GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives
Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-01 > 1136383265
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Subject: Re: [DNA] DNA question
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 09:01:05 EST
There is no reason to upgrade now and probably not later. You need to be find
his most remote documented cousin and run a test on him to determine the
ancestral haplotype.
If you don't have a genealogy and/or contacts with other researchers, about
all you can do is hope for a matching person to show up in the surname project.
Hopefully, the person will have a family (top-down) genealogy that you can
peruse for possible ancestors.
In general (don't know about the one he belongs to), if a surname project has
not typed many genealogies, a participant might want to be very proactive in
recruiting knowledgeable researchers. Many project administrators seem to
think that all they have to do is announce the project and post results on a web
page.
Looking at matches with other surnames is a waste of time, unless you have
good reason to believe that there has been a name change in his paternal line.
There might be family stories. An ancestor appears as an older adult out of
nowhere, when there should have been earlier records and his deduced ancestral
haplotype does not match any other family with the surname. Even if you find a
match, finding the documentation is usually very difficult.
If you are working with a family tree, you will rarely need more than 25
markers. If the occasion arises, you may want to upgrade. This might happen if
someone is in a gray area matching with the ancestral haplotype. You may also
want to search for branch tags, mutations which define a branch, because of a gap
within a genealogy.
Bob Stafford
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