Category Archives: Family Tree DNA

Genealogy Proof Series: Surname Searching

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This is the third article in the Genealogy Proof series, in addition to the introduction.

In the article titled Gathering Location Resources, we focused on locations where you know your ancestor lived – but what if you’re looking for books or information about a particular family or surname?

Maybe you’d like to know if an article or book has been written about that family, either generally or maybe a branch more specifically. Many early books are no longer in print.

Maybe you can find information about your family in resources not typically checked by genealogists.

Of course, there are lots of resources, but I’m including several here that you can use and might otherwise miss. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Recording Your Findings

Don’t forget to record your search results and which resources you used on the spreadsheet we created in the Extracting and Recording Data article.

If you find that the information in the book or resource is too long for the text field in your spreadsheet, record and index the item anyway. Then, transcribe or copy/paste the entire text version in one of two places, but don’t forget to note in your spreadsheet where you put it.

  • Your genealogy software under that person’s name
  • A Word document under that person’s name

When I write my 52 Ancestors articles, everything I know about that person is gathered into a Word document and then organized and arranged into a cohesive story. The pieces have been gathered over the years in various locations and I have to be able to find them to be able to use them.

Book List

I have also created a list of books that I own.

This list needs to be updated because I moved and I would like to more accurately detail the locations of books I still have. It’s nice to know what you already have and where to find it. Tell me I’m not the only person who has purchased the same book twice!

Ok, now for surname resources where you just might find your ancestor!

Cyndi’s List

Cyndi’s list has a HUGE number of resources generally, but it also includes a surname category.

Under each letter of the alphabet, available resources are listed.

Be sure to check out everything for your surnames of interest.

BookFinder

At Bookfinder.com, you can enter a name in the title field.

That query produced a significant list. Remember that this list changes often, based on availability.

I now have another book on the way!

Higginson Book Company

The Higginson Book Company has long been known for carrying heritage books – both by location and for genealogy.

You can search by surname or any keyword.

Higginson reprints copies of original books out of print in addition to maps and a few other things. Note that sometimes you can find the text version of copyright-free books free at other locations.

State Archives

Check the website of every state’s archive where your ancestors lived.

If in doubt about what might be available, call the State Archives and ask a librarian. You might not believe what’s there.

In Tennesee, for example, there’s an index of Supreme Court cases that can be searched for the entire state, or by county, or year.

Cases that appear in the Supreme Court Index will not be recorded in the county records, because the case was appealed from there to the Supreme Court. It’s worth noting that the Hancock County, Tennessee courthouse burned (twice), so the Supreme Court records in the archives reflect lawsuits that we don’t even know existed today.

In many cases, local courts no longer retain case packets, if they ever did. They often only have the names of plaintiffs and defendants in an index book – not even an outcome. However, the county clerks faithfully copied the case packets when the case was appealed and sent to the Supreme Court, where this valuable information resides today – including depositions and receipts.

I’m entering the surname of every ancestor that was found in Hancock County. Sometimes, I search for their in-laws and neighbors too, just in case my ancestor is mentioned.

Look – paydirt! In an estate dispute – you know there are relationships explained and maybe also the source of the dispute.

When utilizing archives, be sure to search the archives of parent-states and parent-counties, meaning states and counties your state/county was formed from. The same goes for descendant states/counties formed from your state/county.

But wait, there are more resources.

Librarians

In addition to resources shown at the Tennessee Archives website, you can also click to chat with a librarian.

Librarians are an encyclopedia of knowledge.

Thanks to a librarian, I recently discovered that the Michigan State Archives holds an obscure collection – prison newspapers published by the inmates over the years, reaching back into the 1800s and early 1900s. It’s not evident from the collection information, but a call to the archives and a lovely discussion with a research librarian revealed that those publications have recently been scanned and OCR indexed, which makes it possible to search by surname or topic.

I love librarians. They have saved my bacon so many times over the years, as have volunteers at local museums, and historical and genealogy societies.

Chronicling America

Chronicling American is provided by the Library of Congress. This link is for the newspaper collection which spans 1756-1963, but there are also other collections

In the photo collection, you can search generally or very specifically.

I had always wondered why my grandparents chose to move to a tiny out-of-the-way farming community outside very rural Fowler, Indiana. I found my answer in the Library of Congress. My grandfather’s cousin, who lived up the road in Tennessee, had moved to Indiana, was running a farm for an absentee owner and needed assistance.

The rest, as they say, is history.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch has an extremely robust and easy-to-use search functionality.

Select “Search,” then “Books.”

I entered the word “Estes” under the Books search and found this:

Notice that full text results are available, which means that either the book is out from under copyright, or they have obtained permission to image. It’s also worth noting that this is one of the books available for print-on-demand from Higginson Books.

Another option, the “Images” search, searches for information by historical location.

Searching “Genealogies” and “Family Trees” is obvious.

I find the “Catalog” search particularly productive.

You can filter your Catalog search in any number of ways, but, as luck would have it, the very first entry is where my Estes family lived.

Oh, look, it’s my lucky day…

If a desired book or article isn’t available for viewing, start a list and look to see if it’s available through your local Family History Center or check elsewhere.

FamilySearch New Full Text Search

I just love this new full text feature that automatically transcribes and indexes entire handwritten collections, such as the will or deed books in a particular county.

On the search page, scroll down until you see the FamilySearch Labs image and click on “View Experiments.”

Click on “Go to Experiment”

I detailed how to use FamilySearch full-text search in this article, but I want to remind you here that you can search by surname.

One of my huge brick walls is identifying the parents of James Lee Claxton (Clarkson/Clarkston) 1775-1815.

All of our Y-DNA matches are spelled Claxton and are found in North Carolina, but that group of Claxton researchers and my line are both stuck at about the same time in history. It’s very likely that the common ancestor of both groups came from Virginia, but where? And who?

I’m searching for Claxton with the hope that there is some mention of a Claxton we don’t already know about – or something connecting my ancestor to Lee County, VA in about 1795.

There are thousands of entries in this database, but I can filter to restrict my search to Virginia.

Remember that FamilySearch is adding to the collection of books and records that are digitized and indexed daily, so if you don’t find what you’re looking for today, check back often.

Google

A general Google search for “Estes genealogy” produced a list. I’m not showing their generative AI result here, because it’s half right and half wrong. It’s fine to use AI for hints, but verify absolutely everything. AI is not ready to be relied on and may never be.

Here is a list of Estes resources from Google.

Always beware of internet links. “Fly” over them first. If the link address even looks questionable, just don’t click.

That said, there are a HUGE number of legitimate resources here.

Google Books

Google books can help you locate books that may not be found elsewhere.

Some are available as an eBook at Google Books, but if not, you can use these as leads to search elsewhere, including AbeBooks and sometimes, Amazon. I usually use Bookfinder after finding a book I’m interested in through Google, because they include other sites such as AbeBooks, Amazon and many more. Bookfinder is an aggregator, not a reseller.

You can also request to “Find in a library,” which might be useful if your local library participates in interlibrary loans, although often heritage books are not eligible for loan.

Internet Archive

I love the Internet Archive, the same company that provides the Wayback Machine, which also allows you to search by surname. The two sites provide different results, so be sure to try both.

You’ll find all kinds of information at the Internet Archive.

Under eBooks and Texts, I often enter “<surname> genealogy” so that their metadata will use both terms to narrow the search. Metadata is data about data, and in this case, it means which keywords they used to index these entries.

Many records aren’t relevant, but some assuredly are.

You can also narrow the results by many features – including the Allen County Public Library which has one of the largest genealogy holdings in the US.

Keep in mind that I’ve selected only items with text, meaning that I can read or download for free. There are certainly other items available that aren’t free.

I sometimes struggle with their search feature, so I often just search at Google using the term “Estes books at internet archive.”

Allen County Public Library

At the Allen County Public Library website, you want to search in the research collection

Please note that you can filter your results in many ways.

One of the wonderful features is that they actively collect newsletters. Estes Trails has been published for decades.

These newsletters are in their physical holdings, but if you know they exist, you can track them down in other ways. In this case, the publisher’s name is included in the full display.

Many newsletters are no longer published, so, fortunately, there’s another way to obtain an article.

PERSI

PERSI, an index for periodicals, such as Estes Trails, above, is also hosted by the Allen County Public Library.

At PERSI, you can search by surname

I searched for Estes, and look what I received. I absolutely must read these Civil War letters.

This is a GOLDMINE. No, Aaron Estes isn’t my ancestor, but again, he’s related, and I just have to read these.

Scroll to the very bottom to order the items.

WikiTree

WikiTree is one of my favorite resources. You can enter your ancestor’s name, or a surname.

WikiTree is a collaborative tree where different individuals add information and sources to the profiles of ancestors. They have a small army of helpful volunteers that are willing to help too.

As with all shared resources, some information can be incorrect. Treat all trees as information to be verified and sources to be checked.

One of the great things about WikiTree is that individuals who descend from ancestors in a specific way can connect themselves and their Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA test information.

Descendants who have taken an autosomal test can list the testing company and information. While testing companies use the DNA of the tester to connect to other testers – it’s up to those two people to determine their common ancestor.

WikiTree works the other way and is ancestor-driven, meaning that you see who descends from the ancestor, and you can go to the testing company indicated to see if you’re an autosomal DNA match.

Furthermore, if you’re working on your genetic tree, you’ll want the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA information for each of your ancestors. If other testers have entered the information, you can find it here. Please enter yours as well.

Be sure to check the sources for each ancestor. There may be information and resources not found elsewhere. Add sources if you can. Collaboration is a good thing, and a rising tide lifts all ships.

Newspapers

After you’ve wrung out the more traditional records, such as deeds and wills and census schedules, you’ll want to turn to newspapers. Not all local newspapers have been scanned, OCRed, and indexed yet, and some quality is better than others.

Licensing and processing old newspapers is ongoing, so just because the location where your ancestor lived doesn’t have an indexed newspaper available today doesn’t mean they won’t soon.

Newspaper articles put meat on the bones of our ancestors as they reveal their everyday lives. Who visited whom after church for Sunday dinner, who hit someone’s cow, who had company from out of town, who was having a family reunion, who moved and to where, who caught a big fish, who went on vacation, who was “visited by the stork,” and much more. Some make you say “awww,” and some are downright juicy and scandalous!

News about neighboring counties and even neighboring states can be found in locations where you may not have thought to look for your ancestor.

Virginia Chronicle

The Virginia Chronicle is a historic newspaper collection curated by the Library of Virginia that produces amazing results.

What? A murder? You know, I just HAVE to go down this rabbit hole and read these stories.

Ok, so, here’s the skinny for those who are curious.

Theodore Estes was dating Miss Loving, the daughter of a judge who shot and murdered Theodore. As it turns out, Theodore’s father was the sheriff, so this story is particularly rich and full of intrigue.

It seems that Miss Loving, the judge’s daughter, drank whiskey, and one thing allegedly led to another, which Theodore, his family, and friends denied. However, the young woman’s father didn’t believe them and sought revenge. Some reports said that she only drank “one swig” of whiskey, and nothing happened. Others said that the whiskey was drugged, and “something” did happen. A third group said she asked for the whiskey and drank a whole lot more than a swig. Theodore took her home (to her house) in his buggy, to her parents, but clearly intoxicated.

It gets even more complex because it appears the families were related. I had to draw a chart to get this straight.

Theodore’s brother had married the Judge’s wife’s sister. I’m telling you, this trial was a humdinger. Whoo boy! Eventually, the charges against the judge were changed to something less severe than murder. This high-profile case was covered by several regional newspapers like the latest soap opera.

As I read through these articles, I noticed that some Estes family members had arrived from Danville, VA, which is in close proximity to where my Estes family was from. So, while this is not my ancestor, it involves my ancestor’s descendants.

Ok, enough of this rabbit hole, but you get the drift. You may never get anything resembling chores done ever again!

The National Genealogical Society membership now provides access to NewspaperArchive as a benefit of membership. As far as I’m concerned, this alone makes the membership worthwhile.

NewspaperArchive offers a notification service for subscribers, or did when I subscribed separately, so you’ll receive an email when the name of a saved search is found in a newly indexed newspaper.

I keep discovering previously unknown things!

Ancestry owns Newspapers.com for accessing newspapers and Fold3 for military records. I discussed the nuances of using Newspapers.com at Ancestry in this article. You’ll need to search in the Historical Newspapers Collection at Ancestry and/or in Newspapers.com. Ancestry is reimaging the newspapers and using AI to create associations between people – for example family members mentioned in a wedding announcement. The results will not all be found in one place. The newspaper itself will be found at Newspapers.com but the associated family grouping will be found at Ancestry itself in their collections.

You can now reference the Birth Index, Marriage Index and Auctions of Enslaved People and Bounties on Freedom Seekers Index, here. The larger Newspapers and Publications category can be found here, and the Historical Newspapers Collection can be found here.

MyHeritage includes a large newspaper collection for their subscribers, much of which is unique and not found elsewhere.

This collection is where I found hundreds of items about my mother’s family in rural Northern Indiana. I found previously unknown photos of my grandfather, and that he attended the “Normal School” to become a teacher. He never taught, instead going to work for the railroad, moving away, and meeting the woman who would become my grandmother.

MyHeritage actually has newspapers in two places. This search is on the MyHeritage site itself, available with a subscription. MyHeritage has a second, independent site too – OldNews.

OldNews is big news!

At RootsTech 2024, MyHeritage announced a separate subscription site called OldNews, which essentially doubles the number of newspapers that they’ve digitized and made available. Take a look!

I found information about my mother, such as when she had her tonsils removed, when and where she danced in plays as a child, and the amount of my grandparents’ estate. Newspapers reported things back then that would be considered privacy violations today. Check OldNews to see what’s there for you.

Colonial Williamsburg has made the earliest Newspapers in the colonies available, here. Some are through a subscription site, and others aren’t. It was through these old newspapers years ago that I discovered the name of my ancestor’s indentured servant who ran away. Now, DNA seems to point to a potential relationship. There are no records other than that “runaway” notice to connect these people together, anyplace.

Check Cyndi’s list for more Newspaper services

MyHeritage Surnames

MyHeritage offers many ways to search, but you can start by entering the name of your ancestor or even just a surname.

I could have simply entered the surname, but I entered James Lee Claxton.

I can filter by any of the collections, at left.

I check them all, but I particularly like the Books and Publications, and the Newspapers category. You just never know what you’ll find, and many of the books are digitized and free.

You can also just enter a surname. I entered “Estes.”

I checked every one of these categories and, among other things, found some fascinating historic maps.

I love my MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have one, you can try one free for 14 days.

Ancestry Message Boards

Ancestry discontinued the RootsWeb-hosted websites, WorldConnect Trees, and RootsWeb mailing lists last year, but the message boards are still functional.

After signing in to Ancestry, scroll down until you see Tools and Resources in the right margin.

Click on “Message boards.”

These boards reach back at least 20 years and many of the original posters are deceased now. I know that I often posted information as I found it while traveling.

There’s an advanced search function, too.

I was shocked to discover that you can still initiate a thread, but I’m not at all sure that other people on that board are notified today. I had no idea these boards even still existed.

Another feature that’s helpful at Ancestry is the Card Catalog, one of their Special Record Collections.

You can enter a surname in either the Title or Keyword box.

Of course, you’ll get different results, but both are certainly worth checking.

Genealogy.com

GenForum was the message board for Genealogy.com. Ancestry purchased it years ago, and while you can no longer post messages, you can still search for messages that were previously posted, here.

American Ancestors

American Ancestors holds a large database that includes periodicals such as the New England Historical and Genealogical Register and the Virginia Genealogist, which you can search by name, here.

Additionally, they have a number of immigration and naturalization records not available elsewhere.

HathiTrust

HathiTrust has indexed millions of documents, including many governmental records and publications.

Select any publication or narrow by categories. Then you can search within the text and also view the text on the relevant pages.

DNA Projects

FamilyTreeDNA offers surname projects, along with geographic, haplogroup, lineage, and regional DNA projects.

You can find surname projects in one of two ways.

The first way is to Google “Estes DNA Project.”

You’ll see two links, either of which will take you to the project.

I administer this project and welcome everyone who has an Estes ancestor, regardless of whether their surname is Estes or something else.

By clicking on “DNA Results,” you’ll see multiple options.

Clicking on the “Classic Chart” shows groupings of males who have taken the Y-DNA test, along with additional information, including their Earliest Known Ancestor (EKA) and, in the final column at right, their haplogroup.

If you take a DNA test and match other people, you can contact them to collaborate through matches on your personal page. Not everyone can test for every ancestor – and women can’t test for Y-DNA lineages (because they don’t have a Y chromosome,) so we depend on being able to check for our ancestors in Y-DNA projects.

If your ancestral line is shown, you can use the confirmed haplogroup (green) in the free Discover tool, here, to learn more about your ancestor’s heritage.

Here’s the “Haplogroup Story” tab for R-BY490 that represents a number of Estes lineages. There are 11 other tabs in the left sidebar just waiting for you to read about your ancestry.

Note that “Suggested Projects” is one tab. The suggestions are based on projects other men with this haplogroup have joined.

Y-DNA information through Discover, and soon, mitochondrial DNA information through MitoDiscover, is the ONLY place you can find this kind of information. Be sure to check out all of the tabs at left, including Ancient Connections.

If you click on the Group Time Tree, you’ll see a different view of the results of the project members who have taken the advanced Big Y-700 test.

By selecting the relevant groups, you can see the surname of the testers, their earliest known ancestor (if known and entered), at right, along with the haplogroup genetic tree at left.

The genetic tree shown at left confirms the genealogy of these testers, at least as far as the genetic tree is able to distinguish. I wrote about the Estes Group Time Tree, here, as an example,

If you are a male and have not taken the Big Y-700 test, please do. It unlocks your history in a way nothing else can.

A second way to find DNA projects that might be relevant to your surname is to navigate to the very bottom of the FamilyTreeDNA main page in the footer.

Click on “Group Projects.”

You can enter any surname and see the projects in which the project administrator listed Estes (or your surname of choice) as a surname that might be interested in their project.

If you’re a customer and signed on to your account at FamilyTreeDNA, you can find this same information at the top of your personal page under “Group Projects.” You can also join projects from there.

Social Media

I often overlook Facebook or other social media as a surname resource, but it is.

Today, many, if not most, genealogy and historical societies have pages, and so do many genealogists with an interest in a particular surname line.

Searching for “Estes” on Facebook shows several individual people, PLUS, two groups that might be very interesting.

Once you’re a member of a group, you can search within the group for a keyword.

This search gave me everything with either Moses or Estes, so I narrowed it by just using “Moses” or just searching for “Halifax” which is the county in Virginia where Moses Estes lived.

Facebook, especially groups with a genealogical focus, is a wonderful way to find men for Y-DNA testing.

I often ask if someone has already DNA tested, and if so, where.

If they have already tested at Ancestry, or 23andMe, but not at MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA, they can upload to both companies for free. Matching is free after uploading, and so are other basic tools. Advanced tools require an inexpensive unlock, which costs far less than retesting. The unlock at FamilyTreeDNA for advanced tools costs $19, and it’s $29 at MyHeritage.

Next Topic – The Proof Table

Our next topic in this series will be the Genealogy Proof Table.

What is a Proof Table, how do you construct one, and why?

We will assemble a Genealogy Proof Table for one of my lines as an example. You’ll need one for every ancestral lineage.

After that, we have four more articles in this series.

  • Genealogy Proof Standard
  • DNA
  • Leveling up
  • Writing it Up

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Thank you so much.

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Great News – Both e-Pub and Print Version of “The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA” Now Available Worldwide  

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  • Anyone, anyplace, can order the full-color, searchable, e-pub version of The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA from the publisher, Genealogical.com, here.
  • Customers within the US can order the black and white print book from the publisher, here.
  • Customers outside the US can order the print book from their country’s Amazon website. The publisher does not ship print books outside the US due to customs, shipping costs, and associated delays. They arranged to have the book printed by an international printer so that it can be shipped directly to Amazon for order fulfillment without international customers incurring additional expenses and delays. If you ordered the book previously from Amazon and a long delivery time was projected, that should be resolved now and your book should be arriving soon.

Comprehensive

This book is truly comprehensive and includes:

  • 247 pages
  • More than 267 images
  • 288 footnotes
  • 12 charts
  • 68 tips
  • Plus, an 18-page glossary

To view the table of contents, click here. To order, click here.

Thank you, everyone, for your patience and your support.

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

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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 your price but helps me 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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Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA Released in Hardcopy

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Just what many of you have been waiting for! The hardcopy print version of the Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA has just been released.

As shown in the table of contents below, The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA contains lots of logically organized information! It includes basic education about genetic genealogy and how it works, instructions on using the FamilyTreeDNA tests and tools, plus an extensive glossary.

Enjoy!

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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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Announcing: The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA; Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA

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I’m so very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA.

For the first time, the publisher, Genealogical.com, is making the full-color, searchable e-book version available before the hardcopy print version, here. The e-book version can be read using your favorite e-book reader such as Kindle or iBooks.

Update: The hardcopy version was released at the end of May and is available from the publisher in the US and from Amazon internationally.

This book is about more than how to use the FamilyTreeDNA products and interpreting their genealogical meaning, it’s also a primer on the four different types of DNA used for genealogy and how they work:

  • Autosomal DNA
  • Mitochondrial DNA
  • Y-DNA
  • X-DNA

There’s a LOT here, as shown by the table of contents, below

This book is chocked full of great information in one place. As an added bonus, the DNA glossary is 18 pages long.

I really hope you enjoy my new book, in whatever format you prefer.

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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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Why Don’t Our Y-DNA Haplogroups Match?

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I’ve been asked this question several times recently, and the answer is resoundingly, “it depends.” There are several reasons why Y-DNA haplogroups might not match and most of them aren’t “bad.”

How Haplogroups Work

Haplogroups are the 79,000+ branches of the Y-DNA phylogenetic tree which you can view here, along with countries where those haplogroups are found. You can think of haplogroups as genetic clans of either closely or distantly related men. Major haplogroup branches have unique letters assigned. Downstream or younger haplogroups are designated by a letter-number sequence that is always preceded by the main haplogroup letter.

Image courtesy FamilyTreeDNA

Major haplogroups were formed tens of thousands of years ago, with more recent haplogroups added as they’ve been discovered. Haplogroups are discovered and added every day thanks to the Big Y-700 test. You can read more about that process, here.

As you look at the pie chart above, you’ll notice that haplogroup R represents about half the men who have tested and has several major subbranches. Every haplogroup R man belongs to all of the branches above his own that lead back to the root of haplogroup R.

Using haplogroup R, which is R-M207, its identifying SNP, as an example, it immediately splits into two branches: R-M173, which has 37,000+ more branches, and R-M479, which has 313 branches. My Estes men fall into a haplogroup several steps beneath R-M173, but they are still members of haplogroups R-M173 and R-M207, even though their descendant haplogroup is R-BY490, which was formed by a mutation that occurred 20,000 years later.

Haplogroup R-M173, then, in turn, leads back to Y-Adam, the first man to have lived and has descendants today.

As we approach the question of why haplogroups of two men might differ, we will review tools to use and how to interpret your findings to reach the appropriate answer for your situation.

What is Your Goal?

You may be looking for a very specific answer, or this may be a more general question.

  • If you’re evaluating closely related men who have different haplogroup assignments, not matching can be very disconcerting. Breathe. There are several perfectly legitimate reasons why they may not match, and we have easy, free analysis tools.
  • If you’re looking at your Y-DNA match list at FamilyTreeDNA, you may or may not match other men closely, but you do “match” at some level if they are on your match list. You may see several different haplogroups in your match list. How closely you match those men is a different question.
  • If you’re looking at autosomal results at FamilyTreeDNA, you may see haplogroups listed for males. You may or may not “match” the haplogroup of men with the same surname. What does this mean, and why don’t you match? Your autosomal match may have nothing to do with your paternal line, or it may be because of your paternal line.

We will cover all of these scenarios.

Where Did You Both Test?

  • Are you comparing apples and apples?
  • Did you both test at the same company?
  • Did you both take the same type or level of test?

These factors all make a difference.

Which Test Did You Take?

There are four types of tests that will provide males with some level of Y-DNA haplogroup.

Autosomal Tests – Some companies include a few Y-DNA location probes in their autosomal test, meaning that they test a few haplogroup-specific Y-DNA locations. LivingDNA, 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder test provide a mid-level Y-DNA haplogroup to customers. The haplogroup that can be determined from these tests depends on a variety of factors, including the vendor, the probes they selected for their chip, the test version, and if that location is successfully read in the test.

Note that FamilyTreeDNA supports autosomal uploads from MyHeritage and Ancestry who do not provide Y-DNA haplogroups to customers, but who do test some Y-DNA locations. Therefore you can upload your autosomal test from those companies to FamilyTreeDNA for free and receive at least a cursory Y-DNA haplogroup.

FamilyTreeDNA is currently processing all of its Family Finder tests, followed by tests uploaded from other vendors, to provide all genetic male testers with a Y-DNA haplogroup at some level. Different vendors and test versions test different Y-DNA SNPs, so your mileage may vary. Y-DNA haplogroups are a free benefit at FamilyTreeDNA.

STR Tests – At FamilyTreeDNA, you can purchase both Y-37 and Y-111 STR (short tandem repeat) Y-DNA tests that provide matching at the number of locations you purchased, plus a predicted haplogroup based on those results. These haplogroup predictions are accurate but are often relatively far back in time.

If you match someone on STR tests, your match may be very recent or before the advent of surnames. For a more specific haplogroup, you need to purchase the Big Y-700 test, which provides at least 700 STR match locations but, more importantly, sequences the entire gold-standard region of the Y-chromosome for the most precise haplogroup and matching possible.

  • When viewing matches of two men who ONLY took STR tests, STR marker matches are more important for genealogy than haplogroups because the haplogroups were formed thousands of years ago.
  • When viewing matches on the Big Y-700 test, haplogroup matching is much more specific and reliable than STR matches because the mutations (SNPs – single nucleotide polymorphisms) that form haplogroups are much more stable than STRs which mutate unpredictably, including back mutations.

SNP Confirmation Tests – Historically, FamilyTreeDNA customers could purchase individual SNPs to confirm a haplogroup, or SNP packs or bundles to do the same for a group of SNPs. With the advent of both the Family Finder haplogroup assignments, and the Big Y-700, these individual tests are no longer necessary or advantageous and are being discontinued.

Big Y-700 Test – At FamilyTreeDNA, the Big Y-700 test provides the most granular and specific haplogroup possible, most often well within a genealogical timeframe. You may be able to tell, based on previously undiscovered mutations, that two people are brothers or father and son, or, depending on who else has tested and when mutations formed, testers may match further back in time. Here’s an example of using the results from multiple testers in the Estes DNA Surname Project.

You can also match men who took the Big Y-500 test which is less specific than the Big Y-700. In the now-obsolete Big Y-500 test, a smaller portion of the Y chromosome was sequenced and testers only received about 500 STR locations. The Big Y-700 test has been enriched to provide a wider range of more specific information. Men who originally took the Big Y-500, then upgraded to the Big Y-700, will very probably have a new haplogroup assignment based on the expanded coverage and increased resolution of the Big Y-700 test. The Big Y-700 ferrets out lineages that the Big Y-500 simply could not, and continues to provide additional value as more men test, which facilitates the formation of new haplogroups.

What Do You Mean by Match?

Matching doesn’t mean you have to have the exact same haplogroup. A perfectly valid match can have a different haplogroup because one haplogroup is more specific or refined than the other. Matching exactly as a result of a predicted STR haplogroup is much less useful than matching closely on a much more recent Big Y-700 haplogroup.

Not all haplogroups are created equal.

I know this is a bit confusing, so let’s look at real-life examples to clarify.

STR to STR or Autosomal to Autosomal Haplogroup Match

Two males might match exactly on a mid-range Family Finder autosomal haplogroup or on a STR-predicted haplogroup like R-M269, which is about 6350 years old.

This haplogroup “match,” even though it might be exact, does not confirm a close match and really only serves to eliminate some other haplogroups and confirm that a closer match is possible. For example, R-M269 men don’t match someone in haplogroup J or E. You may or may not share a surname. You may or may not still “match” if you both upgrade to the Big Y-700.

In this case, a father/son pair would match exactly, as would two men with different surnames whose common ancestor lived 6000 years ago.

Note that if you’re comparing autosomal-derived haplogroups across different vendor platforms, or even different DNA testing chip versions on the same platform, you may see two different haplogroups. Different vendors test different locations. Please note that second cousins and closer will always match on autosomal DNA, but relationships further back than that may not. Y-DNA very reliably reaches far beyond the capabilities of autosomal DNA due to the fact that it is never mixed with the DNA of the other parent – so it never divides or is watered down in time. When comparing two autosomally-generated haplogroups of men who are supposed to be closely related, always check their autosomal match results too.

Use the free Discover Tool to find various categories of information about any haplogroup, including its age. Take a look at R-M269 here.

Using Discover to Compare Haplogroups

You can always use the Discover tool to compare two haplogroups.

Go to Discover (or click through if you’re signed on to your FamilyTreeDNA Y-DNA page), then enter the first haplogroup you’d like to compare.

Click search to view information about that haplogroup.

On the menu bar, at left, click on Compare.

Add the second haplogroup.

I’m selecting E-M35, a completely different branch of the phylogenetic tree.

R-M269 was formed about 6350 years ago, while E-M35 was formed about 25,000 years ago. Their common ancestor was formed about 65,000 years ago. Clearly, these two paternal lineages are not related in anything close to a genealogical timeframe.

These two men would never match on an STR test, but could easily match on an autosomal test on any line OTHER than their direct paternal line.

Now let’s compare two haplogroups that are more closely related.

Haplogroup R-M222 is very common in Ireland, so let’s see how closely related it is to R-M269 which is very common in western Europe.

We see that R-M222 descends from R-M269, so there is no “other haplogroup” involved.

R-M222 was formed about 2100 years ago, around 4250 years after R-M269 was formed.

There are 17 steps between R-M222 and R-M269.

The bottom block shows the lineage from R-M269 back to Y-Adam.

How cool is this??!!

Big Y-700 to Autosomal or STR Haplogroup Comparison

Joe took the Big Y-700 test and discovered that he’s haplogroup R-BY177080.

Joe noticed that his son, who had initially taken an STR test, had been assigned haplogroup R-M269. Then, his son took a Family Finder test and his haplogroup changed to R-FGC8601.

Joe was confused about why he and his son’s haplogroups didn’t match.

First, let’s check Family Finder to confirm the parent/child relationship. Joe’s son is clearly his son.

So why doesn’t Joe’s son’s haplogroup match Joe’s haplogroup? And why did Joe’s son’s haplogroup change?

Joe’s son had not taken a Big Y-700 DNA test, so Joe’s son’s R-M269 haplogroup was initially predicted from his STR test.

Joe’s son’s updated haplogroup, R-FGC8601 was generated by the Family Finder test. Think of this as a bonus. If you’re a male and haven’t yet, you’ll soon receive an email telling you that you’ve received a Family Finder Y-DNA haplogroup. It’s your lucky day!

Family Finder haplogroups always replace STR predicted haplogroups since they are always more specific than predicted STR haplogroups. Big Y-700 haplogroups always replace STR-generated haplogroup predictions and Family Finder haplogroups because they are the most specific.

Let’s compare these results using Discover.

Joe’s son’s original predicted haplogroup was R-M269.

Discover Compare shows us that Joe’s Big Y-700 Haplogroup, R-BY177080, is a descendant of R-M269.

So, they actually do “match,” just several branches further up the tree

Joe’s son’s more precise Family Finder haplogroup was assigned as R-FGC8601.

Discover Compare shows us that Joe’s Big Y-700 haplogroup also descends from R-FGC8601.

You can see that the haplogroup generated by Family Finder is more precise by about 4700 years and improves that comparison.

R-M269 was formed about 6350 years ago, but R-FGC8601 was formed about 1700 years ago.

Joe’s Big Y-700 haplogroup, R-BY177080 was formed about the year 1900, improving the family haplogroup by another 1600 years or so.

Joe’s son’s Family Finder haplogroup moved down the haplotree 21 branches and 4650 years, for free! If Joe’s son were to upgrade to the Big Y-700, they might very well be assigned a new haplogroup that, for the time being, only they share.

Of course, Family Finder doesn’t provide Y-DNA matching so you still need the Y-DNA tests for that important aspect of genealogy.

Big Y to Big Y Comparison

In our next example, a group of men, including a father and son or other very close relative may take the Big Y-700 test and have different haplogroups. If you’re saying, “Whoa Nelly,” hear me out.

George took a Big Y-700 test and discovered that he is haplogroup R-FGC43597. His son and grandsons tested, and they are haplogroup R-FTC50269. What happened? Shouldn’t they all match George?

On George’s Big Y-700 block tree, you can see that a mutation, R-FTC50269, occurred between George and his son. George doesn’t have it, but his son does.

A haplogroup isn’t “named” until there are two men with the same mutation in the same lineage. Therefore, when George’s son initially tested, he would have been assigned to the same haplogroup as George, R-FGC43697, but with one extra variant, or mutation.

Of course, that extra mutation was passed from George’s son to both of his grandsons, so when the first grandson tested, the new haplogroup, R-FTC50269 was assigned as a result of that mutation. Now, George has one haplogroup and his son and grandsons have a different haplogroup, one branch downstream.

Using Discover to check the haplogroup ages and path, we find that indeed, these haplogroups are only one step apart.

Checking Family Finder results can always verify that the match is close or as close as you expected.

Haplogroup Assignments

Haplogroup assignments range from good to better to best.

Good Better Best
STR predicted Yes – but further back in time
SNP Packs (now obsolete) Between good and better
Family Finder autosomal Yes – generally midrange between STR predicted and the Big Y-700
Big Y-500 (need to upgrade) Usually between better and best
Big Y-700 The best – usually within a genealogically relevant timeframe unless your DNA is rare

Where Are You?

Older haplogroups, such as the STR-predicted haplogroups are useful for:

  • Eliminating some potential matches
  • Identifying where that haplogroup originated at that specific point in time. In other words, where your ancestor lived when that haplogroup was born.

If your Y-DNA matches another Y-DNA tester at FamilyTreeDNA, your haplogroups will fall someplace on the same haplogroup branch, although they may be thousands of years apart. STR-predicted haplogroups are “older,” meaning they range in age from about 6500 years to tens of thousands of years ago. They can tell you where the haplogroup originated at that time.

Autosomal haplogroups will be newer, or more recent, than STR-predicted haplogroups, but still (sometimes significantly) older than the Big Y-700 haplogroups..

FamilyTreeDNA provides Y-DNA haplogroups for free for every biological male who either takes the FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder test or uploads an autosomal result from either Ancestry or MyHeritage. Soon, 23andMe uploads will be resumed as well. This means that you will be able to view other men with a similar surname in your Family Finder results and:

  • Rule them out as a paternal line match.
  • Check your STR matches if they have taken a Y-DNA test
  • Check your Big Y-700 test for matches if both men have taken a Big Y test.
  • Encourage your matches to take a Big Y-700 test so you can see how closely you match on your paternal line.
  • Use the Discover Compare and other tools to reveal more information.

Family Finder haplogroups are relatively new, so currently, all new Family Finder testers are receiving haplogroups. Older Family Finder tests are being processed and will be followed by autosomal tests uploaded from other vendors. Haplogroups from autosomal tests are confirmed and will be newer, or more recent, than STR-predicted haplogroups.

The only test that can bring your haplogroup to current, meaning the most refined, recent, personal haplogroup, is the Big Y-700 test. Without taking the Big Y-700 test, you’ll forever be stuck with an older, less informative haplogroup branch. The Big Y-700 allows us to reliably sort families into lineages based on branching mutations.

The Big Y-700 haplogroup is:

  • The most detailed and granular possible.
  • Determined by sequencing the Y chromosome.
  • A test of discovery that continues to provide additional value as more men test and new haplogroups are formed.

Big Y-700 haplogroups generally fall into a genealogically useful timeframe and can be very recent.

The Discover tool and Time Tree provide a wealth of information about your ancestors, including locations, migration paths, ancient DNA, and more.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Now that you understand how to compare and interpret haplogroup matches, what additional information can you learn?

I always encourage Y-DNA matches to upgrade to the Big Y-700. Why? You don’t know what you don’t know. The article, Bennett Greenspan: Meet My Extended Family & Discover Extraordinary Deep Heritage illustrates the benefits of the Big Y-700 for all matches. Upgrading 12-marker matches is exactly how he made his big breakthrough.

The Big Y-700 test answers many questions beyond simply matching by using Discover and the Group Time Tree.

  • Where were your ancestors?
  • Who do you match, and who were their ancestors?
  • Genetically and genealogically, how do your surname matches fit together?
  • Where were your matches’ ancestors, and when?
  • Which ancient DNA results do you match, and where were they located?
  • What is the history of locations where your ancestors were found along their journey?
  • How closely or distantly are you related to other Big Y-700 matches?
  • Can your matches’ information break down your paternal line brick wall, or at least move it back a few generations?

Where are your Y-DNA results along the spectrum of useful haplogroup information? Do you or your matches need to upgrade? Click here to upgrade or order a Big Y-700 test.

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RootsTech 2024 – Celebrating 25 Years of Genetic Genealogy

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On the first day of RootsTech, we celebrated the milestone anniversary of 25 years of genetic genealogy. Right now, we are at the intersection of two incredibly powerful tools: genetics and AI. Both technologies are revolutionary and have changed and are changing the genealogical world overnight. What an amazing time to be alive!

Day 1 is Just Beginning

Day 1 is just the beginning, although pre-show activities have been occurring for a day or two. Everyone is excited. The energy on the show floor and as attendees talk is palpable – a form of human electricity.

I’m going to share some of RootsTech’s flavor with you, so come along with me as I attend a few sessions, give my dozen sessions, and meet people.

First, I need to provide some caveats.

  • I wasn’t able to attend very many sessions
  • I didn’t get to half the expo floor booths
  • I was only at one keynote, but fortunately, most were recorded

I managed to overcommit myself “just a bit,” and I just couldn’t be in two places at once. Thankfully, recorded sessions are available here.

One of the reasons that I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped is because I kept running into people. There was more hugging at RootsTech than at a bear-hug festival. The fun of taking selfies is a thing – a modern-day bonding experience and lots of group selfies are floating around on social media.

I truly love my fellow genealogists, many of whom I’ve discovered are cousins, and some of whom have become lifelong friends. They are brothers and sisters of heart -people who I can’t imagine NOT having in my family. This group of troublemakers is the perfect example of that, with Lianne Krüger, Mags Gaulden, and me in the back and Janine Cloud in front. I think we look like a girl band. Perhaps we’ll call ourselves The Chromosomes. 😊

The first thing on my agenda for Thursday was a book signing for my book, DNA for Native American Genealogy.

Penny Walters wandered by while I was signing and said hello.

Penny, the queen of selfies, constantly has to instruct me on how to do this successfully. It seems I either shut my eyes or I’m smiling so hard I’m laughing. One day, Penny, one day!

Thanks, Penny, for taking this picture of me with my book.

Following the book signing, Janine Could, Groups and Events Manager at FamilyTreeDNA, and I had an AMA, Ask Me Anything session in the FamilyTreeDNA booth about determining if you have Native American ancestors. Our stories are so complementary.

I was raised with and participated in Native cultural traditions. Janine wasn’t, but she is an enrolled Cherokee tribal member. After we had known each other for several years, we discovered that we’re related, but not through that line – at least not that we know of.

The great thing about AMA sessions is that the speakers are literally there to answer your questions. During the conference, lots of people took advantage of the expertise of speakers and their fellow attendees.

Remember

Last year, I met Charis, in the middle between me and Janine. Charis made my day when she told me that she was driving by the Salt Palace a week or so before RootsTech, saw that I was giving a Native American session, and knew she had to attend.

We talked for a long time, and I wondered if I would see her again this year.

Sure enough!

I saw her walking down an aisle, so I knew she was attending. I wanted to give her a hug but I couldn’t at that moment.

She stopped by the FamilyTreeDNA booth and asked Janine if she thought I’d remember her.

You remember people that make you feel good, and she really did.

Someone once told me that people often remember you for how you make them feel.

This year, Charis attended my sessions, and it felt good to see a friendly, smiling face in the audience.

After one class, she waited for me until everyone’s questions were answered. I asked if we could sit down in the quiet at a vacant table in the back of that hall for a few minutes to visit.

Charis pulled out a bag with a card and gave it to me, saying she hoped I didn’t think it was weird or anything. I was stunned and quite moved.

Her name is Remember, the theme of Rootstech this year.

I cried. Charis’s gift was so thoughtful in so many ways, as was the card – and she had no idea how personally this touched me.

We talked for a long time, and while I’m not going to share details, I remembered how it felt to be young and have your life’s trajectory shifted in ways you can’t control.

I remembered what it was like to have hopes dashed.

I remembered when I was “just doing what I was doing” every day, not realizing that I was making memories – not just for me but for others as well.

I remember when Douglas explained the concept of GodMothers to me – and I wasn’t young.

Douglas told me that I had GodMothered people through our combined educational ministry (and I’m not talking about church here) and through my own individual work. Of course, the first thing I thought when Douglas said that was, “No, no, not me,” but then I remembered my mother’s “simple” ministry to others. I remembered how my step-father changed my life both with his actions and a few simple, well-placed words. I remembered the kindness of others when I desperately needed it – and still do.

I remembered.

I remembered that we all have a mission, a ministry, even if we don’t realize it. Even if we don’t understand it. Even if “all we do” is a simple kindness every day.

I remembered that some people’s lives are meant to intersect.

Charis is doing GodMother work, or maybe God’s Mother’s work, every day of her life.

Charis gives me hope for the future.

Thank you Charis, for Remember, and for helping me remember. And for being the next generation of GodMothers and shining your light for others to follow in generations of GodMother footsteps.

Remember.

Genetic Genealogy Turns 25

A few weeks before RootsTech, Diahan Southard emailed and asked me if I’d be interested in and willing to write a short, roughly 3-page “chapter” for a book she was preparing for RootsTech, celebrating the 25th anniversary of genetic genealogy.

Additionally, Diahan would be hosting a panel where some of the contributors would share our remembrances, beginning with the earliest days and ending with more recent innovations.

You can watch the session here.

It’s not hyperbole to say that genetic genealogy changed my life. It also changed the trajectory of my career.

I was very proud to be included on this panel with Diahan and Bennett Greenspan, both of whom I have known since the beginning. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined an event like this – let alone being on this stage on this incredibly memorable day.

Diahan shared her story about beginning her career at Sorenson Molecular Institute with Scott Woodward, who joined us and told his story via video.

Bennett Greenspan spoke about his inspiration as a genealogist, and how and why he founded FamilyTreeDNA in 1999.

Bennett introduced Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA to the consuming public, planting the seeds of an industry that would flourish and ultimately become a household word in the genealogy community.

Tim Janzen spoke about the role of Y-DNA from the first 12-marker panels to the Big Y-700 today. The landmark discovery that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with Sally Hemmings occurred as a result of Y-DNA testing and drew attention to the possibilities for solving long-standing mysteries – known or unknown.

Leah Larkin discussed the tipping point of autosomal DNA in the genetic genealogy industry.

Aimee Haynes with DNA Angels, an adoption search organization, explained how autosomal DNA, in particular, answers questions for adoptees, giving identities and histories to millions of people who “don’t know who they are.”

Diahan asked me to speak about ethnicity and genetic genealogy, and I actually managed to find my original ethnicity test from 2003. That image in the middle with the red dot and “parenthesis” bands was the extent of the information returned, in addition to the percentages. By the way, those percentages weren’t accurate either, but it was a beginning.

However, ethnicity, with associated segment information at FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe, has paved the way for painting both ethnicity and match segments with Jonny Perl’s DNAPainter.

Jonny spoke about his inspiration for DNAPainter and how he initially developed it for his own use. Now, just a few years later, everyone loves it!

Lori Napolitano spoke about the evolution of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG), also known as IGG, including a collage of people whose remains have been identified and a separate collage of perpetrators of violent crime who are now off the streets. She addressed the successes along with the challenges.

Lori’s 3 or 4 minutes were extremely balanced, presenting both sides of the coin, and I strongly encourage you to listen beginning at about minute 36.

Diahan has compiled these people’s contributions along others for a total of 34 vignettes in the book So Far: Genetic Genealogy – The First 25 Years 1999-2024.

  • Megan Smolenyak-Smolenyak
  • Scott Woodward
  • Bennett Greenspan
  • Ann Turner
  • Ugo Perego
  • Diahan Southard
  • Scott Fisher
  • Roberta Estes
  • Tim Janzen
  • Jim Bartlett
  • Blaine Bettinger
  • Daniel Horowitz
  • Debbie Kennett
  • Kitty Cooper
  • Angie Bush
  • Michelle Leonard
  • Paul Woodbury
  • Kelli Bergheimer
  • Judy Russell
  • Dana Leeds
  • Drew Smith
  • Diana Elder
  • Nicole Dyer
  • Leah Larkin
  • Nathan Dylan Goodwin
  • Mary Eberle
  • Mags Gaulden
  • Aimee-Rose-Haynes
  • Jonny Perl
  • Brianne Kirkpatrick
  • Laura Olmsted
  • Cheryi Hudson-Passey
  • Margaret Press
  • Penny Walters

The stories and visions of these pioneers and industry influencers are fascinating.

The eBook is free by scanning the QR code below or click here.

The following day, I found Diahan’s booth and was able to thank her for this labor of love.

Printed copies of Diahan’s book were available for sale in her booth, Your DNA Guide, and I was surprised how many people sought out attendees who wrote mini-chapters and asked us to sign our pages. What fun!

Diahan and I go back a long way. In the greatest of ironies, in the very early days, the Skidmore Family Association retained Diahan to “tell them what she could” about early Y-DNA tests of 51 Skidmore men. Initially, I was very concerned that the family association might have gotten themselves aligned with someone who was less than competent – but then thrilled when I discovered that consultant was Diahan. Better yet, my own line was one of 8 individual Skidmore lines that Diahan identified and was represented by several testers. Back then, Diahan was working with only a few STR markers and of course, today, we have Big Y-700 tests.

Sunny Morton, another author, joined us for a lovely photo in Diahan’s booth.

I’ve always been incredibly grateful to Sunny for taking me under her wing during my first year speaking at RootsTech, where I had 4 or 5 days to prepare a presentation to cover for another speaker who was unexpectedly unable to attend. Baptism by fire, for sure.

Another reminder that people remember you for how you make them feel.

Expo Hall Show Floor

In between sessions and events, I wandered around the show floor to see the booths, their offerings, and my friends. Many of these people are probably your friends, too, or you have seen their names in the community.

Near Diahan’s booth, I found Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer, pictured above, a lovely mother-daughter professional genealogist pair who founded Family Locket. Should I say this? I especially love the baby genealogist peeking at us from behind. I’m thinking in another year or so, it will be a three-generation endeavor.😊

I was excited to run into Marian Pierre-Louis, who facilitates the smooth running of Legacy Family Tree Webinars and slays technology gremlins left and right! Another person I’m grateful to!

Geoff Rasmussen, founder of Legacy Family Tree, both the Legacy Family Tree Software and the webinars, was staffing the booth. If you haven’t tried these amazing genealogy webinars, all webinars are free initially and for 7 days and are then available by subscription in the webinar library.

Here, Geoff and Marian appear together. What a wonderful team. I’ll have a new webinar in the library before year-end.

Further down the row, I found Geneanet. If you’re not familiar with Geneanet, they are the last totally free resource that I’m aware of that allows the free uploading of your tree, regardless of size.

I use Geneanet often, especially when searching for Europeans. One of my favorite trees at Geneanet belongs to professional genealogist Karen Theriot Reader, and it documents more than 166,000 Acadians and their descendants—along with sources.

Yes, there was food, although not as much as in earlier years. However, these lovely mini-bundt cakes were TO DIE FOR. Unfortunately, I never did manage to purchase a chocolate one.

Maybe I’ll just have to cross my fingers for next year.

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RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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I’ve got to tell you, MyHeritage has outdone themselves.

I had a hard time just keeping track of their announcements, which totaled 13 – a baker’s dozen.

You can watch the MyHeritage RootsTech keynote by Aaron Godfrey, here.

However, there are a few things not in the video, so let’s take a look at a quick summary of what’s new.

DNA Uploads with Free Advanced Tools Forever Extended Until March 10th

MyHeritage just extended their DNA upload that includes ALL ADVANCED TOOLS FOR FREE, forever, to March 10th so click here now to upload every kit you manage. This is a great deal. Hint – new ethnicity results are coming soon and you’ll be saving $29 on each kit you upload.

20+ Billion Records

MyHeritage has just passed the 20 billion record mark and is continuing to add. That’s billion, with a B. These records are available to customers with a MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try a MyHeritage Subscription with a Free Trial, here.,

Additionally, right now, subscriptions are 50% off, but I don’t know how long that price lasts.

I love my MyHeritage subscription, and if you try it and don’t like yours, you can cancel and be charged nothing during the 14-day trial period.

I particularly like that the local newspaper where my grandparents lived is available on MyHeritage, and no place else. In addition, MyHeritage has integrated with FamilySearch, which is digitizing and indexing records like wildfire. That collaboration has provided me with information from European sources, including archives.

MyHeritage Wiki

MyHeritage has been working on their new Wiki, a community encyclopedia for genealogy and DNA, for almost a year now, although it was only recently released.

Photo courtesy of MyHeritage

I’ve been honored to write several articles for the newly announced MyHeritage Wiki, including the definition of DNA itself:

Take a look at the new Wiki, here.

You can filter in a number of ways, and you can even sign up to be a contributor.

Check out their blog article, here.

AI Record Finder

The AI Record Finder is the world’s first AI chat-based search engine for historical records.

I should probably tell you that, at this point in time, I do use AI, such as ChatGPT, very cautiously, and I’m inherently suspicious because AI tools sometimes hallucinate. It’s a new technology with lots of glitches and unknowns, so let’s see how MyHeritage is using this tool. It should be much more reliable since it’s in a controlled environment. I need to be convinced. 😊

The AI Record Finder is under the Research Menu. Just type your question about your ancestor.

I’m cheating and giving MyHeritage a tough one. I typed, “Please tell me about Solomon Ferwerda, who died in 1768 in Groningen, the Netherlands.”

MyHeritage returned three possibilities in their database, including their affiliated databases. One is a MyHeritage tree and two are records from FamilySearch.

Don’t limit yourself at this point.

I happen to know “my” Solomon is the first person, but I played around a bit before selecting the “right” Solomon. Why? Because there’s a lot that I don’t know about his life. It’s possible that the second and third records are ALSO the right person, so be sure to review everything.

Clicking on the middle or right record for Solomon shows that, indeed, this record from FamilySearch comes from the Dutch Archival Indexes, so it’s not “just someone’s tree.”

We do know the Ferwerda family is from Leeuwarden, but we don’t know when Solomon was born, nor if he was married twice. I only have the name of his second wife and one child, Jan, who was born the year he died.

The two FamilySearch Dutch archive records are from Leeuwarden, so maybe, just maybe, I’ve discovered something new about Solomon. How exciting!

I need to click through and check this out further.

I didn’t expect to like this tool, but so far, I really do. But wait – there’s more.

AI Ancestor Bio

You can click to have MyHeritage generate an AI bio of an ancestor for you.

The bio takes a few minutes to generate and will be available for download in the chat and will also be emailed to you. You can easily share with others. Getting other people interested in genealogy often encourages them to take a DNA test. DNA tests are still on sale for $39, here.

Solomon Ferwerda’s AI bio was completed quickly and arrived in pdf format. We know so little about him, I knew it would be short. I must say, I really enjoyed the “Historical Context” section that discussed the surrounding events that would have affected his life. That’s incredibly important and would have or could have influenced the decisions he made. Maybe the warfare and political unrest caused him to move from Leeuwarden to Groningen for some reason, where he died the year his son was born.

Here’s Solomon’s bio.

Here’s a link to the RootsTech lecture about the MyHeritage AI tools by Ran Snir, the VP of Product.

MyHeritage blog links for AI Record finder are here and here.

You can watch Telling Your Family’s Story with MyHeritage’s AI Features by Janna Helshtein at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, here.

I can’t wait to play with the MyHeritage AI tools more.

Updated Ethnicity Coming Soon

This is going to make a lot of people happy!

MyHeritage is in the process of updating their ethnicity results, increasing their regions from 42 to 80, with significantly optimized granularity in Europe. I initially misunderstood and thought the new results were available now, but they won’t arrive until summer.

I understand from talking to a Jewish friend involved in MyHeritage’s R&D effort that their own results are substantially improved and that they have now been placed in Armenia where their ancestors are from. They are no longer generically “Jewish.”

New Profile Pages with Hints

Daniel Horowitz said that everyone calls Smart Matches and Record Matches hints, so now MyHeritage has updated profile pages and is adding them to the profile page and officially calling them Hints.

You can still find Smart Matches and Record Matches listed separately under Discoveries, but on everyone’s profile, they are called Hints.

On Solomon’s profile page, scroll down to view his journey based on the information you’ve entered or accepted into your tree.

I did not yet add Leeuwarden, because I’m yet positive those records in Leewarden are his, but if I had, Leeuwarden would also be shown on his journey map. I’ll be incorporating these into my 52 Ancestors stories. I love maps! Maybe I can find old maps to include too,

You can read more about the new profiles and hints, here.

Tree Collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA

Aaron Godfrey announced tree collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA who pre-announced this at their conference in November.

I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

FamilyTreeDNA has never been a “tree” company, so this means that users will have one less tree to maintain independently, and they can augment their research with records from MyHeritage.

I talked to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, the Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA to confirm that this is NOT a DNA transfer. FamilyTreeDNA matches still occur in the FamilyTreeDNA database, just like always, and MyHeritage matches still occur in the MyHeritage database. If you want matching in both databases, you still have to upload to or test at both. Only the trees are integrated, meaning when you click on a tree at  FamilyTreeDNA, you’ll see the tree displayed on MyHeritage.

The great news is that FamilyTreeDNA features such as Family Matching (bucketing) where you link your DNA matches at FamilyTreeDNA to their profile cards so that maternal/paternal bucketing occurs will still work the same way. The only difference will be that your tree will actually reside at MyHeritage and not at FamilyTreeDNA.

You’ll be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We will know more in a few months, and I’ll provide more details when I have them.

Invite Another MyHeritage User to View Your DNA Results

Aaron Godfrey said in the keynote that 2FA (two-factor authentication) at MyHeritage will become mandatory later this month, and with it, MyHeritage is adding the feature of being able to invite another MyHeritage user to view your DNA results. This allows people to collaborate more easily, especially if a different person is managing someone else’s DNA test.

Reimagine Multi-Photo Scanner App

This photo-scanning innovation is for your phone and allows you to scan photos and entire photo album pages – automatically separating and improving the photos. Then, of course, you just tag them to the proper person in your tree like any other photo.

Oh, and did I mention that Reimagine is free? I expected to have to pay when I downloaded the app, but I didn’t, probably because I have a full subscription.

Based on this article, Reimagine is not meant for other types of images, like pages of text or albums of clipped newspaper articles. But guess what? I downloaded the app, and it works just fine for those items! Hallelujah. How I wish I had this last week at the FamilySearch Library when I was finding pages in books I wanted to associate with a specific ancestor.

If you have album pages of photos to scan, this is golden and integrates with the profiles of people into your MyHeritage tree.

I really, really like the idea of having the ability to scan in the palm of my hand. That way if someone has a photo, you don’t have to try to take a photo of it. Gone are the days of literally dragging a laptop and scanner around with me when I’m traveling – just in case. Yes, I actually did and now I don’t have to anymore.

I cringe to think how many opportunities were lost to me before the days of laptops – but not now.

Thank you – THANK YOU, MyHeritage. What a great gift!

You can find the QR code to download the app, here.

OldNews is New News

MyHeritage has introduced a new website for old newspapers called OldNews which you can find here.

This addition doubles the number of newspapers previously available on MyHeritage.

Users can also subscribe separately to Old News for about $99/year.

MyHeritage customers use their normal credentials to sign in to either site, but accessing newspapers not previously integrated into MyHeritage will require an OldNews subscription too.

I had to try it. I entered my mother’s name.

Look, my Mom had a tonsillectomy. I never knew that. It was just a couple of months after she graduated from high school.

I didn’t know Mom spent the summer in Philadelphia, either. She was 19 at that time, and I had heard rumblings that she studied with a “prima ballerina” at the School of American Ballet. Guess where that is? Yep, Philly.

My Mom was a professional tap and ballet dancer before she became my Mom.

Understanding that Mom spent the summer of 1942 on the east coast sheds new light on this and a few other photos in Mom’s photo album, which I can now scan.

Ok, I can’t help myself. I have to enhance this photo at MyHeritage.

Much better. Another tiny piece of Mom’s life brought into focus.

I wonder what else is in OldNews that I don’t know about. Hmmmm…

You can read about OldNews here.

New All-Inclusive Omni Subscription

MyHeritage is launching a new Omni all-inclusive subscription plan that includes most of the MyHeritage products and tools, except for Filae, unless I’m missing something. Omni reportedly costs less than half the price if you were to subscribe to all of these individually. I’ve asked for a comparison chart which I don’t have yet, but I’m told will be coming soon.

Here’s what’s included:

Additionally, I asked MyHeritage about whether or not the advanced DNA tools are included with Omni, and they are. So, add advanced DNA tools to that list.

The following information about the Omni Plan is a screenshot from the MyHeritage blog article, here.

I have not been able to determine the price of an Omni subscription. At RootsTech, you were interested in the Omni plan, you submitted a Google form and a day or so later, you received this email.

I suspect MyHeritage needs to talk to you because how much it costs initially depends on your existing subscriptions, and how much time is left on those.

I reached out to MyHeritage and asked when Omni will be available to purchase, and the answer is “soon.” You can’t sign up just yet.

I have never subscribed to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, even though I’m a webinar presenter and have several webinars available there. My gift to myself is going to be Omni when it’s available because I want Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and I’d love a subscription to OldNews. I already have a full subscription to MyHeritage, and I’d probably use Geni more than I do as a casual user if I had the Omni subscription.

Artifact Testing – Maybe

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend CEO Gilad Japhet’s RootsTech session because his session and mine were at exactly the same time.

However, I asked Aaron Godfrey after Gilad’s session what I had missed that was not in Aaron’s keynote, other than Gilad’s wonderful stories.

Aaron and others told me that Gilad stated that he was personally submitting personal artifacts, such as stamps, to a third-party lab once again, to test the waters to see if DNA can now be extracted from artifacts successfully.

MyHeritage tried this a few years ago, ultimately unsuccessfully. Perhaps this time will be different, but I would not hold my breath, truthfully. Degraded DNA has quality issues, not to mention that the DNA extracted might not be the DNA of the person expected.

I would personally love this, but I am also skeptical at this point. Kudos to Gilad for trying again with his own personal items.

MyHeritage Online RootsTech Booth

MyHeritage has provided several educational videos in their online RootsTech booth, at this link. Be sure to take advantage of this free resource.

Whew, I’m finally done! I told you that MyHeritage had been very, very busy, and I wasn’t kidding. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

_____________________________________________________________

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My RootsTech 2024 Schedule – Come Visit!

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This is lining up to be the busiest RootsTech ever.

My appearance schedule includes:

  • 3 RootsTech sessions
  • 2 presentations in the MyHeritage booth
  • 5 AMA (ask me anything) panel sessions in the FamilyTreeDNA booth.
  • Book signings for my book, DNA for Native American Genealogy

Plus, there are some sessions I’d like to attend as well. I’m going to need roller skates!

RootsTech opens at 8 AM on Thursday, February 29th. Yes, it’s a leap year, so leap into RootsTech!!

Here’s my appearance schedule:

Date/Time Session Location
Thursday, February 29, 2024
9:30 AM DNA for Native American Genealogy book signing Booth 218-222
10:30 AM Native American AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Janine Cloud, an enrolled Cherokee Nation member FamilyTreeDNA booth
11:00 AM DNA for Native American Genealogy book signing FamilyTreeDNA booth
12:15 PM Genetic Genealogy Turns 25: DNA Experts Tell
Their Stories – Diahan Southard’s panel discussion		 Ballroom B – also live-streamed and recorded
2:00 PM Leveraging Triangulation – From Three to Many MyHeritage booth
4:00 PM Adoptee Research AMA Ask Me Anything with Courtney Eberhard FamilyTreeDNA booth
6:30 PM Jumpstart Y-DNA Research with New Family Finder Haplogroups FamilyTreeDNA booth
Friday, March 1, 2024
Noon Leveraging Triangulation – From Three to Many MyHeritage booth
1:30 PM – 4:00 DNA Academy – Pulling it All Together – Tests, Vendors, Tools and You Room 355 D
5:30 PM Mitochondrial DNA AMA Panel with Paul Maier, Goran Runfeldt FamilyTreeDNA booth
Saturday, March 2, 2024
10:30 AM Y-DNA Ask Me Anything Panel FamilyTreeDNA booth
1:30 PM Highways of History – Fleshing Out Your Ancestors Using Discover Case Studies Room 151

Lots of vendors have educational sessions in their booths. I encourage you to stop by the FamilyTreeDNA booth for these sessions. Please note that schedules at shows can be somewhat fluid.

The FamilyTreeDNA booth location is very near the show entrance.

My Heritage is to the right and will have more booth presentations too, but they have not released their schedule yet.

Books & Things where I’ll be signing books at 9:30 AM on Thursday is to the far left.

I’ve starred those locations on the final booth layout that we received this morning.

Hope to see you soon!

_____________________________________________________________

Follow DNAexplain on Facebook, here.

Share the Love!

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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.

DNA Purchases and Free Uploads

Genealogy Products and Services

My Book

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

_____________________________________________________________

Follow DNAexplain on Facebook, here.

Share the Love!

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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.

DNA Purchases and Free Uploads

Genealogy Products and Services

My Book

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

Bennett Greenspan: Meet My Extended Family & Discover Extraordinary Deep Heritage

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“My ancestors are in my soul. I can’t get them out of my mind.”

Bennett Greenspan

“And yes, I brake for cemeteries.”

Bennett Greenspan gave an incredibly interesting presentation at the 15th International Genetic Genealogy Conference held by FamilyTreeDNA in November 2023. Since his retirement in January 2021, he has been able to focus on his genealogy. Once a genealogist, always a genealogist.

Bennett said some things I hadn’t thought about, and now I’m viewing Y-DNA matches with a different perspective – based on how he’s using his results.

Ever since I met him, Bennett’s focus has been to use genetics to unravel his complex Jewish heritage.

The questions that drive Bennett are the same ones that motivate most genealogists:

  1. Who are we?
  2. Where did we come from?
  3. Where were we before we were there?
  4. How did my ancestors get there?

Bennett “lost his family lines” before the mid-1800s due to his Jewish heritage, exacerbated in the 1930s by the devastation wrought by the Holocaust. Families were either killed or scattered to survive. It has been through Y-DNA in particular that he has been able to establish unquestionable and confirmed connections with other Greenspan men, sometimes by similar but different surnames, like Green, and sometimes with other surnames entirely.

When Bennett first started down this path, he tested more than 62 men before actually finding one a decade later that matched his Y-DNA. Bennet commented that it was “a little frustrating.”

Persistence is the key, and sometimes, genealogy is a waiting game, but that’s small comfort to genealogists during that unproductive waiting period.

Eventually, Bennett reassembled his family, at least somewhat, but it was a long journey. Here’s Bennett’s incredible story, including surprises, as he tells it.

Bennett discovered genealogy at age 12 and, like many genealogists, created a pedigree chart by talking to his family.

I love the mark-outs. How many of us still have our first chart with its edits?

This is the young Bennett Greenspan, whose interest in genealogy would one day unlock secrets for all of us!

It was a long way from a decade with no matches to finding his genetic kin in Ukraine.

The Big Y-700 Time Tree shows Bennett’s lineage in Ukraine, but stepping back in time, some descendants of his ancestors are found in adjacent locations.

Bennett was passionately discussing his matches on the time tree and in the Greenspan project, so I visited the Greenspan DNA Project, where the earliest known ancestors of Bennett’s Big Y matches are shown on the Group Time Tree.

Bennett’s closest matches are shown as descendants of haplogroup J-ZS1718. He has additional matches who are not in the Greenspan project. Since this is the Group Time Tree, it only displays the people in that project, along with their earliest known ancestors, Isaac and Usher Greenspan.

12-Marker Matches

Bennett never fails to amaze me. He said something very important and profound about 12-marker matches that I really hadn’t thought about – at least not this way.

As a community, we are often guilty of discounting 12-marker matches, those that don’t match us at 25-markers or above, or with different surnames, as “too far back in time” or otherwise irrelevant. I always look at the names and earliest known ancestors of 12-marker matches, because that person may have tested back in the day when fewer markers were available. But if I don’t recognize something, I move on.

However, Bennett said that, ”Y-12 matches reach back to a common ancestor. 12-marker matches are not a quirk. They are related to you, just further back in time. You share a common ancestor with them, someplace. They may be more distant, but they are still your close matches.”

I’ve been in too much of a hurry for a quick win, and ignoring the (apparently not so) obvious.

Determining when and where their ancestors lived also paves the way to discover yours. Your Y-DNA and theirs were in the same place at the same time.

Of Bennett’s 171 12-marker matches, 107 have upgraded to the Big Y, probably mostly due to his encouragement. This benefits both them and Bennett by fleshing out the history of that entire group of men, including how they got to where they are found in the first available records. The Time Tree shows when Big Y testers shared a common ancestor, and based on Earliest Known Ancestor (EKA) locations, where. This provides further information about the lives of ancestors before contemporary records – in other words – people that we can never identify by name. It’s a window into ancestors before surnames.

Bennett notes that testers need to know their ancestral village or location to be most useful within the project, and of course, they need to enter their EKA information. Location information is how the Migration Map, Matches Map, and Discover tools, including the Time Tree, are built.

What Happened in Spain?

Bennett’s ancestors and those of his 12-marker matches are found in Spain, and as Bennett says, “One son stayed and one left about the year 296.”

While we have no idea of their names, based on the Time Tree combined with the cluster of earliest known ancestors, we know that they were in Spain, and when.

Their family story is revealed in the bifurcation of the tree found beneath haplogroup J-L823, formed about 296 CE. One line stayed in Spain, and Bennett’s line migrated to eastern Europe where that man’s descendants, including Bennett’s family, are found in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovakia, Ukraine, Germany, Romania, the Czech Republic, and other eastern European locations. The closer to you in the tree and in time, the more relevant to your more recent ancestral story.

However, Bennett’s deeper ancestry, the migration of his ancestors to Spain, was only revealed by testing those more distantly related men. Those same men could well have been ignored entirely because they only matched at 12 markers.

According to Bennett, “Y-12 markers are important because these are the men most closely related to you in a database of 1 million men.”

How incredibly profound. How much have I been cavalierly overlooking?

How does this actually apply to Bennett’s results?

Bennett’s Spanish Matches

Bennett has the following STR panel matches who indicate that their EKA are from Spain. You can see that they match Bennett on a variety of panels.

  • X = yes, match
  • No = no match
  • Blank = not tested at that level.

In the Big Y GD column, the genetic distance (GD) is displayed as 15/660 where 15 is the number of mismatches, or the cumulative genetic distance ABOVE the 111 panel, and 660 is the number of STR markers above 111 with results.

The Big Y-500 test guaranteed a minimum of 500 total STR markers, and the Big Y-700 guarantees a minimum of 700 total STR markers, plus multiple scans of the balance of the Y chromosome for SNP mutations that define haplogroups. Testers don’t receive the same number of markers because the scan technology sometimes doesn’t read a specific location.

Tester 12 25 37 67 111 Big Y Test Big Y GD Big Y Match Haplogroup
AA X X X No No Yes 15/660 No J-FTD8826
DT X X No No X Yes 17/664 No J-FTE50318
JG X X No No
AR No No X X No No
ELR X X X No No
EL X X Yes 17/666 No J-FTE50318
GC X X X X No No
JC X No No
JLG X X No No No Yes 14/662 No J-FTE23540
MF X X No X No Yes 15/665 No J-FTD91126
MT X X X X No No
BE X X X X X Yes 20/664 No J-BY1795
DR X X X X X Yes 16/660 No J-FTC87344
EC X X X X X Yes 15/665 No J-FTC87344
GM X X No No No Yes 16/650 No J-FTD28153
GM X X X X No Yes 17/664 No J-FTD11019
LS X X No No No Yes 18/666 No J-FTD28153
NE X X X X X Yes 23/597 No J-BY1795
NC X No No
RR X X X No X Yes 22/659 No J-BY1795
TT X X X X X Yes 16/647 No J-FTC87344
XG X X X No No Yes 17/523 No J-BY167283
JA X X No No No Yes 15/646 No J-FTD11019

Of those 23 Spanish matches, sixteen have upgraded to Big Y tests, 14 of which are Big Y-700s, resulting in nine different haplogroups, all of which are descendants of Haplogroup J-L823. How cool is that?

The “Nos” in the Big Y Match Column aren’t mistakes. That’s right – none of these men match Bennett on the Big Y test, meaning they had more than a 30 mutation difference between them and Bennett on the Big Y test.

At first glance, you’d think that Bennett would have been disappointed, but that’s not the case at all! In fact, it was the information provided by these distant Spanish matches that provided Bennett with the information that his line had split sometime around the year 296 CE, with one branch remaining in Spain and his branch migrating to Eastern Europe, where he has lots of matches.

DNA Plus History

What was happening in Spain or the Iberian peninsula that involved the Jewish people about that time? Historical records exist of Jews living in that region before the fall of the Second Temple in about 70 CE, including records of Jews being expelled from Rome in 139 for their “corrupting influence.”

Furthermore, the Ancient DNA Connections for haplogroup J-L823, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all of those branches, includes connections to multiple burials from:

  • Lebanon
  • Iran
  • Rome (from 1-400 CE)
  • Turkey
  • Jordan

Clearly, Bennett’s ancestor was in the Iberian peninsula around or before 296 CE. One branch stayed, winding up in Spain, and one headed for Europe.

Without these matches, some who didn’t match above the 12 or 25 marker level, how would Bennett have EVER known that his Jewish ancestors left the Middle East for Spain in the early years? How would he have known they migrated from Spain to Eastern Europe, and how would he have known that his line did not migrate directly from the Levant to Eastern Europe in the 9th century?

Big Y matches are typically within about 1500 years, but non-matches are still INCREDIBLY valuable. Without them, you can’t completely assemble your family story.

I noticed on the Time Tree that in Bennett’s Eastern European line, one of his ancestor’s brother lineages includes the Katzenellenbogen Rabbinic Lineage derived from ancient DNA samples.

Bennett’s successes have resulted from contacting his matches and encouraging upgrades. So how did he do it? What’s the magic sauce?

Contacting Matches

How to contact matches successfully is a question I see often. In fact, FamilyTreeDNA recently wrote about that in an article, here.

Bennett’s methodology for contacting his matches to encourage an upgrade is that he sends an email explaining why he’s encouraging them to upgrade, followed by a 2nd email three days later.

Bennett tells the recipient that we are at an inflection point in time. “It’s winter, the wind is blowing hard, and many of the leaves are gone.”

In other words, we need to cast the net wider and capture what we can, while we can. Unfortunately, many early testers have died, and with them, chapters of history are perishing.

Collaboration is key. In addition to encouraging upgrades, Bennett also offers Zoom calls to these groups of men to explain the results if they are interested.

What a GREAT idea! I need to begin offering that as well.

Upgrade Request

Bennett reaches out to his matches at various levels, but he expects his closer STR matches, meaning at the 67 and 111 marker level with the fewest mismatches, to match him on a Big Y-700 test and connect someplace between 300-600 years ago, which helps everyone flesh out their tree.

Bennett’s email:

Hello <name>,

Since you have already made a sizable investment in your Y-DNA, you now know that we come from the dominant male Middle Eastern group (Haplogroup J) of men who <subject here>.

What’s really neat is that our Y-DNA has recently been found in an archaeological site in Northwestern Jordan dated to about 4200 years ago. I know this because I upgraded to the Big Y, which tests SNPs, looking at several million locations on the Y chromosome of each man.

One academic customer recently compared this new technology as the difference between looking into space with binoculars versus the Hubble Telescope.

I don’t know if you are familiar with your list of matches at the highest level you’ve tested for, either Y-67 or Y-111. If you are, you should recognize my name and the names of others who have taken the Big Y test.

You’ll see what you’ll gain by letting me upgrade your test for you and determining whether you are related to my line – probably between about 200 years and 500 years.

This might be the second time that I have written to you on this matter; can I presume if I don’t hear from you that you’re not really interested in the Y-DNA subject anymore?

Can I run the test so that I can see how closely we are related – at my expense? (Of course, you get to see how closely related we are, too).

Please reply to me and say “yes.” You don’t even have to put a 🙂 if you don’t want to.

I started this company and this industry over 20 years ago. I predict that you will be happy with the history of YOU that this upgrade will uncover.

Best,

Bennett Greenspan

As you can see, this email can easily be personalized further and adapted to matches at the 37, 25, and 12 marker levels – or even Family Finder matches, now that intermediate-range haplogroups are being reported.

What’s Next?

I’m going back to every one of the kits I sponsored or that represent descendants of one of my ancestors to review their matches again – focusing not just on the closest matches with common surnames, but also on locations – and specifically at lower matching levels. I’ll also be checking their Family Finder matches for male surname matches, or similar surnames.

As is evident from Bennett’s tests, an entire mine of diamonds is out there, just waiting to be unearthed by a Big Y test.

And to think that some people have been advising people to ignore 12-marker matches out-of-hand because they are “entirely irrelevant.” They aren’t – for two reasons.

  1. First, some early testers only tested to that level
  2. Second, because of the deeper history that Big Y tests from those matches will uncover

You can view your Y-DNA matches, upgrade your own Y-DNA test, or order a Big Y-700 test if you haven’t yet tested by clicking here. What’s your next step?

_____________________________________________________________

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Share the Love!

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

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an email whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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.

DNA Purchases and Free Uploads

Genealogy Products and Services

My Book

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

What’s Changed? –  Autosomal DNA Vendor Feature Changes Since the 23andMe Data Compromise

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The 23andMe customer data compromise has reverberated throughout the technology industry, not limited to DNA testing.

The 23andMe compromise has provided the impetus for reflection and security and policy reviews at each DNA testing vendor.

That’s a good thing.

What has been and remains challenging is keeping track of which features have been disabled and are no longer available at each vendor as the vendors, including 23andMe, attempt to right themselves from this blow. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we can’t just return to “business as usual.”

Some of these feature removals may only be paused, and a few have already returned. Some may never be resumed.

We don’t really know yet.

If you’re having trouble keeping track, welcome to the club.

The features that have been disabled are features that were exploited at 23andMe or could have been exploited by bad actors who signed on “as you,” exposing not only your data but that of your matches in one way or another.

To be very clear, there was no data leak or compromise at any other vendor, but some other vendors provide(d) similar features for their customers. Every vendor offering DNA testing to genealogists had to stop, pause, and reevaluate their security measures. That’s exactly what they should have done. Genetic genealogy is a team sport where compromising one person’s account exposes at least some information about thousands more individuals.

Every company has proceeded somewhat differently based on how their features work.

I’ve compiled a chart listing the four primary vendors alphabetically, with affected features.

The Scorecard

In this chart, “Not available” means the feature was available before the 23andMe incident but is not currently available.

Feature 23andMe Ancestry FamilyTreeDNA MyHeritage
Two-factor Authentication (2FA)[1] Required Required Will be required for project administrators and available for all users[2] Will be required soon.
Forced Password Reset Yes No May be required for project administrators. Yes
Match information download[3] Not available Never was available Not available until after 2FA implementation Not available
Matching segment download[4] Not available Never was available Not available until after 2FA implementation Not available
Shared matches[5] Not available Available[6] Available Available
Shared matches who match each other Not available Never was available Available thru Matrix, but not segments Partially available through triangulation
Shared matches match segments Not available Never was available Never was available Never was available
Shared matches relationship to each other Not available Never was available Never was available Predicted available
Triangulation Not available Never was available Available[7] Available
Chromosome Browser Not available Never was available Available Available
Daily matching or browse rate limited[8] No No No Yes
Shared ethnicity with matches[9] Not available Available Available by opt-in Not available
Filter matches by ethnicity Never was available Never was available Never was available Not available

 
Accepts 23andMe DNA file uploads Not applicable Never was available Paused Not restricted but not available because 23andMe does not currently allow the download of your raw data file

Other features remain unchanged, so they are not mentioned.

I think I accounted for everything that has changed, including some features already resumed at MyHeritage.

23andMe has not stated if or when they will return any of the functionality that has been removed.

FamilyTreeDNA plans to return their paused features after 2FA has been implemented in early 2024.

Please note that this information may change at any time.

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[1] There has been a great deal of gnashing of teeth surrounding 2FA and how it’s implemented at each vendor. If you experience issues, please contact the vendor in question.

[2] At FamilyTreeDNA, testers utilize a kit number as their username, not their name or email. No place is the kit number publicly associated with the user’s name. In the 23andMe breach, the user’s email and passwords had been exposed in earlier breaches, so the hacker simply tried the same username and password at 23andMe, with great success. That scenario cannot occur at FamilyTreeDNA because the username is not their email address, which is why 2FA is not required for users. Administrators can select their username, so they will be required to utilize 2FA soon.

[3] This means information about your DNA matches other than your matching segments, such as email address, maternal or paternal matches, notes, surnames, and other relevant information.

[4] Matching segment information for each match. Used for triangulation, ancestor identification, and at DNAPainter.

[5] Shared matches between you and another match.

[6] Ancestry has recently announced that they will require a membership to view several features available with a DNA test, including Common Ancestors (ThruLines), Notes, Trees, Groups, and filtering matches by unviewed status. These features will not be available to DNA testers without an Ancestry subscription.

[7] Available if maternal/paternal matching is enabled. When matching, each individual who matches the tester and other testers and is bucketed on the same maternal/paternal side will triangulate on at least one segment.

[8] This is to prevent data scraping if a bad actor gains access to your account.

[9] The 23andMe data was reported to have focused on both Jewish and Chinese customers