GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From:
Subject: [DNA] Adopted grandfather / what to read
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 07:26:27 EST

I received the following message addressed to me personally in response to
the "8 great-grandparents" thread. With the author's permission, I am posting
the text here to open the subject for discussion:

--- begin message

WOW!

I'm a beginner and am, at present, totally baffled
by this whole DNA scenario but am excited about the
possibilities.

Your message blew me away. Where should I
go to start to study in order to reach the level of
knowledge where I would understand that last
message?

My grandfather was adopted and I've been unable
to connect him to a population of people in the same
county and township with his birth name. Perhaps this
would be a way to solve what has been a brick wall for
a long time.

Any suggestions about where to find texts to
study would be appreciated.

----- end message

We'd need a few more details to see if DNA testing is a practical approach.

1) Is your grandfather living?

2) Is this your father's father or your mother's father?

3) Are you a male or a female? Your given name could be either!

4) Do you have ways of establishing contact with the males in his birth
location who have the same birth name?

5) Do you have any concerns about whether the adoption was a sensitive issue
at the time? Will you be stirring things up? Will the information you get be
truthful?

Of course, you can't answer all these questions, but it's probably worthwhile
playing out some scenarios in your head. Also, if you correspond with the
home-town males in question, you should be sure to let them know that the DNA
testing won't reveal a particular person as the father, just whether or not
your grandfather comes from the same family in that area.

As far as texts go, I don't have any particular recommendations myself. You
could check your public library for recent books on genetics. When I went to
school, they didn't even know how many chromosomes there were! You could also
check the archives of this group for web site suggestions -- some of these
have good explanatory background information. When I have a moment, I'd like
to put together a web page myself, but that's in the distant future.

http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Miscellaneous/GENEALOGY-DNA.html

Ann Turner
List Administrator

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