Colonial ancestress

[bgw3133]

I have tried to post this, but told me I was not logged in - trying again. Don't know how I got this far if not logged in.

My ancestress was b.c1580 England. Her husband was on ship to VA. in 1608. (I had 2 ancestors on same ship)
I am female and descended from her son not a daughter; therefore, not a direct female line from my mother.

On my 2d ancestress, spouse on same 1608 ship, neither am I from a daughter, but a son.
I do not know maiden name of either ancestress.

Am I wasting money on DNA tests of any type? I know they were of England so what else is there to know?

JCW

[MMaddi]

I have tried to post this, but told me I was not logged in - trying again. Don't know how I got this far if not logged in.

My ancestress was b.c1580 England. Her husband was on ship to VA. in 1608. (I had 2 ancestors on same ship)
I am female and descended from her son not a daughter; therefore, not a direct female line from my mother.

On my 2d ancestress, spouse on same 1608 ship, neither am I from a daughter, but a son.
I do not know maiden name of either ancestress.

Am I wasting money on DNA tests of any type? I know they were of England so what else is there to know?

JCW

You ask what else is there to know. The more relevant question is what you would like to know that you can't find through paper trail research.

DNA testing for genealogical purposes should start from a clear answer that you're hoping to find. Then you can choose the right test that may help give you the answer through matches who have information that you're looking for about your ancestors.

From what you've posted, you're probably only interested in the Family Finder autosomal test. It tests the 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes. You received one set of the 22 pairs from your mother and the other set from your father; each parent contributed 50% of your DNA. So, it can tell you about the ancestors in all lines in your tree, but isn't specific about in which line a match connects to you.

However, because recombination in each generation breaks up DNA segments that you may share with descendants of common ancestors, the test can only go back so far in finding your cousins in the database. The test will reliably find any 3rd cousins or closer who are in the database, about half of 4th cousins and only 5-10% of more distant cousins.

If you're hoping to connect with cousins who share with you either of the two common ancestresses you mention above, it will be difficult to succeed. If they were born in the late 1500s, any cousins who also have them as their ancestresses are something like 15th or so cousins. That means, even if such cousins are in the database, you and most of these cousins probably don't share enough DNA to be declared a match.

However, the Family Finder test also includes an estimate of ethnic/geographic admixture, called myOrigins. If you're interested in finding out how much of your DNA comes from various parts of the world, that would be another reason to take the Family Finder test. For instance, you have some ancestors who were early colonists in the New World. Your myOrigins results may find that you have some Native American ancestry, since some of the English colonists had children with Native Americans.

[Darren]

Autosomal DNA question

Originally posted by bgw3133

I am female. To learn something on my father's line should I get the autosomal test?
His paternal gr.father was b.1830 Scotland. I do not know about the gr.mother other than her name and supposedly b.Louisiana. I know more on the gr.father's mother's Scottish line into late 1600s.

My father's father was b.TX of Scottish and ___ descent. My father's mother was b.TX but her father b.Cuba/Mexico and her mother b.Germany.
Cuba/Mexico line to 1805 (the father in Spanish army). The German line to about 1815 in Germany.
=What do you think is best: autosomal or mtFullSequence or what? Or do I know enough that additional info is a waste of money?

JCW
Edit/Delete Message

[PDHOTLEN]

I have tried to post this, but told me I was not logged in - trying again. Don't know how I got this far if not logged in.

My ancestress was b.c1580 England. Her husband was on ship to VA. in 1608. (I had 2 ancestors on same ship)
I am female and descended from her son not a daughter; therefore, not a direct female line from my mother.

On my 2d ancestress, spouse on same 1608 ship, neither am I from a daughter, but a son.
I do not know maiden name of either ancestress.

Am I wasting money on DNA tests of any type? I know they were of England so what else is there to know?

JCW

Do you know about the Jamestowne Society?

http://www.jamestowne.org

[funfarm07741]

Comparing kits

I keep seeing users posting their kit numbers to compare I am confused. I can't figure out how to compare them. Deb 401085

[KATM]

Deb,

Perhaps you are seeing some people posting their Gedmatch.com kit numbers who have kits there, and want to compare with others here who have kits at Gedmatch.com. Others may be posting their FTDNA kit number if they are in a project at FTDNA, and are asking for help from others for some reason. I thought we were generally advised to not share our FTDNA kit numbers publicly, for security reasons, but I can't find anything in the Learning Center to confirm that.

Your FTDNA kit number is used to sign in to your account. It is not used in any list of matches within your account; but only if you are in any projects, it could appear in the project lists (although not associated with your name, only a distant ancestor's name that you provide). There is no method to compare kit numbers for matches at FTDNA.

Since this thread doesn't seem to have any posts that contain kit numbers, this question probably should have started a new thread.