately for me, Jim volunteered to scan the entire book at one of the new book-scanning stations.

I’m SOOO excited.

RootsTech and the FamilySearch library ran golf carts back and forth between the facilities throughout the conference.

Decisions, decisions.

Well, if you can’t decide, just go to the chocolate shop to think things over😊

The Night Before

Preconference events began on Wednesday evening with the media dinner which allows us to understand the layout, when to be someplace, and where that place might be. It also allows provides accurate information to pass on to you.

Of course, many of us have known each other for years. As the first event of RootsTech, after three years of being apart, it felt like one huge family reunion with everyone catching up. So many hugs!!!

And selfies.

It was wonderful to see Marie Cappart again. I’ll never forget walking down the street in Amsterdam with two friends and hearing someone shouting my name from some distance away. I turned around and there was Marie, running toward me, arms outstretched. What are the chances??

The influencers and media were treated to a tour of the show floor after setup was supposed to be complete.

Finishing touches were being put on the Expo Hall and booths. I guess I never realized how large these booths are and that they actually have to be “constructed”.

The next morning, the show would open and thousands of excited genealogists would descend on the Salt Palace for the next three days.

RootsTech Opens

Finally, the Salt Palace, with its legendary signs outside, was ready to receive genealogy guests.

Everyone was so happy to see each other again. My friends, Janna Helstein, Schelly Taladay Dardashti and Daniel Horowitz with MyHeritage photobombing the group. This was the best of several photos because we were all joyfully laughing so hard.

The absolute best part of RootsTech 2023 was seeing people again, in person. Zoom and similar platforms have been sanity-saving for the past three years – but they aren’t people.

Humans are, I think, wired for connection to each other.

I’ve worked “home office” for decades now, but not without regular contact with others.

The classes were great and there was a lot that was wonderful at RootsTech – but hands down, the best part was hugging so many people.

In case you aren’t aware, genealogists are huggers.

If someone were to have followed me around taking photos, there would have been hundreds of hugs. And I don’t mean polite greeting distant hugs. I mean the “OMG I haven’t seen you in a lifetime and everyone was concerned we might never see each other again” holding tight, never-letting-go hugs.

Mags Gaulden and I spotted each other in front of the WikiTree booth, and some kind soul took our picture. I tried to do a nice thing for her and made DNA masks, not remembering that she was allergic to my cat assistants. Thank goodness Mags realized it quickly enough to remove the masks before they had the opposite of the intended effect. I really do not want to be listed in her obituary! “Cause of death: Roberta’s masks.”

Tears streamed down people’s faces as they saw each other, especially that first day. And I don’t mean because of cat hair, either.

There were thousands of selfies joyfully taken. Lots of “blooper” ones too, but just the giddiness of being together again was intoxicating and overshadowed the challenges of the past few years. For a minute, or a few, everyone could just forget about everything else and enjoy our three-day adrenaline high.

And of course, sometimes things change, and many people weren’t there, for a variety of reasons. I missed so many people and there was more than one moment of silence.

Attendance

Here’s the RootsTech Expo Hall from the second floor. It felt like “coming home” after a long absence.

I was standing inside when the doors opened on the first day. People were waiting, but not the mob like past years.

In a Zoom call with RootsTech staff a week or ten days before the conference, they said they had 6000 paid admissions at that time, and a week or so later, they said they were anticipating the same number of attendees as 2020 which was about three times that number.

That number was clearly aspirational, but it didn’t happen.

I’ve been attending RootsTech since 2018, and the actual in-person attendance, based on observation, was lower than it has been since I’ve been attending. Of course, while we may be getting used to Covid, it’s not over and still a significant concern to many. I had my doubts.

Now that I’ve said that about attendance, let me expand. There were over a million registered online for the virtual sessions PLUS the livestreamed sessions that were held in person as well. I don’t know how many more than a million attended, but that number will only grow because those sessions remain available for viewing after RootsTech. In other words, Rootstech sessions have become a library which you can find and enjoy, here.

Clearly, more people in total were reached in 2023 than in 2020.

Questions for Attendees

This year, I had three in-person classes, and no virtual classes. All three were well-attended.

I don’t know how many people attended my sessions, but I know I took about 2000 DNAeXplain ribbons that were passed out to attendees at the exit doors of my classes if they wanted them for their RootsTech badges. I brought home maybe 100.

After everything is set up for the session (thank you Jim,) I always chat with the people in my sessions that show up early. There’s no reason not to have a little fun for everyone.

My first session was at 9:30 the first day, right after the conference opened at 9. I was passing out ribbons personally to people who were early and I saw the confused looks. So I demonstrated what to do with the ribbons with my own badge.

Ribbons on badges are a RootsTech staple, and it’s the only conference I’ve ever attended with that tradition. I realized, based on the confused looks, that we had several first-time attendees.

I was so excited to welcome people at the beginning of my first session, back to in-person genealogy, and that feeling was palpable throughout the room and the conference as a whole.

How Many First-Time Attendees?

When my session started, I asked how many people were attending RootsTech for the first time, and I was very surprised to discover that roughly half the room raised their hands.

Half!!!

That’s HUGE. No wonder there were so many confused looks about the ribbons.

My three sessions, in order, were:

  • DNA for Native American Genealogy: 10 Ways to Find Your Native American Ancestors
  • DNA Journey – Follow Your Ancestors Path
  • Big Y for the Win

I mention this because of the next questions I asked.

Who Has Taken a DNA Test for Genealogy?

In the first session, “DNA for Native American Genealogy,” I asked who had taken a DNA test, and more than half raised their hands, but several had not. Frankly, that surprised me given how long DNA testing has been available now. I talked to people afterwards, and the common thread for those who had not seemed to be:

  • They didn’t know which vendor or which DNA test to take for this purpose.
  • They thought the ancestor was too far back in time and they would not have any Native results. In my session, I talked about testing the older generations and your cousins. Also, that you don’t know what you don’t know. I asked how many people would purchase a book if they thought the answer to that question even MIGHT be inside, and every single person raised their hand.

I also pointed people to the Native section on my blog, to my book, DNA for Native American Genealogy, and to my second blog focused entirely on early Native American records, www.nativeheritageproject.com.

In the second class, “DNA Journey – Follow Your Ancestor’s Path,” probably three fourths of the class had taken a DNA test. That session was really fun. I used several case studies to illustrate how different kinds of DNA have broken down brick walls AND showed me exactly, and I mean literally exactly where my ancestors were from. I used Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal to accomplish this. Who among you DOESN’T want to stand where your ancestors stood?

Yep, we all do.

I think it was in the second class that I asked a question about how many people had taken the three different types of tests, and here’s the breakdown:

  • Who has taken a DNA test? – The majority of the room
  • Who has taken an autosomal test – It looked to be the same number of people as above
  • Who has taken (or sponsored) a Y-DNA test – Maybe 10% of the room
  • Who has taken a mitochondrial DNA test – A scattering of people

As genealogists, we need to do more Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing, because we don’t know what we don’t know and may well be missing.

In the third class, “Big Y for the Win,” which included both Y-DNA STR testing and the Big Y-700, comparing and contrasting the tests, how to use them, and why the Big Y provides significant advantages, most of the people had taken some type of DNA test.

The second question I asked in the Big Y class was how many people had taken or sponsored a Big Y test, and significantly more than half had, which is what I would have expected.

However, given the session topic, I was surprised to learn that few had used the new, free, Discover Tools, or the recently released Group Time Tree. Both were developed and created by FamilyTreeDNA to maximize the usefulness of Y-DNA haplogroups, and they are amazing.

How Many People Have Tested?

As part of the information that I gathered during the conference, Ancestry has tested 23 million people and MyHeritage 6.5 million. I don’t have a current number for FamilyTreeDNA or 23andMe, but the last numbers I heard some months ago were 2 and 5 million, respectively.

There are clearly more (and new) people who are interested in genealogy and are still DNA testing candidates – especially Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA which have separate inheritance paths, providing additional and unique benefits as compared to autosomal tests.

Keynotes

The keynote sessions were livestreamed, so you can still view them here. Be sure to watch Steve Rockwood’s welcome. He may be the CEO, but he’s an exceptionally caring, inspirational and humble, man.

I attended two of three keynote sessions. Each keynote session actually included three speakers, which was initially confusing.

Steve Rockwood’s message is that “All Means All” – everyone is included. He also thanked and encouraged people to not be further divisive during this difficult time, and instead to choose inclusion.

Steve asked several questions and in answer to his queries, attendees were encouraged to hold up their phones with their flashlight on. As you can see, the entire huge room is filled with light – our light. One at a time. We can all be the light. You can hear Steve’s message for yourself, here.

Another session I enjoyed immensely was Jordin Sparks, the youngest ever American Idol winner. I’ve been in concert venues that were smaller, so it was a real treat to enjoy this inspirational story plus four of her amazing songs.

I really encourage you to watch this video, especially if you love music. Even Jordin’s guitarist was wiping his eyes!

She literally played to a packed house and I don’t think there was a dry eye anyplace.

Jordin has an incredible voice and an inspirational story. Do yourself a favor and listen, here.

MyHeritage Keynote and Announcements

Aaron Godfrey, VP of Marketing with MyHeritage announced new products and initiatives during the keynote on day 2.

The new Photo Dater app, available soon, will estimate when a photo was taken based on clothes, hairstyles and other items in the photo.

Additionally, Aaron announced the cM Explainer, a wonderful new tool which predicts relationship estimates between DNA matches and includes the ages of the testers, among other factors. cM Explainer is incorporated into your DNA matches at MyHeritage in addition to being independently available for free, here.

I’ll be reviewing this new feature in an article, soon.

In another surprise, Aaron announced that MyHeritage has donated another 5000 kits to DNA Quest, for adoptees, here.

MyHeritage also introduced color coding for family trees, here. If you’re a MyHeritage user, this feature is already available for you on your tree, so check it out.

MyHeritage takes the “most new announcements at RootsTech” award with these new features.

Vendor Booth Sessions

Truth be told, I didn’t even get to visit all of the various booths. I meant to, but it just didn’t happen.

At least two vendors offered sessions throughout all three days. There were probably others, but between my three RootsTech sessions, three booth sessions and the book signing, in addition to keynotes, meetings and interviews, I just wasn’t able to attend many booth sessions.

The ones I did attend were wonderful. I focused on DNA, of course. Let’s start with FamilyTreeDNA.

Sherman McRae presented “Unexpected Y-DNA Results” in the FamilyTreeDNA booth where he’s showing how to utilize the Y-DNA Time Tree in the Discover tool, and the Group Time Tree.

You can view Sherman’s main session, Connect the Forefathers, here.

You just never know when a pilgrim is going to show up for your session.

Janine Cloud, an enrolled Cherokee tribal member and manager of Group Projects at FamilyTreeDNA discussed Y-DNA, mitochondrial and autosomal avenues to prove Native ancestors using DNA, using her own Cherokee ancestors as an example.

Dr Paul Maier, Population Geneticist, Goran Runfeldt, Head of Research and Michael Sager, Phylogeneticist answer questions about Y-DNA in the AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.

Paul and Goran also hosted an AMA for mitochondrial DNA as well, an often overlooked but valuable resource.

In addition to the Native American AMA session for FamilyTreeDNA which I gave with Janine, I gave two booth presentations for MyHeritage, “Time Travel with Your Ancestors” and “AutoClusters for the Win,” both of which were recorded meaning you  just might see them in the future.

The Time Travel session utilized the MyHeritage AI tools to see what my ancestors who came from specific regions or cultures might have looked like in that time and place. In the slide above the AI photo of my grandmother is combined with the document and with the Genetic Group that incorporates that part of Germany.

I combined the AI images with MyHeritage records that link those ancestors to a specific location, showing the predicted ethnicity, genetic groups when applicable, and then the actual location – some of which I’ve visited. My ancestor owned that windmill in the Netherlands, above. Combining these tools is so much FUN. My heritage provided the AI photos, records and ethnicity. I’m the one who did the traveling, of course, but in this way, time travel is possible!

I really enjoyed using this story-telling methodology that incorporates all 4 types of genealogy research and clues.

In the AutoClusters for the Win session in the MyHeritage booth, I discussed how I utilized AutoClusters to solve an adoption case in my own family, and how you can use this very powerful tool as well. The methodology I used works equally as well for genealogy mysteries.

In another MyHeritage booth presentation, Janna Helshtein told an amazing and moving story about her grandparents, their escape from the Holocaust, move to Israel, and more – in their own “voices” using MyHeritage’s Deep Story.

We all sat spellbound.

Janna also offers a free guide on how she created and integrated the Deep Story verbiage that her grandparents “spoke.” It was actually quite easy.

There was more to Janna’s story, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

I believe MyHeritage intends to make their booth sessions available through social media.

Here, Janna and I are celebrating with a quick picnic style lunch after her presentation. She truly knocked it out of the park.

Shifting Attendance

I’m sharing my opinion here, and not anything a RootsTech spokesperson told me.

I was surprised that the in-person attendance was down as much as it was, truthfully. I think in-person was down by either half or maybe even two-thirds. Some decline wouldn’t have surprised me, but this much was sobering.

I was also VERY surprised that roughly half of the attendees were new. And that number could have actually been higher. That’s a good thing, meaning new people are being attracted to genealogy.

These two things, together, suggest the following to me:

  • The passing of time, Covid, and aging-out of some people caused some decline. I know several people who passed away during the past three years, not to mention those whose lives changed dramatically due to their partner’s illness, passing or life circumstances. Several people lost jobs or moved, or both, or are in that process now.
  • Now let’s flip this and say that the virtual and FREE capability for much of RootsTech made the conference accessible and available to many who could not attend in person. For that, I’m very grateful. I have a friend who has been very ill and participated by taking selfies of herself with the livestreamed sessions on her monitor behind her. She posted her photos on social media to be with us. That warmed my heart so much.
  • I think that the reason there were so many new people was because they were able to attend virtually during 2021 and 2022. Essentially this means that while virtual RootsTech was challenging for everyone on the behind-the-scenes production side, to put it mildly, it served to recruit many new genealogists who would not have participated in person had they not previously attended online.

Based on discussions at the media dinner table, and other statements by Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch, FamilySearch, including RootsTech, is reaching out to young people and to other areas of the world as well.

According to Steve, who, by the way, turns out to be my 11th cousin according to Relatives at RootsTech and the FamilySearch Tree, RootsTech will forever be a blended conference event.

This year, in addition to the local emcee, there were 15 people in other countries hosting in their locations, times and in their native languages.

This year there were 304 virtual classes, 205 in person, and some of those were streamed online as well.

Don’t forget that Relatives at RootsTech is still available through March 31st and you can contact cousins to collaborate. Some may represent Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA testing lines that you need for matching and to complete your tree.

Vendors

That brings me to the topic of vendors.

Three of the four major DNA vendors were present, meaning Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. 23andMe was absent in 2020 and again this year. Their last DNA innovation was their genetic tree in September of 2019.

Many of the smaller vendors were not in attendance. I had made friends with several of the Mom and Pop vendors and almost none of them were there this year, nor were many of the organizations and smaller companies. I spoke with several people and they said, almost universally, that the cost of the virtual booths over the past two years, the work involved, and the fact that those virtual booths did not generate many sales, not even equal to the amount of the booth rent, had soured the experience.

Not only are conference booths very expensive, so is the invested labor and time. For those of you who don’t know, booth rent is only a part of it. You want carpet? That’s more. A chair? That’s more. Two chairs? More. A trash basket? More. Oh, you need wireless to handle sales? LOTS more.

I’d say that the Expo Hall was only half to one third of the size it had been previously. Mind you, it’s still huge, especially compared to many other conferences, but I missed seeing many of my favorite vendors.

For example, neither Genealogical.com nor Deseret Books were there this year, so there was no bookstore, and neither were many of the fun t-shirt vendors or others that sold jewelry or genealogy-related merchandise.

I hope that FamilySearch will put their creative caps on and perhaps reach out to their vendors, both past and current, and figure out a way to make RootsTech vendors attractive to the online crowd. Perhaps a “search” game where you have to visit vendor booths to find items. Maybe there could be some permanent online stores as well.

There were fewer food vendors too, but in case anyone was wondering, I could still smell cinnamon-almonds throughout the facility😊

I did run into some of my long-time vendor friends.

My friend Jessica Taylor with Legacy Tree Genealogists. I regularly refer people seeking genealogists who understand both genealogy and DNA to Legacy Tree Genealogists.

I don’t need to tell you how much I love DNAPainter and it was great to see Jonny Perl and Patricia Coleman in the DNAPainter booth.

I feel kind of bad because I obviously caught Rob Warthen and Carol Carman by surprise in the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference booth, but it’s the only photo I have of their booth.

Last fall’s ECGGC conference was very successful and I’m planning to speak in person this year, in Baltimore, October 6-8, 2023. Save the date. Last year was the first year and it was wonderful.

My Book Signing

FamilyTreeDNA was kind enough to host my book signing for DNA for Native American Genealogy in conjunction with the Native American Ask Me Anything session. Many thanks to Joe Brickey for her help with this event as well.

After the AMA session, which was the final event of Saturday, just before closing, we took a group picture with the FamilyTreeDNA team, or at least the staff members in the booth at that time.

I did learn that perhaps the last thing Saturday might not be the best time for a book signing, because lots of people leave on Friday night. On the other hand, on Saturday, admission to the conference is free, at least to the show floor, with lots of children’s activities and programs for LDS families. Saturday is always very busy in terms of traffic, with sometimes more Saturday visitors than paying conference attendees. It will be interesting to see final RootsTech conference numbers.

The Thank You That Made My Day!!!

One lovely lady, Charis, came up to me after my first session and explained that she saw an ad for RootsTech. She decided she needed to purchase a ticket and attend. She had never heard of me, but she is very focused on documenting her Native ancestry. She sat in the front row in my first session and paid rapt attention. (Speakers do notice, in case you wondered.)

Charis came up to me afterwards and told me that this class alone was worth her registration fee.

She made my day, but I thought to myself that she would attend other sessions that she would find equally as valuable. After all, the conference was just beginning. She found me the next day and repeated what she had said. On day 3, she attended the Ask Me Anything session, arriving early. She said the said the same thing, AGAIN, and I asked if we could take a picture together. As presenters, we take our time, spend our money to attend these conferences, and invest the effort because we want to help people.

People like Charis make this all worthwhile.

Sweetness Personified

I’m sorry, I just can’t resist sharing the sweetest picture series ever.

In 2020, I met my cousin, Heidi Campbell and her baby at RootsTech. Three years later, I saw Heidi again, with a beautiful new addition to the family.

I just can’t tell you how wonderful it was to hold this baby. The last baby I held was Heidi’s little one, three years ago. The look on Heidi’s face is priceless too when he’s reaching for my glasses. He had the biggest smile EVER on his face and he’s booping noses with me. We had so much fun.

My heart just melted into a huge puddle. I so much wish they lived close so I could “grandma.” Thank you, Heidi, for sharing your sunshine with me.

Rolling Up the Sidewalks

On Saturday, literally at one minute after 3 when the conference closed, the workers at the Salt Palace started rolling up the sidewalks, or in this case, the carpets.

It’s a wrap!!!

Afterglow

At the Salt Lake City airport, I ran into two people and had the opportunity to talk to them again and hug goodbye once more. You’d think we would all have had enough of genealogy, but not a chance. More hugs, gratitude for togetherness, and anticipation for next year.

Winging my way home again, having walked about 6 miles each day, according to Fitbit, I was tired, desperately tired, and my everything hurt. However, I was also incredibly fulfilled to have connected again with old friends and met so many new people that I now look forward to seeing again. We are very fortunate to be members of such a wonderful, diverse and universal community.

I couldn’t help but think, as we crossed the winding Mississippi River, how fortunate we are that we have “time travel” in this way. I’m also struck with how many different ways we have to time travel, with Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA at FamilyTreeDNA, autosomal testing and ethnicity at various vendors, and actual historical records that are becoming ever-more available remotely.

Using artificial intelligence, we can “see” our ancestor’s heritage in our own faces, or, in this case, the face of my grandfather using the MyHeritage AI Time Machine.

Using our DNA, we can identify the parts of those ancestors that we carry today, reaching back in time several generations with autosomal DNA. In addition to autosomal, both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA provide close matches and reach back in time, focused on one specific line, providing insights for millennia.

Time travel, truly reimagined.

There are so many ways to discover and connect with our ancestors available to us today. If we don’t carry the DNA of ancestors a few generations upstream, perhaps selected cousins do. We have several tools and databases at our disposal to find testers.

The DNA of our ancestors can and does actually lead us home, to them and, sometimes, exactly where they lived, as I illustrated with several case studies in my presentation, “Follow Your Ancestors Path.” Today, these options are available to everyone.

RootsTech is in the history books for another year, with new friendships made and old ones renewed. Indeed, we were finally reunited with each other, and introduced to cousins we had never met before. We shared tools, methodologies and information to identify our ancestors. We all left fervently hoping to be reunited again next year.

Please enjoy the amazing RootsTech musical finale here.

_____________________________________________________________

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Sneak Preview: Introducing the FamilyTreeDNA Group Time Tree

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Drum roll please!!!

This is a sneak peek of a new tool being rolled out by FamilyTreeDNA in a VERY EARLY BETA soft launch.

Right now, the only way to view the Group Time Tree is by using the link to my group project, below, then, search for a different project name. I’ll show you, but first, let’s talk about this VERY COOL new tool for Big Y group project results.

The Group Time Tree is a feature that group project administrators and project members have wanted for a VERY long time!

At FamilyTreeDNA, the words “group” and “project” are both used to describe Group Projects which are projects run by volunteer administrators. FamilyTreeDNA customers can join any number of projects to collaborate with other testers who have a common interest.

Four basic types of public group projects exist:

  • Surname Group Projects
  • Haplogroup Group Project
  • Geographic Group Projects which can include other types of special interests
  • Mitochondrial Lineage Group Projects

What Does the Regular Discover Time Tree Do?

The Discover tool that was recently introduced (here) provides a Time Tree view of any specific haplogroup (but no surnames or ancestors) in relation to:

  • Big Y testers (not SNP-only testers and not STR results because they can’t be used for time-to-most-recent-common-ancestor (TMRCA) calculations)
  • Ancient Connections
  • Notable Connections

Using the regular Discover Haplogroup took, here’s an example of the haplogroups of the Estes (and other) men, beginning with the R-BY154784 lineage near the bottom. Time is at the top. The only way you know they are Estes men is because I told you. The Discover tool is haplogroup specific, not surname specific.

What Does the New Group Time Tree Do?

The brand-new Group Time Tree is an extension of the Discover technology, but focused within projects and includes both surnames and earliest known ancestors for people who have opted-in to have their results display in public group projects. This tool only works for group projects that have the public display enabled, and includes only data that the administrator has included. Not all administrators have enabled the display of the “Paternal Ancestor” field, for example.

Now, you can see Big Y group project members:

  • All mapped together on a genetic time tree, or
  • By project subgroups defined by the project administrator

I want to provide a friendly reminder that this is a BETA tool and will be fully rolled out in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, it’s fun to have a sneak preview!!!

Estes DNA Group Project

Before going further, here are some screen shots of the Estes DNA Group Project for comparison.

I’ve created multiple color-coded groups within the project based on the genealogy and Y-DNA matches of the participants. The teal groups all descend from the Estes line from Kent, England, and match each other. Since not every man with an Estes surname descends from this line, there are also other color-identified groups.

Additionally, in the Estes project, I do not restrict members to males with the Estes surname, so there are several non-Estes men who have joined. Their Y-DNA shows in the project so I have placed them in an “Autosomal – Not Y DNA” group because they are Estes-related autosomally, not through the direct Y-DNA surname line.

I’ve grouped other clusters of Estes-surname males who do not descend from the Kent line into other color-coded groups, which turned out to be extremely beneficial for the new Group Time Tree.

Let’s see how the Estes Project works with the new Group Time Tree.

The Estes Group Time Tree

Here’s the link to the Estes Group Time Tree. I’ll be using the Estes data for this article, then show you how to view other group projects of your choosing from this link. So please read these instructions.

The Group Time Tree shows a genetic family tree of direct paternal lineages on a time scale. It shows how Big Y tested members of Group Projects are related to each other and when their shared ancestors are estimated to have lived.

Click on any image to enlarge

This is the first display I see.

Looking around, I notice the menu.

Select either “All search results” or the group or groups you want to view.

If you compare the groups above on the menu to the project screen shots, you’ll notice that the colors along the left side equate to the colors of the project subgroupings. We have Eastridge, meaning those who are not genetically Estes, then “Estes Autosomal, Not Y DNA,” then a group of teal project groupings who descend from the Estes Kent line.

I clicked on “Select All Search Results” which displayed everyone in the project from all haplogroups. This resulted in the Estes men being scrunched on the right-hand side, below, due to the long timeframe involved, which is not useful.

What is VERY useful is the Paternal Ancestor column which is the earliest known ancestor (EKA) for each tester’s line. Hopefully, this will encourage everyone to enter their EKA and location. You can find instructions, here.

Ok, let’s “De-select all” and just focus on specific groups.

Much better. I can see a much more relevant timeline for the men in the line being researched. The Estes men are no longer scrunched up along the right side because the left-to-right time is much shorter – 1500ish vs 100,000ish years.

The colored dot on the location flag indicates which colored group these men have been assigned to by the project administrator.

It’s very easy to see if two groups (or two men) descend from the same paternal line.

Next, I added the Eastridge group back into the display as an experiment.

The common ancestor between the single Eastridge Big Y tester and the Estes men is back in the Stone Age, about 35,000 BCE.

I do feel compelled to mention that this information can’t necessarily be extrapolated for all Eastridge men, because there are a few men with Eastridge surnames that are actually genetically Estes men. Someplace along the line, the name got changed. This is the perfect example of why every man needs to test their Y-DNA.

You can remove the menu by clicking on Subgroups.

You make the menu re-appear by clicking on Subgroups again.

I LOVE – LOVE – LOVE that I can see the ancestors and the clusters and I didn’t have to do this grouping myself. These men could have been in one big group in the project and the software would have created the clusters for me.

For example, there has been debate for decades about whether or not Moses Estes of South Carolina was descended from Abraham Estes, the immigrant, and if so, through which son.

Based on the Big Y-700 test (the Big Y-500 did not reveal this) and clustering, we know assuredly that Moses Estes of SC:

  • Descended from the Kent line
  • Descended from Abraham who has mutation R-BY490
  • Did NOT descend from Abraham’s son Moses whose descendants have mutation R-ZS3700

I’ve been keeping this project spreadsheet for years now. It’s wonderful to be able to see a genetic tree visualization. The Big Y men are blocked in red.

I’m hopeful that the balance of the men who have NOT yet taken the Big Y-700 will upgrade now because there’s so much more to learn. This is especially true for men who reach a brick wall prior to Abraham. The Big Y-700 test, perhaps combined with STRs, will place them in a lineage.

I’m sure that we would discover new haplogroups among Abraham’s descendants if they would all upgrade. There are more men who have not tested at the Big Y level than those that have.

Display Options

Under display options, you can add Ancient or Notable connections, remove confidence bars, and adjust the tree height.

Discoveries for Administrators

As a project administrator, one thing I discovered is that I might want to regroup within some of my projects to take full advantage of the color coding on the Group Time Tree. If you are a project administrator, you may want to ponder the same.

I also discovered that when I clicked on Country Map, I did not have Project Statistics enabled.

If you make project configuration changes, this report will only be updated weekly, so it’s not immediate.

The country map shows the distribution of all the countries within the project, not specific groups within projects

You can view Country Maps in either map or table format, but remember that if the project is a surname project and includes autosomal testers, the map view will not be representative of the surname itself. This view shows all groups.

Viewing Another Group Project

To view a different group project, simply enter that project name in the search box. For now, this is how you’ll be able to view group projects until this tool is fully rolled out.

I entered the surname “Speak” and was presented with these options.

Obviously, the surname Speak or a variation is found in these projects. Just click to view.

Your Turn

If you have not yet taken or upgraded to the Big Y-700 test, now’s the time. Order or upgrade, here.

If you have already taken the Big Y-700 test, or want to view a project, click on this link, and search for your project of choice.

Have fun!!!

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Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Uploads

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