Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA Released in Hardcopy

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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Genealogy Research

Genealogy Proof Series: Gathering Location Resources

This is the first article in the Genealogy Proof Series.

Most genealogists, even if they don’t realize they are genealogists yet, begin by creating a small tree of their known ancestors. Most people know who their grandparents are, and by asking a few questions, can probably complete another generation or two.

If your parents were born in 1950, your grandparents would have been born about 1920, and your great-grandparents may have been born around 1890. You probably have concrete facts about your parents. Their birthdates, birth location, marriage location, and so forth. They probably have the same information about their parents. However, with each generation reaching back in time, the information becomes less precise and less reliable. Memories fail people, and the information they were provided may not have been accurate in the first place.

For example, my mother told me what she knew about her maternal grandfather, which wasn’t much. He died when my grandmother was 20, several years before my mother was born.

As the information becomes thinner, the need for additional information and confirmation of facts becomes crucial. Furthermore, when utilizing new resources, you may discover information not previously known about close generations. One of the best resources for that is old newspapers.

Our ancestors are more than birth and death dates. I like to piece their life together, complete with historical events, both national and local, and how they influenced and affected their lives.

This first article explains how I gather and utilize location resources for each ancestor.

Before we start, let’s talk for a minute about where we are going and how this series will be organized.

The Genealogy Proof Series Roadmap

It’s difficult to put the steps in a specific order because often, I get very distracted and go right down a rabbit hole.

In other words, I’ll be working on gathering resources for a specific county, but then I find a listing for what I think is my ancestor, and before you know it, I’m off on the chase. I really, really try NOT to do that because it’s actually very distracting to the process as a whole.

It’s also difficult for me to select an order to write these articles. For example, do I write about Leveling Up, determining what you need for each ancestor, first or last?

I’ve chosen to write about that topic last because I want to step through how to gather and use the resources before we get distracted by what you need to do with individuals in your tree. It’s way too easy to go after that bright, shiny object:)

Gathering and Organizing Location Resources: This article is about how to find location resources for the area where your ancestor(s) lived. I suggest starting at the beginning, meaning your closest ancestors. You know where your parents and grandparents lived, so start there.

If you think there’s nothing there that matters because you know everything about your family – I guarantee you surprises are waiting. They may surprise you, touch your heart, or even shock you, and they are just waiting to be discovered. But before you can logically extract everything to do with your family and surname, you need a comprehensive list of what is available for your county and region.

You’ll also need to keep a record of what you looked for in that county, and when, because you may very well need to go back and access those records again in the future.

Recording Your Data: After you have a list of what’s available for your specific counties, in the next article, we’re going to talk about extracting information and recording it in a spreadsheet. If you don’t like spreadsheets, you can do the same thing in a table. But it’s critical that you record it someplace.

You’ll also index and transcribe it as you go so you can reasonably retrieve it. This is why I utilize spreadsheets – they are made for filtering and sorting.

Surname Searching: You’ve found location resources, but where do you find surname resources? For example, what about books written about the Estes surname, or internet resources? Some will be in books or webpages about the location, but certainly not everything.

How do you find additional resources?

Proof Table: Now that you HAVE data about all the people in a region or regions where your ancestors lived, how do you prove that the Moses Estes or George Estes in Halifax County, Virginia is YOUR Moses or George Estes? What about men with the same name? What if there is no definitive proof in ONE document?

We will discuss the Genealogy Proof Standard and create a proof table for every single generation because you need proof for every single generation.

Including DNA.

(If you’re beginning to think you might dislike me by the time this series is finished – I fully understand. If it helps any, some days I’m tired and mad at myself.)

DNA: How and when can you use DNA as part of your proof argument? What about the different types of DNA? When are they useful? Are they conclusive? How do they bolster or refute other evidence?

Can you resolve conflicts between DNA and a paper trail, and if so, how?

Leveling Up: Leveling up is a methodology of determining where you are in the process of evaluating EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE available about each ancestor.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

For those of us who have been working on genealogy for a long time, it’s easy not to think about using new resources when they become available. For example, the 1940 and 1950 census, new full-text AI from FamilySearch, and new newspaper resources like OldNews.

What do you need to do yet for each ancestor to bring them to current?

Writing It Up: Now that you HAVE this information assembled, what will you do with it? I fervently hope you’re going to write or record it for posterity. I’ve chosen the 52 Ancestors series that I’ve been writing weekly for several years, but there are other ways, too. Genealogy is about resurrecting and honoring the lives of our ancestors. The more factual information you can saturate the airwaves and internet with, the less “bad information” can take hold. Genealogy is a team sport.

Gathering and Organizing Location Resources

This article is focused on gathering and organizing resources for where your ancestor lived, NOT on retrieving the records in those resources for your ancestor and their surname. The next article will cover retrieving and recording the data using a consistent methodology.

If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m a spreadsheet person, but I also use MSWord documents to organize and utilize resources from time to time, especially if the text is long. I have one Word document for every ancestor.

I’m going to use a chart as an example, understanding that you will create your own resource-tracking tool that you’re most comfortable with.

The first consideration is that you probably have at least three ancestors in any specific location. By that, I mean at least two parents and one child. You may have significantly more ancestors and family members from that location.

Conversely, those same ancestors may have moved from location to location – even state to state or cross-country, so you may have multiple locations for the same ancestor(s).

In my family, I have clusters of ancestors in the same county. For example, my early Estes line, along with their wives’ lines including Combs, Younger and Moore, resided in Halifax County, Virginia for about 4 generations or more than 50 years. The first generation, Moses Estes (1711-1787) who moved to Halifax County by 1771 came from someplace else, and the last generation, John R. Estes (1787-1885), moved to Claiborne County, TN about 1820, not long after his marriage.

I searched Halifax County records for at least four surnames and multiple generations.

This means I needed to compile the various resources for Halifax County across a significant amount of time.

Resources for Resources

There are multiple places to find available resources for a specific county and state.

We will use these to complete our own research list by county. In the next article, we’ll be checking each one of these resources for surnames.

FamilySearch Wiki

The first thing I do when beginning to compile resources is check the FamilySearch wiki.

Googling “Halifax County, Virginia FamilySearch wiki” brings up a lovely compilation of resources.

You’ll find general information by category, followed by very specific information and multiple resources for each category.

Click on any image to enlarge

Also note that the county website link is given, along with the county formation history further down the page. Don’t neglect to check each county’s individual resources and parent county, if relevant.

If you’ve checked the wiki, or any resource list before, check back often because things change.

I enter each of the resources into a spreadsheet for that county. This is NOT the same thing as making a list of information discovered for an individual ancestor or surname. We’ll get to that later.

Don’t limit yourself to just the years that you know your ancestor was living in that county because records pertaining to that family may exist before your ancestor arrived and long after they left. Other family members may have preceded them, while lawsuits, deeds, and other records may refer to them decades after they left or died.

Here’s the beginning of a list for Halifax County,

Resource State County Link Year Range Surnames Findings
Virginia Bible Records Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore One was donated by the Tune family.
Halifax Biographies Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore
1782 tax list Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm, http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/halifax/census/1782/1782tax.txt 1782 Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore 5 Estes, 1 Combs, 2 Younger 6 Moore
Slave Draft for Defense of Richmond Virginia Halifax http://usgwarchives.net/va/halifax.htm

http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/halifax/court/1862slavedraft.txt

1862 Estes, Younger, Combs, Moore 2 Younger, 2 Moore

I enter the county and state in two fields, so it’s sortable. If I’m checking multiple counties using the same resource, I enter the resource twice, one for each county and the surnames in that county that I searched for.

For example, this link for Virginia Bible records takes you to a link for Halifax County Bible records on the USGenWeb site. I listed the surnames I checked for. I also noted the Tune donation because I know from prior research that the Tune home is on the old Marcus Younger land and the families intermarried. When you search any county for another surname, be sure to add it to the list so you don’t have to wonder later if you checked for that surname.

For county histories and biographies, check to see if they are available digitally. In the next article, you’ll want to search for and record all instances of your surname, even if it’s NOT your ancestor, because of the FAN club, Friends and Neighbors (thank you ,Elizabeth Shown Mills). Those people may or will help you identify which ancestors are yours. Not to mention fleshing out their lives.

Tax lists are often used to replace or supplement the census. You should be able to determine if the lists are recorded in procession order or alphabetical order. Clearly, procession order is much more relevant because it shows who lives nearby or are neighbors. This may help you identify specific individuals, especially when there are multiple people with the same name. In the case of John Estes in Halifax County, Virginia, the tax list placed “my” John by his father, George, which was a huge clue. Eventually, on a tax list that was stuffed in the back of a deed book in the Clerk’s Office, I found another tax list with the note, “S. G.” by my John’s name, and another note on the “other” John that lived in the north end of the county. “S.G.” meant son of George, as that designation had been used and spelled out for other people elsewhere in the same tax list. I’ve never been so grateful to the taxman in my life!

The Slave Draft for the Defense of Richmond is a fascinating document transcribed by a volunteer from the court minute book.

From Minute Book 20 page 169 Halifax County, Va

At a Court Held for Halifax County on Monday the 4th day of April 1862. Present Beverly Sydnor, Howell Chastain, John M. Craddock, William Moorewell, James Kent, Henry C. Logan, James Richardson, E. A. Coleman, Archer A. Farmer

The court in consideration of the Draft from the Governor of the Commonwealth for laborers on the Public Defense near Richmond do order and direct that the Sheriff of this County do proceed for ___ to require the following named persons to deliver to him the said Sheriff at News Ferry Depot, Boston Depot, Clover Depot and as may be convenient to the parties on ___ the day of ___ at such see hours as he may designate the Slaves between the ages of eighteen and fifty five years directed to be furnished by each person in the said following list and proceed with them to the City of Richmond and deliver them to the Agent of the Confederate Government and take receipt for the Slaves furnished by each person.

Then, by district, the name of the owner, and the number of enslaved persons sent.

This information may provide insight into who enslaved others at that time, which may provide insight into families that were slaveholders historically. Additionally, it may provide important hints and clues for African American researchers who seek their family and may have adopted the surname of their former enslaver after the war.

Also, please note that these records may not be entirely accurate. For example, there’s a list of ministers who performed marriages, and my Rev. William Moore is not listed, but I actually have the list of his marriages, returns made in his own handwriting obtained in the courthouse in Halifax County.

If you remember, I found my way to GenWeb through the FamilySearch Wiki. When I finish listing the GenWeb resources, I need to return to the FamilySearch wiki to list any further resources.

You may find lists of out-of-print books for land and property records and other record types. I sometimes find out-of-print books for sale at www.bookfinder.com.

If you own the book, note that it’s in your own library.

To locate books, check the WorldCat entry, but also check both the FamilySearch Catalog by county, the Fort Wayne Public Library and other book resources as well.

Surnames

While the goal of this exercise is to document and record location resources, if you stumble across surname resources, certainly don’t ignore them and think you’ll find them later – you might not.

I suggest starting either a second spreadsheet, or new tab on this spreadsheet for each surname.

I maintain a separate spreadsheet for each location and one for each surname or group of surnames on the same migration path. For example, my Combs, Estes, Moore, and Younger families are migrating from the Virginia Colony into the new frontiers, so I track them together from Amelia and Prince Edward Counties, where they are first found through Halifax County.

Ok, back to searching for our county resources.

FamilySearch Catalog

To search the FamilySearch Catalog by county, sign in and then click on Search, Catalog, and Place.

I was given the choice of British Colonial America or the United States. I’ll check both to be sure I have all available resources.

Selecting “Land and Property,” one of the items displayed is the Antrim Parish Vestry book. By clicking on that entry, you can see that it’s available in the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Maybe it’s available elsewhere too. I’ll check in a bit.

I build research lists from these resources routinely.

The entry for deed books shows that some are available online only at either the FamilySearch Library or a Family History Center (camera with key), which may be located near you. Other images are available online with no location requirement, indicated by the camera without a key, just by clicking.

These may or may not be indexed, and an index may be available elsewhere or by using the new FamilySearch Labs AI full text transcription tool. AI is not available for all records yet.

FamilySearch Labs

Next, try FamilySearch labs for additional assistance. I wrote about this new AI full text transcription tool, here.

You’ll see two features which may help you.

Using the “Find Help with AI Search” feature, type in what you’re searching for. I find the Full Text Search” to be much more helpful.

Click on “Go to Experiment.”

Typing “Halifax County, VA” into the search box returns resources from unexpected places. For example, county histories from elsewhere that reference Halifax County, or a Divorce degree, or a deed book from another county.

These are unexpected gold mines that you’d never find otherwise.

Note that this search is literally an exact match, so Halifax County, VA, is NOT the same as Halifax County, Virginia.

However, adding a surname to the location narrows the results substantially.

While normal deed and other books are indexed by the grantor and grantee, the FamilySearch full text search reveals EVERY instance of that name, including when referenced in another document. This feature is an absolute game-changer!

I can hardly wait to revisit my earlier work to see what’s new, but that’s part of the Level Up process.

It’s important to note that FamilySearch is adding new types of records to the AI collection almost daily, so check back often. Not everything uses the full-text transcription feature today, and while it’s quite accurate, it’s not 100%, so read carefully for yourself.

FamilySearch Book Search

You can also search for books by location or surname.

Allen County Public Library

The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana is one of the largest genealogy libraries in the US. You can search their site for locations, keywords, or surnames, here.

While these resources are generally not available online at this library, they alert you that they exist, and you may be able to find them elsewhere.

The one HUGE exception is the one-of-a-kind PERSI index.

PERSI

The PERSI, or Periodical Source Index is maintained by the Allen County Public Library as well, here.

You can search by location.

Click on a category that displays the results.

At the bottom of each page, you can open a form to request a copy of the article.

Ancestry.com Card Catalog

At Ancestry.com, you can search their Card Catalog by title or location.

Be sure to try different spellings and abbreviations, like VA for Virginia, or remove the word county, etc.

The results display a list of records for Halifax County in their collection.

You can click on the link to this book to search by surname or keyword.

These local histories are wonderful tools for fleshing out your ancestor’s stories because they tell us what was happening in their community during different time periods that would have affected and influenced their lives.

For example, in one of these histories, I discovered that one of the Revolutionary War generals and his troops marched right down the road in front of my ancestor’s home. It’s no wonder that he “contributed” brandy, food, and fodder for their horses.

Newspaper Sites

At Newspapers.com, you can see which papers were available and when.

You can also add a surname or first and last name.

Unless there’s a story about someone’s ancestors, there’s no point in looking for people who lived there in the 1700s and early 1800s. These are the publication dates, so an earlier ancestor could have been included in a 25 or 50-year history column in the local paper.

This same technique works with other genealogy Newspaper sites, too, including MyHeritage with a subscription and separately, their new OldNews site which contains newspapers not included in the MyHeritage subscription.

Also check out the Library of Congress digitized newspaper collection, here.

Newspaper Archive is available with an NGS membership, here.

Fulton County (not limited to Fulton County) and GenealogyBank are two additional newspaper resources.

MyHeritage

At MyHeritage, you can search by location or Newspapers as well.

MyHeritage has one book about Halifax County.

By clicking on the book, you can add additional search criteria.

Estes is mentioned 16 times in this book.

Library of Congress

Don’t forget about the Library of Congress, which has its own Historical Newspapers section, here.

You can also search by county or surname in the search box at the top. The images are all copyright-free.

State Archives

Don’t forget about your state archives.

Most have wonderful search capabilities and specific collections.

For example, the Library of Virginia has been indexing individual county chancery records dating back to the county’s formation. Chancery suits are where you find all the juicy stuff because people are asking for remediation and explaining why.

The index is here, and you can search by a combination of county and surname.

There are 59 records in Halifax County fitting this description, mentioning Estes in any capacity, reaching back as far as 1795.

Don’t neglect later cases because many times later cases tend to be lawsuits filed about much earlier estates and property divisions. They also tend to provide relationships in their narrative.

You’ll also notice that often, the plaintiff and defendant aren’t Estes, but they are clearly mentioned somewhere in that case, perhaps in a deposition.

Clicking on “View Details” displays the entire case file.

The resources at each state library are different and vast, so take a look and check back for new offerings and features.

Google is Your Friend

Google can turn up amazing resources, but it can also lead to some unsafe sites, so be careful and don’t just click without thinking.

Google “Halifax County Virginia genealogy society.” You’ll receive eight results that may have databases, members, or donated materials, but these resources may not be complete. For example, I wrote and donated a Moore genealogy to the local museum, which doubled as a genealogy society, and that “book” isn’t listed anywhere in any resource list.

You’ll often find multiple groups focused on the county of interest. These groups will likely have dedicated and interested volunteers and other researchers.

RootsWeb

Ancestry shut down the RootsWeb mailing lists, but they are still out there even though you can no longer add information.

If you Google “Halifax County, Virginia Rootsweb,” you’ll be shown several pages and entries, some of which may or may not be useful to you.

One link provides a list of the 1860 slaveholders compared to the 1870 African Americans on the census. This could be extremely useful!

Google Books

Another underutilized tool is Google books, found here.

Some of these resources you’ll not find elsewhere.

Also, check out the other Google features, such as Images, Maps, and more, which may lead you to other resources.

I love old maps where sometimes you’ll find old stream names, landmarks, or even settlers’ homes with their name.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is an initiative found at the Internet Archive to digitize out-of-copyright books for public consumption.

You can read more here.

Genealogical.com and American Ancestors

Don’t forget about book publishers that specialize in genealogy books like Genealogical.com and American Ancestors. Both are searchable, offer both hardcopy and e-books, and American Ancestors sells used books too.

Facebook

Last but not least, Facebook has many groups, including county-focused genealogy groups.

Sign in to Facebook and then use the Facebook search for the county you want.

Some groups maintain a list of resources.

Be sure to check both “Files” and “Features,” then use the Facebook search function to search for your surname(s) or other relevant locations or keywords in the Discussions.

In Summary

As you step through this process, it’s easiest if you include links to the various sites so that you can extract names in the next step. Links make it easy to return in the future and quickly review to see if anything has been added.

Even if you don’t find anything relevant at the site, be sure to NOTE THAT. That way, you never have to wonder and replow that same infertile ground. For example, if you determine that none of your four surnames are in a book written in 1937, they will never be in that book. If you don’t record that you looked, you’ll be left to wonder a few years from now and you’ll find yourself looking again.

However, a new book about that county might be written in the future, so it’s important to continue to look for new resources.

It’s also important to know that you searched for Estes, Moore, Younger, and Combs in Halifax County because you might, someday in the future, need to search for a new surname, like Hart. This way, you know what you did and did not search for in the past.

Why might you need to search for a new surname? Brick walls fall. Sometimes, the FAN Club turns out to be an important key to unlocking relationships that may extend back in time to earlier locations. People did not live or move in a vacuum.

I’ve made every one of these mistakes and nothing makes me unhappier than having to look something up, AGAIN, because I failed to record what I did.

The same advice holds for hard-copy books in research libraries. If nothing else, I take a picture of the front or inside cover and the index so I know what to record and that nothing was found. I wish I had done that from the beginning. Live and learn.

The biggest lie I’ve ever told myself is, “Of course I’ll remember that!”

Your Turn

It’s your turn now. Happy hunting!

Our next articles in this series will discuss how to record data from these resources so that it is both useful and findable again.

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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 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 Books

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

Genealogy Proof Series: Gathering Resources, Leveling Up, Using the Genealogical Proof Standard and DNA

I am beginning a series about Genealogy Proof – in other words, how do you prove that your ancestor is actually your ancestor?

  • What tools are available?
  • How can you best utilize them?
  • What is leveling up? How do you do it, and why would you want to?
  • What is the genealogy proof standard, GPS, and how can you easily use it?
  • How does DNA play into this equation? How does DNA work with the other tools? Can DNA alone prove an ancestral connection? Can it disprove one, even in the face of other information?

I use these methodologies and tools when writing my 52 Ancestors articles that I typically publish on Sundays.

If you’re wondering how I compile the information for those ancestors, including multiple ancestors from the same region, I’ll address that.

If you’re wondering how I keep everything straight, or at least try to, I’ll share my processes and tools. I’ve made just about every mistake possible, AND I’ll tell you how NOT to retread that path.

If you’re wondering how to utilize the various forms of DNA to either confirm an ancestor, a hypothesis, or maybe disprove an ancestor, I’ll discuss that.

Lastly, we’ll talk about what to do if you made a mistake and got something wrong, or if previously unknown information surfaces that conflicts with earlier information. How do you correct and fix it? Trust me—I’ve been there and done that, too.

As I complete each article, I’ll update this article and post links here.

Articles in the Series

Announcing: The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA; Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA

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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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 Books

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

Why Don’t Our Y-DNA Haplogroups Match?

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 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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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Congratulations!!! – MyHeritage 20th Anniversary Documentary

A full six-episode documentary about the history of MyHeritage has just been released. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

I am incredibly grateful for all of the MyHeritage tools and want to say a personal congratulations to Gilad Japhet. He personally started this company two decades ago and has literally changed the world.

I’ve been very privileged to be in the right place at the right time to be a part of launching these new technologies, some of which leverage DNA, but all of which benefit genealogists.

Congratulations Gilad – and thank you from genealogists around the world. What a leap – from pen and paper to DNA, AI and automation that does what we, individually, cannot. What an incredible legacy – and they are just beginning.

I can’t wait to see what’s next!

You can be a part of the MyHeritage genealogy family by purchasing a MyHeritage DNA test here or upload your DNA file from other vendors free here.

You also receive 14 days free when you sign up for a records subscription here. If you don’t like the subscription, just cancel at the end of 14 days to avoid billing. I use the combination of DNA and records nearly every single day. I can’t imagine genealogy without both. 

Pedigree Collapse and DNA – Plus an Easy-Peasy Shortcut

Pedigree collapse can be responsible for you sharing more DNA than expected with another person.

What is pedigree collapse?

Pedigree collapse occurs when you descend from the same ancestor(s) through more than one path. In other words, you descend from those ancestors through two different children. Therefore, when matching with someone else who descends through those ancestors, you may share more DNA than would be expected from that level of relationship on the surface, meaning without pedigree collapse.

Endogamy is different and means that you descend from a community of ancestors who descend from the same group of ancestors. Often out-marriage is discouraged or otherwise impossible, so all of the group of people share common ancestors, which means they often match on segments without sharing close ancestors. Examples of descent from endogamous populations are Jewish, Amish, Brethren, Acadian, Native Hawaiian, Māori, and Native American people, among others.

I wrote about the difference between pedigree collapse and endogamy in the article, What’s the Difference Between Pedigree Collapse and Endogamy?

I’ve also written about endogamy in the following articles:

Degrees of Consanguinity

If you’re a genealogist, and especially if you’ve worked with Catholic church records, you’ve probably heard of “degrees of sanguinity,” which are prohibited blood relationships in marriage. For example, siblings are prohibited from marrying because they are too closely related, according to church doctrine.

By SVG remake by WClarke based on original by User:Sg647112c – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54804980

Today, we think of the genetic results of inbreeding, but originally, relationships (and consanguinity) also had to do with inheritance.

Essentially, marriages are prohibited by degree of sanguinity, and that degree is calculated based on this relationship chart. Prohibited degrees of consanguinity changed over time. Sometimes, a priest granted dispensation for a couple to wed who was of a prohibited degree of sanguinity. That’s a genealogy goldmine because it tells you where to look for common ancestors. It also tells you something else – that you may share more DNA with other descendants of that couple than one would otherwise expect.

More Than You Ever Expected

Recently, I’ve been working with an academic research team on a very interesting ancient DNA case that involves pedigree collapse. Doing the genealogy and genetic work on how much DNA was expected in a match without pedigree collapse, and how much was expected with pedigree collapse, was very interesting.

The team was working to confirm relationships between people in a cemetery. The burials shared more DNA than anticipated for who the people were believed to be. Enter pedigree collapse.

I can’t disclose the circumstances just yet – but I will as soon as possible. It’s an extremely interesting story.

We needed to ensure that readers, both academic and more generally understood pedigree collapse and our calculations. Why did burials share higher than expected DNA than indicated by the expected relationships? This puzzle becomes much more interesting when you add in pedigree collapse.

Academic researchers and scientists have access to models and mathematical algorithms that normal air-breathing humans don’t have easy access to.
So, what do you do if you and a match have a known pedigree collapse in your tree? How much DNA can you expect to share, and how do you calculate that?

These are all great questions, so let’s take a look.

I’m sharing the PowerPoint slides I prepared for our team on this topic. I’ve removed anything that would identify or even hint at the project and modified the slides slightly for easier consumption.

This presentation has never been given publicly, so you’re first! It seemed a waste to do this work and not share it!

Pedigree Collapse and DNA

Pedigree collapse occurs when you share an ancestor or ancestors through different pathways. In this case, the person at the bottom is the child of parents who were third cousins, but the father’s grandparents were also first cousins.

First cousin marriages were common in the not-too-distant past. Today, you could easily marry your third or fourth cousin and not even realize it unless someone in your family just happened to be a genealogist.

Genealogists use various tools to calculate the expected amount of shared DNA in relationships – first cousins, siblings, or half-siblings, for example. Both the Shared cM Project at DNAPainter and SegcM at DNA-Sci Tools provide tools.

Take a look at the article, DNA: In Search of…Full and Half-Siblings, for some great examples.

First cousins share common grandparents. Their child inherits DNA from two paths that lead back to the same ancestors. Some of that DNA will be the same, meaning the child will or can inherit the same ancestral segment from both parents, and some will be different segments from those ancestors that the parents do not share with each other.

Inheritance – How It Works

Let’s look at inheritance to see how this happens.

Let’s start with full and half-siblings.

Each child inherits half of their DNA from each parent, but not entirely the same half (unless they are identical twins.)

Therefore, full siblings will match on about 50% of their DNA, which is illustrated by the segments on the chromosome browser. However, and this will be important in a minute, about 25% of their DNA is exactly the same, when compared to each other, on the chromosome inherited from their father and mother at the same location.

On the chromosome browser, you can see that three siblings do match. One sibling (the grey background chromosomes) is the person both other full siblings are being compared to, in the example above.

What you can’t determine is whether they share the exact same DNA on both their mother and father’s Chromosome 1, where the matches overlap, for example. We know they both match their sibling, but the top person could match the sibling due to a match from their paternal chromosome in that location, and the bottom person could match due to their maternal chromosome. There’s no way to know, at least not from that view.

The areas where the siblings share exactly the same DNA on both their maternal and paternal chromosome, both, with each other are called Fully Identical REgions (FIR), as compared to Half Identical Regions (HIR) where the siblings match on either their maternal or paternal copy of the chromosome, but not both.

23andMe used to provide a tool that displayed both types of matches.

Since the data exposure incident at 23andMe, they no longer provide this lovely tool, and since that help page is now gone as well, I doubt this view will ever be returned. Fortunately, I grabbed a screenshot previously.

The dark purple segments are fully identical, meaning that these two full siblings match on both their maternal and paternal chromosomes in that location. The magenta are half identical, which means they match on EITHER the maternal or paternal chromosome in that location but not on both chromosomes. Of course, no color (light grey) means there is no match at that location.

Please note that because 23andMe counts fully identical regions (FIR) twice, their total matching cMs are elevated. The other companies do NOT count those regions twice.
GEDmatch also shows both full and half-identical regions as described more fully, here.

In this full-sibling example from GEDmatch, the green segments are fully identical regions across both the maternal and paternal chromosomes.

The definition of FIR is that two people match on both their mother’s and father’s DNA on the same chromosome. Therefore, in following generations, there technically should not be FIR matches, but in some instances we do find FIR matches outside of full siblings.

Moving down another generation, first cousins may share SOME fully identical DNA, especially if they are from an endogamous population or their mothers are related, but less, and it’s generally scattered.

Here’s my Mom’s GEDmatch comparison to her first cousin. The purple-legend segment shows a match, and the green within that match shows fully identical locations.

You can easily see that these are very scattered, probably representing “chance” or population-based fully identical matching locations within a segment. Comparatively, the green FIR segments for full siblings are dense and compact, indicating a segment that is fully identical.

Evaluating matches for dense FIR segments (known as runs of homozygosity – ROH) is a good indicator of parental relatedness.

Double Cousins

Of course, if these people were double first cousins, where the wives of the siblings were sisters to each other – the first cousins would have large patches of dense green FIR segments.

First cousins share grandparents.

Double first cousins occur when two people share both sets of grandparents, meaning that brothers marry sisters. Normal first cousins share about 12.5% of their DNA, but double first cousins share about 25% of their DNA.

In this case, Sharon and Donna descend from two brothers, James and Henry, who were sons of Joseph and Jane. In this scenario, James and Henry married unrelated women, so Sharon and Donna are first cousins to each other.

Double first cousins share both sets of grandparents so they would inherit FIR from both sets of siblings.

You need to be aware of this, but for now, let’s stick with non-double relationships. You’re welcome!

DNA Inheritance

Here’s a different example of DNA inheritance between two siblings.

  1. You can see that in the first 50 cM segment, both siblings inherited the same DNA from both parents, so they match on both their mother’s and father’s chromosomes. They match on both the 50 cM green and 50 cM pink segments. 23andMe would count that as 100 cMs, but other vendors only count a segment IF it matches, NOT if it matches twice. So, other vendors count this as a 50 cM match.
  2. In column two, these two people don’t match at all because they inherited different DNA from each parent. In this example, Person 1 inherited their maternal grandmother’s segment, and Person 2 inherited their maternal grandfather’s segment.
  3. In column three, our siblings match on their paternal grandmother’s segment.
  4. In column four, no match again.

How much can we expect to inherit at different levels – on average?

Different tools differ slightly, and all tools provide ranges. In our example, I’ve labeled the generations and how much shared DNA we would expect – WITHOUT pedigree collapse.

Ancestral couple Inherited cM Inherited %
Gen 1 – Their children 3500 cM 50
Gen 2 – Grandchildren 1750 cM 25
Gen 3 – Great-Grandchildren 875 cM 12.5
Gen 4 – GG-Grandchildren 437.5 6.25
Gen 5 – GGG-Grandchildren 218.75 3.125
Gen 6 – GGGG-Grandchildren 109.375 1.5625
Gen 7 – GGGG-Grandchildren 54.6875 .078125

Please note that this is inherited DNA, not shared (matching) DNA with another person.

Adding in pedigree collapse, you can see that we have three Gen 1 people involved, three Gen 2 descendants, and two Gen 3 and Gen 4 people.

Each of those people inherit and pass on segments from our original couple at the top.
We have three distinct inheritance paths leading from our original couple to Gen 5.
We have a first cousin marriage at Gen 2, at left, which means that their child, Gen 3, will have an elevated amount of the DNA of their common ancestors.

In Gen 4, two people marry who both descend from a common couple, meaning their child, Gen 5, descends from that couple in three different ways.

Did your eyes just glaze over? Well, mine did, too, which is why I had to draw all of this out on paper before putting it into PowerPoint.

The Gen 5 child inherits DNA from the ancestral couple via three pathways.
The next thing to keep in mind is that just because you inherit the DNA from an ancestor does not mean you match another descendant. Inheritance is not matching.

You must inherit before you can match, but just because you and someone else have inherited a DNA segment from a common ancestor does not guarantee a match. Those segments could be in different locations.

Categories of DNA

When dealing with inheritance and descent, we discuss four categories of DNA.

  • In the first generation, full siblings will, in about 25% of their locations, share the same DNA that has been inherited from both parents on the same chromosome. In other words, they match each other both maternally and paternally at that location. Those are FIR.
  • The DNA you inherit from an ancestor.
  • The DNA that both you and your cousin(s) inherit from a common ancestor and match on the same location. This is shared DNA.
  • The DNA that both you and your cousin(s) inherit from a common ancestor, but it’s not in the same location, so you do not match each other on that segment. Just because you inherit DNA from that ancestor does not necessarily mean that your cousin has the same DNA from that ancestor. This is inherited but not shared.

Inheritance is Not The Same as Matching

Inheritance is not the same thing as matching.

Inheriting our ancestor’s DNA isn’t enough. We need to match someone else who inherited that same segment in order to attribute the segment to that specific ancestor.

Depending on how close or distant the relationship, two people may share a lot of DNA (like full siblings), or one segment in more distant matches, or sometimes none at all. As we reach further back in time, we inherit less and less of our increasingly distant ancestors’ DNA, which means we match increasingly fewer of their descendants. I wrote about determining ancestral percentages in the article,  Ancestral Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?

Based on how much DNA we share with other known relatives, we can estimate relationships.

Pedigree collapse, where one descends from common ancestors more than once, increases the expected amount of inherited DNA, which in turn increases the probability of a shared match with other descendants.

Ancestral Couple Matching Between Shared DNA ~cM Shared DNA ~% Range (Shared cM Project) FIR – Identical DNA
Generation 1 Full Siblings 2600 50 1613-3488 25%
Generation 2 First Cousins 866 12.5 396-1397 0
Generation 3 Second Cousins 229 3.125 41-592 0
Generation 4 Third Cousins 73 0.78125 0-234 0

Here’s an example through third cousins, including expected FIR, fully identical regions where full siblings match each other on both their maternal and paternal chromosomes in the same location.

I provided a larger summary chart incorporating the information from public sources, here, minus FIR.

Of course, double cousins, where two pairs of siblings marry each other, represent another separate level of complexity. DNA-Sci’s Double Cousin Orogen explains this here and also provides a tool.

Double cousins, meaning when two pairs of siblings marry each other, are different from doubly related.

Doubly related means that two people descend from common ancestors through multiple paths, meaning multiple lines of descent. Doubly related is pedigree collapse. Double cousins is pedigree collapse on steroids.

Pedigree Collapse, aka Doubly Related

Calculating expected inherited DNA from multiple lines of descent is a bit more challenging.

A handy-dandy chart isn’t going to help with multiple relationships because the amount of expected shared DNA is based on the number of and distance of relationships.

Please note that this discussion excludes X-DNA matching which has its own inheritance path.

It’s time for math – but I promise I’ll make this relatively easy – pardon the pun.

What’s Behind the Math?

So, here’s the deal. I want you to understand why and how this works. You may not need this information today, but eventually, you probably will. This is one of those “refer back to it” articles for your personal library. Read this once as a conceptual overview, then read it again if you need to work through the relationships.

This is easy if you take it one step at a time.

First, we calculate each path separately.

In the first generation, full siblings inherit identical (FIR) DNA on both their mother’s and father’s chromosomes.

In the second generation, the male inherits the maternal segment, and the female inherits the paternal segment.

In the third generation, their child inherits those segments intact from both of their parents. The child inherits from the ancestral couple twice – once through each parent.

In generation 1, those two segments were FIR, fully identical regions. Both of those men married unrelated wives. When their children, Gen 2, were born, they had either the maternal or paternal segment from their father because they had an entirely different segment in that location from their mother.

However, the child in Gen 3 inherited the original green segment from their father and the original pink segment from their mother – reuniting those FIR segments in later generations.

First Cousin’s Child

Let’s calculate the inheritance for the child of those two first cousins who married.

Ancestral couple Inherited cM Inherited %
Gen 3 – Great-Grandchildren 875 cM 12.5
Gen 3 – Great-Grandchildren 875 cM 12.5
Total 1750 cM 25

Normally, a Gen 3 person inherits roughly 875 cM, or 12.5% of their great-grandparent’s DNA. However, since their grandparents were first cousins, they inherit about twice that amount, or 1750 cM.

While a Gen 3 person inherits as much as a grandchild (25%) normally would from the original couple, they won’t match on all of that DNA. When matching, we need to subtract some of that DNA out of the equation for two reasons:

  • In the first generation, between siblings, some of their DNA was fully identical and cannot be identified as such.
  • In the second generation, they will each have some parts of the ancestral couple’s DNA that will not match the other person. So, they inherit the same amounts from their common ancestors, but they can only be expected to match on about 25% of that amount two generations later.

However, the child of first cousins who marry inherits more DNA of the common ancestors than they would if their parents weren’t related. It’s just that some of that DNA is the same, potentially on the maternal and paternal chromosomes again, and some won’t match at all.

While matching DNA is the whole point of autosomal DNA testing, fully identical DNA matching regions (FIR) cannot be identified that way. For the most part, other than identifying full and half-siblings, sometimes pedigree collapse, and parent-relatedness, fully identical DNA isn’t terribly useful for genealogy. However, we still need to understand how this works.

It’s OK if you just want to say, “I know we’ll share more DNA due to pedigree collapse,” but if you want to know how much more to expect, keep reading. I’d really like for you to understand use cases and be able to track those segments.

Remember, we will learn a super-easy shortcut at the end, so for now, just read. It’s important to understand why the shortcut works.

Sibling Inheritance Versus Matching

In order to compare apples to apples, sometimes we need to remove some portion of DNA in our calculations.

Remember story problems where you had to “show your work”?

Calculating Expected DNA

Here’s the step-by-step logic.

Ancestral couple Inherited Non-Identical cM Inherited %
Gen 1 first son 3500 50
Gen 1 second son 3500 50
Less identical segments (FIR) -1750 (subtracted from one child for illustration) 25
Gen 2 son 1750 25
Gen 2 daughter married Gen 2 son 875 12.5
Gen 3 – Their child path through Gen 2 son 875 cM 12.5
Gen 3 – Their child path through Gen 2 mother 437.5 cM 6.25
Their child total without removing identical segments 1750 cM 25
Their child total after removing identical segments 1312.5 18.75

Category cMs Most Probable Degree Relationship
No Pedigree Collapse 875 98% Great grandparent or great-grandchild, great or half aunt/uncle, great or half niece/nephew, 1C 3
Pedigree Collapse without identical segment removal 1750 100% Grandparent, grandchild, aunt/uncle, half-sibling, niece/nephew 2
Pedigree Collapse after identical segment removal 1312.5 56% grandparent, grandchild, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, half-sibling 2

Just because you HAVE this much shared (and/or identical) DNA doesn’t mean you’ll match on that DNA.

Next, let’s look at Gen 5 child who inherited three ways from the ancestors.

If you think, “This will never happen,” remember that it did, which is why I was working through this story problem. It’s not uncommon for families to live in the same area for generations. You married who you saw – generally, your family and neighbors, who were likely also family.

Let’s take a look at that 5th generation child.

The more distantly related, the less pedigree collapse affects matching DNA. That’s not to say we can ignore it.

Here’s our work product. See, this isn’t difficult when you take it step by step, one at a time.

Ancestral couple Inherited Non-Identical cM Inherited %
Gen 3 Child total after removing identical segments 1312.5 18.75
Gen 4 father – half of Gen 3 father 656.25 9.375
Gen 5 child – half of Gen 4 father 328.125 4.6875
Gen 5 child – mother’s side calculated from ancestral couple normally 218.75 3.125
Total for Gen 5 Child 546.875 7.8125

Inheritance Ranges

Lots of factors can affect how much DNA a person in any given generation inherits from an ancestor. The same is true with multiple paths from that same ancestor. How do we calculate multiple path inheritance ranges?

As with any relationship, we find a range, or combined set of ranges for Gen 5 Child based on the multiple pathways back to the common ancestors.

Gen 5 Child Inherited Non-Identical cM Inherited %
Without removing either paternal or maternal identical cMs 656.25 9.375
After removing paternal identical cMs only 546.875 7.8125

 

After removing maternal cMs only 546.875 7.8125

 

After removing both paternal and maternal identical cMs 362.50 6.25
Normal Gen 5 no pedigree collapse 218 3.125

What About Matching?

Inheritance and matching are different. Most of the time, two people are unlikely to share all of the DNA they inherited from a particular ancestor. Of course, inheriting through multiple paths increases the likelihood that at least some DNA from that ancestor is preserved and that it’s shared with other descendants.

Two people aren’t expected to match on all of the segments of DNA that they inherit from a particular ancestor. The closer in time the relationship, the more segments they will inherit from that ancestor, which increases the chances of matching on at least one or some segments.

Clearly, pedigree collapse affects matching. It’s most pronounced in closer relationships, but it may also be the only thing that has preserved that ONE matching segment in a more distant relationship.

So, how does pedigree collapse actually affect the likelihood of matching? What can we actually expect to see? Is there a name for this and a mathematical model to assist with calculations?

I’m so glad you asked! It’s called Coefficient of Relationship.

Coefficent of Relationship

My colleague, Diahan Southard, a scientist who writes at YourDNAGuide has authored two wonderful articles about calculating the statistical effects of pedigree collapse.

You can also read another article about the methodology of calculating coefficient of relationship, here, on WaybackMachine.

Diahan is a math whiz. I’m not, so I needed to devise something “quick and dirty” for my own personal use. I promised you a “cheat sheet,” so here’s the methodology.

Two Inheritance Paths – First and Third Cousins

Let’s look at an example where two people are both first cousins and third cousins because their grandparents were also first cousins.

Let’s calculate how these two people are related. They are first cousins and also third cousins.

When calculating the effects of pedigree collapse, we calculate the first relationship normally, then calculate the second relationship and add a portion of the result.

Here’s the math.

Using the Shared cM Project for the expected amount of shared DNA for both relationships, we’ve calculated the expected range for this pedigree collapse relationship.

Tying this back to degrees of relatedness.

Let’s look at ways to do Quick Calculations using the publicly available Shared cM charts and my composite tables, here.

Using Average Shared DNA

This first methodology uses average expected amount of shared, meaning matching, DNA. Please note, I’m not necessarily expecting you to DO this now, just read to follow.

Using Average Inherited DNA

Here’s a second method using average inherited DNA, meaning people wouldn’t be expected to match on all of the inherited DNA – just a portion.

You can’t always use the shared cM charts because all relationships aren’t represented, so you may need to use the amount of expected inherited DNA instead of shared DNA amounts.

Methodology Differences

Remember, none of these methodologies are foolproof because DNA inheritance is random. You may also have additional relationships that you’re aware of.

So, what’s the easiest method? Neither, actually. I’ve found an even easier method based on these proven methodologies.

Easy-Peasy Pedigree Collapse Shortcut Range Calculation in 4 Steps

Now that you understand the science and reasoning behind all of this, you can choose from multiple calculation methodologies after drawing a picture of the relevant tree.

You’re probably wondering, “What’s the easiest way to do this?”

  • These quick calculation methods are the easiest to work with for non-scientists and non-math whizzes. These are the calculations I use because, taking into account random recombination, you can’t do any better than get close.
  • Also, remember, if you’re dealing with double relationships, meaning double first cousins, you’ll need to take that into consideration, too.
  • If endogamy is involved, your matches will be higher yet, and you should use the highest calculations below because you need to be on the highest end of the range – and that may still not be high enough.

In these Easy-Peasy calculations, you calculate for the lowest, then the highest, and that’s your range. Please note that these are options, and truly, one size does not fit all.

  1. For the lowest end of the range, simply use the average of the highest relationship. In this case, that would be 1C, which is 866 cM. Remember that you may not share DNA with third cousins. 10% of third cousins don’t share any DNA, and 50% of fourth cousins don’t.
  2. For the highest end of the range, find the second relationship in the Shared cM chart, divide the average by half, and add to the value from the closest relationship. In this case, half of the 3C value of 76 is 38.
  3. Add 38 to 866 for the highest end of the range of 904.
  4. If there’s yet another path to ANY shared ancestor, add half that amount too to calculate the high end of the range – unless it’s 4C or more distant, then don’t add anything.

You can see that this easy-peasy range calculation for pedigree collapse compares very well to the more complex but still easy calculations.

  • Easy-peasy calculation: 866-904
  • Other calculation methods: 850-903
  • For this same relationship combination, Diahan’s statistical calculation was 850 cM.

Back to Genealogy

What’s the short story about how pedigree collapse affects genealogy?

Essentially, in close generations, meaning within a few generations of two first cousins marrying, descendants can expect to inherit and share significantly more DNA of the common ancestors, but not double the amount. As we move further away from those marriages in time, the effect becomes less pronounced and more difficult to detect. You can see that effect when calculating multiple paths where at the fourth cousin level, or more distant, those cousins have a 50% or greater possibility of not sharing DNA segments.

Of course, with multiple paths to the same ancestor, your chances of inheriting at least some segments from the common ancestor are increased because their DNA descends through multiple paths.

Today, close marriages are much less common and have been for several generations in many cultures, so we see fewer instances where pedigree collapse makes a significant difference.

Within a population or group of people, if pedigree collapse becomes common, meaning that there are multiple paths leading back to common ancestors, like our three-path example, DNA segments from the common ancestors are found among many people. Significant pedigree collapse becomes endogamy, especially if marriage outside of the group is difficult, impossible, or discouraged.

Normally, pedigree collapse is not recorded in actual records. It’s left to genealogists to discover those connections.

The exception, of course, is those wonderful Catholic parish records where the priest granted dispensations. Sometimes, that’s our only hint to earlier genealogy. In the case of the marriage of Marie-Josesphe LePrince to Jacques Forest, the priest wrote “dispense 3-3 consanguinity,” which tells us that they shared great-grandparents. It also tells us that their grandparents were siblings, that the bride and groom were second cousins, and that their children and descendants inherited an extra dose of DNA from their common great-grandparents.

How does that affect me today? Given that I’m their seventh-generation descendant – probably not at all. Of course, they are Acadian, and the Acadians are highly endogamous, which means I match many Acadians because all Acadians share the DNA of just a few founders, making it almost impossible to track segments to any particular ancestor. If it weren’t for endogamy, I would probably match few, if any, of their descendants.

Now, when you see those Catholic church dispensations or otherwise discover pedigree collapse, you can be really excited, because you understand the effects of pedigree collapse and how to calculate resulting matches! You might, just might, have retained a DNA segment from those ancestors because you inherited segments through multiple paths – increasing the probability that one survived.

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

“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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What Subjects Should We Explore in 2024?

DNA testing is all about solving genealogy puzzles!

After we test, we need to fully understand what those test results are telling us.

To help, I need to know about your genealogy dreams! Who are you dreaming of finding, and what tools do you need to understand better to achieve that goal?

I have some articles planned for 2024, but I’d like to know what topics you’d like to see covered.

Of course, I always cover “breaking news” in genetic genealogy. I’ll be covering RootsTech as well.

Here are a few articles that I have in the works for 2024.

  • DNA and Pedigree Collapse
  • Big Y March of the Ages, by Dr. Paul Maier from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference
  • Highlights from Ancient Connections, by Dr. Miguel Vilar from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference
  • Meet My Extended Family – Leveraging Y DNA Testing, by Bennett Greenspan from the FamilyTreeDNA Conference

Focus

To help focus my efforts, I made a list of my own “genealogy dreams” by reviewing each ancestor and asking myself what I need to know about their life. For example, do I have the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups for each line? How can I figure out who their parents are? Do I have representatives of this line in every database? How can I address each of these things?

I’ve already started my 2024 research from a focus list I created. So far, I’ve:

  • Upgraded two cousins who took a Y-DNA test to the Family Finder, so I can use those two tests together. I need to know how closely related those two men might be, and who they match in common.
  • Upgraded a cousin to the Big Y-700 from a Y-67, hoping to discover when two lines from our common, unknown ancestor, split. That may help me know where to look, and when.
  • Encouraged a 95-year-old cousin to upload their Ancestry DNA test to FamilyTreeDNA and join the appropriate surname project. They did! Now we can compare their results within a project, which may very well solve a long-standing mystery of an unknown father all the way back in 1809! Fingers crossed!
  • Asked several cousins to also upload their DNA files to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. You’ll find free step-by-step instructions for how to do that, here.

It’s Your Turn

What mysteries are you focused on solving using DNA? Who are you searching for in your tree?

Please note that already published articles are available by using the search function on the main DNAexplain blog page, here. Those articles may prove quite helpful.

What topics would you like to see covered in 2024 that will assist with your journey?

Here’s to a wonderful 2024 and finding lots of ancestors!

_____________________________________________________________

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 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