Graham S. Holton - Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians

TRACING YOUR ANCESTORS USING DNA

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide for Family and Local Historians

edited by

Graham S. Holton

Contributors

John Cleary, Michelle Leonard,

Iain McDonald, Alasdair F. Macdonald

First published in Great Britain in 2019

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright Graham S. Holton and Contributors, 2019

ISBN 978 1 52673 309 2

eISBN 978 1 52673 310 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52673 311 5

The right of Graham S. Holton and Contributors to be identified as Authorsof the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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has now achieved a high profile for the topic among the general public. The motivation behind an interest in this field may range from those hoping to find answers to questions arising from their genealogical research, to adoptees and other individuals who are seeking to identify their biological parents. This book aims to appeal to the whole range of interest groups and to both those new to the topic and those with some experience.

As you will see, this is a collaborative work, for the simple reason that we believe this will produce the best book possible. There are a number of specific fields of interest within genetic genealogy, some relating to the type of DNA test used, some to the technical aspects of analysing test results and yet others using statistical mathematics to investigate how to date when a common ancestor was living. To these should be added the whole question of the use of , which is now becoming important for its benefits to genealogy. The book draws on the varied expertise of the contributors to give a wide-ranging, but often detailed, view of the topic. If we have succeeded in our aim, it will give both practical guidance on DNA tests and their interpretation and a deeper understanding of the whole field.

Due to the fact that genetic genealogy is such a fast-developing area, producing an up-to-date book on the subject is a challenge, but we have made every effort to do just that, including making some predictions about what developments might be seen in the future.

look to the future. Although the first of these chapters gives the background to the testing of ancient DNA, its principal purposes are to emphasise the importance of very careful consideration and planning for any projects involving ancient DNA, the significant role that genealogists can play in these and how this type of work can benefit genealogical research in the future. The final chapter discusses the likely increases in the number of test-takers and the level of tests taken, technical developments in the tests being offered and holds out some intriguing possibilities for other future developments.

Our subject area has often been seen as challenging complex and difficult to understand. There has been some justification for this view, but some of the complexity has been caused by particular circumstances and some was perhaps avoidable.

Testing company websites are not always particularly user-friendly and can leave new test-takers confused and bewildered due to a lack of ) has promoted, very successfully, probably the most unreliable feature of DNA testing for genealogy, in its current state of development. By far the most important feature is the ability to compare how closely test results match in order to predict relationships. It is possible that test-takers disappointed with their admixture estimates may be discouraged from pursuing genetic genealogy and remain unaware of its more useful outcomes.

Currently by far the largest proportion of test-takers are from North America, which in some ways impedes progress in discovering long descents. Immigrant families without any knowledge of, but a great interest in, their earlier origins, find a lack of matches with families in the previous homelands to help them identify these origins. An increase in the number of test-takers from the Old World would be very much welcomed.