Have you heard of the new book by journalist Libby Copeland: The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are . American Ancestors and the Boston Public Library had an interview and Q & A with her this week, full of stories and insight. I was struck by the advice from one of the "search angels" in her book, who says that she no longer tries to persuade people to DNA test. After hearing Judy Russell's webinar  DNA Rights and Wrongs: The Ethical Side of Testing , I think I would have to agree. To our cousins or others we would like to test, we owe a complete description of what testing entails, and we need to offer them fine-grained choices such as:  whether their profile will have their name or an anonymised nickname, what email will be associated with a kit, whether or not they will allow sharing of the test results, and to whom, whether or not they want to access the test results, if there are unexpected results, do they want to know those results? and so m...

Why I Use FamilyTreeDNA  (FTdna) and You Should Too .... But only if you have family mysteries you have been unable to solve!  Don't we all have such mysteries? Years ago, my father's family had done some family history, then I did some research, and got my dad's Cowan line back to the Borders of Scotland and the tiny village of Yarrow Feus in Selkirshire where they lived before emigrating to Ontario, Canada in 1832.  However, the records before 1700 are scarce, and so the question remained - did the Cowans always live in the Scottlsh Borders? Were they always sheep herders? Y DNA testing When FTdna first introduced Y-DNA testing, I got a kit for my Dad for Father's Day one year. It was thrilling to see matches come in. He had an identical good match at 35 markers, which was what was available at the time. His match Chris Cowan and I compared notes, but his bunch came from Ireland and mine from Scotland. My dad and he both paid for more markers, and they w...

Black Friday is coming soon, and one item many genealogy researchers will be looking for is DNA test kits to give as gifts for relatives. A common question is should I activate the kit before giving or sending it to my relative? The answer depends on: Which testing company? Will you be in charge of the kit, or your relative? The Basics Let's start with the basics.  Have you tested yourself? If so, choosing the same company for both of you will simplify matters. If not, test yourself too . Test results get their meaning from comparison with matches. If you are purchasing from FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage or LivingDNA, you can upload your results to those companies, and my advice is that everyone should do so whether or not you are buying kits for relatives. This is known as "fishing in all the ponds." I would add uploading to Gedmatch to the list above. Have you asked your relative if they want to test? Have you explained to them in as much detail...