Hello Roy and others, I have been reading this thread with great interest and seriously considering putting some money aside for this. I have a similar situation to others on here: My great grandfather was a deserted child and grew up in various instittuions. He never knew who his parents were or when he was born. No parents names were listed on his marriage certificate and no birth certifcate circa 1893 can be traced for him despite spending over £100 looking for one. In the 1901/1911 census he was recorded with two different surnames; JUBBIE/GUBBIE or STRANGE, and two differerent places of birth; London or France. My great grandmother (wife of the above) was fostered as a baby girl circa 1892 and never knew her real parents either. In the 1901/1911 census she was recorded with two different surnames; DAVIES or THOMAS but same place of birth Llangendeirne. The marriage certificate does give a clue to her fathers name but is one of the most common names in Wales; Tom THOMAS, coal hewer. There are a couple of possible candidates for this father in Llangendeirne around the right time but I have still yet to find any matching birth certificate, depsite spending well over £100 in search of her birth certicate also. I am unsure which type of test/tests would be most appropriate in helping to find out who the fathers/mothers of the above were and wonder if anyone might be able to advise me further about it, what tests would be best and who i would need to get samples from, etc. Hoping someone 'in the know' can offer some advice on how to best achieve a result for this. Looking forward to any help. Many thanks. Paul Jubbie

Hello Paul, The y-chromosone is only carried by males and therefore a close match on the y-DNA test would tell you that you and the person you match shared a great, great, great ... grandfather approximately x number of generations ago. You would have to be very lucky to find a match recent enough for your to overcome your brick wall. However as the databases grow in size the chances of finding a relatively recent match should increase. It is a bit like waiting for Premium Bond prizes to come up. If you want a chance of finding matches sharing a reasonably recent common paternal ancestor e.g. one who lived not more than two or three centuries ago, you need to test a reasonably large number of markers, e.g. Ancestry's Y-46 test. There is an MTDNA test that covers the purely maternal line, i.e. your mother, her mother, your mother's mother's mother etc. but while such tests can prove you and someone else do NOT have a recent great, great ... great grandmother in common even if you do have a perfect match that does not prove you do have a recent common maternal ancestor - unless you have all your mitochondrial DNA analysed which is pretty expensive. Family Tree's full sequence mt-DNA test costs $299 and even it can only prove that you and an exact match share a common maternal ancestor some time within the last 16 generations, which is still not very specific. Autosomal DNA tests can find matches on any of your ancestral lines but they are only reliable going back a few generations, e.g. they can often identify distant relations as far back as 4th cousins but beyond that are less useful because although they may be able to say that you and someone else probably share a common ancestor they cannot say with any certainty how far back that ancestor lived if you and the other person are more distantly related than 4th cousins. Family Tree DNA offer an autosomal test (as well as Y-DNA and mtDNA tests) and they occasionally have sales so itif you are thinking of taking a test with them it might be worth waiting about 3 months and checking their website every week just in case they have a sale in the near future. Ancestry.com currently offer y-DNA and mt-DNA tests. I don't think their current mt-DNA test is specific enough to identify anyone with whom you share a recent common maternal ancestor so I would only consider their y-DNA test using either 33 or 46 markers - a 12 marker test is not much use for proving that you share a RECENT common paternal ancestor with someone. However Ancestry are planning to announce a new test soon - probably an autosomal test but I'm not sure about that. Therefore I would be inclined to wait to see what Ancestry's new test is before making up your mind. Since you have brick walls on both your great grandfather and great grandmother's side I would be inclined to opt for an autosomal DNA test as well as a y-DNA test. However you need not have both at the same time. If they seem too expensive (given that there is no certainty of a close match with anyone already in the database) you could choose one this year and then have the other next year or later still. Ancestry's DNA Tests http://dna.ancestry.com/ Family Tree DNA tests http://www.familytreedna.com Good luck! Roy On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Paul Jubbie <[email protected]> wrote: >  Hello Roy and others, > I have been reading this thread with great interest and seriously > considering putting some money aside for this.  I have a similar situation > to others on here: > > My great grandfather was a deserted child and grew up in various > instittuions. He never knew who his parents were or when he was born. No > parents names were listed on his marriage certificate and no birth > certifcate circa 1893 can be traced for him despite spending over £100 > looking for one. In the 1901/1911 census he was recorded with two different > surnames; JUBBIE/GUBBIE or STRANGE, and two differerent places of birth; > London or France. > My great grandmother (wife of the above) was fostered as a baby girl circa > 1892 and never knew her real parents either. In the 1901/1911 census she > was recorded with two different surnames; DAVIES or THOMAS but same place > of birth Llangendeirne.  The marriage certificate does give a clue to her > fathers name but is one of the most common names in Wales; Tom THOMAS, coal > hewer.  There are a couple of possible candidates for this father in > Llangendeirne around the right time but I have still yet to find any > matching birth certificate, depsite spending well over £100 in search of > her birth certicate also. > > I am unsure which type of test/tests would be most appropriate in helping > to find out who the fathers/mothers of the above were and wonder if anyone > might be able to advise me further about it, what tests would be best and > who i would need to get samples from, etc. > > Hoping someone 'in the know' can offer some advice on how to best achieve a > result for this.  Looking forward to any help.  Many thanks. Paul Jubbie > > ================================ > Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message