Basic Skills
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DNA in a Nutshell, Part 2
I watched this amazing video from the Rootstech 2018 conference and it made me feel that my post DNA in a Nutshell was incomplete. In that introductory post I talked about how we inherit DNA and provided a link that has some great pictures. Even if you don’t want to read the article, looking at the…
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Is this normal?
One of the interesting things that people have discovered as a result of DNA testing is family secrets that would have otherwise been taken to someone’s grave are being brought to light. Some people have discovered that who they thought was their biological parent was not, others have discovered half-siblings they never knew about. Occasionally…
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What is a cousin?
One of my favourite things about being a genealogist is discovering new cousins. I have a lot of cousins now, some very distant, some a little closer. I have emailed back and forth with some, friended some on Facebook and even talked to some on the phone. It’s been really wonderful making all these connections.…
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Gedmatch basics: people who match one of two kits
After my sad triangulation story I felt a little adrift. What direction should I go in next? I’m counting this post as a basic post because you don’t really need to understand triangulation to make use of the strategy in this post. However, it does help to know that there is a hierarchy of trustworthiness,…
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Mcs or Macs?
I have McBeans and McLeods in my family tree. Or is that MacBeans and MacLeods? When asked whether we are Mcs or Macs, a distant cousin who still carries the surname said that his parents registered one sibling as a Mc, and one as a Mac! Anyone with McMacs in their tree knows the frustration…
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Crafting the perfect letter to DNA matches
So you have a DNA match. Perhaps this person has a name in their tree that you’d like to know more about, or you share a lot of DNA and you want to see if you can figure out the connection. Unless the company you did your testing with has an internal messaging system, you…
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Gedmatch Basics, Part 1
You might be here because you read my last post Please Upload Your DNA Results To Gedmatch and you want to learn more. Maybe you’re new to the genetic genealogy world, and you’ve uploaded your results to Gedmatch but you don’t know what to do next. Maybe you’ve fooled around with Gedmatch for awhile, but you don’t feel like…
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Please Upload Your DNA Results to Gedmatch.com
(Updated February 2020) If you’re a little bit curious about what Gedmatch.com is and why you would want to upload your DNA there, read on. What is Gedmatch? If you have already done DNA testing with another company, Gedmatch allows you to take your DNA file from that company and put it in their database.…
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Lost on a deserted island
Working on genealogy, genetic or otherwise, is much like being lost on a deserted island. The first thing you do once you’ve got your basics covered is to move the rocks to spell HELP so that anyone flying by can see it. I’ve attracted the attention of a few people by doing this, so I’d…
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DNA in a Nutshell
What is DNA? Rather, what do you need to know about DNA to make it useful for basic genealogy research? We have 23 pairs of chromosomes, 22 pairs called autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. For most people their sex chromosomes are XX (for those assigned female at birth) or XY (for those assigned…
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