Phil, Eileen and list, I'm a beginner at genetic genealogy but I've been working on mine for a couple of years now. With what I've found out, firsthand and from following online lists and groups and seminars, I may be able to point you in the right direction to where you can find out more. I'll mention a few things of more general interest in this mail (if List Admin approves) and, if you have more questions, I can try to answer them, but maybe off list, as this is not Sussex-related and I am only following one family that passed through the county. Exploring genetic genealogy through DNA testing is infinitely fascinating but you do NOT get it on a plate! It helps to be aware of this from the start. Test prices are lower than they were, but a lot of hard work is still needed to make progress. When your results come in, you need to be willing to undertake as much work as in traditional paper trail genealogy - and then some - and no guarantees you will find the gold nuggets. But the journey itself can be fascinating. Before starting out, it is wise to determine your goals, so that you can choose the appropriate test(s) for your purposes, which DNA company to use, and who to test. (Do you only want to know where your father's name and ancestors were in the Middle Ages? Do you want to know where your mother's maternal ancestors were 13,000 years ago? Or do you want to find out more about ALL your family history in the past few hundred years? For each of these, different tests are appropriate.) If you have already tested and are baffled by results, there are things you can do to find out more. After that, much study will be required to make sense of your results and use them to find your relations, near and far. That said, I find even the initial results from some tests give insights into a side of your heritage you probably knew nothing about. It has made me take a whole new look at world geography and history, especially the USA and Canada, which is quite something considering I was born in London UK, and spent most of my adult life in The Netherlands. My ancestry is North West European, so it was a real eye-opener to find how many distant cousins I have in the Americas, particularly the Eastern seaboard and the Southern States! I mean, most of us agree in theory that we all go back to a few mutual ancestors, but it's really weird seeing this in practice, and finding out how many people in faraway places are related to me in or just beyond a genealogical time frame. It may turn out that your fifth great grandfather's youngest brother, that you 'assumed' died in infancy when you found nor more records for him, in fact crossed the ocean where his descendants match up with you today! The current most-used tests are those for y-DNA, mtDNA and AUTOSOMAL DNA. y-DNA test: shows MEN only their direct paternal male line back: so only your father's father's father's father etc. The y-test can only be done on men, so only of use to a woman with a known brother or male cousin. mtDNA test: shows men AND women only their direct maternal line going back: your mother's mother's mother's mother etc. A mother passes it to all her children, but only the daughters can pass it on. AUTOSOMAL DNA test: can tell you about relations from ALL your family lines. Your matches in the autosomal test may be from ANY of your family lines, over the last two or three hundred years! However, the catch is that it is rarely obvious WHICH line they are from. If you are lucky and persevere, you may find out where the connection is, what relation your match is to you. The idea then is that you and your match communicate, sharing and comparing information from your family trees, names and places, trying to see where the branches of your trees connect. Sometimes, a common family location may be more helpful than a shared name. This means that both you and your matches need to have extensive trees say six to ten generations back, if you are going to look at each other's trees and have an instant recognition like 'bingo!' hey, I see our 6 x great grandfathers were likely brothers! And of course most of us have gaps in our trees. Sometimes distant cousins look closer than they are, because they come from endogamous populations with much cousin intermarriage in the past. So you and your match may share segments of DNA that look like 3rd to 5th cousin, while the link may in fact be generations further back. These gold nuggets are rare but oh so coveted. So the y-DNA and mtDNA tests each only tell you about ONE line in your family history, going back thousands of years into your deep ancestry. Fascinating, but little help with brick walls in your genealogy paper trail. And nothing about, say, the lines of all your 16 great great grandparents! Autosomal DNA matches can be from ALL your lines. Generally speaking, it is said that autosomal matches are over the last five generations, or about 125 years, and one DNA company advertises with this. What they mean is that those will definitely show up. Further back segments are more random. In practice, it turns out that many of our matches are further back than indicated. Up to 2nd cousins, you will almost certainly visibly share DNA with your family. Large enough to show up in the autosomal test. Further back than that, however, there is no guarantee that a shared DNA segment will show up. So you may know a 3rd or 4th cousin in your paper trail, but there is no guarantee that he will show up in your list of matches. (So you and many of your distant cousins may have inherited 7 x great grandpa Elijah's very special nose, but that may or may not be enough shared DNA to show up in the test.) And you can't even see at a glance which matches are from your father's side or your mother's - or maybe even both! Some people test both their parents and more cousins, which helps sort out which matches are from which side of your family, but this costs more money and is not for all of us! As I say, you don't get it on a plate, but even the initial and obvious results of genetic genealogy are very interesting. For instance, with my North Western European ancestry, mainly UK & Ireland, who would have thought that I have 6% Berber/North African/Sardinian/Basque & Saami DNA in the mix? Absolutely fascinating, to consider the trail it took. I have tested with more than one company and have well over a thousand matches that I am still avidly trying to sort out and connect. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle and now and then you can piece together bits of the sky or round the edges. These people in all corners of the world are ALL my relations and as time goes by I hope to find out where we all connect, but for now it's amazing just knowing who are where they are. I first tested in the hopes of finding my unknown father. In the end, and against all odds, I was lucky enough to find his name in an archive, but when I found and homed in on his family, I tested a cousin to confirm that they are my family. This meant closure, and lots of half brothers and sisters after more than 60 years. Lots of adoptees are turning to DNA testing now as well, to find their family and their heritage and there are special groups helping them on their trail, which is essential because, obviously, adoptees have little or no paper trail at all. Fortunately, there are lots of people out there more knowledgeable in the field of genetic genealogy, some of whom spend all their time helping others and designing digital tools to help us make more sense of our results, so there is hope. My apologies for a lengthy and off-topic sermon, but maybe some family historians on this list may have found it useful. Katie de Haan -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: sussex-plus-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:sussex-plus-bounces@rootsweb.com] Namens eileen/pat Verzonden: woensdag 26 maart 2014 10:39 Aan: Phil White; SUSSEX PLUS Onderwerp: Re: [SXP] DNA research Hi Phil, I would be very interested in any replies to your query. I had my DNA taken at the WDYTYA exhibition in London last year and have an account now on line which I sign into to find out who else they are finding with similar DNA and they post these oin line with the possible relationship. The nearest I had was a 3rd cousin on my Tomalin line. The others are all mostly 5th cousin-remote and a few 3-4th cousins with names I do not recognise at all. Being a female its more difficult to trace back I realise unless you have a specific test. Very few of my matches have any names in their data base which match mine. I have researched very thoroughly a line back to Edward 1V but too many females (some illegitamate) interupt the flow to prove my connection though. Good luck. Eileen.. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil White" <pwgrandmapa@comcast.net> To: "SUSSEX PLUS" <SUSSEX-PLUS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:34 PM Subject: [SXP] DNA research > Hello Listers, I have 3 main lines I have researched for Family Trees, > all in England, Sussex and Iow for my parents and Yorkshire for my > wife's side > I recently decided to get our DNA data via Ancestry.com and I am > disapointed with what I recvd, and have assumed it was because I did > not ask enough questions beforehand as to what type of information I > would receive. > Have any of you had a first hand experience with this research > whereby you could give me some assistance Phil White in New Hampshire > USA Roots in Sussex and IOW > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SUSSEX-PLUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SUSSEX-PLUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message