On May 16, 2012, at 11:11 PM, Dave Michaelson wrote: Gale, Y-DNA testing will not give you the information you are looking for - neither will MT-DNA testing. These test only test two SPECIFIC lines as I mentioned above. Autosomal testing will test the other lines but will only help you if both parties have been tested (or the situation in the next paragraph exists) which is true for all DNA testing. ALL these tests are useless for identifying people whose DNA is not available. What the autosomal testing is good for is to test people alive today that have provided their DNA and been tested and compare their DNA to yours. In that way, using information from both (yours and theirs) trees, you could possibly get the data you need. The more people that match you, the easier it is to narrow your search and identify specific individuals and/or families. Again, I hope this helps. Dave -----------snip---------- The surname projects at FTDNA will have people in their database who of course have been tested and also share the same surname at some point. My hope is for a match that has a paper trail extending further back in time than what I've been able to find. This is about genealogy and the DNA test is just one more tool in our bag. Gale Gorman Houston