DNA Testing

What are reasonable testing goals for Y-DNA, and why do we want to take Y-DNA tests anyway? What can we discover when we test, and when we encourage our cousins to test? Where and how do we find those cousin? I’m “collecting” Y-DNA testers from each of my ancestral lines to reveal their history that has been forgotten to time – and to assure my recent genealogy is accurate. Who were my ancestors? Where did they come from? How are they related to other people, including ancient burials and notable people who lived more recently? I’m sharing several fun case studies from my own genealogy. Come join me on my journey as I discover that my ancestor is related to a burial along the old Roman Road in France, who lived there before the Romans, and what that means to me today. I’ll also share with you how I solved an adoption case within a generation with JUST Y-DNA, and how I then used autosomal DNA matches to augment and refine that information. In another case, we learned something VERY interesting!!! Oh, and I almost forgot, another of my ancestors appears to have been a retired Roman soldier in England. My Jewish friend provided that his ancestors settled in Spain and exactly when they migrated to Eastern Europe, and another tester discovered that he and a famous lineage match. Their ancestors are found in the baptismal records of the same church in England, but their common ancestor reaches back to the peoples buried beneath the Saxon tombstones outside. How did we Discover all of this??? Once you adopt Y-DNA testing, you’ll have fascinating success stories of your own too.

Family historians researching in Poland and Ukraine have to deal with gaps in records that could make progress next to impossible. Thanks to genetic genealogy, we can bridge those gaps. Geographic clues from your matches might get you looking in the right direction. This session includes some DNA success stories, based on geography and backed by documented research. It also offers pointers on how to get more value from your tests.

Siblings are siblings, but when working with DNA, we need to know the difference. What do these terms mean?

This lecture will discuss how best to weed out false-positive DNA Matches that test-takers from endogamous groups face daily. After discussing how endogamous matches differ from typical DNA matches, chromosome mapping tools such as DNA painter will be demonstrated to help identify more likely matches. The strengths and weaknesses of every testing company will be considered, when specifically considering endogamy.

Let’s diagnose your DNA match list. Do you have too few matches to work with? Or so many that it’s overwhelming? Learn WHY that may be and WHAT you can do about it, whether you need MORE matches or you need to whittle them down. Take a close look at your own tree with the tools I’ll give you and leave with next-step strategies to address your own DNA problem.

This webinar will explain how you can use MyHeritage labels to organize and cluster your match list. Michelle will outline different clustering strategies that can be employed in different situations and will provide step-by-step guidance to help you on the path to a more organised MyHeritage match list!

Family lore tells a different story than the records for the paternity of a southwest Virginia great-grandfather. Learn how DNA helps solve the mystery!

For many of us who have Irish ancestry, the major question is ‘but where in Ireland?’ Like millions of other descendants of Irish emigrants, Michelle Leonard has Irish ancestors who left Ireland in the 1840s-60s and on nearly all documents she can find for them their birthplaces were given simply as ‘Ireland’. In many cases traditional research is not able to narrow down exactly where in Ireland our ancestors lived and trying to trace them across the seas is often a ‘needle in a haystack’ endeavour. In this personal case study, Michelle will outline how she managed to identify exact locations in Ireland for her Irish lines using the power of DNA testing and will provide strategies and top tips that could help you do the same.

The secret to unlocking the potential of DNA testing for genealogy is knowing how to analyze your DNA matches. Learn how to leverage your matches and use MyHeritage’s DNA tools to gain new insights and make important discoveries.