Do You Use DNA Testing in Your Genealogy Search?

The times they are a changin'. DNA testing for genealogy has become a very popular segment of family history research. Some companies that are well known in this business are FamilyTreeDNA, AncestryDNA, Pathway Genomics, 23andme, and a great many others.

These companies send out DNA kits to gather a sample and you do your own test at home and mail the sample in to one of the DNA testing centers and they will return your results in a few days. The test is harmless in that you just use a little scraper paddle device and run it around inside your cheek and seal it in the sterile return envelope to send to the testing company.

If you are able to test yourself and your parents you will have absolute proof then in order to test further back in generations it becomes a little more like a numbers game. the Y-DNA test is used for testing father to son and is absolute.

If you are a female you do not have the Y chromosome but two XX's and this is called a mitochondrial test that can prove mother to daughter results. All persons enherit mita and this test is used primarily to go way back in history and you will be able to tell which part of the world your early ancestors inhabited.

This type of testing increased rapidly in the 1990's and now in the 21st century it is growing enormously fast. The more people that test and join the database of results, the better the results reporting become. Now is a great time to have your DNA tested.

This is great especially for surname studies, as you can have male distant cousins tested to show approximately how far back in time until you have a common ancestor. Feamles can enlist the aid of a brother or male cousin to prove her surname connection.

Give it a try and see what your DNA test results look like.




(genemisc)

GeneMisc will be Moving Soon, and Two New Websites

GeneMisc.blogspot.com will be moving to a new website of its own soon. The free hosting service here at blogspot, which is part of the Google empire has been a very nice place to post occasional messages such as we have done, and with a big thank you to Google.

However there are certain things that can be improved when this site is moved over to the WordPress Blogging platform and hosted on our own servers that we pay for. Blogger has various templates that may be chosen and it has been quite easy to just fill in the blanks and publish, however there are certain guidelines that must be followed and it is not easy to bring you various new Web 2.0 interactivity, or at least not as easy as it is with WordPress.

We will announce it here when the new site goes live and we will be moving all of the previous articles from this Blog over to the new structure. Thank you to all of our readers and friends that have been following our occasional rants, and we look forward to serving you even better in our new digs.

Next I want to tell you about a couple of new websites that should be helpful in your genealogy research. The first is Obituaries Help at www.obituarieshelp.org, which is a free website that is staffed by volunteers.

From their own description of their website: Access newspaper obituaries and discover your genealogy online. Discover obituary resources like old newspaper obituaries archives and Download free genealogy forms and printable family tree charts.

Here is another website that will give you some ideas about using old newspaper articles for genealogy research and how to Search Obituaries.
www.old-newspaper-articles.com

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for the new move.