By now you have come to realize I’m a DNA junky and I may have to start a group. Oh wait a minute, I did… well a friend of mine and I did, for our genealogy society. We are not experts and we tell everyone that, but we are very interested in the topic and so we want to help everyone else that has the same interest, so that way we can all learn it together.
So to continue with the hunt to figure out the Beaton/Batten mystery the next step is to go to DNAgedcom.com. I learned about it from a blog post on Sue Griffith’s blog called Genealogy Junkie. Take a look around her blog; there is a lot of info.
Once you’ve set up your account on DNAgedcom.com you’re ready to go. You can do this several way; you can upload an Ancestry file, 23andMe file, Family Tree DNA file or a gedmatch file. I have my DNA kits (I’m the keeper of both my parents DNA and a few other family members) on Family Tree DNA but I also have my personal DNA and my husband’s on Ancestry. I decided to opt for the gedmatch upload and I choose my mom’s kit as she is a part of the Beaton/Batten mystery.
If you choose the same path that I did, then I can tell you that on the gedmatch upload page (beta) there is a link to an instruction booklet that is written very well and was easy to follow along with.
Once you’ve completed all the steps you can download a report that looks like this.
Sorry my screen shot is a bit blurry.. But you get the idea.. or perhaps you will once I show you chromosome 22.
Here you can see that I have a couple of overlaps on this portion of the chromosome. If your hover your mouse over the coloured segment it tells you all the people who match on that segment. Now you have a list of people who you can contact. On the green line there is my cousin Rick, my mom’s second cousin; Margaret and another person (whom I’ve contacted before). On the Brown line its the same three people. But on the purple segment there are seven people who I can contact.
Maybe I won’t find the answer to my Beaton/Batten mystery…but I’ll keep looking and convincing other people to do their DNA and work with the tools we have available and maybe someday the mystery won’t be a mystery any longer.