Father’s Day is on Sunday, 19 June 2022, in the United States, you may be interested in giving a gift to a father in your life, and I have a fun idea for you! Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) has Y-DNA kits on sale right now. You can save money on each of the three Y-DNA kits that FTDNA has available. You may have questions about Y-DNA, and hopefully, I can answer some of them in...
Have you heard about the latest Ethnicity Estimate tool called SideView™? AncestryDNA launched this new feature on 13 April 2022, and it has features that I think you will really like! SideView™ uses your DNA matches to help assign ethnicity estimates to two profiles representing your father and your mother. This is exciting news! This new feature, found in the “Ethnicity Estimates” section of AncestryDNA, shows you the ethnicities you inherited from each side of...
Have you been wanting to use DNA evidence to help solve a genealogical research question? Maybe you have learned about the types of DNA but haven’t tried researching matches and incorporating DNA evidence into a report. The Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) is offering a course this summer that will help you do exactly that. Intermediate DNA: Planning for and Conducting Research Using DNA and Documentary Sources is a unique course. You will...
Have you ever used the MyHeritage chromosome browser to view triangulated segments? It’s a wonderful tool. A member of the Research Like a Pro with DNA study group asked a great question about his experience using it. He said, I’ve compared the DNA of 3 people with my mom: Bob, my mom’s 1st cousin on her dad’s side two DNA cousins I’m researching, Jane and Jill (names changed) Bob triangulates with Jane on chromosome...
Segments of DNA that reportedly match can sometimes be pseudosegments, or false segments. These pseudosegments were not inherited from a common ancestor. In this Research Like a Pro with DNA Q&A video, I discuss pseudosegments and share an example of finding a probable pseudosegment with a match at MyHeritage. When creating triangulated groups with MyHeritage matches following Jim Bartlett’s methodology, you can sort overlapping segments into two groups, one for maternal and one for paternal....
DNA Day is celebrated annually on April 25th to commemorate the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 and the discovery of DNA’s double helix in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick. To celebrate, I am sharing ten posts / series at Family Locket that feature the use of DNA evidence to help solve genealogical research objectives. Enjoy these research projects! 1 – Colonial Pennsylvania 5th-Great-Grandparent In part nine of our Pennsylvania Germans...
Do you have a parent-child link that you haven’t personally researched but has been a long-standing fact in the family? If so, you may want to use DNA evidence and revisit the documentary research to prove that link. If you’ve tested your autosomal DNA at Ancestry and attached a family tree, Ancestry Thrulines will generate hypothetical placements for your DNA matches. These are great clues but it’s up to you to verify that placement. As...
DNA Day is on April 25. It commemorates the day in 1953 when Watson and Crick published a model of the double-helix structure of DNA in the scientific journal, Nature. Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction images of DNA and research contributed to their discovery. We love to celebrate DNA Day, too! The innovation and advancements in direct-to-consumer DNA tests and tools give us the opportunity to bring our family history research to levels that could only...
In our previous blog posts in this series, we have been learning all about how to research our Pennsylvania German ancestors by discovering the paper trail they have left behind. What about DNA? How useful will it be in helping us with these colonial ancestors? Even though (for most test-takers) colonial ancestors will be beyond the typical 5-6 generations that autosomal DNA is useful, using DNA with your colonial German ancestors may be a key...
Have you noticed that some of your family lines have many DNA matches and others very little? My dad is seven-eighths 19th-century German, one-sixteenth Pennsylvania German (18th century) and one-sixteenth colonial American/British. I’ve noticed that my dad has many matches on his Pennsylvania German side. However, there are only a few matches on my dad’s 19th-century German ancestor lines. As much as we want our match list to tell us about our ancestors, we have...