Dear Carole, You have asked an excellent question. I visited the Laurens DNA site which posts some DNA results for people from Laurens. This is not the way to find about your connections to your family. Why? Nothing ever stands alone. DNA testing and family history needs something to compare to. DNA testing is only valid when you have a surname connections project of similar surnames with hopefully matching DNA profiles to compare to. We have 22 different Hendricks groups and this illustrates what I am saying. Generally surname Projects are slightly less expensive to join and get DNA testing. Generally surnames have diverse family connections. Joining a group will generally get you some one who knows something more than a posting about your surname. In our case we have about 80 years of documented land deeds, grants, wills, church records plus numerous lineages. We also provide free 3 family history CDs which are useful for searching out your family records. So what to do? As a start you can go to your browser like Google or Yahoo and plug in DNA testing. This will pull up a lot of stuff. However there are a number of DNA testing companies and this is what to look for. I will give you an example, Family Tree DNA is found at (Not a necessary advertizement for FTDNA) http://www.familytreedna.com/surname.asp<http://www.familytreedna.com/surname.asp>. This web site gives you a place where a large number of surnames are posted. Scroll down to the alphabet listing of projects click on the first letter of your surname. This will bring up a list of surnames of the beginning letter of your surname. Scroll until you find your surname and click on it. This takes you to a page that begins to give information about your surname. Depending upon the knowledge and dedication of the Group Administrator you will begin to connect to your family. There is also a link to the person doing the coordination of the project. We and numerous other DNA Projects have learned the hard way overtime to do 37+ marker DNA testing. Why? Visiting such sites as Charles Kerchner (http://www.kerchner.com/dna-info.htm there<http://www.kerchner.com/dna-info.htm%20there> is excellent documentation that shows you why. To separate out people 12 and 25 marker testing often gives false positive matches which lead people to make errors in connections to family members. 37+ marker testing also helps separate out different members in family groups. So if you are really serious about DNA the above is a beginning. However you need to search out male members of your family for Y-DNA testing as the genes are passed for a given surname down form father to son to grandson forever. Getting other members of your surnames, once your know your family's DNA profile, will establish a DNA base profile in which to compare others to your particular surname group. We have a number of good case example. For instance we had three particular groups of Hendricks do DNA testing. 1) back to Daniel Hendrick of MA 1617., 2) A family back to KY 1792 and 3) a family back into Eastern NC 1700. When they saw that all three were beginning to match, one group only did a beginning 12 marker test, then a 25 and 37 test they all began to match. So from 3 different groups at the beginning (one group only 12 markers which wasa mistake at the beginning) they matched into a single Hendrick/s family Group pointing toward Daniel Hendrick of MA b 1617 m 1642 Dorothy Pike, d of Robert Pike Mayflower passenger. Talk about thrilled. Now all this different happen overnight. The Hendricks Family Association had a data base on the Daniel Hendrick group and also what some know as the Jabesh Hendricks or Francis Hendrickson family of Eastern NC. All this helped put the family together for DNA does not stand alone it stands with family history records. The whole story is more complicated but it shows you what can happen in a family surname project where you have good participation for DNA testing and good family records. Working with dedicated people who search their families histories and getting good DNA participation form multiple given surname families is what makes success. Standing alone somewhere just hoping and waiting will not solve your project's problems. Participation and working with family members to bring together your family history will solve many a problem. God Bless. Herb Hendricks Retired NASA Physicist Hendricks DNA Project Group Administrator Secretary Hendricks Family Association Herb_316@MSN.com<mailto:Herb_316@MSN.com> 1210 Long Meadow DR Lynchburg, VA 24502 434 832 7246 Major/Smith/Hendricks http://www.ftdna.com/public/hendricks/<http://www.ftdna.com/public/hendricks/> ----- Original Message ----- From: EASYSKIER@aol.com<mailto:EASYSKIER@aol.com> To: Herb_316@msn.com<mailto:Herb_316@msn.com> Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 3:38 AM Subject: Re: [SCLAUREN] A True DNA Story Hi Herb......I am interested in doing a DNA study for my family. What would be a good site to find out more about the testing, the cost and the best place to have it done? Carole