PPGS Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

Larry Cates describes an easy-to-understand method and provides a real-world example for using your autosomal DNA results to uncover remote ancestors you never knew you had. Many researchers and experts initially judged atDNA to be of little use past second great-grandparents. Some remain skeptical. It turns out they are wrong, and you don't need a lot of technical knowledge to be successful. It is fun. It is amazing. And chances are, you are foregoing many opportunities by giving up on your cousin match list. Forget the ethnicity results! Get back in there, and find connections that are frequently indiscernible using conventional research techniques alone.

 

Cates has a new mystery regarding a German Lutheran grandmother born probably in the 1760s or 1770s that he'll be working on for this talk. The pattern is pretty clear after relatively minimal effort, but not in my kit or my father's, uncle's, aunt's, or great-aunt's. Only my grandmother's first cousin's kit had the DNA needed for this one. She tested for me at age 88 about four years ago and died within a year after that.