Genetic Genealogy

[Heather Potter]

Thanks for this Jessie,
I will attempt to download my results, I would be welcome for any advice on how to do this.

[Wilkes_ml]

Does it matter if your line goes back through a mixture of male & female ancestors now? I notice from Lockeroots that he has male only descendent with y testing..

I would like to see if my illegitimate male ancestors suspected mother is the sister of the female ancestor of a possible contact.

If that is a possibility then I would be very interested in giving DNA testing a try.

[lockeroots]

For those who are going to use the Family Tree DNA company to do their testing, I highly recommend you join your surname DNA project, and if you are interested in your deep ancestral roots, join your Y Haplogroup or mt Haplogroup project as well.
The Admin's of those projects are typically very informed volunteers who will try to help as much as possible.

[Jessie 888]

Thanks for this Jessie,
I will attempt to download my results, I would be welcome for any advice on how to do this.

Heather, I'll attempt to start a new thread to explain it simply because it might get lost on this thread and it might help others.

[Heather Potter]

I have managed to e mail my results to my own address.
I can also copy a link and will try to put this on here.

[Heather Potter]

Hi Jessie 888
This is my DNA ethnicity link let me know if it is ok.

https://dna.ancestry.com/public/ethni...4-a8b661ee3e0c

[Jessie 888]

Hi Jessie 888
This is my DNA ethnicity link let me know if it is ok.

https://dna.ancestry.com/public/ethni...4-a8b661ee3e0c

Heather, just checking, did you read the other thread I set up for you about 'how to download your raw DNA data from Ancestry?'

You've posted your ethnicity results here but they're just a small part of your results. Forgive me if this is obvious to you but, just in case you haven't found your 'proper' results yet, go to your Ancestry Home Page. Along the top bar you will see a tab called DNA. When you click on that, the screen is divided into two parts. On the left, you will see a link to your Ethnicity results, but on the right you should see a button that says See All DNA Matches. That's the link you need to click. You should find pages of possible matches to explore. Once again, sorry if you knew all that already!

[Heather Potter]

Hi Jessie,
Sorry I have not seen your previous thread.
I don't mind your advice at all.
Can you point me in the direction of you thread.
Thank you

[Lesley Robertson]

In answer to #22, y chromosome testing will only give you your direct male line - father's father's father's etc. The y chromosome is the one that makes a baby male. Mitochondrial DNA testing only gives you the direct female line - mother's mother's mother's etc. The mitochondria are energy producers in cells and are present in the egg's cytoplasm (imagine the egg white in a hen's egg), not on the chromosomes in the nucleus, and can only come from the mother. That's why the press make so much fuss about potential "babies with 3 parents" when the nucleus from a maternal egg is injected into a nucleus-free donor egg - the child will have different sources of maternal, paternal and mitochondrial DNA.

Neither y chromosome or mDNA will tell you anything about your other lines where a mixture of males and females are involved.

They also don't tell you who the specific male or female relatives were - it could be man A, it could be his brother, uncle or even a distant cousin if they both have uninterrupted descent of the correct gender. It can tell you that A and B share descent on a specific line, but it can't tell you whether your ancestor was the local landowner or a byblow of his great great grandfather. Life gets a bit easier if you know that A was the only (fe)male from that family in the area at the time.

There are companies that offer information about other lines, but please make sure that you understand what you're being offered, and be sure that it's what you want, before handing over your money. Also, I'd only use a company suggested by informed contacts who have already used them - it's a new field and some companies may less reliable than others....

Tom's post, the first in this forum HERE is a good place to start.

[thewideeyedowl]

This is a very interesting thread, discussing one of the current buzz trends in genealogy - and a big 'thank you' for the useful input from Guy and Lesley.

I have been, and remain, deeply sceptical about using DNA testing in researching family history. And as a female, I would have to use autosomal and mitochondrial tests, and rely on co-operative males for Y-DNA samples.

I am now running a small One-Name Study (EZARD) and do not myself wish to embark on an associated Y-DNA project, even though I have close male relatives who might be willing to participate. Interestingly, my document trail takes me, both as a family researcher and as a one-namer, back to a Bastardy Recognizance of 1779, which reveals that father of a male EZARD child was a teenager called George CLARKSON. (The descendants of that teenage 'roll in the hay' are now spread all over the world - and one of them is me.) If interested, check out the thread '1800: The parents are alias EZARD' on the Church Registers' forum.) I will continue those EZARD studies back from the mother of that illegitimate child; not interested in the CLARKSON line.

For me, both my own family researches and now the ONS, are all about the history of the family/the name itself; I am not concerned about going back to a potential 'first' ancestor/EZARD name-bearer. I do not think it matters if an ancestor/name-bearer who has played a part in the development of the family lines/the EZARD name, perhaps centuries ago, were to be proved - via DNA testing - to have been a 'cuckoo in the nest'. That person, perhaps (un)officially adopted/an assumer of the name, played their part. That is what matters.

And as Guy and Lesley have both pointed out, there is an element of what could be termed 'negative proof' in Y-DNA testing, e.g. a result showing a percentage likelihood, which also implies a percentage unlikelihood - say, 98% v 2%. Obviously, it is a lot more complicated than that, but I hope you can see what I am getting at.

Y-DNA projects are currently a Big Thing in the world of One-Name Studies, with researchers trying to establish the original genetic lines of the surname being studied. This might lead back to founding father(s) in a little village somewhere in the far distant mists of time. And that does not interest me at all, heretic that I am. (Sorry, folks.) I would prefer to trace the linguistic development of a name, taking into account dialect and speech.

But what I find interesting - obsessively fascinating - is how my family lines/EZARD name-bearers have been affected by and responded to the times in which they lived. For instance, there has been a lot of migration, within the UK and to distant countries, usually for economic reasons. So, for me, it is the things folk have done, the places they have lived, and - sometimes - the photographs they have left that make for the history and heritage of the family/the name. My family researches have revealed, inter alia, "salt-of-the-earthness", excellent carpentry skills and an alarming tendency for going bankrupt. And the ONS has already thrown up a freed black slave who was Head of Household in a US census (1830), coloured cavalrymen in the US Civil War, ships' captains; and an awful lot of carpenters.

Swooping off now.

Owl