-----Original Message----- On Behalf Of AJ Marsh via "You raise a good point about a line of ancestors rather than just the presumed most distant. In my surname project, early published genealogical books claim that certain USA families descended from brothers in the 1600, whereas Y-DNA clearly shows the assumed brothers did not have the same Y-DNA, ie did not have the same direct male line ancestor in the past 30,000 years. So giving a line of ancestors is more helpful, as it still would work even if it wrongly assumes the most distant ancestor. In my projects some even believe family legends, and claim their earliest known male line ancestor was someone living 1000 years ago. In some cases they may be right, in others they may be wrong. One good thing about the Sorenson database was the well documented pedigrees. When I found matches in that database I was really able to infer a possible point or region of connection, the genealogies were hugely helpful. I think the default should be no names of ancestors living or born before about 1900, but there are different views on that." ----------------------------- Huh??? none born BEFORE 1900? Does that not make it useless? Doug McDonald

Doug, That did not read the way I intended it! I meant the trees should not include persons still living, to protect the privacy of living persons who may not be the DNA tester. I meant to say as an arbitrary cutoff, it was reasonably certain persons born before 1900 were not still living. It is safer to exclude persons born after 1900, than to exclude "living" persons, as I find internet trees are occasionally wrong about living status. I even found one Internet tree indicating I was dead, something which I disagree with. John. Sent from my iPad > On 10/12/2015, at 10:57 am, McDonald@lists3.rootsweb.com wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > On Behalf Of AJ Marsh via > "You raise a good point about a line of ancestors rather than just the presumed most distant. In my surname project, early published genealogical books claim that certain USA families descended from brothers in the 1600, whereas Y-DNA clearly shows the assumed brothers did not have the same Y-DNA, ie did not have the same direct male line ancestor in the past 30,000 years. So giving a line of ancestors is more helpful, as it still would work even if it wrongly assumes the most distant ancestor. > > In my projects some even believe family legends, and claim their earliest known male line ancestor was someone living 1000 years ago. In some cases they may be right, in others they may be wrong. > > One good thing about the Sorenson database was the well documented pedigrees. When I found matches in that database I was really able to infer a possible point or region of connection, the genealogies were hugely helpful. > > I think the default should be no names of ancestors living or born before about 1900, but there are different views on that." > ----------------------------- > > Huh??? none born BEFORE 1900? Does that not make it useless? > > Doug McDonald > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GENEALOGY-DNA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message