I haven't done anything with my family's, but a woman & her Dad from our local genealogy society took a bunch of Y-chromosome DNA kits with them when they went to Ireland a few years ago. There were Shanahans in two areas in Ireland, and the kits identified which area of Ireland their Irish immigrant ancestor came from when the tests came back, as from the one area there were matches, and none from the other area. It did nothing to identify the immigrant ancestor. What it can do is determine that two people are related, what it can't do is tell HOW they are related (no names & dates, and if there are anomalies like adoptions or something that one doesn't know about early in the family's history, it, of course, won't show a familial match to others that may be blood line kin.) Mtd DNA perhaps isn't as useful, as there are only 7 kinds in the world. If you don't know much about DNA studies, it is the DNA in the cell out side of the nucleus. It's passed on by the mother. Men have their mother's Mtd but don't pass it on to their off spring, but women do. The Y chromosome DNA is passed on only by the male, of course, and will link male father/son connections for generations (if one can get the samples.) Apparently these two types of DNA do not vary like other genetic strands within a cell, although on rare occasions there may be very slight mutations over generations. It's getting somewhat less expensive, and it depends on which genetic level you're testing for, with the more comprehensive studies being more expensive naturally. That doesn't necessarily make it cheap, especially, if you're doing as my friend did and had several tests run on men from the two areas of Ireland. At least in that case though, they know which area of the country to focus their research in. Karen On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 7:06 AM, <bradncathy@charter.net> wrote: > I recently sent mine in. It is a little hard to understand at times, > but I have been able to connect with several "cousins" I didn't know > about and it confirmed a cousin relationship that I had already > discovered. I did the Family Finder for myself through > familytreedna.com. They often run specials after you join for upgrades, > so when they offered the mitochondrial dna stuff for the female line, I > upgraded to include that as well. My uncle submitted his YDNA for > testing so I've been able to look at that for the direct paternal line. > I also manually entered my results onto my ancestry.com tree to find > connections there. If anything, it has helped me explore lines in my > tree that I might not have necessarily concentrated on before. And I'm > hoping, as more people submit their DNA, I can solve some mysteries in > my family tree. > Cathy Moore > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Margfreemon@aol.com wrote: > > > Has anyone ever sent for their family DNA and was it worth the cost > > What information did you get from it > > Thank you > > Margaret Freemon > > _margfreemon@aol.com_ (mailto:margfreemon@aol.com) > > ------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > > TNUNION-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 > TNUNION-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > -- Finding ancestors is like eating potato chips--you can't stop with just one!