It's in my DNA

When I retired October 1, 2000 I was faced with a unique and wonderful challenge: TIME. A gift of twenty-four hours every day to use any way I wanted. Time is money, and I became an instant millionaire, a winner of the lottery. Unlike most women I knew, I really didn’t have any hobbies, just a variety of interests. I’d always liked writing and art, animals and travel, religion, history and science, but especially research got my blood flowing to the brain. That interest in everything is probably what drew me to library science first as a staffer (high school and college in the 50s), then a professional (University of Illinois and Ohio State University in the 60s). That career is a never ending quest for information in a logical progression, and because I was an academic librarian, publication was a requirement for promotion and tenure. However, both my mother and grandmother were researchers in their own way--so it's in my DNA.

For 30 years I’d been dabbling here and there with genealogy, looking through scraps of paper and family Bibles each time I visited my parents. In the mid-1990s, I even signed up for a pass to use the genealogy sources at the Ohio Historical Society. In 1993 I wrote down the recollections of my father and aunt, “Tales from Pine Creek” and created a family recipe book to use at a 1993 reunion of the 100 or so descendants of my grandparents. However, once I had the time, I soon learned that genealogy is more than a hobby, it’s an obsession requiring more devotion and days than I had left. From time to time, I do look through the records I’ve accumulated and I read the newsletter from Rootsweb, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in beginning this fascinating hobby, step by step from the beginning. December's issue was on one of the newer research tools, DNA testing:

The most common test used today is for the Y chromosome. Males are tested because only males inherit a Y chromosome. Y-DNA testing is surname-based with a specific surname (and variant spellings) included in a project. Surname projects will generally have a group of people whose results indicate that they share a common ancestor. The degree of the match helps to pinpoint the approximate number of generations separating a person from the shared ancestor. Common surnames may have many separate groups whose results indicate they descend from different ancestors.

Although only males can be tested for Y-DNA, females can use a surrogate male relative, usually a brother, for testing purposes. The surrogate male must share the top line of the pedigree with the female relative, usually represented by the father's surname. DNA tests, for genealogical purposes, must be taken from a living person. Most tests are self administered by swabbing the inside of your cheek – no blood, no needles!

mtDNA testing is for everyone (male and female). All children inherit mtDNA from their mother. mtDNA isn't a chromosome like Y-DNA. It comes from the egg contributed by our mother. This type of test tells us about our straight maternal line -- the very bottom line of a pedigree form. Finding a relative based on your mtDNA is quite rare.

Y-DNA and mtDNA tests will provide us with information about our paternal and maternal "haplogroup." Our haplogroup tells us about our deep ancestral origin.

These are the only portions of our DNA that are inherited "intact" from one parent or the other. This means they can be traced back to a specific ancestor and the results compared with others. DNA won't identify the common ancestor. That element is left to the paper records we've gathered in our traditional research.

Keep in mind that Y and mtDNA tests only tell us about the very top and very bottom lines of our ancestry -- a tiny fraction of our overall ancestry. These tests will not tell us about our father's mother's, or our mother's father's, ancestors. For another explanation, see the Ancestry blog entry.