Courtesy of https://clipartix.com As Mother's Day approaches, many of us wonder how best to honor our moms, especially those of us whose mothers have passed. We want to more fully know their lives, and tell stories about them to our families. We have some great examples of such stories in past years here on the SKCGS Blog: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History Thank You Mothers and Aunties An Unusual Story Brick Wall -- Dissolved? Wonderful Women: Grandma Lolas Brick Wall broken! A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME Westward Expansion--Women Shape the West Women in Our History--Revolutionary War Celebrating March--Women's History Month Recently Wikitree offered a creative way to honor our whole maternal line, the  2023 WikiTree Challenge 8 .  Registration has started to help research for mitoYDNA: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1572660/wikitree-challenge-registration-started-research-mitoydna . To participate, answer this post and say you want to be part of it. And then list your mit...

Collaboration The logo above is one of the main reasons I love WikiTree and the same reason some do not. Collaboration means working with other genealogists, who sometimes disagree about the facts! The WikiTree community really is collaborative and helpful. In fact, many members spend their time welcoming new members, answering questions, helping people with problems, and even adding sources to unsourced profiles.  Privacy Controls The privacy controls on WikiTree profiles are unmatched by any other site I've seen. Every profile on WikiTree has an independently-managed Privacy Level and Trusted List. If you're on the profile's Trusted List you can access everything. If you're not on the Trusted List, what you can see and do depends on the Privacy Level. -  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Privacy For instance, profiles of living people where the person is not a WikiTree member are unlisted .  Unlisted profiles are entirely hidden from everyone except those on the Trus...

It's all about the chromosomes (and mitochondria) The 23 chromosomes of a human male . Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute X, Y and Mitochondrial DNA are less well-known and not used by many genealogical researchers. Both Y and MtDNA tests are more expensive than the more common autosomal DNA tests.  X is always tested in an autosomal DNA test. However X results are less reported (FTDNA, 23andMe) or not reported at all (Ancestry, MyHeritage, LivingDNA), with the exception of Gedmatch. Rather than covering generations of your ancestry, each of these DNA types cover a smaller portion of your tree, which some see as a weakness.  However, because of that restriction, the researcher gets a focused result, which can be powerful, if the test will help you answer your research question.  Y DNA tests were first offered to the consumer in 2000 by only one company: FamilyTreeDNA. Ancestry also offered Y and mitochondrial tests between 2012 and 2014...

The three kinds of DNA of use for family history research* Autosomal - what most of us use, via Ancestry , 23andMe , MyHeritage , FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder and LivingDNA Y - available from FamilyTreeDNA, Yseq and a few others Mt or mitochondrial - available from FamilyTreeDNA Autosomal DNA For autosomal DNA (AtDNA), to make best use of your results for research, you will "fish in all the ponds" by testing with Ancestry and 23andme since neither accept uploads, and then upload your raw data to Gedmatch , MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA, which do accept uploads - for free!  The value of autosomal DNA testing is that it covers all of your ancestry back four generations or so, and up to six or seven generations, which is quite long ago. However, as your matches are ever smaller as you go further back in time, your AtDNA will not take you back to your deep ancestry before surnames and record keeping. Y and Mt DNA Both Y and Mt DNA will take you back very f...