Well, I've had matching autosomal segments with cousins I knew were my cousins prior to either of us being tested and had one really great match with a previously not known to me cousin via our X chromosomes (his mother's father's line and my father's mother's line--a line we'd NEVER have match with traditional mtDNA or Y-DNA testing. I've also run into a couple of adoptees trying to match to learn about their biological roots--but, of course, they have no paper trail to compare. When we find matching segments in autosomal DNA we KNOW there is a relationship but it can be hundreds or years in the past when neither of us has a paper trail to prove exactly WHO the matching ancestor might be. One adoptee knew (or thought he did) that his biological heritage was Swedish and my only Swedes came to America in the mid 1600s but I DO have Swedish ancestry. Since we only had 1 small segment that match it may help this person to know that his hint of Swedish ancestry is accurate--because our matching strip COULD be 300 years in the past. My biggest problem with matching based upon autosomal DNA is that most of the people tested up to the present with 23andme don't know as much about their lineage through traditional research as I do. One really great aspect of finding cousins (at least for me being female) is that I've obtained the Y Haplogroup of some of my male ancestors by finding cousins who are straight male descendants of those lines. I suspect that now that 23andme has split the testing into genealogical and medical that more genealogists with a better paper trail will be tested there and those results will be easier to trace. Joan In a message dated 5/27/2010 3:23:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Hi folks, me again, and depressed......I get emails from these potential cousins with slugs of matching DNA (no doubt all inserted in the same petri dish on the mother ship). However when we try to compare surnames, ...he says he has a White [changed to reduce incoming hate email] in Scotland before 1700...oh, well, that really helps now, don't it? Of course I got all the usual Scottish surnames too, useless as they are. Mine married a Thompson....What, no Smiths available? So this isn't getting me anywhere fast. Plus we're all 'stuck' in VA circa 1700 and Kentucky, circa 1800. Well, I know he's Scotch Irish, that's fer sure. So has anyone had any success with the autosomal DNA testing (not Y or mtchondrial). Linda Merle

Hi Joan, Thanks for the 'heads up'. It is good to know it does sometimes work. I would think the adoptees might do better to stick with Y or mitochondrial -- otherwise it seems a lot like 'needle in a haystack'. You can't tell if the matching segs are from the lost parents or some much further on back relative. You could be hoping to find dad in Kentucky and you are looking at relatives back in Scotland..... >My biggest problem with matching based upon autosomal DNA is that most of >the people tested up to the present with 23andme don't know as much about >their lineage through traditional research as I do. Yep, this I noticed too......AND some of these people think it is all about vacuuming up trees from Ancestry and trying to get the biggest number of people "I got 10,000 people in my tree!" Oh, wow, but 99,980 of them ain't related to you at all due to a mistake you haven't found yet. >One really great aspect of finding cousins (at least for me being female) >is that I've obtained the Y Haplogroup of some of my male ancestors by >finding cousins who are straight male descendants of those lines. This is really important information for those whose lines 'daughtered out'. >I suspect that now that 23andme has split the testing into genealogical and > medical that more genealogists with a better paper trail will be tested >there and those results will be easier to trace. The two 'offerings' seem very different. I suspect for genealogy the Family Tree DNA stuff will be more feature rich simply because that is their focus. I have one member of the FTDNA group that I admin who is awaiting test results so we shall soon see what it is like. Apparently everyone is finding it very confusing. The DNA genealogy list is full of people trying to sort out how to do this -- and these are the experts. FTDNA sent admins a free tshirt to those who recruited someone to pay for a pre-release (beta) autosomnal test. Mine came. It's unwearable... I threw it on fast and ran out to tai chi class. There I was in a tshirt ---the front and back said "SEX doesn't matter any more www.family tree DNA." SEX was about 6 inches high. Everyone was looking at me. They really laughed hard when I explained. I had to cancel my shopping...... I will wash it and send it to the Goodwill....Unless someone here wants it <grin>. So it's best to carefully inspect free tshirts carefully. It's not like the one they give you at work. I could not imagine walking into a Kmart into it <grin>. Lin da Merle