Native American & Minority Ancestors Identified Using DNAPainter Plus Ethnicity Segments

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Roberta Estes

Ethnicity is always a ticklish subject. On one hand we say to be leery of ethnicity estimates, but on the other hand, we all want to know who our ancestors were and where they came from. Many people hope to prove or disprove specific theories or stories about distant ancestors.

Reasons to be cautious about ethnicity estimates include:

Within continents, like Europe, it’s very difficult to discern ethnicity at the “country” level because of thousands of years of migration across regions where borders exist today. Ethnicity estimates within Europe can be significantly different than known and proven genealogy.
“Countries,” in Europe, political constructs, are the same size as many states in the US – and differentiation between those populations is almost impossible to accurately discern. Think of trying to figure out the difference between the populations of Indiana and Illinois, for example. Yet we want to be able to tell the difference between ancestors that came from France and Germany, for example.

Ethnicity states over Europe

All small amounts of ethnicity, even at the continental level, under 2-5%, can be noise and might be incorrect. That’s particularly true of trace amounts, 1% or less. However, that’s not always the case – which is why companies provide those small percentages. When hunting ancestors in the distant past, that small amount of ethnicity may be the only clue we have as to where they reside at detectable levels in our genome.

Noise in this case is defined as:

A statistical anomaly
A chance combination of your DNA from both parents that matches a reference population
Issues with the reference population itself, specifically admixture
Perhaps combinations of the above

You can read about the challenges with ethnicity here and here.

On the Other Hand

Having restated the appropriate caveats, on the other hand, we can utilize legitimate segments of our DNA to identify where our ancestors came from – at the continental level.

I’m actually specifically referring to Native American admixture which is the example I’ll be using, but this process applies equally as well to other minority or continental level admixture as well. Minority, in this sense means minority ethnicity to you.

Native American ethnicity shows distinctly differently from African and European. Sometimes some segments of DNA that we inherit from Native American ancestors are reported as Asian, specifically Siberian, Northern or Eastern Asian.

Remember that the Native American people arrived as a small group via Beringia, a now flooded land bridge that once connected Siberia with Alaska.

By Erika Tamm et al – Tamm E, Kivisild T, Reidla M, Metspalu M, Smith DG, et al. (2007) Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders. PLoS ONE 2(9): e829. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000829. Also available from PubMed Central., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16975303

After that time, the Native American/First Nations peoples were isolated from Asia, for the most part, and entirely from Europe until European exploration resulted in the beginning of sustained European settlement, and admixture beginning in the late 1400s and 1500s in the Americas.

Family Inheritance

Testing multiple family members is extremely useful when working with your own personal minority heritage. This approach assumes that you’d like to identify your matches that share that genetic heritage because they share the same minority DNA that you do. Of course, that means you two share the same ancestor at some time in the past. Their genealogy, or your combined information, may hold the clue to identifying your ancestor.

In my family, my daughter has Native American segments that she inherited from me that I inherited from my mother.

Finding the same segment identified as Native American in several successive generations eliminates the possibility that the chance combination of DNA from your father and mother is “appearing” as Native, when it isn’t.

We can use segment information to our benefit, especially if we don’t know exactly who contributed that DNA – meaning which ancestor.

We need to find a way to utilize those Native or other minority segments genealogically.

23andMe

Today, the only DNA testing vendor that provides consumers with a segment identification of our ethnicity predictions is 23andMe.

If you have tested at 23andMe, sign in and click on Ancestry on the top tab, then select Ancestry Composition.

Minority ethnicity ancestry composition.png

Scroll down until you see your painted chromosomes.

Minority ethnicity chromosome painting.png

By clicking on the region at left that you want to see, the rest of the regions are greyed out and only that region is displayed on your chromosomes, at right.

Minority ethnicity Native.png

According to 23andMe, I have two Native segments, one each on chromosomes 1 and 2. They show these segments on opposite chromosomes, meaning one (the top for example) would be maternal or paternal, and the bottom one would be the opposite. But 23andMe apparently could not tell for sure because neither my mother nor father have tested there. This placement also turned out to be incorrect. The above image was my initial V3 test at 23andMe. My later V4 results were different.

Versions May Differ

Please note that your ethnicity predictions may be different based on which test you took which is dictated by when you took the test. The image above is my V3 test that was in use at 23andMe between 2010 and November 2013, and the image below is my V4 test in use between November 2013 and August 2017.

23andMe apparently does not correct original errors involving what is known as “strand swap” where the maternal and paternal segments are inverted during analysis. My V4 test results are shown below, where the strands are correctly portrayed.

Minority ethnicity Native V4.png

Note that both Native segments are now on the lower chromosome “side” of the pair and the position on the chromosome 1 segment has shifted visually.

Minority ethnicity sides.png

I have not tested at 23andMe on the current V5 GSA chip, in use since August 9, 2017, but perhaps I should. The results might be different yet, with the concept being that each version offers an improvement over earlier versions as science advances.

If your parents have tested, 23andMe makes adjustments to your ethnicity estimates accordingly.

Although my mother can’t test at 23andMe, I happen to already know that these Native segments descend from my mother based on genealogical and genetic analysis, combined. I’m going to walk you through the process.

I can utilize my genealogy to confirm or refute information shown by 23andMe. For example, if one of those segments comes from known ancestors who were living in Germany, it’s clearly not Native, and it’s noise of some type.

We’re going to utilize DNAPainter to determine which ancestors contributed your minority segments, but first you’ll need to download your ethnicity segments from 23andMe.

Downloading Ethnicity Segment Data

Downloading your ethnicity segments is NOT THE SAME as downloading your raw DNA results to transfer to another vendor. Those are two entirely different files and different procedures.

To download the locations of your ethnicity segments at 23andMe, scroll down below your painted ethnicity segments in your Ancestry Composition section to “View Scientific Details.”

MInority ethnicity scientific details.png

Click on View Scientific Details and scroll down to near the bottom and then click on “Download Raw Data.” I leave mine at the 50% confidence level.

Minority ethnicity download raw data.png

Save this spreadsheet to your computer in a known location.

In the spreadsheet, you’ll see columns that provide the name of the segment, the chromosome copy number (1 or 2) and the chromosome number with start and end locations.

Minority ethnicity download.png

You really don’t care about this information directly, but DNAPainter does and you’ll care a lot about what DNAPainter does for you.

DNAPainter

I wrote introductory articles about DNAPainter:

If you’re not familiar with DNAPainter, you might want to read these articles first and then come back to this point in this article.

Go ahead – I’ll wait!

Getting Started

If you don’t have a DNAPainter account, you’ll need to create one for free. Some features, such as having multiple profiles are subscription based, but the functionality you’ll need for one profile is free.

I’ve named this example profile “Ethnicity Demo.” You’ll see your name where mine says “Ethnicity Demo.”

Minority ethnicity DNAPainter.png

Click on “Import 23andme ancestry composition.”

You will copy and paste all the spreadsheet rows in the entire downloaded 23andMe ethnicity spreadsheet into the DNAPainter text box and make your selection, below. The great news is that if you discover that your assumption about copy 1 being maternal or paternal is incorrect, it’s easy to delete the ethnicity segments entirely and simply repaint later. Ditto if 23andMe changes your estimate over time, like they have mine.

Minority ethnicity DNAPainter sides.png

I happen to know that “copy 2” is maternal, so I’ve made that selection.

You can then see your ethnicity chromosome segments painted, and you can expand each one to see the detail. Click on “Save Segments.”

MInority ethnicity DNAPainter Native painting

Click to enlarge

In this example, you can see my Native segments, called by various names at different confidence levels at 23andMe, on chromosome 1.

Depending on the confidence level, these segments are called some mixture of:

East Asian & Native American
North Asian & Native American
Native American
Broadly East Asian & Native American

It’s exactly the same segment, so you don’t really care what it’s called. DNAPainter paints all of the different descriptions provided by 23andMe, at all confidence levels as you can see above.

The DNAPainter colors are different from 23andMe colors and are system-selected. You can’t assign the colors for ethnicity segments.

Now, I’m moving to my own profile that I paint with my ancestral segments. To date, I have 78% of my segments painted by identifying cousins with known common ancestors.

On chromosomes 1 and 2, copy 2, which I’ve determined to be my mother’s “side,” these segments track back to specific ancestors.

Click to enlarge

Chromosome 1 segments, above, track back to the Lore family, descended from Antoine (Anthony) Lore (Lord) who married Rachel Hill. Antoine Lore was Acadian.

Minority ethnicity chromosome 1.png

Clicking on the green segment bar shows me the ancestors I assigned when I painted the match with my Lore family member whose name is blurred, but whose birth surname was Lore.

The Chromosome 2 segment, below, tracks back to the same family through a match to Fred.

Minority ethnicity chromosome 2.png

My common ancestors with Fred are Honore Lore and Marie Lafaille who are the parents of Antoine Lore.

Minority ethnicity common ancestor.png

There are additional matches on both chromosomes who also match on portions of the Native segments.

Now that I have a pointer in the ancestral direction that these Native American segments arrived from, what can traditional genealogy and other DNA information tell me?

Traditional Genealogy Research

The Acadian people were a mixture of English, French and Native American. The Acadians settled on the island of Nova Scotia in 1609 and lived there until being driven out by the English in 1755, roughly 6 or 7 generations later.

Minority ethnicity Acadian map.png

The Acadians intermarried with the Mi’kmaq people.

It had been reported by two very qualified genealogists that Philippe Mius, born in 1660, married two Native American women from the Mi’kmaq tribe given the name Marie.

The French were fond of giving the first name of Marie to Native women when they were baptized in the Catholic faith which was required before the French men were allowed to marry the Native women. There were many Native women named Marie who married European men.

Minority ethnicity Native mitochondrial tree

Click to enlarge

This Mius lineage is ancestral to Antoine Lore (Lord) as shown on my pedigree, above.

Mitochondrial DNA has revealed that descendants from one of Philippe Mius’s wives, Marie, carry haplogroup A2f1a.

However, mitochondrial tests of other descendants of “Marie,” his first wife, carry haplogroup X2a2, also Native American.

Confusion has historically existed over which Marie is the mother of my ancestor, Francoise.

Karen Theroit Reader, another professional genealogist, shows Francoise Mius as the last child born to the first Native wife before her death sometime after 1684 and before about 1687 when Philippe remarried.

However, relative to the source of Native American segments, whether Francoise descends from the first or second wife doesn’t matter in this instance because both are Native and are proven so by their mitochondrial DNA haplogroups.

Additionally, on Antoine’s mother’s side, we find a Doucet male, although there are two genetic male Doucet lines, one of European origin, haplogroup R-L21, and one, surprisingly, of Native origin, haplogroup C-P39. Both are proven by their respective haplogroups but confusion exists genealogically over who descends from which lineage.

On Antoine’s mother’s side, there are several unidentified lineages, any one or multiples of which could also be Native. As you can see, there are large gaps in my tree.

We do know that these Native segments arrived through Antoine Lore and his parents, Honore Lore and Marie LaFaille. We don’t know exactly who upstream contributed these segments – at least not yet. Painting additional matches attributable to specific ancestral couples will eventually narrow the candidates and allow me to walk these segments back in time to their rightful contributor.

Segments, Traditional Research and DNAPainter

These three tools together, when using continent-level segments in combination with painting the DNA segments of known cousins that match specific lineages create a triangulated ethnicity segment.

When that segment just happens to be genealogically important, this combination can point the researchers in the right direction knowing which lines to search for that minority ancestor.

If your cousins who match you on this segment have also tested with 23andMe, they should also be identified as Native on this same segment. This process does not apply to intracontinental segments, meaning within Europe, because the admixture is too great and the ethnicity predictions are much less reliable.

When identifying minority admixture at the continental level, adding Y and mitochondrial DNA testing to the mix in order to positively identify each individual ancestor’s Y and mitochondrial DNA is very important in both eliminating and confirming what autosomal DNA and genealogy records alone can’t do. The base haplogroup as assigned at 23andMe is a good start, but it’s not enough alone. Plus, we only carry one line of mitochondrial DNA and only males carry Y DNA, and only their direct paternal line.

We need Y and mitochondrial DNA matching at FamilyTreeDNA to verify the specific lineage. Additionally, we very well may need the Y and mitochondrial DNA information that we don’t directly carry – but other cousins do. You can read about Y and mitochondrial DNA testing, here.

I wrote about creating a personal DNA pedigree chart including your ancestors’ Y and mitochondrial DNA here. In order to find people descended from a specific ancestor who have DNA tested, I utilize:

WikiTree resources and trees
Geni trees
FamilySearch trees
FamilyTreeDNA autosomal matches with trees
AncestryDNA autosomal matches and their associated trees
Ancestry trees in general, meaning without knowing if they are related to a DNA match
MyHeritage autosomal matches and their trees
MyHeritage trees in general

At both MyHeritage and Ancestry, you can view the trees of your matches, but you can also search for ancestors in other people’s trees to see who might descend appropriately to provide a Y or mitochondrial DNA sample. You will probably need a subscription to maximize these efforts. My Heritage offers a free trial subscription here.

If you find people appropriately descended through WikiTree, Geni or FamilySearch, you’ll need to discuss DNA testing with them. They may have already tested someplace.

If you find people who have DNA tested through your DNA matches with trees at Ancestry and MyHeritage, you’ll need to offer a Y or mitochondrial DNA test to them if they haven’t already tested at FamilyTreeDNA.

FamilyTreeDNA is the only vendor who provides the Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests at the higher resolution level, beyond base haplogroups, required for matching and for a complete haplogroup designation.

If the person has taken the Family Finder autosomal test at FamilyTreeDNA, they may have already tested their Y DNA and mtDNA, or you can offer to upgrade their test.

Projects

Checking projects at FamilyTreeDNA can be particularly useful when trying to discover if anyone from a specific lineage has already tested. There are many, special interest projects such as the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry project, the American Indian project, haplogroup projects, surname projects and more.

You can view projects alphabetically here or you can click here to scroll down to enter the surname or topic you are seeking.

If the topic isn’t listed, check the alphabetic index under Geographical Projects.

23andMe Maternal and Paternal Sides

If possible, you’ll want to determine which “side” of your family your minority segments originate come from, unless they come from both. you’ll want to determine whether chromosome side one 1 or 2 is maternal, because the other one will be paternal.

23andMe doesn’t offer tree functionality in the same way as other vendors, so you won’t be able to identify people there descended from your ancestors without contacting each person or doing other sleuthing.

Recently, 23andMe added a link to FamilySearch that creates a list of your ancestors from their mega-shared tree for 7 generations, but there is no tree matching or search functionality. You can read about the FamilySearch connection functionality here.

So, how do you figure out which “side” is which?

Minority ethnicity minority segment.png

The chart above represents the portion of your chromosomes that contains your minority ancestry. Initially, you don’t know if the minority segment is your mother’s pink chromosome or your father’s blue chromosome. You have one chromosome from each parent with the exact same addresses or locations, so it’s impossible to tell which side is which without additional information. Either the pink or the blue segment is minority, but how can you tell?

In my case, the family oral history regarding Native American ancestry was from my father’s line, but the actual Native segments wound up being from my mother, not my father. Had I made an assumption, it would have been incorrect.

Fortunately, in our example, you have both a maternal and paternal aunt who have tested at 23andMe. You match both aunts on that exact same segment location – one from your father’s side, blue, and one from your mother’s side, pink.

You compare your match with your maternal aunt and verify that indeed, you do match her on that segment.

You’ll want to determine if 23andMe has flagged that segment as Native American for your maternal aunt too.

You can view your aunt’s Ancestry Composition by selecting your aunt from the “Your Connections” dropdown list above your own ethnicity chromosome painting.

Minority ethnicity relative connections.png

You can see on your aunt’s chromosomes that indeed, those locations on her chromosomes are Native as well.

Minority ethnicity relative minority segments.png

Now you’ve identified your minority segment as originating on your maternal side.

Minority ethnicity Native side.png

Let’s say you have another match, Match 1, on that same segment. You can easily tell which “side” Match 1 is from. Since you know that you match your maternal aunt on that minority segment, if Match 1 matches both you and your maternal aunt, then you know that’s the side the match is from – AND that person also shares that minority segment.

You can also view that person’s Ancestry Composition as well, but shared matching is more reliable,especially when dealing with small amounts of minority admixture.

Another person, Match 2, matches you on that same segment, but this time, the person matches you and your paternal aunt, so they don’t share your minority segment.

Minority ethnicity match side.png

Even if your paternal aunt had not tested, because Match 2 does not match you AND your maternal aunt, you know Match 2 doesn’t share your minority segment which you can confirm by checking their Ancestry Composition.

Download All of Your Matches

Rather than go through your matches one by one, it’s easiest to download your entire match list so you can see which people match you on those chromosome locations.

Minority ethnicity download aggregate data.png

You can click on “Download Aggregate Data” at 23andMe, at the bottom of your DNA Relatives match list to obtain all of your matches who are sharing with you. 23andMe limits your matches to 2000 or less, the actual number being your highest 2000 matches minus the people who aren’t sharing. I have 1465 matches showing and that number decreases regularly as new testers at 23andMe are focused on health and not genealogy, meaning lower matches get pushed off the list of 2000 match candidates.

You can quickly sort the spreadsheet to see who matches you on specific segments. Then, you can check each match in the system to see if that person matches you and another known relative on the minority segments or you can check their Ancestry Composition, or both.

If they share your minority segment, then you can check their tree link if they have one, included in the download, their Family Search information if included on their account, or reach out to them to see if you might share a known ancestor.

The key to making your ethnicity segment work for you is to identify ancestors and paint known matches.

Paint Those Matches

When searching for matches whose DNA you can attribute to specific ancestors, be sure to check at all 4 places that provide segment information that you can paint:

FamilyTreeDNA
23andMe
MyHeritage
GedMatch, especially for AncestryDNA matches

At GedMatch, you’ll find some people who have tested at the other various vendors, including Ancestry, but unfortunately not everyone uploads. Ancestry doesn’t provide segment information, so you won’t be able to paint those matches directly from Ancestry.

If your Ancestry matches transfer to GedMatch, FamilyTreeDNA or MyHeritage you can view your match and paint your common segments. At GedMatch, Ancestry kit numbers begin with an A. I use my Ancestry kit matches at GedMatch to attempt to figure out who that match is at Ancestry in order to attempt to figure out the common ancestor.

To Paint, You Must Test

Of course, in order to paint your matches that you find in various databases, you need to be in those data bases, meaning you either need to test there or transfer your DNA file.

To purchase a 23andMe ancestry kit that includes ethnicity, click here
To purchase a 23andMe ancestry plus health kit that includes ethnicity, click here
To purchase a FamilyTreeDNA autosomal test, click here
To purchase a FamilyTreeDNA Y DNA test, click here
To purchase a FamilyTreeDNA mitochondrial DNA test, click here
To purchase a MyHeritage autosomal test, click here
To purchase a MyHeritage autosomal test plus health kit, click here
To purchase an AncestryDNA autosomal test, click here

Transfers

If you’d like to test your DNA at one vendor and download the file to transfer to another vendor, or GedMatch, that’s possible with both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage who both accept uploads.

You can transfer kits from Ancestry and 23andMe to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage for free, although the chromosome browsers, advanced tools and ethnicity require an unlock fee (or alternatively a subscription at MyHeritage). Still, the free transfer and unlock for $19 at FamilyTreeDNA or $29 at MyHeritage is less than the cost of testing.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet.

DNA vendor transfer cheat sheet 2019

From time to time, as vendor file formats change, the ability to transfer is temporarily interrupted, but it costs nothing to try a transfer to either MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA, or better yet, both.

In each of these articles, I wrote about how to download your data from a specific vendor and how to upload from other vendors if they accept uploads.

Summary Steps

In order to use your minority ethnicity segments in your genealogy, you need to:

Test at 23andMe
Identify which parental side your minority ethnicity segments are from, if possible
Download your ethnicity segments
Establish a DNAPainter account
Upload your ethnicity segments to DNAPainter
Paint matches of people with whom you share known common ancestors utilizing segment information from 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and AncestryDNA matches who have uploaded to GedMatch
If you have not tested at either MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA, upload your 23andMe file to either vendor for matching, along with GedMatch
Focus on those minority segments to determine which ancestral line they descend through in order to identify the ancestor(s) who provided your minority admixture.

Have fun!

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Mitochondrial DNA: Part 5 – Joining Projects

Posted on August 14, 2019 by Roberta Estes

This is the fifth article in the Mitochondrial DNA series. The first four are:

One of the best things about Family Tree DNA is their projects. Just this week, one of my brick walls is falling, thanks to a project administrator’s keen eye!

There are lots of projects to choose from for just about every interest. Let’s take a look at what’s available and why you should join.

What Are Projects?

Family Tree DNA offers customers the ability to join roughly 10,000 free projects that are administered by volunteer project administrators who have a particular interest in the subject of the project.

The most well-known projects are surname projects, but of course, the challenge with mitochondrial DNA, inherited through generations of female to female genetic transmission, is that the surname changes with each generation. Surname projects generally are founded based on paternal surnames.

For example, I started and administer the Estes surname project, even though I’m not a male and have no Y chromosome. To represent my line, I tested my Estes male family members.

Some Y DNA projects welcome all people who descend from an ancestor with that surname, and others do not. I do, because within projects members can use advanced matching tools to see who they match within the project. Of course, a match within a project does NOT guarantee that you match the person BECAUSE of that specific ancestor. It’s a good clue and a place to start, however, and I encourage everyone to consider joining all projects that pertain to their genealogy.

Testers can join an unlimited number of projects and they are all free, although some may have specific criteria required to join.

Why Join a Project?

You might be wondering why one would want to join a project. There are several reasons.

Expertise

Project administrators generally offer some level of expertise in the subject at hand. They have to have a reason to spend the time creating and maintaining the project and corresponding with members. Relative to haplogroup projects, project administrators are literally the most knowledgeable people on earth about their haplogroups of interest.

Common Interests

Whether you’re trying to figure out where your haplogroup came from, your ancestor of a specific surname or you’re interested in a particular ancestral group, like Acadian ancestors, other project members clearly have the same interest. Project members know that others in the project share that interest and if the project administrators have enabled the social media feature of projects, you can post and discuss topics and make requests there.

Camaraderie

Who wants to exist on a genealogical island? Working together with others often reaps huge benefits. For example, in the Crumley project, a few years ago I was able to reconstruct the partial genome of the common ancestor of 57 group members who descend from James Crumley. Without collaboration, we could never make this type of genetic progress – not to mention simply sharing traditional research.

Access to project feed or project results

Some project administrators make the viewing the project as well as the social media feed available only to project members who are signed in. Whether you can view the project page or social media feed or not as a non-project member, the only way to actually participate is by joining the project. The more joiners, the better for everyone.

Every project has the ability to display a map based on the entire project, as well as by project groupings. By clicking on Manage myProjects, then on DNA Results, you’ll see options for both the results and a map, if the administrator has enabled both features.

mitochondrial DNA projects.png

Maps show the distribution of the earliest known ancestors of project members if they have provided that information and agreed to project sharing.

Mitochondrial DNA hap J map.png

My first map selection in the haplogroup J project, shown above, was for “All” meaning the entire project. There’s not much of a story here except that there’s lots of haplogroup J in Europe.

Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup J1c2f map.png

My second selection was for the group the administrator created for my own complete haplogroup, J1c2f. This map distribution, found primarily in Scandinavia is suggestive of a much more granular story.

Project maps are an important under-utilized resource.

Advanced matching and searching within projects

Mitochodrial DNA matching on your regular match page allows you to view your matches in the entire database or to filter by projects that you have joined.

Mitochondrial DNA project matches.png

When selecting a project view, I’m only shown matches who are members of projects that I have joined, shown above.

However, there’s another, more powerful matching tool.

The Advanced Matching Tool

Mitochondrial advanced matches

Utilizing the Advanced Matching tool, I have more options and can select to filter and match from a variety of tests, match types and features.

Mitochondrial DNA advanced matches.png

For example, I can select the level of mitochondrial DNA match I want to see, pair it with a Family Finder match, see only people who match me on both tests and who are in a specific project.

These are powerful combined tools.

How do you know if anyone else with your surname or interests have tested and if a project exists?

Does A Project Exist?

Without signing into your account, click here to go to the primary Family Tree DNA home page.

Scroll down. Keep scrolling….

You will eventually see this surname search box.

Type the surname of interest into the box and press enter. I’ll use Estes for this example.

You will see three types of results:

The number of people with that exact surname that you typed, “Estes” in this case, that have tested – both male and female. In the first red box below, you can see that 320 people who currently have the surname of Estes have tested.
The surname projects that include that surname spelling in the project description. Looking at the second red box, you can see that the Estes project has 370 members and the Estis Jewish Ukraine project has 62. The Estis Jewish project administrator has included the spelling Estes in the project description which is why this project is listed under Estes surname Projects.
Other projects, in the green box, where the administrators have listed the surname Estes because their project might be of interest to some Estes descendants. This doesn’t mean that this project pertains to your Estes family – but it does mean you might want to click on the project and read the description.

Mitochondrial DNA projects by group.png

For example, here’s the North Carolina Early 1700s project description.

Click to enlarge

For all projects, you can see the administrators’ names at the bottom left, below the project links. You can click on their names to contact them with questions.

You can click on this page to join. If you click “Join” and have not purchased a kit, you will be prompted to do so. If you have already purchased a kit, you will be prompted to sign in at this point so that your kit can be joined to the project.

Project results are available for viewing through the links at the left.

The Early North Carolina project includes both Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA participants.

Project Grouping

Project administrators group participants in various ways, depending on the goals of the project. In this case, mitochondrial DNA results are grouped by haplogroup.

Click to enlarge

Note that the first 2 people didn’t enter their earliest known ancestor, but the last 3 did. Results are so much more useful with ancestor information.

HVR1, HVR2 and Full Sequence

Project administrators have a lot of leeway about the purpose and goals of the project, the criteria to join, grouping (or not) and even whether the project has a public-facing results page, like the one shown above.

However, two things project administrators have NO CONTROL OVER at all are:

Whether your full name displays. It does NOT! A surname only may be displayed if the administrator selects that option.
Whether or not the coding region results are shown. That’s not an option and never has been at Family Tree DNA. Only HVR1 and HVR2 are shown, as shown above.

If, as project members, you grant administrators coding region view access so that they can properly group your results, there is no option for administrators to show coding region results on any web page.

Joining Projects from Your Personal Page

After signing on to your personal page at Family Tree DNA, to join or manage projects, click on myProjects at the top of your personal page.

Mitochondrial DNA myProjects.png

You will then see the following option.

Mitochondrial DNA join a project.png

Click on “Join a Project.”

At this point, you will see a list of projects. People interpret this to mean that Family Tree DNA is recommending these projects, but that’s not the case. The project administrators have listed your surname as a surname that is relevant to the project they are running. That’s why the project is displayed on the project list you see initially.

Here’s the list that I see.

Mitochondrial DNA project list.png

Of these projects, 2 are of interest, Estes and Cumberland Gap Y DNA, except that I don’t carry the Y chromosome. My mitochondrial DNA is not relevant, so unless the Cumberland Gap Y DNA project accepts people who don’t descend via the Y chromosome, only the Estes project is relevant to me.

The project with the purple star is new since the last time I looked. It may be relevant to me. I’ll need to read the project description to see.

Searching

Let’s say I’m interested in joining the Lore project, my mother’s mother’s surname. I want to search for projects that include Lore. I won’t see any initially, because my surname is not Lore.

Scrolling down below the initial project names shown above, I see a search box.

Typing Lore in the search box and clicking on “search” displays the following projects.

Mitochondrial DNA project join link.png

Both of these projects are relevant to me. My Lore great-grandfather is indeed Acadian.

Clicking on the link displays more information about the project. Clicking on the Join button joins you to the project, or, for projects that require a join request, takes you to the join request page.

If the project requires a join request, be sure to read the project goals and state why the project is a good fit for you.

For example, if the project is the Mitochondrial Haplogroup B Project, and you’re a haplogroup H, the project is not a good fit for you.

Many projects include key words that make searching more effective. For example, to find the AcadianAmerindian project, simply type Acadian into the search box. Project administrators try their best to make the projects findable for people interested in that specific topic.

To find haplogroup projects and projects that don’t include a specific surname or key word, you’ll need to browse. Fortunately, projects are logically grouped.

Browsing Projects

By scrolling down below the search box, you’ll see the various project categories with projects listed alphabetically. The number beside the letter indicates the number of projects in that category.

Click to enlarge

Surname Projects are just what they say and you’ll find those using the search feature.
Y and Mitochondrial Geographical Projects are projects that aren’t surnames and aren’t haplogroups. In other words, they could be a geography like the Cumberland Gap or France, or they could be a group like Native American or Tuscarora.
Dual Geographical Projects include both Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA from a geography, BUT, these types of projects are extremely difficult to administer because someone may join because their Y DNA is from France, for example, but their mitochondrial DNA is from Africa. What happens is that unless the administrator actively suppressed the “wrong” DNA (from the project perspective) from showing, it looks for all the world like African mitochondrial DNA is appearing in France because both the Y and mitochondrial DNA of the tester shows in the results by default. If you’re thinking to yourself that suppressing “one little thing” should be easy, it’s not necessarily, especially not with thousands of participants in some projects. Not only that, it would require each person joining a project to communicate with the administrator and tell them which line is relevant to the project, Y, mitochondrial, or neither.
MtDNA and Y DNA Lineage Projects are similar to surname projects, but they track descendants of a specific ancestor. For example, I could start a project for my great-great-grandmother’s descendants and encourage them to join that project so we could communicate and research together.
Mitochondrial and Y DNA Haplogroup Projects are focused on a single haplogroup or subgroup. Some haplogroups have only one project, like Haplogroup J. Other haplogroups have a primary project plus several subgroup projects. Haplogroup H, which is very prevalent in Europe, has several subgroups.

Click to enlarge

Haplogroup administrators as scientists and citizen scientists often study specific haplogroups to learn more about their history and through that, the history of the human species and our migrations.

Unjoin

If you joined a project by accident, changed your mind or discovered a project is no longer relevant, it’s easy to unjoin.

Mitochondrial DNA manage myProjects.png

Click on “Manage myProjects.”

Mitochondrial DNA unjoin.png

You’ll see each project that you have joined, along with two actions. A pencil to modify your membership and a trash can. To unjoin the project, just click the trash can.

Editing and Granting Administrator Access

Click on the pencil to edit.

You control the amount and level of access that administrators have to your results.

If you grant administrators Minimum Access, they can’t even see your matches to group you properly. I don’t recommend that level.

Here’s a summary of Group Administrator Access at the various levels.

Mitochondrial DNA admin access summary.png

Please read the details on the Group Administrator Access Level and Permissions page in the Learning Center.

Mitochondrial DNA future admins.png

I generally allow all future administrators the same level of access. After all, I won’t be here one day to reauthorize and I want my DNA to work for both my ancestors and descendants forever.

Make your selections and then click on “Accept Project Preferences.” The system will then provide you with a summary of your selections.

Group Profile and Coding Region Sharing

You’ll need to decide if you’re going to share the Coding Region with the administrators, and if you’re going to share your results on the public webpage.

Both of those options can be found under your Account Settings, found under the little drop down beside your name in the far right hand corner of your personal page..

FamilyTreeDNA account settings.png

Under Account Settings, click on Project Preferences.

Click to enlarge

Next, you’ll see a list of the projects you have joined. Scroll beneath that to the Project Sharing section.

Click to enlarge

You’ll want to be sure that these selections reflect your wishes. If you DON’T allow sharing, your results won’t be included on the public web page. People often view projects to see if their ancestors are represented, so results in projects act as cousin bait.

The administrators need to be able to view your coding region mutations to group you accurately.

Housekeeping

While you’re on the Account Settings page, take a look at the other tabs and make sure they reflect your desired options.

In particular, make sure on the Genealogy page to complete your surnames and your Earliest Known Ancestors and on the Account Information Page, your Beneficiary Information.

Your relatives and descendants will thank you!!!

______________________________________________________________

Disclosure

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2018 – The Year of the Segment

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Roberta Estes

Looking in the rear view mirror, what a year! Some days it’s been hard to catch your breath things have been moving so fast.

What were the major happenings, how did they affect genetic genealogy and what’s coming in 2019?

The SNiPPY Award

First of all, I’m giving an award this year. The SNiPPY.

Yea, I know it’s kinda hokey, but it’s my way of saying a huge thank you to someone in this field who has made a remarkable contribution and that deserves special recognition.

Who will it be this year?

Drum roll…….

The 2018 SNiPPY goes to…

DNAPainter – The 2018 SNiPPY award goes to DNAPainter, without question. Applause, everyone, applause! And congratulations to Jonny Perl, pictured below at Rootstech!

Jonny Perl created this wonderful, visual tool that allows you to paint your matches with people on your chromosomes, assigning the match to specific ancestors.

I’ve written about how to use the tool with different vendors results and have discovered many different ways to utilize the painted segments. The DNA Painter User Group is here on Facebook. I use DNAPainter EVERY SINGLE DAY to solve a wide variety of challenges.

What else has happened this year? A lot!

Ancient DNA – Academic research seldom reports on Y and mitochondrial DNA today and is firmly focused on sequencing ancient DNA. Ancient genome sequencing has only recently been developed to a state where at least some remains can be successfully sequenced, but it’s going great guns now. Take a look at Jennifer Raff’s article in Forbes that discusses ancient DNA findings in the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia and perhaps most surprising, a first generation descendant of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan.

From Early human dispersals within the Americas by Moreno-Mayer et al, Science 07 Dec 2018

Inroads were made into deeper understanding of human migration in the Americas as well in the paper Early human dispersals within the Americas by Moreno-Mayer et al.

I look for 2019 and on into the future to hold many more revelations thanks to ancient DNA sequencing as well as using those sequences to assist in understanding the migration patterns of ancient people that eventually became us.

Barbara Rae-Venter and the Golden State Killer Case

Using techniques that adoptees use to identify their close relatives and eventually, their parents, Barbara Rae-Venter assisted law enforcement with identifying the man, Joseph DeAngelo, accused (not yet convicted) of being the Golden State Killer (GSK).

A very large congratulations to Barbara, a retired patent attorney who is also a genealogist. Nature recognized Ms. Rae-Venter as one of 2018’s 10 People Who Mattered in Science.

DNA in the News

DNA is also represented on the 2018 Nature list by Viviane Slon, a palaeogeneticist who discovered an ancient half Neanderthal, half Denisovan individual and sequenced their DNA and He JianKui, a Chinese scientist who claims to have created a gene-edited baby which has sparked widespread controversy. As of the end of the year, He Jiankui’s research activities have been suspended and he is reportedly sequestered in his apartment, under guard, although the details are far from clear.

In 2013, 23andMe patented the technology for designer babies and I removed my kit from their research program. I was concerned at the time that this technology knife could cut two ways, both for good, eliminating fatal disease-causing mutations and also for ethically questionable practices, such as eugenics. I was told at the time that my fears were unfounded, because that “couldn’t be done.” Well, 5 years later, here we are. I expect the debate about the ethics and eventual regulation of gene-editing will rage globally for years to come.

Elizabeth Warren’s DNA was also in the news when she took a DNA test in response to political challenges. I wrote about what those results meant scientifically, here. This topic became highly volatile and politicized, with everyone seeming to have a very strongly held opinion. Regardless of where you fall on that opinion spectrum (and no, please do not post political comments as they will not be approved), the topic is likely to surface again in 2019 due to the fact that Elizabeth Warren has just today announced her intention to run for President. The good news is that DNA testing will likely be discussed, sparking curiosity in some people, perhaps encouraging them to test. The bad news is that some of the discussion may be unpleasant at best, and incorrect click-bait at worst. We’ve already had a rather unpleasant sampling of this.

Law Enforcement and Genetic Genealogy

The Golden State Killer case sparked widespread controversy about using GedMatch and potentially other genetic genealogy data bases to assist in catching people who have committed violent crimes, such as rape and murder.

GedMatch, the database used for the GSK case has made it very clear in their terms and conditions that DNA matches may be used for both adoptees seeking their families and for other uses, such as law enforcement seeking matches to DNA sequenced during a criminal investigation. Since April 2018, more than 15 cold case investigations have been solved using the same technique and results at GedMatch. Initially some people removed their DNA from GedMatch, but it appears that the overwhelming sentiment, based on uploads, is that people either aren’t concerned or welcome the opportunity for their DNA matches to assist apprehending criminals.

Parabon Nanolabs in May established a genetic genealogy division headed by CeCe Moore who has worked in the adoptee community for the past several years. The division specializes in DNA testing forensic samples and then assisting law enforcement with the associated genetic genealogy.

Currently, GedMatch is the only vendor supporting the use of forensic sample matching. Neither 23anMe nor Ancestry allow uploaded data, and MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA’s terms of service currently preclude this type of use.

MyHeritage

Wow talk about coming onto the DNA world stage with a boom.

MyHeritage went from a somewhat wobbly DNA start about 2 years ago to rolling out a chromosome browser at the end of January and adding important features such as SmartMatching which matches your DNA and your family trees. Add triangulation to this mixture, along with record matching, and you’re got a #1 winning combination.

It was Gilad Japhet, the MyHeritage CEO who at Rootstech who christened 2018 “The Year of the Segment,” and I do believe he was right. Additionally, he announced that MyHeritage partnered with the adoption community by offering 15,000 free kits to adoptees.

In November, MyHeritage hosted MyHeritage LIVE, their first user conference in Oslo, Norway which focused on both their genealogical records offerings as well as DNA. This was a resounding success and I hope MyHeritage will continue to sponsor conferences and invest in DNA. You can test your DNA at MyHeritage or upload your results from other vendors (instructions here). You can follow my journey and the conference in Olso here, here, here, here and here.

GDPR

GDPR caused a lot of misery, and I’m glad the implementation is behind us, but the the ripples will be affecting everyone for years to come.

GDPR, the European Data Protection Regulation which went into effect on May 25, 2018 has been a mixed and confusing bag for genetic genealogy. I think the concept of users being in charge and understanding what is happened with their data, and in this case, their data plus their DNA, is absolutely sound. The requirements however, were created without any consideration to this industry – which is small by comparison to the Googles and Facebooks of the world. However, the Googles and Facebooks of the world along with many larger vendors seem to have skated, at least somewhat.

Other companies shut their doors or restricted their offerings in other ways, such as World Families Network and Oxford Ancestors. Vendors such as Ancestry and Family Tree DNA had to make unpopular changes in how their users interface with their software – in essence making genetic genealogy more difficult without any corresponding positive return. The potential fines, 20 million plus Euro for any company holding data for EU residents made it unwise to ignore the mandates.

In the genetic genealogy space, the shuttering of both YSearch and MitoSearch was heartbreaking, because that was the only location where you could actually compare Y STR and mitochondrial HVR1/2 results. Not everyone uploaded their results, and the sites had not been updated in a number of years, but the closure due to GDPR was still a community loss.

Today, mitoydna.org, a nonprofit comprised of genetic genealogists, is making strides in replacing that lost functionality, plus, hopefully more.

On to more positive events.

Family Tree DNA

In April, Family Tree DNA announced a new version of the Big Y test, the Big Y-500 in which at least 389 additional STR markers are included with the Big Y test, for free. If you’re lucky, you’ll receive between 389 and 439 new markers, depending on how many STR markers above 111 have quality reads. All customers are guaranteed a minimum of 500 STR markers in total. Matching was implemented in December.

These additional STR markers allow genealogists to assemble additional line marker mutations to more granularly identify specific male lineages. In other words, maybe I can finally figure out a line marker mutation that will differentiate my ancestor’s line from other sons of my founding ancestor😊

In June, Family Tree DNA announced that they had named more than 100,000 SNPs which means many haplogroup additions to the Y tree. Then, in September, Family Tree DNA published their Y haplotree, with locations, publicly for all to reference.

I was very pleased to see this development, because Family Tree DNA clearly has the largest Y database in the industry, by far, and now everyone can reap the benefits.

In October, Family Tree DNA published their mitochondrial tree publicly as well, with corresponding haplogroup locations. It’s nice that Family Tree DNA continues to be the science company.

You can test your Y DNA, mitochondrial or autosomal (Family Finder) at Family Tree DNA. They are the only vendor offering full Y and mitochondrial services complete with matching.

2018 Conferences

Of course, there are always the national conferences we’re familiar with, but more and more, online conferences are becoming available, as well as some sessions from the more traditional conferences.

I attended Rootstech in Salt Lake City in February (brrrr), which was lots of fun because I got to meet and visit with so many people including Mags Gaulden, above, who is a WikiTree volunteer and writes at Grandma’s Genes, but as a relatively expensive conference to attend, Rootstech was pretty miserable. Rootstech has reportedly made changes and I hope it’s much better for attendees in 2019. My attendance is very doubtful, although I vacillate back and forth.

On the other hand, the MyHeritage LIVE conference was amazing with both livestreamed and recorded sessions which are now available free here along with many others at Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

Family Tree University held a Virtual DNA Conference in June and those sessions, along with others, are available for subscribers to view.

The Virtual Genealogical Association was formed for those who find it difficult or impossible to participate in local associations. They too are focused on education via webinars.

Genetic Genealogy Ireland continues to provide their yearly conference sessions both livestreamed and recorded for free. These aren’t just for people with Irish genealogy. Everyone can benefit and I enjoy them immensely.

Bottom line, you can sit at home and educate yourself now. Technology is wonderful!

2019 Conferences

In 2019, I’ll be speaking at the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference, Journey of Discovery, in St. Charles, providing the Special Thursday Session titled “DNA: King Arthur’s Mighty Genetic Lightsaber” about how to use DNA to break through brick walls. I’ll also see attendees at Saturday lunch when I’ll be providing a fun session titled “Twists and Turns in the Genetic Road.” This is going to be a great conference with a wonderful lineup of speakers. Hope to see you there.

There may be more speaking engagements at conferences on my 2019 schedule, so stay tuned!

The Leeds Method

In September, Dana Leeds publicized The Leeds Method, another way of grouping your matches that clusters matches in a way that indicates your four grandparents.

I combine the Leeds method with DNAPainter. Great job Dana!

Genetic Affairs

In December, Genetic Affairs introduced an inexpensive subscription reporting and visual clustering methodology, but you can try it for free.

I love this grouping tool. I have already found connections I didn’t know existed previously. I suggest joining the Genetic Affairs User Group on Facebook.

DNAGedcom.com

I wrote an article in January about how to use the DNAGedcom.com client to download the trees of all of your matches and sort to find specific surnames or locations of their ancestors.

However, in December, DNAGedcom.com added another feature with their new DNAGedcom client just released that downloads your match information from all vendors, compiles it and then forms clusters. They have worked with Dana Leeds on this, so it’s a combination of the various methodologies discussed above. I have not worked with the new tool yet, as it has just been released, but Kitty Cooper has and writes about it here. If you are interested in this approach, I would suggest joining the Facebook DNAGedcom User Group.

Rootsfinder

I have not had a chance to work with Rootsfinder beyond the very basics, but Rootsfinder provides genetic network displays for people that you match, as well as triangulated views. Genetic networks visualizations are great ways to discern patterns. The tool creates match or triangulation groups automatically for you.

Training videos are available at the website and you can join the Rootsfinder DNA Tools group at Facebook.

Chips and Imputation

Illumina, the chip maker that provides the DNA chips that most vendors use to test changed from the OmniExpress to the GSA chip during the past year. Older chips have been available, but won’t be forever.

The newer GSA chip is only partially compatible with the OmniExpress chip, providing limited overlap between the older and the new results. This has forced the vendors to use imputation to equalize the playing field between the chips, so to speak.

This has also caused a significant hardship for GedMatch who is now in the position of trying to match reasonably between many different chips that sometimes overlap minimally. GedMatch introduced Genesis as a sandbox beta version previously, but are now in the process of combining regular GedMatch and Genesis into one. Yes, there are problems and matching challenges. Patience is the key word as the various vendors and GedMatch adapt and improve their required migration to imputation.

DNA Central

In June Blaine Bettinger announced DNACentral, an online monthly or yearly subscription site as well as a monthly newsletter that covers news in the genetic genealogy industry.

Many educators in the industry have created seminars for DNACentral. I just finished recording “Getting the Most out of Y DNA” for Blaine.

Even though I work in this industry, I still subscribed – initially to show support for Blaine, thinking I might not get much out of the newsletter. I’m pleased to say that I was wrong. I enjoy the newsletter and will be watching sessions in the Course Library and the Monthly Webinars soon.

If you or someone you know is looking for “how to” videos for each vendor, DNACentral offers “Now What” courses for Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA and Living DNA in addition to topic specific sessions like the X chromosome, for example.

Social Media

2018 has seen a huge jump in social media usage which is both bad and good. The good news is that many new people are engaged. The bad news is that people often given faulty advice and for new people, it’s very difficult (nigh on impossible) to tell who is credible and who isn’t. I created a Help page for just this reason.

You can help with this issue by recommending subscribing to these three blogs, not just reading an article, to newbies or people seeking answers.

https://dna-explained.com/ (this blog)
https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/ (Blaine Bettinger’s)
https://www.legalgenealogist.com/ (Judy Russell’s)

Always feel free to post links to my articles on any social media platform. Share, retweet, whatever it takes to get the words out!

The general genetic genealogy social media group I would recommend if I were to select only one would be Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques. It’s quite large but well-managed and remains positive.

I’m a member of many additional groups, several of which are vendor or interest specific.

Genetic Snakeoil

Now the bad news. Everyone had noticed the popularity of DNA testing – including shady characters.

Be careful, very VERY careful who you purchase products from and where you upload your DNA data.

If something is free, and you’re not within a well-known community, then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it sounds shady or questionable, it’s probably that and more, or less.

If reputable people and vendors tell you that no, they really can’t determine your Native American tribe, for example, no other vendor can either. Just yesterday, a cousin sent me a link to a “tribe” in Canada that will, “for $50, we find one of your aboriginal ancestors and the nation stamps it.” On their list of aboriginal people we find one of my ancestors who, based on mitochondrial DNA tests, is clearly NOT aboriginal. Snake oil comes in lots of flavors with snake oil salesmen looking to prey on other people’s desires.

When considering DNA testing or transfers, make sure you fully understand the terms and conditions, where your DNA is going, who is doing what with it, and your recourse. Yes, read every single word of those terms and conditions. For more about legalities, check out Judy Russell’s blog.

Recommended Vendors

All those DNA tests look yummy-good, but in terms of vendors, I heartily recommend staying within the known credible vendors, as follows (in alphabetical order).

For genetic genealogy for ethnicity AND matching:

23andMe
Ancestry
Family Tree DNA
GedMatch (not a vendor because they don’t test DNA, but a reputable third party)
MyHeritage

You can read about Which DNA Test is Best here although I need to update this article to reflect the 2018 additions by MyHeritage.

Understand that both 23andMe and Ancestry will sell your DNA if you consent and if you consent, you will not know who is using your DNA, where, or for what purposes. Neither Family Tree DNA, GedMatch, MyHeritage, Genographic Project, Insitome, Promethease nor LivingDNA sell your DNA.

The next group of vendors offers ethnicity without matching:

Genographic Project by National Geographic Society
Insitome
LivingDNA (currently working on matching, but not released yet)

Health (as a consumer, meaning you receive the results)

23andMe (limited health)
Promethease

Medical (as a contributor, meaning you are contributing your DNA for research)

23andMe
Ancestry
DNA.Land (not a testing vendor, doesn’t test DNA)

There are a few other niche vendors known for specific things within the genetic genealogy community, many of whom are mentioned in this article, but other than known vendors, buyer beware. If you don’t see them listed or discussed on my blog, there’s probably a reason.

What’s Coming in 2019

Just like we couldn’t have foreseen much of what happened in 2018, we don’t have access to a 2019 crystal ball, but it looks like 2019 is taking off like a rocket. We do know about a few things to look for:

MyHeritage is waiting to see if envelope and stamp DNA extractions are successful so that they can be added to their database.
www.totheletterDNA.com is extracting (attempting to) and processing DNA from stamps and envelopes for several people in the community. Hopefully they will be successful.
LivingDNA has been working on matching since before I met with their representative in October of 2017 in Dublin. They are now in Beta testing for a few individuals, but they have also just changed their DNA processing chip – so how that will affect things and how soon they will have matching ready to roll out the door is unknown.
Ancestry did a 2018 ethnicity update, integrating ethnicity more tightly with Genetic Communities, offered genetic traits and made some minor improvements this year, along with adding one questionable feature – showing your matches the location where you live as recorded in your profile. (23andMe subsequently added the same feature.) Ancestry recently said that they are promising exciting new tools for 2019, but somehow I doubt that the chromosome browser that’s been on my Christmas list for years will be forthcoming. Fingers crossed for something new and really useful. In the mean time, we can download our DNA results and upload to MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA and GedMatch for segment matching, as well as utilize Ancestry’s internal matching tools. DNA+tree matching, those green leaf shared ancestor hints, is still their strongest feature.
The Family Tree DNA Conference for Project Administrators will be held March 22-24 in Houston this year, and I’m hopeful that they will have new tools and announcements at that event. I’m looking forward to seeing many old friends in Houston in March.

Here’s what I know for sure about 2019 – it’s going to be an amazing year. We as a community and also as individual genealogists will be making incredible discoveries and moving the ball forward. I can hardly wait to see what quandaries I’ve solved a year from now.

What mysteries do you want to unravel?

I’d like to offer a big thank you to everyone who made 2018 wonderful and a big toast to finding lots of new ancestors and breaking down those brick walls in 2019.

Happy New Year!!!

______________________________________________________________

Disclosure

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

Thank you so much.

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Family Tree DNA’s PUBLIC Y DNA Haplotree

Posted on September 27, 2018 by Roberta Estes

It’s well known that as a result of Big Y testing that Family Tree DNA has amassed a huge library of Y DNA full sequence results that have revealed new SNPs, meaning new haplotree branches, for testers. That’s how the Y haplotree is built. I wrote about this in the article, Family Tree DNA Names 100,000 New Y DNA SNPs.

Up until now, the tree was only available on each tester’s personal pages, but that’s not the case anymore.

Share the Wealth

Today, Family Tree DNA has made the tree public. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Family Tree DNA.

To access the tree, click here, but DON’T sign in. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Keep scrolling, and scrolling…until you see the link under Community that says “Y-DNA Haplotree.” Click there.

The New Public Haplotree

The new public haplotree is amazing.

This tree isn’t just for people who took the Big Y test, but includes anyone who has a haplogroup confirming SNP OR took the Big Y test. Predicted haplogroups, of course, aren’t included.

Each branch includes the location of the most recent known ancestor of individuals who carry that terminal SNP, shown with a flag.

The branches are color coded by the following:

Light blue = haplogroup root branches
Teal or blue/green = branches with no descendants
Dark blue = branches that aren’t roots and that do have at least one descendant branch

The flag location is determined by the most distant known ancestor, so if you don’t have a “Most Distant Known Ancestor” completed, with a location, please, please, complete that field by clicking on “Manage Personal Information” beneath your profile picture on your personal page, then on Genealogy, shown below. Be sure to click on Save when you’re finished!

View Haplotree By

Viewing the haplotree is not the same as searching. “View by” is how the tree is displayed.

Click on the “View By” link to display the options: country, surnames or variant.

You can view by the country (flags), which is the default, the surname or the variants.

Country view, with the flags, is the default. Surname view is shown below.

The third view is variant view. By the way, a variant is another word for SNP. For haplogroup R-M207, there are 8,202 variants, meaning SNPs occurring beneath, or branches.

Reports

On any of the branch links, you’ll see three dots at the far right.

To view reports by country or surname, click on the dots to view the menu, then click on the option you desire.

Country statistics above, surname below. How cool is this!

Searching

The search function is dependent on the view currently selected. If you are in the surname view, then the search function says “Search by Surname” which allows you to enter a surname. I entered Estes.

If I’m not currently on the haplogroup R link, the system tells me that there are 2 Estes results on R. If I’m on the R link, the system just tells me how many results it found for that surname on this branch and if there are others on other branches.

The tree then displays the direct path between R-M207 (haplogroup R root) and the Estes branch.

…lots of branches in-between…

The great thing about this is that I can now see the surnames directly above my ancestral surname, if they meet the criteria to be displayed.

Display criteria is that two people match on the same branch AND that they both have selected public sharing. Requiring two surnames per branch confirms that result.

If you want to look at a specific variant, you can enter that variant name (BY490) in the search box and see the surnames associated with the variant. The click on “View by” to change the view from country (maps) to surnames to variants.

Change from country to surname.

And from surname to variants.

What geeky fun!!!

Go to Branch Name

If you want to research a specific branch, you can go there directly by utilizing the “Go to Branch Name” function, but you must enter the haplogroup in front of the branch name. R-BY490 for example.

When you’re finished with this search, REMOVE THE BRANCH NAME from the search box, if you’re going to do any other searches, or the system thinks you’re searching within that branch name.

My Result Isn’t Showing

In order for your results to be included on the tree, you must have fulfilled all 3 of these criteria:

Taken either a SNP or Big Y test
Opted in for public sharing
More than one result for that branch with the same exact surname

If you think your results should be showing and they aren’t, check your privacy settings by clicking the orange “Manage Personal Information” under your profile picture on your main page, then on the Privacy and Sharing tab.

Still not showing? See if you match another male of the same surname on the Big Y or SNP test at the same level.

If your surname isn’t included, you can recruit testers from that branch of your family.

How Can I Use This?

I’m like a kid with a new toy.

If any of your family surnames are rather unique, search to see if they are on the tree.

Hey look, my Vannoy line is on haplogroup I! Hmmm, clear the schedule, I’m going to be busy all day!

Every haplogroup has a story – and that story belongs to the men, and their families, who carry that haplogroup! I gather the haplogroups for each of my family surnames and this public tree just made this task much, MUCH easier.

Discovering More

If the testers have joined the appropriate surname project, you may also be able to find them in that project to see if they descend from a common line with you. To check and see, click here and then scroll down to the “Search Surname” section of the main Family Tree DNA webpage and enter the surname.

You can see if there is a project for your surname, and if not, your surname may be included in other projects.

Click on any of those links to view the project or contact the (volunteer) project administrators.

Want to search for another surname, the project search box is shown at the right in this view.

What gems can you find?

Want to Test?

If you are a male and you want to take the Big Y test or order a haplogroup confirming SNP, or you are a female who would like to sponsor a test for a male with a surname you’re interested in, you can purchase the Big Y test, here. As a bonus, you will also receive all of the STR markers for genealogical comparison as well.

Wonder what you can learn? You will be searching for matches to other males with the same surname. You can learn about your history. Confirm your ancestral line. Learn where they came from. You can help the scientific effort and contribute to the tree. For more information, read the article, Working with Y DNA – Your Dad’s Story.

Have fun!!!

______________________________________________________________

Disclosure

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Services

Genealogy Research

Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research

Ancestor Birthdays Mean Presents for YOU!

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Roberta Estes

I’ve been wanting to celebrate my ancestors’ birthdays for some time now, and I’ve finally figured out exactly how to accomplish this goal in a really fun way.

Being reminded once a year about their birthday and the anniversary of their death reminds me to work on their genealogy, and in particular, genetic genealogy. With more people testing every single day, meaning different people at every vendor, we need to check often with specific ancestors in mind. You never know who’s going to be the person who puts the chink in that brick wall.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a spreadsheet to track what I know about each ancestor. This makes it easy to schedule those dates in my calendar, with a reminder of course, and then to check my spreadsheet to see what information might have been previously missing that might be able to be found today.

It’s like a birthday present for them, but now for me. I am, after all, their heir, along with the rest of their descendants of course! If I’m lucky, I inherited part of their DNA, and if not, their DNA is still relevant to me.

Checking the List

Here’s my spreadsheet checklist for each ancestor:

Birth date
Birth place
Death date
Death place
Spouse
Y DNA haplogroup (if male)
Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup
Autosomal confirmed
Ancestry Circle

New information becomes digitized every year making new information available.

Additionally, some items may change. For example, if a base haplogroup was previous known, a deeper haplogroup might be available a year later if someone has taken a more detailed test or the haplogroup name might have been updated. Yes, that happens too.

I originally had a triangulation column on the spreadsheet too, but I pretty quickly discovered that column was subject to lots of questions about interpretation. Is the actual ancestor triangulated, or the line? I decided that “autosomal confirmed” would suffice to cover whatever I decide constitutes confirmation and a comment column could hold the description. For example, my grandparents are autosomal confirmed because I match (and triangulate) with cousins who are descended from ancestors upstream of my grandparents. If my grandparent wasn’t my grandparent, I wouldn’t be related to those people either. In particular, first cousins.

I also added an “Article Link” column to paste the link to that ancestor’s 52 Ancestors article so I can quickly check or maybe even provide this spreadsheet to a family member.

Here’s an example of what the first several entries of my Ancestor Birthday Spreadsheet look like.

Ancestor Birthday Presents for You

In order to remind myself to check on my ancestors’ status, on their birth and death days, I schedule reminders in my phone calendar. Every morning when I wake, I’m greeted by my ancestor – well – at least this much of them.

First, I check at Family Tree DNA for new matches, haplogroups and the presence of my family lines in surname projects.
Then it’s off to Ancestry to see if I have any new green leaf DNA or record hints, to add or update the circle for this particular ancestor, and to see if any of my matches would be a candidate for either Y or mitochondrial DNA testing, assuming they reply to messages and agree to test at Family Tree DNA. I keep a separate spreadsheet of each person that I’ve identified as a match with an identified ancestor. I know it’s extra work, but that spreadsheet is invaluable for determining if the ancestor is autosomal proven and if the match is a candidate for Y or mtDNA testing.
Then I get another cup of coffee and check at MyHeritage for new record matches for that ancestor, along with new DNA SmartMatches.
GedMatch and 23andMe aren’t as easy to check for matches specific to ancestors, but I still check both places to see if I can find matches that I can identify as descending from that ancestor.
While I’m at it, sometimes I run over to FamilySearch to see if there’s anything new over there, although they don’t deal with DNA. They do, however, have many traditional genealogical records. I may add another column to track if I’m waiting for something specific to be digitized – like court minutes, for example. FamilySearch has been on a digitization binge!
As I go along, I add any new discovery to my genealogy software and my Ancestor Birthday Spreadsheet as well.
Last, I paint new segment information from Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, GedMatch or 23andMe at DNAPainter. My three articles about how I use DNAPainter are here, here and here.

I just love ancestor birthdays.

Any day that I get to find something new is a wonderful day indeed – fleshing out the lives, history and DNA of my ancestors. With this many places to look, there’s seldom a day that goes by that I don’t discover at least something in my ancestor scavenger hunt!

Ancestor birthday presents for me😊

_____________________________________________________________________

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Family Tree DNA Group Project Privacy Levels

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Roberta Estes

Recently, Family Tree DNA sent two emails about the new Group Project privacy settings and policies that are now in effect. The first email was to project members, and the second was to administrators.

I’m combining information from both in this article, along with step-by-step instructions for what you need to do, whether you’re a project member or a project administrator.

Before GDPR came into force in May 2018, group project administrators had more latitude to help project members by viewing all fields and being able to change some that weren’t deemed critical to privacy. For example, administrators could add the member’s most distant ancestor, help them with a tree or enter the mapped location of their direct maternal or paternal ancestor. Administrators could not change personal things like name, e-mail, contact information or passwords.

With the arrival of GDPR, Family Tree DNA implemented changes in order to achieve compliance which had the unfortunate effect of restricting administrators’ ability drastically. With the pressure of the GDPR deadline past, Family Tree DNA has rethought some of the restrictions and made welcome modifications.

Who is Affected and What Changed?

Anyone who has tested at Family Tree DNA and is a member of any project is affected, even if you may not realize that you are.

Before we go any further, let’s discuss the privacy settings which fall into basically three categories:

very low
medium (normal)
high

In the chart below, we see the names assigned to the levels as of the GDPR rollout, and now. The names have changed.

The May 2018 names were problematic because some project members became confused, thinking that Project Only was giving full access for this project. Additionally, Full access wasn’t full, but did allow some modifications. Therefore, in an effort to minimize confusion, Family Tree DNA has now renamed the access levels. The () are my descriptions.

The GDPR Transition

In May, the pre-GDPR privacy settings for project members were programmatically converted to the new settings, the result being that many project members were converted over with new settings that were much more restrictive than they were previously. I am still hopeful that this issue will be addressed, because the expectation of individuals who joined projects in the 19 years before GDPR was that the administrators had access to work with their results – and always would have. Many of those individuals have been project members for years and have now passed away, eliminating any possibility of the project administrator obtaining even limited (partial view only) access from the member.

For example, with Minimal access, administrators can’t see either members results or trees. With Limited Access, project administrators can’t see the member’s personal profile or privacy selections, but at least can view their tree and results.

Furthermore, anyone who joined a project after May 25^th was joined at the minimal level, requiring the new member to change their settings to Limited, providing the administrators a reasonable level of access. Most people didn’t realize that, and therefore the majority of people who have recently joined projects remain at the minimal level.

New Joins No Longer Default to Minimal

When joining a project, new members are currently given the option of assigning an administrator a level – meaning the minimum privacy level is no longer assigned as a default. This is a HUGE improvement.

Due to the transition as well as the “join” policy between May and August leaving many people with Miminum settings, project administrators may want to contact individuals who currently have the Minimum level and ask them to change their settings.

Moving Forward

What matters currently is that you, or kits you manage, may now be at the MOST restrictive level which was originally called “Project Only” after conversion, but has now been renamed as “Minimal Required.”

From my perspective, if a group member does not want the administrators working with their results, they shouldn’t join the project. The purpose and focus of projects is collaboration.

New Settings and Permissions

The chart below, now shown to people when they join projects, summarizes the various abilities that administrators have under Minimal, Limited and Advanced.

With the most restrictive “Minimal Required” setting, administrators cannot see critical items such as a member’s tree or who they match. Minimal Required is extremely restrictive, which means that administrators can’t group the individual within the project appropriately.

With the original GDPR privacy rollout, many people were automatically converted to what is now “Minimal Required” and are unaware that their privacy selection has been downgraded.

Access Now Granted To Individual Administrators

Another change is that members now grant each individual project administrator a specific and different level of access unique to that administrator.

This change is quite beneficial, because you may want to grant one project administrator Advanced access which allows them to change some fields, while granting the rest Limited.

New Administrators

In this latest update, you can now grant all future project administrators an access level too, creating a legacy for future project administrators to have access to your results at the level you select.

After GDPR, new project administrators were only granted “minimal” access to every project member, meaning that in essence, new administrators were entirely hamstrung if every project member didn’t individually change their access for that administrator.

Needless to say, project members who joined projects before GDPR did not expect this would ever happen. Many have died or become disinterested and that meant that their results would forever be unavailable to new administrators.

Granting at least minimal access to future administrators assures that your DNA within a project will never be dead.

Another change last week was that new administrators are now granted Limited access, unless you specifically select either Minimal or Advanced access for new administrators.

Advanced Versus True Full Access

Advanced access is not the same as full access.

If you want an individual, project administrator or otherwise, to truly have full access to your account, you need to personally give them your kit number and password, realizing that allows them to function entirely “as you.” I have done this, because when I die, I want my DNA legacy to live vibrantly into the future.

Beneficiary

Speaking of legacy, please take this opportunity to complete your beneficiary form so that Family Tree DNA knows who to allow access to your account after your death.

Access Levels

Bottom line – you need to check BOTH your “Privacy and Sharing” setting along with “Project Preferences” for each project that you belong to because your settings may be much more restrictive than you think they are.

Privacy and Sharing

The Privacy and Sharing tab allows your results to be shown in the public project.

You MUST OPT IN to project sharing, or your results won’t be included in the public project display.

Most people don’t realize that the default is to NOT SHOW in a project, believing that if they join a project, their results will automatically be anonymously displayed in the public portion of the project. You must opt-in, so be sure that little box at the right side of the Group Project Profile is checked.

Project Preferences

The Project Preferences tab is where you grant project administrator rights.

Let’s look at the various group project preference privacy levels; Minimal, Limited and Advanced, and what they provide.

Level: Minimal Required

From the Family Tree DNA Learning Center:

Minimal Required is the most limited access level. This access level permits the Group Administrator or co-administrator to access project administration tools that allow him or her to view certain results in relation to how you match other project members; however, this access level does not allow the administrator to visit your myFTDNA pages.

The following table lists the Group Administration Pages and the corresponding group member information viewable by administrators assigned the Minimal Required level:

Minimal Required
Group Administration Report Page*	Viewable Information
Profile Information (viewable by Group Administrators, co-administrators, and other project members in multiple locations)	Name Email
Maternal and Paternal Ancestry	Maternal and Paternal Country of Origin (from release form only) Most distant ancestor and location Family tree (if public)
Order Summary	Y-STR Big Y-500 mtDNA Deep Clade Family Finder Geno 2.0
Pending and Received Lab Results	Pending lab results Completed lab results
Received and Unreceived Kits	Kit status
FF Illumina OmniExpress Matrix	Matrix of in-project members and who they match
FF Illumina OmniExpress Results	Comparison and download of in-project matches and their chromosome information
mtDNA Results Classic	Haplogroup HVR1/2 mutations Coding region mutations (only if authorized)
Y-DNA Genetic Distance	Subgroup
Y-DNA TiP Report	Genetic distance to other project members
Y-DNA Results	Haplogroup STR marker values
Y-DNA Results Classic	Haplogroup STR marker values
Y-DNA Results Colorized	Haplogroup STR marker values
Y-DNA SNP	SNPs
Member Subgrouping	SNPs
Activity Feed	Postings

*These pages are only accessible by Group Administrators and co-administrators unless otherwise noted.

Level: Limited and Advanced

Limited is the recommended access level. This level of access permits the Group Administrator or co-administrator to visit and view certain information on your myFTDNA pages in order to assist with kit management and to better facilitate project research. Additionally, this access level includes all of the permissions granted with the Minimal Required level.

For more information on the permissions granted with this level, see the below Limited and Advanced Access table.

Advanced access permits the Group Administrator or co-administrator to visit, view, and modify certain information on your myFTDNA pages in order to assist with kit management and better facilitate project research. Additionally, this access level includes all of the permissions granted with the Limited access level.

The Advanced access level is designed to allow an individual administrator to fully manage a project member’s kit and function on their behalf. This includes ordering products and modifying information with the exceptions of the primary email address and project preferences for other Group Projects.

The following table lists your myFTDNA pages and the corresponding limitations and permissions granted to the administrator with the Limited and Advanced access levels.

Note: In addition to the personal information mentioned below, administrators for Group Projects of which you are a member and whom you have assigned Limited or Advanced access and administrators to whom your matches have granted Limited or Advanced access, will be able to view your profile, match information (e.g., Common Matches, Genetic Distances, and Shared Segments) and some Genetic Information (e.g., genetic markers and ethnicity information).

Limited and Advanced
Group Member myFTDNA Page	Limited (Recommended) (read only)	Advanced (modify capability)
myFamilyTree	Yes	Yes
Complete Order History	Yes	Yes
Personal Surveys	No	Yes
Products and Upgrades (Ability to purchase tests or upgrades for group member)	No	Yes
Family Finder
Family Finder Raw Data Download	No	Yes
Family Finder Matches	Yes	Yes
Download Family Finder Matches	Yes	Yes
Family Finder Linked Relationship	Yes	Yes
Family Finder Chromosome Browser	Yes	Yes
Download Family Finder Chromosome Browser	Yes	Yes
Family Finder myOrigins	Yes	Yes
Family Finder Shared Origins	Yes	Yes
Family Finder ancientOrigins	Yes	Yes
Family Finder Matrix	Yes	Yes
Population Finder Survey	No	Yes
Family Finder Advanced Matches	Yes	Yes
mtDNA
mtDNA Download Matches	Yes	Yes
mtDNA View Matches	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Ancestral Origins	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Matches Maps	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Migration Maps	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Haplogroup Origins	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Print Certificates	No	Yes
mtDNA Download FASTA	No	Yes
mtDNA View Results	Yes	Yes
mtDNA Advanced Matches	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA and Big Y-500
Y-DNA Download Matches	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA View Matches	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Ancestral Origins	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Haplotree & SNPs	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA SNPs Download	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Matches Maps	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Migration Maps	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA SNP Map	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Haplogroup Origins	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Print Certificates	No	Yes
Y-DNA Download Y-STR Results	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA View Y-STR Results	Yes	Yes
Y-DNA Advanced	Yes	Yes
Big Y-500 Results	Yes	Yes
Big Y-500 Matches	Yes	Yes
Big Y-500 BAM File Download	No	Yes
Big Y-500 Download VCF	No	Yes
Y-DNA Advanced Matches	Yes	Yes
Other Results
All Factoids Results	No	Yes
X-STR	Yes	Yes
Individual Y-STR	Yes	Yes
Individual Autosomal Markers	Yes	Yes
Applications
Partner Applications	No	Yes
Vitagene Wellness	No	No
Account Settings
Contact Information	No	Yes (except primary email)
Change Password	No	Yes (must know the current password to change it)
Beneficiary Information	No	Yes
Earliest Known Ancestors	Yes	Yes
Surnames	Yes	Yes
Privacy & Sharing	Yes	Yes
Project Preferences	Yes	Yes*
Notification Preferences	Yes	Yes
Projects
Join a Project	Yes	Yes

* An administrator granted Advanced access has the ability to modify permissions for administrators in other projects who have Limited or Minimal Required access; however, they cannot grant Advanced access to or remove Advanced access from any other administrator or co-administrator. Additionally, administrators granted Advanced access by a member can, on the member’s behalf, leave other projects with the exception of those having administrators who also have Advanced access.

Checking Your Settings – Step by Step Instructions

Step 1

Sign on to your account at Family Tree DNA and select the orange “Manage Personal Information,” right under your Profile photo, or the location reserved for the photo.

Then click on the Project Preferences tab:

Click on the Edit function which shows you the current level for each administrator in a specific project, allowing you to select a new level, and then allowing you to pre-select a new level for all new future administrators of this project.

I strongly recommend that you pre-select (at least) the Limited Access level.

Then, click on Accept which shows you a summary of your new selections.

Click “Confirm” and you’re all set.

You’ll need to repeat this step to check administrator rights for all projects that you have joined.

Step 2

Next, click on the privacy and sharing tab to opt in to Project Sharing. You only have to do this one time, but if you don’t – your results will NOT BE INCLUDED in any public projects.

Why is that important?

Public project displays encourage people to participate in DNA testing and join projects, especially Y and mitochondrial. If they see several lines tested, they are much more likely to purchase a test to see if they match a line they think might be theirs. Projects serve as advertising which helps all genealogists.

So please, opt in!

Project Administrators

If you’re a Family Tree DNA project administrator, you’ll need to do the following:

Review your Member Information List for members who have the minimal setting AND those who are not publicly sharing their DNA results.

In my Estes project of 327 individuals, 32 converted with Minimal access, including my immediate family members whose kits I manage. I don’t know if this 10% number holds true across all projects, but that’s a nontrivial number of people whose results you can’t access, and who you can’t help.

You’ll need to do the following:

Educate your members about why you need either Limited or Full Access as well as why they want to consider allowing their results to be publicly displayed.
If as an administrator, you’ve elected to prevent your project from publicly displaying, please consider making your project public. Family Tree DNA does not display the results of any individual in a project who does not opt-in to having their results shown publicly – so you don’t have to worry about that.
Using the administrator’s Bulk Email function, send a project e-mail with instructions for how to check and select new Project Preference administrator settings as well as where to find the Project Sharing opt-in. (Feel free to link to this article.)
Follow-up by sending individual e-mails to members who don’t change their settings.
If you have a number of people in your project who are not grouped, you can group people with “Minimal” access into one group, and send a group e-mail to only them. I think that would be easier than e-mailing everyone individually, but as a project administrator, I’m committed to doing whatever needs to be done to preserve the integrity of my projects.

Getting Help

If you run into problems and need help, you can call Family Tree DNA at 713-868-1438 M-F 9-5 CST and select the customer support option or initiate a support request by clicking on help at the very bottom of every page.
If you’re a project administrator and run into problems, don’t forget that Family Tree DNA has a Group Support Department to help administrators. You can call the same number and select the option for groups or e-mail groups@ftdna.com.

______________________________________________________________

Disclosure

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Services

Genealogy Research

Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research

Project Groupings and How to Get the Most Out of Projects at Family Tree DNA

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Roberta Estes

Family Tree DNA is the only DNA testing company that offers and supports projects – a structure that allows participants to join groups of common interest with the goal of providing information about their ancestors. Family Tree DNA provides a project structure and even a special administrator support group and hotline at Family Tree DNA to assist project administrators with the over 8000 projects that exist today.

Projects do more than just help the members – they have the potential to help others who descend from these same lines. Not to mention that they are a wonderful recuiting tool.

You can see what projects might be available for a surname of interest at this link by typing the surname or topic (like Indian) into the “Search your Surname” box:

For the past several years, World Families Network has hosted some Family Tree DNA projects utilizing a different format, as well as orphan projects, meaning those with no administrator.

With the recent World Families Network announcement that they are retiring as of May 23th and will no longer be hosting projects, several people have been inspired to adopt orphan projects, literally preserving what exists at World Families Network already in place for that project. That’s great news, but what’s next and how does a project administrator manage a project?

Or maybe you’re on the other side of the fence and you’d like to understand why projects are grouped so differently and how to use, or group, them effectively.

This article is written for surname project administrators, but is a learning tool for anyone interested in surnames. Isn’t that all genealogists?

Projects Are Your Surname Billboard

Project pages are your project’s front door, the marketing department, and a great way to put your best foot forward to recruit new members.

I’ve provided some resources for administrators at the end of this article, but before you start the nitty-gritty of how to group project members, I’d like to provide a few thoughts, observations and recommendations for grouping specific types of projects.

No need to roll through the same mud puddles I’ve already stomped in just to discover that they’re cold, wet and dirty.

Project Types

I administer or co-administer a number of projects at Family Tree DNA, such as:

Regional projects, such as the Cumberland Gap Y and mitochondrial DNA
Family or special interest projects, such as the American Indian project and the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry project.
Haplogroup projects
Surname projects
Autosomal projects

How projects are grouped varies by the type of project, combined with the project’s specific goal. Not every project falls neatly into one of these categories, but most do.

Let’s take a look at the differences.

Regional Projects

Regional projects often reflect an interest in a particular region of the world. This includes projects based on geographic regions, like the Cumberland Gap projects, or sometimes countries like the French Heritage Project.

Regional projects sometimes show both Y and mitochondrial DNA results, although this is sometimes problematic. Unless the administrator checks to be sure both the Y and mitochondrial lineages belong in that specific project for every member who joins, the member’s results will be shown in both categories if they have taken both tests. For example, a man’s direct paternal line might be from the Cumberland Gap region, but his mother, or mitochondrial line might be from Italy. Clearly both lines don’t belong in this project.

The administrator can individually disable one display or the other (Y or mt) for each project participant – but that requires that the participant communicate with the administrator and frankly, it’s a huge pain. Been there, tried that, didn’t work.

For that very reason, several years ago, I split the Cumberland Gap project into two projects, one being for Y DNA results and one for mitochondrial results. That way, I can simply disable the entire mitochondrial page display for the Cumberland Gap Y DNA project, and disable the Y page display for the Cumberland Gap Mitochondrial DNA project. No need to do something with each person who joins. The member joins the appropriate project for their heritage – Y or mitochondrial DNA, or maybe both.

Deciding how to group a regional project can be challenging. The French Heritage project groups their Y DNA members and mitochondrial by surname and ancestor.

Please click to expand any image.

In this case, the administrator of the French Heritage project has chosen NOT to include the surname column, but instead created a subgroup banner with the surname included – so the surname column was not necessary unless a member is ungrouped.

The Cumberland Gap literally at the intersection of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, was a waystation on the westward migration and the projects were originally intended to help reassemble families whose ancestors migrated through the mountain ranges to new frontiers. Some stayed and settled, but many left behind a family member of two and then moved on. Truthfully, I’m not sure that this project hasn’t outlived its original purpose with the advances in DNA testing since it was established about 15 years ago.

The Cumberland Gap Mitochondrial project results are “ungrouped,” because based on how Family Tree DNA groups Mitochondrial results, similar results and haplogroups appear together – so mitochondrial projects are in essence self-grouping in most instances.

For mitochondrial DNA, the current surname is largely irrelevant because women’s surnames tend to change with every generation, unlike patrilineal surnames which are relevant to Y DNA results.

The administrators also maintain a separate Yahoo group to exchange genealogical, regional and cultural information.

If you are administering a Y haplogroup only project, disable the mitochondrial page display, and vice versa.

World Families Network didn’t host regional, special interest or haplogroup projects, so these projects aren’t as likely to be orphaned as surname projects.

Special Interest Projects

Special interest projects are focused specifically on one type or group of people. Grouping varies widely depending on the project type. I co-administer both the American Indian project and the Acadian Amerindian Ancestry projects, and they are grouped differently.

The American Indian project is grouped according to haplogroup, since specific haplogroups are known to be Native; subsets of C and Q for Y DNA and subsets of A, B, C, D, X and possibly M for mitochondrial DNA.

Note that we show the surname and the “Paternal Ancestor Name” columns, both, because the surname and the paternal ancestor’s name may not be the same for a variety of reasons.

The Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry project includes both Y and mitochondrial DNA of our Acadian ancestors. Acadians were a mixture of French, a few English soldiers, and Mi’kmaq Indians. The Acadian AmerIndian Y DNA project is grouped both by haplogroup and by surname.

Some surnames, such as Doucet, have both a Native lineage (C-P39) and a European lineage (R-M269), so their separate lineages are shown grouped with their respective haplogroups.

If members were grouped primarily by surname, then both lineages would have been shown adjacent to each other under the Doucet surname.

There is no one right way to group projects.

In this project, as well as others, I sometimes wish we had implemented the “apply to join” methodology, because I suspect that some people (in the ungrouped section) have joined in error.

Some ungrouped people have joined because their lineage is Acadian, but not their direct Y or mitochondrial lines.

The administrators chose to embrace the open join policy, even though it’s more difficult and time-consuming to administer, because we want to be inclusive and help everyone with either Acadian or AmerIndian ancestors from France, Eastern Canada and the Acadian diaspora regions connect with their ancestors. Acadians were admixed in Canada for 150 years, then dispersed to the winds in 1755 when they were forcibly evicted from Nova Scotia, so we find their roughly 2 million descendants in many parts of the world today.

Haplogroup Projects

By comparison, haplogroup projects are easier to group, because their focus is clear. Haplogroup projects, be they Y or mitochondrial are focused on that haplogroup and it’s sub-haplogroups.

The Haplogroup C-P39 project is a relatively small Native American project, so it’s grouped by surname and matching group within that haplogroup.

Another popular way to group larger haplogroup projects is by haplogroup subgroups for both Y and mitochondrial DNA. The popular R-L21 and Subclades project where my Estes men are members, but I don’t administer, is grouped in this manner.

One of the great features of all projects at Family Tree DNA is mapping. Based on how the administrator subdivides the project, if they enable project mapping (please do), you can select groups to display to view subgroup clusters.

I just love this feature. You know there’s a story behind this grouping that is relevant to the men who carry this haplogroup.

The A2 mtDNA Haplogroup project is grouped by subgroup. Some administrators go further and group by specific mutations within subgroup as well, hoping they will someday form a new subclade.

Maps provide so much information. In this case, the map of the A2 group, with no A2+ (downstream) subgroups shows a dispersal throughout the Americas, plus one person in Denmark.

Wait, what?

Denmark?

Of course, Denmark immediately raises a plethora of questions including whether the Denmark person has taken the full sequence test or has perhaps misidentified their ancestor’s original location.

Some people don’t understand that the matrilineal line is your direct mother’s mother’s mother’s line on up until you run out of direct line mothers. They hear or understand maternal instead and select their most distant MATERNAL ancestor which may be anyone from their mother’s side of the tree – and someone entirely different than their direct line MATRILINEAL ancestor.

Surname Projects

Surname projects play a different role than the projects mentioned above. Specifically, surname projects not only attract males with that surname who are candidates to test, they also attract anyone who has that surname in their genealogy who is looking to see if someone from their line has tested – because they can’t.

All of us have a lot more surnames that aren’t our direct paternal surname, which only males can test via Y DNA.

In the graphic above, the surname lineage is blue, the mitochondrial is red, and the colorless boxes represent all of our other lines.

Therefore, most people are looking at a surname project to find lineages they can’t directly test for. Surname projects need to make it easy to find and locate lineages based on ancestors and location.

I don’t know how many surname projects exist, as opposed to other project types, but I’d say surname projects outnumber the other types of projects significantly – meaning there is a huge potential to find your surnames and ancestors in those projects.

I love surname projects, because even if you are a female or a male that doesn’t carry that surname today, you can still benefit from the tests of people with that surname.

In the Estes project, which was formed for Y DNA, we also welcome autosomal joiners as long as they have Estes lineage someplace in their tree.

In the project, I group Estes men by lineage from the immigrant Estes ancestor.

In order to do this, I utilized the descendants of Abraham Estes to recreate his haplotype, and I compare everyone to those values, which represent the values that Abraham himself carried.

The good news is that by looking at the matches of each person in the project, you know who does and does not match each other. Family Tree DNA tells you that. They do the hard lifting and you arrange the furniture.

I didn’t know quite what to do with people whose genealogy and surname go back to Abraham Estes, or one of his cousins who all descend from the Deal, England line – but their Y DNA unquestionably doesn’t.

I created a “New Estes Line – Genetically Speaking” category. We can’t say that these people “aren’t Estes” because their mother may have been an Estes and gave her male child her surname, just not her Y DNA (which she doesn’t have,) of course. That was contributed by the father. So the surname is Estes, but the Y DNA doesn’t match any of the Estes descendants of the Deal line. However, these people may match Estes descendants autosomally.

There is also an “Estes Ungrouped” group, because even though their Y DNA is clearly Estes, I can’t connect these men back to a specific line yet either through paper or DNA.

Assigning a member to the “Estes Ungrouped” group is different than leaving them in the default “ungrouped” catchall group provided by Family Tree DNA which is located at the bottom of the page. The default ungrouped group is where everyone lives until the administrator assigns them to a group.

Autosomal Joiners

There’s been recent discussion about why administrators would want to allow people to join Y DNA surname projects who’ve tested autosomally and descend from the surname line, but aren’t males who carry the surname.

I am very much IN FAVOR of allowing autosomal joiners. Some other administrators, not so much. Someone recently said that they don’t understand why anyone who is not a male with the same surname as the project would want to join – what benefit there could possibly be. As a female Estes, I can explain exactly why, in one simple graphic. OK, 3 graphics.

On your personal account myFTDNA tab, there’s an Advanced Setting under “Tools and Apps.” Click there.

Then select the Family Finder test, then “yes” to “Show only people I match in all selected tests,” then select the project. The project selected (Estes in this example) must be one you have joined – that’s why it’s important to allow people from that lineage that don’t carry the Y chromosome to join.

Want to guess how many people I match, meaning Estes males AND all other Estes descendants who have joined the project? Click on the orange “Run Report” to see.

The answer is 23 people, although I’ve truncated the graphic. Some are cousins that I tested, but a dozen aren’t AND there are a few that I’ve never heard of before. Hello cousins! Does anyone have the family Bible or know where it is???

Clearly, I could match some of these people through other lines, BUT, now I know where to start looking. Using the advanced tools like Paternal Phasing (bucketing), the In Common With (ICW) tool and the Matrix, available to everyone, will quickly tell me how I match these people. You can read about how to utilize these tools here.

Project administrators have an even more powerful matrix tool at their disposal.

This is exactly why I’ve elected to welcome autosomal testers into my Y DNA surname projects. The power of DNA is not just in a single set of results, but in collaboration and combined tools.

Autosomal Projects

Autosomal projects, typically referred to as “private family projects” do exist, but you can’t see them when you search by surname because they don’t show up in searches, according to the Family Tree DNA policy.

I hope this policy changes in the near future, allowing the option of searching for autosomal-only projects. Admittedly, autosomal projects are challenging without any results to “show” in a display.

Therefore, in an autosomal project today, in order to group people, you must allow either the Y or mtDNA to “show” because members can’t be grouped otherwise, and even then, they must be grouped on two independent pages – Y and mitochondrial.

The current project structure does not support creating an autosomal group, perhaps by ancestor, and allowing project members’ ancestor from the Estes line to show, for example, given that it’s not the direct Y or mitochondrial DNA line.

For that reason, autosomal projects are private, but I would like for the administrator to be able to select public or private for autosomal projects and to have a separate autosomal tab in the administrator’s toolbox where all members can be grouped according to autosomal lines, independent of and in addition to Y or mitochondrial DNA if relevant.

This would also allow the creation of “ancestor projects,” meaning everyone descended from Robert Eastye (that becomes Eastes and Estes) born 1555 in Deal or Ringwould, Kent, England. Thinking ahead, we could then proceed to recreate his autosomal DNA from project members, just like we recreated Abraham Estes’s Y STR haplotype.

Here’s an example of how autosomal results could be grouped, without showing any additional results information, in projects. I’ll be submitting this as a request to Family Tree DNA!

This autosomal grouping challenge is present as well for Y DNA surname projects that allow autosomal joiners.

Some Grouping Don’ts, With a Dash of Humor

One of the things I do roughly yearly is to peruse the public projects to see if any of my ancestral lines are represented or their haplogroup has been expanded. I recently finished this activity once again, so, here are a few of the frustrations I encountered that are entirely avoidable.

Please Don’t Make Projects Private

There is nothing more discouraging than seeing this:

Projects are a wonderful way to recruit new members and if the project is private, you’ve disabled your best recruiting tool.

I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy about this project, and that’s no joke. The first thing this project administrator did was to hang a big “Go Away” sign out for me to see. Ok, I’m going! No need to ask twice!

Individuals select for their results to “show” or “not show” publicly in projects. You don’t have to do this for them. Really.

So please, be inclusive and roll out the red carpet!

Please Don’t Group Surname Projects by Haplogroup Only

Please don’t group surname projects by haplogroup, at least not if you have any other choice. Let’s call this the last choice or desperation grouping methodology.

Remember, the most common reason people are looking at the project is to be able to find their ancestors, or ancestral group, which may be predicated on location. No one, but no one, already knows the surname haplogroup or they wouldn’t be searching for their ancestors in this way.

Family Tree DNA automatically groups by marker/color within subgroup, but if you’re trying to see if your ancestor or line is represented in a project, it’s almost impossible to find using the “group by haplogroup” methodology – especially with small subgroups. Y haplogroups can vary in their naming, depending on how deeply people have tested. For example, haplogroup R has thousands of branches. Some administrators group at the highest haplogroup level, and some group by the smallest branch level, which separate groups of men in the same family line – because not everyone has tested to the same level.

Of course, if you really don’t know how these men connect, or don’t have any idea about who descends from which ancestor, haplogrouping at the base haplogroup level (like R or J) may be the best you can do. Family Tree DNA will attempt to automatically group within your haplogroup subgroups.

If this is the case, you might want to attempt to recruit a genealogist with some specialty in this surname as a co-administrator. Hey, maybe someone from within that surname project!

Please Don’t Group by Number of Markers Tested

OMG, please no. Just no.

Grouping by number of markers tested makes it impossible to find line marker mutations that should be grouped together. For example, the men with a value of 13 at marker DYS439, above, should be displayed together because that is likely a line marker mutation – signifying descent from a specific descendant line of Charles Dodson in the red rows. However, since participant results are grouped by the number of markers tested, these men are displayed in different groups.

To figure out which ancestral line that value of 13 descends from, you need a subscription to the Physic Friends Network.

Please, PLEASE, Don’t Show Only Surnames and not “Paternal Ancestor Name”

How on earth would I ever know if my Luttrell or Littrell line is represented here. And why would an administrator choose to NOT INCLUDE the Paternal Ancestor Column?

This one makes me just want to pull my hair out. Yes, seriously! Going bald.

Please, Name the Line

Give the lineage a name or description, not just “Lineage 1.” It helps researchers determine if THAT John Jones is THEIR John Jones and it helps a lot to know who John Jones married, and when, if you know.

For example, for Lineage 1, put as much information as you can discover, or at least enough to unquestionably identify the line. For example, “John Doe born 1612 Sussex, England died 1683 Tukesbury, MA m Jane Smith.”

This helps identify specific lines. This is not Wheel of Fortune for ancestors. Don’t make me guess, because I may guess incorrectly – and there is no need for that when the information is (could be, might be, please let it be) readily available.

Another hint is to use color effectively. Perhaps lines that have different known progenitors but still match genetically having the same surname, meaning the earliest common ancestor has not yet been identified, could be the same color.

Think this through ahead of time and come up with a naming and color scheme that works well for your project circumstances and goals.

Sometimes after you’ve worked with a project for some time, you realize that perhaps things could be organized better. Been there, done that – no t-shirt. Just re-do it.

Or Worse Yet…

No surname AND no ancestor AND the lines aren’t named. Yes, really. This project might as well be called “why bother” or “shoot me now.”

You can’t even tell which surname this project might be, let alone identify an ancestral line.

You know that old saying about serving as a bad example? Well, this is it!

A Good Example

And because I don’t want to leave on a negative note – a really good example of a surname project.

You can tell that this administrator has spent a significant amount of time working on this project – and also encouraging members to enter their most distant ancestor information which is extremely useful.

Now this project looks inviting and welcoming. And no, in case you were wondering, I do not administer this project, but since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’m going to review my own surname projects with this one in mind.

Great job Hill project administrator(s).

Resources

Maurice Gleeson has produced two wonderful YouTube videos about project administration and in particular, member grouping.

How to Group your Project Members using MPRs (by the way, an MPR is a “marker of potential relatedness,” according to Maurice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9JcvbFcgUI

How Y-DNA can help your One Name Study

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOx971zy6LI&t=3s

In addition, Family Tree DNA just updated the Quick Start Guide for administrators which walks you through setting up a project. https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/project-administration/quick-start-guide/.

Now, enjoy Maurice’s videos and create the most friendly welcome mat possible.

______________________________________________________________

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World Families Network, Ysearch and Mitosearch Bite the Dust – Thanks So Much GDPR

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Roberta Estes

It’s a sad month.

The core foundation of genetic genealogy is sharing.

GDPR is NOT about sharing easily, and the GDPR hoops are onerous, to be charitable. I wrote about GDPR in the articles GDPR – It’s a Train and It’s a Comin’ and Common Sense and GDPR.

One might say GDPR is at cross purposes with genealogy. It probably wasn’t intended that way, but so far, we’ve lost several resources due to GDPR, and it’s still not here yet.

Add to the death list World Families Network, Ysearch and Mitosearch.

The cost of GDPR compliance, necessary attorney fees along with with the risk of the horrific fines of up to 4 million Euro is just too much for a small business or a non-profit. Additionally, non-EU businesses are required to retain a European Representative company that agrees to absorb some level of the risk for non-compliance. Try finding a company to do that. Not to mention the pain-in-the-butt-factor of the hoops that they would have to jump through if so much as one person complained. Bottom line – not worth it.

Thanks so much GDPR.

World Families Network

Terry Barton, founder of World Families Network, a Y DNA project management company that consists primarily of Terry and his wife, sent an e-mail to the administrators of the projects they host saying that WFN is retiring and shutting down on May 23rd, two days before the GDPR date.

Here’s part of the e-mail to WFN administrators from Terry:

We will delete the project sections of the WorldFamilies site on May 23, 2018, so please copy any information that you wish to save. You may wish to make a copy of your Home, Results, Patriarch, Discussion or other project pages. We can provide an empty excel spread sheet with columns preset to copy/paste your results page on request. For the other pages, you may want to copy/paste your info into a Word document. (Note: we won’t be able to “rescue” you if you miss the deadline, so please don’t wait too long.)

The projects hosted at World Families Network (WFN) will revert to their project pages at Family Tree DNA, so all is not lost, BUT, the information on the Patriarch’s pages as well as some of the information on the actual DNA results pages at WFN does not come directly from Family Tree DNA. Some WFN sites are not fed from the Family Tree DNA project pages at all, so fields like “Earliest Ancestor” at WFN may be blank at Family Tree DNA. That, of course, can be remedied, but won’t happen automatically.

Many of the projects managed by WFN were abandoned, meaning they have no administrator. Some have administrators that preferred the WFN format to the Family Tree DNA format. One of the most popular features was the Patriarchs page where lineages of men with the project surname were listed. This feature was put in place before trees were available at Family Tree DNA – but the Patriarchs format serves as a one-glance resource and can be connected to the kit numbers on the DNA pages.

Please, please, please do two things:

Visit the WFN surname links here for projects and scan the projects shown with “project site,” meaning they are WFN hosted, to see if any include your ancestral surnames. If SO, visit that WFN project site by clicking the link and record any information relevant to your family.

Consider adopting projects relevant to your surname. Most of these projects will need to be spruced up at Family Tree DNA, meaning they will need to be grouped and the Patriarch’s page will need to be copied onto one of the several available project pages at Family Tree DNA. Many of these projects are small and you can easily preserve information. Terry provides a list of orphaned projects here, but I don’t know if it’s current. I would reach out to Family Tree DNA at groups@familytreedna.com about any project listed as having a project site at WFN. Some projects have an administrator listed, but they are no longer active.

For project administrators considering a private website, be aware per the GDPR requirements that you will constantly have to monitor the privacy settings at Family Tree DNA and assure that you are not displaying information for anyone who has selected, or changed their project setting from public to “project only.” Family Tree DNA automatically removes the project members data from a public display when they change settings or leave projects.

Ysearch and Mitosearch

On May 10^th, on their Forum, a Family Tree DNA representative announced that Ysearch and Mitosearch will be shut down by month end. These databases were established in 2003 by Family Tree DNA for free, open sharing.

While this announcement doesn’t state that it’s because of GDPR, that correlation probably isn’t coincidence.

These two data bases have been on life support for some time now. They have been less immediately useful since other testing companies stopped Y and mitochondrial DNA testing, meaning that you could see all of your new matches at Family Tree DNA.

One of their biggest benefits, even for Family Tree DNA customers, was that these were the two databases where everyone could compare actual marker values, not just see if they matched and genetic distance.

Unfortunately, Ysearch and Mitosearch were the only locations left for people who uploaded from those now-defunct databases. Of the 219,410 records in the Ysearch database, 25,521 are from sources other than Family Tree DNA.

Originally, there were four public databases. The other two have been gone for some time, with these being the last two resources to go. This is truly a tragedy for the genetic genealogy community, because unlike the WFN departure where the projects are still available at Family Tree DNA – there is no alternative resource to Ysearch and Mitosearch. Gone is gone – especially for the 25,000+ results archived there from companies that are also gone meaning Relative Genetics, Oxford Ancestors, Ancestry’s now defunct Y DNA, Sorenson and others.

Recently, Family Tree DNA fixed the captcha issue, but the sites are still not fully functional. I tried to retrieve information by searching by surname at Ysearch, and the search failed with an error. I don’t know if the problem now is the actual data base or the fact that the site is overwhelmed by people trying to do exactly what I was trying to do.

As someone in the Family Tree DNA forum thread said:
“GDPR: The gift from Europe that just keeps on giving.”

Thank You

As sad as I am to see both of these resources go, I want to publicly thank Terry and Marilyn Barton for their 14 years of service to the genetic genealogy community and wish them well in their retirement. Hopefully they will have time to solve their own genealogy mysteries now.

I also want to thank Family Tree DNA for establishing both Ysearch and Mitosearch, and maintaining these sites as long as they have. Few companies would have established a platform for their customers to compare results with their competitors’ products which speaks to their early and ongoing commitment to genealogy.

______________________________________________________________

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2018 Resolution – Unveiling Hidden Evidence

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Roberta Estes

I spent New Year’s Eve, doing what I’ve done for years on New Year’s Eve – celebrating by researching. In fact, it was at the stroke of midnight in 2005 that I ordered kit number 50,000 from Family Tree DNA. Yes, I’m just that geeky and yes, I had to purchase several kits in a row to get number 50,000.

That kit went on to help immensely, as I used it to test an elderly cousin of my great-grandmother’s generation who took both the Y DNA test, and then, eventually, autosomal.

This year I made a wonderful discovery to mark the new year. But first, let’s see how I did with last year’s resolution.

Last Year’s Resolution

Last year, I made 1 resolution. Just one – to complete another year’s worth of 52 Ancestor stories.

Now, that didn’t mean I had to do 52 in total. It meant I had to be committed to this project throughout the year. You know, unlike cleaning out that closet…or losing weight…or exercising more. Commitments that are abandoned almost as soon as they are made.

So, how did I do?

I published 37 stories. I shudder to think how many words or even pages that was. I’m ashamed to say that I plucked much of the “low hanging fruit” early on, so these were tough ancestors for an entire variety of reasons.

That’s not one article each week, but at least I’m making steady progress. And I must say that I couldn’t do it without a raft of helpers – all of whom I’m exceedingly grateful to. Friends, professionals, cousins, DNA testers, blog subscribers and commenters – an unbelievable array of very kind souls who are willing to give of their time and share their results. Thank you each and every one!

Now, I’m thrilled to tell you that Amy Johnson Crow has revitalized the 52 Ancestor’s project. It’s free and you can sign up here. There’s no obligation, but Amy provides suggestions and a “gathering place” of sorts. Think of her as your genealogy cheerleader or coach. It’s so much easier with friends and teammates! I miss reading other people’s stories, but I won’t have to miss that much longer!

Randy Seaver (of Genea-Musings) and I will have company once again. He’s the only other person that I’m aware of that has continued the 52 Ancestors project – and he has put me way to shame. I do believe he published number 286 this week. I keep hoping that some of his ancestors and some of mine are the same so I can piggyback on Randy’s research! I need an index! Randy, are you listening?

You might wonder why I enjoy this self-imposed deadline ancestor-writing so much.

It’s really quite simple. It’s an incredible way to organize and sort through all of your accumulated research “stuff.” I cherish the end product – documenting my ancestors lives with dates, compassion and history. BUT, I absolutely hate parts of the research process – and the deadline (of sorts) gets me through those knotholes.

I absolutely love the DNA, and I really, REALLY like the feeling of breaking through brick walls. It’s like I’m vindicating my ancestors and saving them from the eternal cutting room floor. DNA is an incredible tool to do just that and there are very few ancestors that I can’t learn something from their DNA, one way or another – Y, mtDNA, autosomal and sometimes, all three. And yes, DNA is in every one of my articles, one way or another. I want everyone to learn how to utilize DNA in the stories of their ancestor’s lives. In many cases the DNA of theirs that we (and our cousins) carry is the only tangible thing left of them. We are wakling historical museums of our ancestral lines!

How Did You Do?

Not to bring up an awkward subject, but if you recall, I asked you if you had any genealogy resolutions for 2017? How did you do?

Congratulations if you succeeded or made progress.

It’s OK if you didn’t quite make it. Don’t sweat last year. It’s over and 2018 is a brand spanking new year.

New Year Equals New Opportunities

2018 is stacking up to be a wonderful year. There are already new matches arriving daily due to the Black Friday sales and that’s only going to get better in the next month or two. Of course, that’s something wonderful to look forward to in the dead of winter. We’ll just call this my own personal form of hibernating. Could I really get away with not leaving my house for an entire month? Hmmm….

I want to give you three ideas for having some quick wins that will help you feel really great about your genealogy this year.

Idea 1 – Finding Hidden Mitochondrial DNA

This happened to me just last night and distracted me so badly that I actually was late to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Yes, seriously. One of my friends told me this is the best excuse ever!

I was working on making a combined tree for the descendants of an ancestor who have tested and I suddenly noticed that one of the female autosomal matches descended from the female of the ancestral couple through all females – which means my match carries my ancestor’s mitochondrial DNA!

Woohooooooo – it’s a wonderful day.

Better yet, my match tested at Family Tree DNA AND had already taken the mitochondrial DNA test.

Within about 60 seconds of noticing her pattern of descent, I had the haplogroup of our common ancestor. That’s the BEST New Year’s gift EVER. I couldn’t sleep last night.

So, know what I did instead of sleeping? I bet you can guess!

Yes indeed, I started searching through my matches at Family Tree DNA for other people descended from female ancestors whose mtDNA I don’t have!

So, my first challenge to you is to do the same.

Utilizing Family Finder, enter the surname you’re searching for into the search box in the upper right hand corner of your matches page.

That search will produce individuals who have that surname included in their list of ancestral surnames or who carry that surname themselves.

Your tree feeds the ancestral surname list with all of the surnames in your tree. I understand this will be changing in the future to reflect only your direct line ancestral surnames.

Some people include locations with their surnames – so you may recognize your line that way. Click on your match’s surname list (at far right) to show their entire list of surnames in a popup box. Some lists are very long. I selected the example below because it’s short.

Your common surnames are bolded and float to the top. The name you are searching for will be blue, so it’s easy to see, especially in long lists of surnames.

About half of my matches at Family Tree DNA have trees. Click on the pedigree icon and then search for your surname of interest in your match’s tree.

Hey, there’s our common ancestral couple – William George Estes and Ollie Bolton!!!

Idea 2 – Finding Hidden Y DNA

Now that I’ve shown you how to find hidden mitochondrial DNA, finding hidden Y DNA is easy. Right?

You know what to do.

I this case, you’ll be looking for a male candidate who carries the surname of the line you are seeking, which is very easy to spot on the match list.

Now, word of warning.

As bizarre as this sounds, not all men who carry that surname and match autosomally are from the same genetic surname line.

As I was working with building a community tree for my matches last night, I was excited to see that one of my cousins (whose kit I manage) matches a man with the Herrell surname.

I quickly clicked on the match’s tree to see which Herrell male the match descends from, only to discover that he didn’t descend from my Herrell line.

Whoa – you’re saying – hold on, because maybe my line is misidentified. And I’d agree with you – except in this case, I have the Y DNA signature of both lines – because at one time I thought they were one and the same. You can view the Herrell Y DNA project here. My family line is Harrold Line 7.

Sure enough, through the Family Finder match, I checked my Harrell match’s profile and his haplogroup is NOT the same as my Herrell haplogroup (I-P37.)

I could have easily been led astray by the same surname. I really don’t need to know any more about his Y DNA at this point, because the completely different haplogroup is enough to rule out a common paternal line.

Don’t let yourself get so excited that you forget to be a skeptical genealogist😊

My second challenge to you is to hunt for hidden Y DNA.

You can increase your chances of finding your particular lineage by visiting the relevant Y DNA projects for your surname.

Click on Projects, then “Join a project,” then search for the DNA project that you’re interested in viewing and click on that link.

Within the project, look for oldest ancestors that are your ancestors, or potentially from a common location. It’s someplace to start.

You can read more about how to construct a DNA pedigree chart in the article, “The DNA Pedigree Chart – Mining for Ancestors.”

Idea 3 – Pick A Puzzle Piece

Sometimes we get overwhelmed with the magnitude and size of the genealogy puzzle we’d like to solve. Then, we don’t solve anything.

This is exactly WHY I like the 52 Ancestor stories. They make me focus on JUST ONE ancestor at a time.

So, for 2018, pick one genealogy puzzle you’d really like to solve. One person or one thing. Not an entire line.

Write down your goal.

“I’d like to figure out whether John Doe was the son of William Doe or his son, Alexander Doe.”

Now admittedly, this is a tough one, because right off the bat, Y DNA isn’t going to help you unless you’re incredibly lucky and there is a mutation between Alexander Doe and his father, William. If indeed that was the case, and you can prove it by the DNA of two of Alexander’s sons who carry the mutation, compared to the DNA of one of William’s other sons who does not, then you may be cooking with gas, presuming you can find a male Doe descended from John to test as well.

This is the type of thought process you’ll need to step through when considering all of the various options for how to prove, or disprove, a particular theory.

Make a list of the different kinds of evidence, both paper trail and genetic, that you could use to shed light on the problem. Your answer may not come from one piece of evidence alone, but a combination of several.

Evidence	Available/Source	Result
William’s will	No, burned courthouse	Verified
Alexander’s will	No, burned courthouse	Verified
Deeds with William as conveyor	No, burned courthouse	Verified
Family Bible	Nope, no Bible
Deeds with Alexander as conveyor, naming John	Possible, some deed books escaped fire	Check through county, Family search does not list
Deeds with John as conveyor	Yes, check to see if they indicate the source of John’s land	John is listed in index, need to obtain original deeds from county
Y DNA of John’s line	Yes, has been tested	Matches DNA of William’s line as proven through William’s two brothers
Y DNA of Alexander	Not tested (to the best of my knowledge), find descendant to see if they will test	Search vendor DNA testing sites for male with this surname to see if they have/will Y DNA test
Closeness (in total cM and longest segment) of individuals autosomal matching through any of William’s descendants	Mine both Ancestry and FTDNA for surname and ancestor matches	This step may produce compelling or suggestive evidence, and it may not. Make a McGuire chart of results.
Does John match any relatives of the wife of Alexander Doe?	Search FTDNA and Ancestry for matches. Triangulate to determine if match is valid and through that line.	This is one of the best approaches to solve this type of problem when paper records aren’t available. Fingers crossed that Alexander and his wife and not related.

You can add pieces of evidence to your list as you think of them.

Making a list gives you something to work towards.

Your Turn!

Select one thing that you’d like to accomplish and either set about to do it, like mining for mitochondrial or Y DNA evidence, or put together a plan to gather evidence, both traditional and genetic.

In the comments, share what it is you’ll be searching for or working on. You just never know if another subscriber may hold the answer you seek.

I can’t wait to hear what you’ll be doing this year!

Have a wonderful and productive New Year searching for those hidden ancestors!

______________________________________________________________

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Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project

Posted on September 12, 2017 by Roberta Estes

The Acadians – settlers, pioneers in a new land allied with and intermarried into the Native population of seaboard Nova Scotia beginning in 1603. They lived in harmony, developing their farms and then, roughly 150 years or 6 generations later, in 1755, they found themselves evicted, ruthlessly and forcibly deported, losing absolutely everything. They became landless refugees, living off of the benevolence of strangers…or dying. The Acadian diaspora was born. You can view a timeline here.

Marie Rundquist, Acadian and Native descendant, genetic genealogist, researcher and founder of the original AmerIndian project visited the Acadian homeland this past summer and is graciously sharing her experience through some of her photography and narrative.

Courtesy Marie Rundquist

Marie Rundquist:

This cross, located on the beach near Grand Pre where the Acadians were herded onto ships, is a priceless icon of our Acadian ancestry and represents all of our ancestors who were forcibly removed from their lands – marched on to the awaiting boats at gunpoint – and who left their footprints on this beach. Their last footprints in the land into which their effort and blood had been poured for 150 years. This cross is very symbolic and meaningful to all who look at it.

Courtesy Marie Rundquist

This photo was taken at Waterfront Park in the town of Wolfville which borders the Minas Basin and the historic Acadian dykelands our ancestors once farmed. The area is known for the spectacular tides that rush into the basin bordering the park, totally changing its landscape.

Courtesy Marie Rundquist

Sabots, the wooden shoes pictured above were worn by Acadian ancestors who farmed the wet, marshy dykelands and were also worn on boats. Wolfville is within a short distance of the Grand Pre UNESCO Historic Site where my husband and I stayed while attending the 2017 Acadian Mi’kmaq Celebration of Peace and Reconciliation this past August.

If you have Acadian ancestors, these pictures probably caused you to catch your breath. Your ancestors walked here, stood here and the blood in their veins ran thick with fear, here, as they boarded the ships that would disrupt their lives forever, destroying what they had built over a century and a half.

Focus on the Homeland

Marie has recently begun a new chapter in her life which allows her to focus more directly on the Acadian and AmerIndian homelands and communities. She has been preparing for this transition for years, and all Acadian and AmerIndian researchers will be beneficiaries.

Marie initially founded the AmerIndian out of Acadia project in 2006 to sort out the relationships between the various Acadian and Native families both in Nova Scotia, and wherever their descendants have dispersed since “Le Grand Derangement,” their forced removal in 1755. The story of the Acadians didn’t end in 1755, it began anew in different locations throughout the world, the Acadian diaspora.

Through traditional genealogy research paired with genetic genealogy, we are breathing life into those ancestors once again, honoring their memory and sacrifices, and along the way, getting to know them better and finding unexpected surprises as well.

This is an exciting time in genetic genealogy for descendants of Acadians and those with American Indian roots in eastern Canada and the northeastern portion of the US.

The Acadian homeland is located in the easternmost portion of Canada, Nova Scotia.

By Mikmaq – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1351882

Many, if not most, Acadians were admixed with the Native population in the 150 years that the French colonists lived in harmony with the Native Mi’kmaq (also referenced as Micmac) people on the Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia. It’s impossible to study one without studying the other. Their fates, genealogies and DNA are inextricably interwoven.

Having Acadian and Native ancestors as well, and after several years of working together on other projects, I joined Marie as a co-administrator of this project in early 2017.

Today, Marie and I have several exciting announcements to make, the first of which is the renaming of the project to more accurately reflect a new, expanded, focus.

The Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project

You might have noticed that the AmerIndian project was renamed a few months ago as the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project to reflect our expanded goals. Specifically, our goal is to create a one-stop location in which to discover Acadian genetic roots. While the Acadia – Metis Mothers and Mothers of Acadian DNA projects have existed for several years to document proven matrilineal Acadian lines, nothing of the same nature existed for Y DNA for paternal surname lineages, or for those who want to connect with their Acadian roots through autosomal DNA.

After weighing various options, Marie and I, in conjunction with Family Tree DNA, decided that the best option was to expand the existing AmerIndian project to include Y, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA of the entire Acadian population into our existing project which already has over 1000 members.

In a word, our new project focus is FAMILY!

In Marie’s words:

Primary project goal: Through genetic genealogy research techniques combined with advanced Y DNA testing, it is our goal to add to and develop Y DNA signatures for male descendants of our legacy Acadian ancestors that may be referenced by others in verifying genealogies.

We want to assure that in our surname studies we are informed by Y DNA results primarily but take into account the mtDNA Full Mitochondrial Sequence results when considering the spouse, and Family Finder (autosomal) DNA results when researching all who may share ancestry.

Surname variants and dit names are of particular interest and factor into our development of a database of surname signatures as related to Acadian genealogies.

We encourage all who have tested and have the surname lineages listed in our project profile to join our project as their combined DNA results help us see through the genealogy brick walls and help us find answers to our genealogy questions.

We want to let new and existing members know how their results have contributed to our ability to develop and verify Acadian genealogies – and for the men in particular, the attainment of Y DNA “signatures” for surname lineages against which all may compare their own Y DNA results – and reference in genealogy research. Adoptees with matching Y DNA results for Acadian surnames (as we already have a number of these) are welcome to join and participate. Our team is expert in the areas of Y DNA testing and analysis, including the latest Big Y DNA tests only through years of practical experience with geographical and haplogroup-related DNA projects. Both Marie and Roberta have extensive project administration experience and both are affiliate researchers with The Genographic Project.

Introducing Deadre Doucet Bourke

Marie and I realized that we needed assistance, so we are very pleased to welcome our new co-administrator, Deadre Doucet Bourke. Many Acadian researchers already know Deadre, a long-time genealogist and contributor from within the project, so adding her expertise as a project administrator is a natural progression. Deadre will be focused on communicating with people regarding their genealogy and utilizing social media.

You can read the bios of our administrators here.

Welcome Deadre!!!

The DNA Focus

The Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project is primarily focused on Y DNA and autosomal DNA. While we aren’t competing with the two mitochondrial DNA projects, we certainly welcome those with direct mitochondrial lineages to join this project as well. We encourage researchers to combine all of the DNA that makes us family to confirm our Acadian heritage and connect to our ancestors.

Acadian researchers struggle with the inability to find their Acadian ancestor’s Y DNA signatures gathered together in one place. Marie and I decided to fix that problem, hence, the redesign of the project.

The Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project welcomes everyone with Acadian heritage!

If you descend from a particular line, but aren’t male or don’t carry the surname today, you’ll be able to discover information about your ancestors from the Y DNA, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA carried by other project members. Genetic genealogy is all about collaboration and sharing and finding all types of results in one project location makes that search much easier!

Who Should Join the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project?

If you have an ACADIAN SURNAME in your family lines, as listed in the project profile or on the surname list later in this article, and you’ve had the Y DNA, mtDNA or Family Finder test, you are qualified to join this project.
If you are a MALE with an ACADIAN SURNAME, please join the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project by ordering (minimally) a Y Chromosome 37 marker test.
If you are either male or female and have Acadian MATRILINEAL ANCESTRY (your mother’s mother’s mother’s line) that leads to a Native and/or an Acadian grandmother through all females, please join the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project by ordering the mtFull Sequence mitochondrial DNA test.
If you have Acadian or Native American ancestors from the Acadian region of Canada or diaspora regions where Acadian families settled after the 1755 deportation, and would like to discover new leads for ancestry research and close, immediate and distant cousins, please join the project by ordering a Family Finder test.
If you have Acadian ancestry and have already taken the Y or mitochondrial DNA test at Family Tree DNA, please click here to sign in to your account and order a Family Finder test by clicking on the “Upgrade” button on the top right of your personal page.
If you have already tested and have Y DNA, mtDNA, or Family Finder matches with members of the Acadian Amerindian Ancestry project and are researching your ancestry, you are welcome to join this project.
If you have already tested your DNA at Family Tree DNA, but are not yet a project member, please click on the Project tab at the top left of your personal page to select a project to join. If the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestors project is not showing on your list, just type “Acadian” into the search box and click on the “Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry” link to join the project.
If you have tested your autosomal DNA at either Ancestry or 23andMe, but not at Family Tree DNA, you can download your autosomal results into the Family Tree DNA data base and use many tools for free – including the ability to join projects. You can read more about this here.

Not sure which kinds of DNA you can test for, and the difference between the different tests, please read 4 Kinds of DNA for Genetic Genealogy.

Questions? Just ask!

Saving Money by Joining the Acadian AmerIndian Project

Please note that DNA testing discounts are available through our project site for people who have never ordered a test from Family Tree DNA previously.

First, click here to go to the Family Tree DNA webpage. Scroll down, then, type the word Acadian into the search box, as shown below. This search process works for surnames as well.

Then, when the results are returned, select the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project and click that link, shown below, to see DNA testing prices available to project members, example shown below.

You’ll need to scroll down to see test prices. The screen shot below only shows a portion of what is available.

DNA testing prices through the project are less than ordering the same test without joining a project.

As A Project Member

Of course, the point of DNA testing and projects is to share. Family Tree DNA has provided several tools to help genealogists do just that. We would ask that project members complete the following four easy steps, unless for some reason, you can’t. For example, adoptees may not have this information. Just do the best you can.

First, please upload a tree of at least your direct line ancestors at Family Tree DNA.

Just sign in to your personal page and click on “My Family Tree” to get started.

DNA and family trees are extremely powerful tools together – the genetic and genealogy parts of genetic genealogy.

Second, please complete the name and location of your earliest known direct matrilineal ancestor (your mother’s mother’s mother’s line) and your direct patrilineal line (your father’s father’s father’s line) by clicking on the orange “Manage Personal Information” link below your profile photo on the left side of your personal page.

Then, click on the Genealogy Tab, and then click on Earliest Known Ancestors. Please note that you can click on any image to enlarge.

You’ll need to complete:

Both Earliest Known Ancestor fields on the left side of the page.
Both Ancestral Locations by clicking on the orange “update location” for the patrilineal AND matrilineal ancestor on the right side.

Be sure to click “Save” at the bottom of the page when you’re finished.

Third, under the Privacy and Sharing tab, please consider allowing your Y and mitochondrial DNA results to show on the public page of the project.

When Acadian descendants are searching for projects to join, or information about their ancestral lines, the public project display is often what they find and how they decide if participation or DNA testing is worth their time.

Here is what our public Y DNA project page displays and here is what our mtDNA project page displays. There is also an option for administrators to display the participants surname, but we do not have this field enabled at this time. Other projects that you may have joined probably do have this field enabled, and your selection affects all projects of which you are a member.

Under “My Profile,” you’ll see an option to “Share my Earliest Known Ancestor with other people in the projects I’ve joined.” If you don’t have this option enabled, only a blank space will appear, which doesn’t help anyone determine if you share a common ancestor.

A second option on this page under “My DNA Results is “Make my mtDNA and Y DNA public” which allows your results to show on the public project page. If you select “project only” then only project members will be able to see your results when logged in to their account. Your results will no show on the public project page unless you select the public option.

Remember to click “save.”

Fourth, if your mitochondrial line (mother’s mother’s mother’s line) is Acadian or Native, you’ll need to provide the project administrators with the ability to see the coding region of your mitochondrial DNA so that your mitochondrial DNA can be properly grouped within the project. If your direct matrilineal line does NOT pertain to Acadian or Native ancestry, then you’re done.

If your matrilineal line is Native or Acadian, on the Privacy and Sharing page, under “Account Access,” please click on the “Only You” answer to “Who can view my mtDNA Coding Region mutations.”

You will then see a drop down list of the projects you have joined. You can select any of the projects by clicking the box beside the project. Only the administrators of the projects you’ve selected can see your coding region results, and you can change this at any time. In my personal account, I’ve selected all of the projects that my mtDNA is relevant to.

Your coding region results are NEVER displayed publicly and no one other than project administrators can see those results. Family Tree DNA does not offer the option of displaying coding regions in any project.

Again, don’t forget to click “save,” or you haven’t.

Need Help?

Need help? Just ask. We’re here to help.

Project administrators can help you by completing some fields, like most distant ancestor, with your permission, but Privacy and Sharing fields can’t be changed or edited by administrators for everyone’s security. However, we’d be glad to step you through the process, as would Family Tree DNA customer support. You can call or contact customer support by scrolling down to the very bottom of your personal page.

Acadian Surnames

Courtesy Marie Rundquist

I compiled the following list of Acadian surnames along with dit names (surname nicknames) from the following Acadian website where you can view which ancestral families were recorded in various census documents including 1671, 1686, 1714 and a deportation list from 1755.

True Acadian Period: 1604-1755 Surnames

Brenda Dunn’s list was prepared for the Canadian National Parks Service for the Grand Pre National Historic site.

Variant spellings were retrieved from this site and may not be inclusive.

Surname	Various Spellings	Source
Abbadie, de Saint-Castin d’		Brenda Dunn
Allain	Alain, Alin, Allain, Halain, Halin	Brenda Dunn
Allard	Alard, Allard, Allart, Halard, Hallard	Acadian-Cajun.com
Amirault dit Tourangeau	Amireau, Amireault, Mero, Miraud, Mirau, Miraux, Mireau, Mireault, Moreau	Brenda Dunn
Angou dit Choisy		Brenda Dunn
Apart		Brenda Dunn
Arcement		Brenda Dunn
Arnaud	Arnaud, Arnault	Brenda Dunn
Arosteguy		Brenda Dunn
Arseneau		Brenda Dunn
Aubin	Aubain, Aubin, Obin	Acadian-Cajun.com
Aubois		Brenda Dunn
Aucoin	Aucoin, Coin, Ocoin	Brenda Dunn
Ayor		Brenda Dunn
Babin	Babain, Babin	Brenda Dunn
Babineau dit Deslauriers	Babinau, Babineau, Babineaux, Babino, Babinot	Brenda Dunn
Barillot		Brenda Dunn
Barnabe		Acadian-Cajun.com
Barriault	Bariau, Bariault, Barieau, Barillault, Barrillaut, Barillon, Barillot, Bario, Barrio	Acadian-Cajun.com
Bastarache dit (Le) Basque		Brenda Dunn
Bastien	Baptien, Basquien, Bastien, Vasquais	Brenda Dunn
Beaulieu	Baulieu, Baulieux, Beaulieu, Beaulieux	Acadian-Cajun.com
Beaumont	Beaumon, Beaumont	Acadian-Cajun.com
Belisle	Belisle, Bellisle, de Bellisle	Acadian-Cajun.com
Bellefontaine	Bellefontaine, Bellefontenne	Acadian-Cajun.com
Belleville	Beliveau	Brenda Dunn
Belliveau dit Bideau	Beliveau	Brenda Dunn
Belliveau dit Blondin		Brenda Dunn
Belou		Brenda Dunn
Benoit dit Labriere	Benois, Benoist, Benoit	Brenda Dunn
Bergereau		Brenda Dunn
Bergeron d’Amboise		Brenda Dunn
Bergeron dit Nantes	Bargeron, Bergeon, Bergeron, Berjeron	Brenda Dunn
Bernard	Bernar, Bernard	Brenda Dunn
Berrier dit Machefer		Brenda Dunn
Bertaud dit Montaury		Brenda Dunn
Bertrand	Bartrand, Berterand, Bertran, Bertrand, Bertrant	Brenda Dunn
Bezier dit Lariviere		Brenda Dunn
Bezier dit Touin		Brenda Dunn
Bideau		Acadian-Cajun.com
Blanchard dit Gentilhomme	Blanchar, Blanchard, Blanchart	Brenda Dunn
Blondin	Blondain, Blondin	Acadian-Cajun.com
Blou		Acadian-Cajun.com
Bodard		Brenda Dunn
Boisseau dit Blondin	Boissau, Boisseau, Boisseaux	Brenda Dunn
Bonnevie dit Beaumont		Brenda Dunn
Borel		Brenda Dunn
Boucher dit Desroches	Bouché, Boucher, Bouchez	Brenda Dunn
Boudreau	Boudrau, Boudraut, Boudreau, Boudro, Boudrot	Acadian-Cajun.com
Boudrot		Brenda Dunn
Bourg	Bourc, Bourg, Bourgue, Bourk, Bourque	Brenda Dunn
Bourgeois	Bourgeois, Bourgois, Bourjois	Brenda Dunn
Boutin	Boudin, Boutain, Boutin, Bouttain, Bouttin	Brenda Dunn
Brassaud		Brenda Dunn
Brasseur dit Mathieu	Brasseur, Brasseux	Brenda Dunn
Breau		Brenda Dunn
Breton	Berton, Breton, Lebreton	Acadian-Cajun.com
Brossard	Brosard, Brossar, Brossard, Brossart, Broussard	Brenda Dunn
Brun	Brun, Lebrun	Brenda Dunn
Bugaret		Brenda Dunn
Bugeaud		Brenda Dunn
Buisson	Buisson, Busson, Dubuisson	Brenda Dunn
Buote		Brenda Dunn
Buteau	Butau, Butaud, Buteau, Buteux, Buto, Butteau	Brenda Dunn
Cadet	Caddé, Cadet, Cadette	Acadian-Cajun.com
Caissy dit Roger		Brenda Dunn
Calve dit Laforge		Brenda Dunn
Carre	Caray, Caré, Caret, Carr, Carré, Carret	Brenda Dunn
Cassy dit Roger		Brenda Dunn
Celestin dit Bellemere		Brenda Dunn
Cellier dit Normand		Brenda Dunn
Champagne	Champagne, Champaigne	Acadian-Cajun.com
Chauvert		Acadian-Cajun.com
Chauvet	Chauvet, Chauvette, Chovet	Brenda Dunn
Chenet dit Dubreuil	Chenay, Chenet, Chenette, Chesnay	Brenda Dunn
Chesnay dit Lagarene		Brenda Dunn
Chiasson dit La Vallee	Chiasson, Giasson	Brenda Dunn
Chouteau dit Manseau		Brenda Dunn
Clemenceau		Brenda Dunn
Cloustre		Brenda Dunn
Cochu	Cochu, Cochus	Acadian-Cajun.com
Cognac	Cognac, Coignac	Brenda Dunn
Comeau		Brenda Dunn
Cormier dit Bossigaol	Cormié, Cormier, Cornier	Brenda Dunn
Cormier dit Thierry		Brenda Dunn
Cornelier		Brenda Dunn
Corporon		Brenda Dunn
Cosse		Acadian-Cajun.com
Cosset	Cosset, Cossette	Brenda Dunn
Coste		Brenda Dunn
Cottard		Brenda Dunn
Cousineau		Brenda Dunn
Crepeau	Crepau, Crepaux, Crepeau, Crepeaux, Crepos, Crespau, Crespeau, Crespel	Brenda Dunn
Creysac dit Toulouse		Brenda Dunn
Cyr	Cir, Cire, Cyr, Cyre, Sir, Sire, Siree, Syr, Syre	Brenda Dunn
Daigle	Daigle. Daigles, Dehegue	Acadian-Cajun.com
Daigre		Brenda Dunn
Damboue		Acadian-Cajun.com
D’Amours de Chauffours		Brenda Dunn
D’Amours de Clignancour		Brenda Dunn
D’Amours de Freneuse		Brenda Dunn
D’Amours de Louviere		Brenda Dunn
D’Amours de Plaine		Brenda Dunn
Daniel	Daniel, Daniele, Danielle, Deniel	Brenda Dunn
Darois		Brenda Dunn
David dit Pontif	Davi, David, Davit, Davy	Brenda Dunn
Debreuil		Acadian-Cajun.com
Delatour	Delatour, Latour	Acadian-Cajun.com
Delisle	Delile, Delille, Delisle, Delisles,	Brenda Dunn
Denis	Deni, Denis, Dennis, Denys	Brenda Dunn
D’Entremont		Acadian-Cajun.com
Denys de Fronsac		Brenda Dunn
Depeux		Acadian-Cajun.com
Derayer		Brenda Dunn
Desaulniers	Desaulnier, Desaulniers, Desaunié, Desaunier, Desauniers	Acadian-Cajun.com
Deschamps dit Cloche	Dechamp, Dechamps, Dechant, Deschamps	Brenda Dunn
Desgoutins		Brenda Dunn
Desmoulins	Demoulin, Desmoulin, Desmoulins, Dumoulin	Brenda Dunn
Desorcis		Acadian-Cajun.com
Després	Depre, Depres, Despre, Despres, Desprez	Brenda Dunn
Devaux		Acadian-Cajun.com
Deveau dit Dauphine	Devau, Devaux, Deveau, Deveaux, Devot, Devots	Brenda Dunn
Dingle		Brenda Dunn
Doiron	Doiron, Douairon, Doueron	Brenda Dunn
Domine dit Saint-Sauveur		Brenda Dunn
Donat		Acadian-Cajun.com
Douaron		Acadian-Cajun.com
Doucet dit Laverdure	Doucet, Doucette	Brenda Dunn
Doucet dit Lirlandois		Brenda Dunn
Doucet dit Mayard		Brenda Dunn
Druce		Brenda Dunn
Dubois dit Dumont	Debois, Desbois, Dubois, Duboy	Brenda Dunn
Dufault	Dufau, Dufault, Dufaut, Dufaux, Duffault, Duffaut, Duffaux, Dufo, Dufos, Duphaut	Brenda Dunn
Dugas	Duga, Dugas, Dugast, Dugat	Brenda Dunn
Duguay	Dugai, Dugaie, Dugay, Duguay, Dugué	Brenda Dunn
Dumont	Dumon, Dumond, Dumont	Acadian-Cajun.com
Duon dit Lyonnais		Brenda Dunn
Dupeux		Acadian-Cajun.com
Duplessis	Duplaissy, Duplassis, Duplassy, Duplecy, Duplesis, Duplessis, Duplessy, Placy	Brenda Dunn
Dupuis	Dupui, Dupuis, Dupuit, Dupuits, Dupuy, Dupuys	Brenda Dunn
Egan		Brenda Dunn
Emmanuel		Acadian-Cajun.com
Esperance	Lespérance, Lesperence	Acadian-Cajun.com
Fardel		Acadian-Cajun.com
Flan		Brenda Dunn
Fontaine dit Beaulieu	Delafontaine, Fonteine, Lafontaine, Lafonteine, Lafonteinne	Brenda Dunn
Forest	Fores, Forêt, Laforêt, Laforest	Brenda Dunn
Foret	Forest	Acadian-Cajun.com
Forton		Brenda Dunn
Fougere		Brenda Dunn
Fournier	Fournié, Lefournier	Brenda Dunn
Froiquingont		Brenda Dunn
Gadrau		Brenda Dunn
Galerne		Brenda Dunn
Galle		Brenda Dunn
Garceau dit Boutin	Garco, Garso, Garsot	Brenda Dunn
Garceau dit Richard		Brenda Dunn
Garceau dit Tranchemontagne		Brenda Dunn
Gardet	Gardai, Garday, Gardé	Brenda Dunn
Gareau	Garau, Garaud	Brenda Dunn
Gaudet	Gaudais, Gaudé, Gaudette, Godé, Godet, Godete, Godette	Acadian-Cajun.com
Gauterot		Brenda Dunn
Gauthier	Gaultier, Gautier, Gotier	Brenda Dunn
Gentil		Brenda Dunn
Giboire Duverge dit Lamotte		Brenda Dunn
Girouard	Geroir, Gerroir, Giouard, Giroir, Girroir, Jirouard	Brenda Dunn
Gise		Brenda Dunn
Godin Boisjoli		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Beausejour	Gaudain, Gauden, Gaudin, Godain, Goddin, Godin	Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Bellefeuille		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Bellefontaine		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Catalogne		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Chatillon		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Lincour		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Preville		Brenda Dunn
Godin dit Valcour		Brenda Dunn
Godon	Gandon, Gaudon, Godon	Brenda Dunn
Gosselin	Gaucelin, Gauscelin, Gausselin, Goscelin, Gosselain	Brenda Dunn
Goudreau	Gaudrau, Gaudrault, Gaudreau, Gaudreault, Gaudro, Godereau, Godrault, Godreault, Godro, Godrot, Goodrow	Brenda Dunn
Gougeon	Gougeon, Gougon, Goujon, Goujou	Acadian-Cajun.com
Gourdeau		Acadian-Cajun.com
Gousille		Acadian-Cajun.com
Gousman		Brenda Dunn
Gouzille		Brenda Dunn
Grandmaison	Degrandmaison	Brenda Dunn
Granger		Brenda Dunn
Gravois		Brenda Dunn
Grosvalet		Brenda Dunn
Guedry dit Labine		Brenda Dunn
Guedry dit Labrador		Brenda Dunn
Guedry dit Laverdure		Brenda Dunn
Guedry Grivois	Guidry, Guildry	Brenda Dunn
Gueguen		Brenda Dunn
Guenard		Brenda Dunn
Guerin dit LaForge	Guerrin	Brenda Dunn
Guilbault	Guibau, Guibaut, Guibeau, Guibo, Guilbau, Guilbaud, Guilbaux, Guilbeau, Guillebault, Guillbeau, Guilbaut	Acadian-Cajun.com
Guilbeau		Brenda Dunn
Guillot		Brenda Dunn
Guy dit Tintamarre	Degui, Deguy, Gui	Brenda Dunn
Guyon	Dion, Dionne, Gion, Guillon, Guion, Gyon, Yon	Brenda Dunn
Hache dit Gallant		Brenda Dunn
Hamel	Amel, Amell, Emmel, Hamell, Hamelle, Hornel	Brenda Dunn
Hamet		Brenda Dunn
Hamon		Brenda Dunn
Hébert dit Manuel	Abaire, Abare, Abbot, Ebart, Éber, Ébert, Heber, Heberd, Hébere, Herber, Herbert, Hesbert, Hibbart, Hubert	Brenda Dunn
Helys dit Nouvelle		Brenda Dunn
Henry dit Robert	Henri	Brenda Dunn
Hensaule		Brenda Dunn
Heon		Brenda Dunn
Herpin	Arpin, Guertin, Harpin, Hertin	Acadian-Cajun.com
Heuse		Brenda Dunn
Hugon		Brenda Dunn
Jasmin	Jassemin	Acadian-Cajun.com
Jeanson	Jeansonne	Brenda Dunn
Joseph		Brenda Dunn
Kimine		Brenda Dunn
Labarre	Delabarre, Labar, Labard	Brenda Dunn
Labat, dit Le Marguis, de	Labatte	Brenda Dunn
LaBauve		Brenda Dunn
Lachaume	Delachaume	Brenda Dunn
Lacroix	Delacroix	Brenda Dunn
Lafond	Lafon, Lafont	Acadian-Cajun.com
Lafont		Acadian-Cajun.com
Lagasse	Lagace, Lagacee, Lagassee, Lagassees, Lagasset	Acadian-Cajun.com
Lalande dit Bonnappetit	Delalande, Lalande	Brenda Dunn
Laliberte	Laliberte, Liberte	Acadian-Cajun.com
Lambert	Lamber, Lembert	Brenda Dunn
Lambourt		Brenda Dunn
Lamontagne	Delamontagne, Montagne	Acadian-Cajun.com
Landrom		Brenda Dunn
Landry	Landri, Landrie, Landril, Landrille, Lendry	Brenda Dunn
Langlois	Anglais, Anglois, Langlais, Langloi, Langlouois	Brenda Dunn
Lanoue		Brenda Dunn
Lapierre dit LaRoche	Delapierre, Lapeer, Pierre	Brenda Dunn
Latour		Acadian-Cajun.com
Laurier	Lauriere,Lorier	Acadian-Cajun.com
LaVache		Brenda Dunn
Lavallée	Lavale, Lavalee, Vale, Valee, Valle, Vallee	Acadian-Cajun.com
Lavergne	Laverne	Brenda Dunn
Lavigne	Delavigne	Brenda Dunn
Lebasque		Acadian-Cajun.com
Lebert dit Jolycoeur	Abare, Hébert, Labare, LeBear, Leber, Leberre, Libest	Brenda Dunn
Leblanc dit Jasmin	Blanc, Leblan, Lebland, Leblant	Brenda Dunn
LeBorgne dit Belisle		Brenda Dunn
Lebreton	Berton, Beurton	Acadian-Cajun.com
Leclerc dit Laverdure	Clair, Claire, Clerc, Leclair, Leclaire, Lecler, Leclerq	Brenda Dunn
Lecul		Brenda Dunn
Lefebvre	Febur, Febvre, Lefaivre, Lefebre, Lefebur, Lefeuvre, Lefevre	Acadian-Cajun.com
Leger dit La Rozette	Legere, Legey, St-Leger	Brenda Dunn
Lejeune dit Briard	Jeune, Lejeunne	Brenda Dunn
LeJuge		Brenda Dunn
Lemaistre		Acadian-Cajun.com
LeMarquis dit Clermont		Brenda Dunn
Lemire	Lemir, Lemirre, Lemyre, Lemyrre, Mire	Brenda Dunn
LeNeuf de Beaubassin	Lenef, Leneuf	Brenda Dunn
LeNeuf de Boisneuf		Brenda Dunn
LeNeuf de LaValliere		Brenda Dunn
L’Enfant		Brenda Dunn
LePoupet de Saint-Aubin		Brenda Dunn
LePrieur dit Dubois		Brenda Dunn
LePrince		Brenda Dunn
Leroy	Leroi, Roi, Roy	Brenda Dunn
L’Eschevin dit Billy		Brenda Dunn
Lespérance	Delesperance, Lesperence	Acadian-Cajun.com
Lessoile		Acadian-Cajun.com
LeVanier dit Langevin		Brenda Dunn
LeVasseur dit Chamberlange		Brenda Dunn
Leveille	Leveiller, Leveillez, Leveillie, Leveillier	Brenda Dunn
Levron dit Nantois	Leveron	Brenda Dunn
Loiseau	Laiseau, Laizeau, Loisau, Loisseau, Loizeau, Loseau, Loyseau, Lozeau	Brenda Dunn
Long		Brenda Dunn
Longuepee		Brenda Dunn
Loppinot		Brenda Dunn
Lord dit Montagne	Lore	Brenda Dunn
Lort		Acadian-Cajun.com
Lucas	Luca	Brenda Dunn
Lyonnais		Acadian-Cajun.com
Maffier		Brenda Dunn
Maillard		Acadian-Cajun.com
Maillet		Brenda Dunn
Maisonnat dit Baptiste		Brenda Dunn
Malboeuf	Malbeuf	Brenda Dunn
Mangeant dit Saint Germain		Brenda Dunn
Manseau	Manceau, Mansau	Acadian-Cajun.com
Marcadet		Brenda Dunn
Marchand dit Poitiers	Marchan, Marchant	Brenda Dunn
Marres dit LaSonde		Brenda Dunn
Martel	Martelle	Brenda Dunn
Martil		Acadian-Cajun.com
Martin dit Barnabe	Martain	Brenda Dunn
Massé	Macé, Macés, Masset, Massey	Brenda Dunn
Massie		Brenda Dunn
Mathieu	Mathieux, Matthieux	Brenda Dunn
Maucaire		Brenda Dunn
Mazerolle dit Saint Louis		Brenda Dunn
Melanson dit LaRamee
Melanson dit Laverdure	Melanson, Melençon, Melenson, Menançon	Brenda Dunn
Mercier dit Caudebec	Lemercier, Mersier	Brenda Dunn
Messaguay		Brenda Dunn
Meunier	Megné, Menié, Mesnier, Meusnier, Munier, Musnier	Brenda Dunn
Michaud	Michau, Michault, Michaut, Michaux, Micheau	Acadian-Cajun.com
Michel dit LaRuine	Bichel, Miché, Michelle, Micher	Brenda Dunn
Migneau dit Aubin	Mignau, Mignaud, Mignault, Mignaux, Migneaux, Mignot, Migneau	Brenda Dunn
Mignier dit Lagasse		Brenda Dunn
Mignot	Mignau, Mignaud, Mignault, Mignaux, Migneaux, Mignot	Brenda Dunn
Mirande		Brenda Dunn
Mius d’Azit	Miusse, Mousse	Brenda Dunn
Mius de Entremont de Plemarais	Miusse, Mousse	Brenda Dunn
Monmellian dit Saint Germain		Brenda Dunn
Mordant		Brenda Dunn
Morin dit Boucher	Maurain, Maurin, Morrin	Brenda Dunn
Morpain		Brenda Dunn
Moulaison dit Recontre		Brenda Dunn
Mouton		Brenda Dunn
Moyse dit Latreille		Brenda Dunn
Muis de Entremont de Pobomcoup	Miusse, Mousse	Brenda Dunn
NaQuin dit L’Etoile		Brenda Dunn
Nogues		Brenda Dunn
Nuirat		Brenda Dunn
Olivier	Oliver, Olivie, Ollivier	Brenda Dunn
Ondy		Acadian-Cajun.com
Onel	O’Neale	Brenda Dunn
Orillon dit Champagne	Aurillon, Aurion, Orion, Oriont	Brenda Dunn
Oudy		Brenda Dunn
Ozelet		Brenda Dunn
Paris	Deparis, Parisis, Parisse, Pary	Acadian-Cajun.com
Parisien	Leparisien, Parisiens, Parizien	Acadian-Cajun.com
Part		Brenda Dunn
Pellerin	Pelerin, Pelrin	Brenda Dunn
Pesseley		Acadian-Cajun.com
Petitot dit Saint Sceine		Brenda Dunn
Petitpas		Brenda Dunn
Pichot		Brenda Dunn
Picot		Brenda Dunn
Pincer		Brenda Dunn
Pinet		Brenda Dunn
Pitre dit Marc	Lepitre, Pistre, Piter, Pittre	Brenda Dunn
Poirier	Poerier, Poirie, Poiriers, Poirrier, Porier, Poyrie, Poyrier	Brenda Dunn
Poitevin dit Cadieux	Lapoitevin, Paudevin, Poidevin, Poitvin, Potdevin, Potevin, Potvin	Brenda Dunn
Poitevin dit Parisien	Lapoitevin, Paudevin, Poidevin, Poitvin, Potdevin, Potevin, Potvin	Brenda Dunn
Poitier		Brenda Dunn
Porlier		Brenda Dunn
Pothier	Pauthier, Pautier, Poitié, Poitier, Poitiers, Potier, Potiers, Pottier	Acadian-Cajun.com
Poujet dit Lapierre		Brenda Dunn
Poulet		Acadian-Cajun.com
Poupard	Poupar, Poupare, Poupart	Brenda Dunn
Prejean dit LeBreton	Pregeant, Pregent, Prejan	Brenda Dunn
Pretieux		Brenda Dunn
Pugnant dit Destouches		Brenda Dunn
Racois dit Desrosiers		Brenda Dunn
Raymond	Raimon, Raimond, Raymont, Raymon, Remond, Remont	Brenda Dunn
Renaud dit Provencal	Rainaud, Raynaud, Raynalt, Regnault, Regneault, Renau, Renauld, Renault, Renaut, Renaux, Reneau, Reneault, Renaux, Renod	Brenda Dunn
Richard dit Beaupri	Richar, Richart	Brenda Dunn
Richard dit Boutin	Richar, Richart	Brenda Dunn
Richard dit Lafont	Richar, Richart	Brenda Dunn
Richard dit Sancoucy	Richar, Richart	Brenda Dunn
Rimbeau	Rimbaut	Brenda Dunn
Rivet	Rivais, Rive, Rivest, Rivette, Rivez	Brenda Dunn
Robichaud dit Cades	Robichau	Brenda Dunn
Robichaud dit Niganne	Robichau	Brenda Dunn
Robichaud dit Prudent	Robichau	Brenda Dunn
Rodoham		Brenda Dunn
Rodrigue dit DeFonds	Rodrigues, Rodriguez	Brenda Dunn
Rossette	Roucet, Roucette, Rouset, Rousette	Acadian-Cajun.com
Rousse dit Languedoc	Leroux, Rousse, Roux	Brenda Dunn
Roy dit Laliberte	Leroi, Roi, Roy	Brenda Dunn
Rullier		Brenda Dunn
Saindon		Brenda Dunn
Saint Etienne de La Tour, de		Brenda Dunn
Saint Julien de La Chaussee, de		Brenda Dunn
Saint Scene		Acadian-Cajun.com
Samson	Sanson	Brenda Dunn
Saulnier	Saunier	Brenda Dunn
Sauvage dit Chrystophe	Sauvages, Sauvagesse, Sauvaget, Savage	Brenda Dunn
Sauvage dit Forgeron	Sauvages, Sauvagesse, Sauvaget, Savage	Brenda Dunn
Savary		Brenda Dunn
Savoie		Brenda Dunn
Semer		Brenda Dunn
Sereau	Serot, Serreau	Brenda Dunn
Serreau de Saint-Aubin		Brenda Dunn
Simon dit Boucher	Cimon	Acadian-Cajun.com
Simoneau	Simonau, Simonaud, Simoneaux, Simonneau, Simono,	Acadian-Cajun.com
Soulard	Soular, Soulard, Soulart, Soullard	Brenda Dunn
Soulevent		Brenda Dunn
Surette		Brenda Dunn
Tandau		Brenda Dunn
Teriot	Teriau, Teriaut, Teriot, Terriau, Terriaux, Terriau, Terriaux, Terriot, Theriault, Theriaux, Therieau	Brenda Dunn
Testard dit Parish	Testar, Testard, Tetard, Tetart	Brenda Dunn
Thebeau		Brenda Dunn
Thibault		Brenda Dunn
Thibeau		Acadian-Cajun.com
Thibodeau		Brenda Dunn
Tillard		Brenda Dunn
Tourangeau	Tourangeau, Tourangeaux	Acadian-Cajun.com
Tourneur		Brenda Dunn
Toussaint dit Lajeunesse	Tousain, Toussain, Toussaint, Toussin, Touzin	Brenda Dunn
Trahan		Brenda Dunn
Triel dit LaPerriere		Brenda Dunn
Turcot		Brenda Dunn
Turpin dit LaGiroflee		Brenda Dunn
Vallois		Brenda Dunn
Veco		Acadian-Cajun.com
Vescot		Brenda Dunn
Viger		Brenda Dunn
Vigneau dit Maurice	Vignau, Vignault, Vignaux, Vigneau, Vigneaux	Brenda Dunn
Villatte	Vilatte	Brenda Dunn
Vincent dit Clement	Vincant, Vincent	Brenda Dunn
Voyer		Brenda Dunn
Yvon		Acadian-Cajun.com

Additional Resources

In addition to the resources utilized to compile the Acadian surnames listed above, we recommend the following resources for genealogical research:

View the Acadian family tree contributed and maintained by genealogist Karen Theriot Reader at this link.
The Acadian Rootsweb list hosted by Paul LeBlanc provides an invaluable resource for sharing information. To subscribe to the list, please send an email to ACADIAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word ‘subscribe’ without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message. If you are not already a member, you can browse the archives here or you can search the Acadian list archives for keywords like surnames by utilizing the search engine here.
Please visit the Family Heritage Research Community to read exciting articles about how real people like you discovered their roots by way of DNA testing.

Additional projects administered by Roberta Estes and Marie Rundquist that may be relevant to Acadian descendants include:

American Indian Project (Dr. David Pike is also an administrator)
Mitochondrial haplogroups A, A2, A4 and A10
Mitochondrial haplogroup X2b4 (Tom Glad is also an administrator)
Y DNA haplogroup C-P39 (Dr. David Pike is also an administrator)

Thank You

We want to extend a big thank you to the incredible members of the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project for recruiting new members, for their individual research, and for sharing so willingly. A project is only as strong as the members!

We hope you’ll be joining us soon!

Photography Credit

The location photos used in this article were taken this summer at the Annapolis Royal Historic Site, Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens and the Grand Pre UNESCO World Heritage Site by Marie Rundquist. Thanks to Marie for being our project ambassador, for permission to use her photography here and on the Acadian AmerIndian Ancestry Project page as well.

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Disclosure

Thank you so much.

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