As I write this I am patiently waiting for my DNA consultation. Well I may be exaggerating a bit …. I never really wait patiently for anything. I met Diahan Southard at Roots Tech 2015, and the first time I saw her, she was presenting an introductory session on DNA. (Click her name to watch the video) Diahan Southard
I’m not new to DNA but I am interested in the subject and always want to learn as much as I can. Diahan was very entertaining during her presentation . Diahan offers DNA consultation through her business; Your DNA Guide ([email protected]) and so I purchased a consultation but told her I wanted to wait until I had a couple more kits completed.
So what do I hope to get out of my consultation? The session is for an hour and I’m thinking with all the kits that I provided and what I hope to get out of the consultation, that one session may not be enough. But it’s a start.
I believe that may of the people who are interested in DNA are doing it not only to learn more about themselves but to perhaps use it as a tool to break down a brick wall in their family history. This is the case with me.
So far for this consultation I’ve had the following people’s autosomal DNA tested; myself, my mom, a descendant of my great grandfather’s sister(my mom’s second cousin, Marg), one of my mom’s brothers; Ken, and a nephew of my mom; Rick, who is related on my grandmother’s side of the family. What I’m trying to do is narrow down the number of matches so we are looking at only people who are connected to us through my Beaton family line. I know that’s a lot of kits but I wanted her to have the info so she could decide what she needed to look at and what she could ignore. So I provided all the kit numbers on FamilyTree DNA (FTDNA) along with my password.
When I look at our matches on FTDNA there only a couple that are closely connection to all of us and shows as a 2-4th cousin. This I hope is promising. In particular there is one man; Cliff that my mom connects to at 69.82 CM. Marge connects to my mom by 88.13 CM and to Cliff by 41.92 CM. My mom’s brother connects to Marg by 83.36 CM but doesn’t match Cliff. When I start looking on FTDNA and the in common with it starts to get complicated, at least for me. But I think is just a matter of finding the appropriate way to present it visually to my brain.
I also told her the whole road block story and did my best at explaining how we are all connected. Because I know that it’s hard to figure out all the players when you not connected to the family yourself. Again maybe that’s just a me problem but that’s what I did.
My hope is with the kit information and the tree information, that Diahan can advise me what the next step is to breaking down my brick wall or if that is possible. So we will see. To be continued…… 