Advice on which test to take

[ianJF]

I posted this to another forum a couple of weeks ago but no response to date. Was hoping maybe an advanced browser might have some thoughts.

I am an adoptee. I know my bm. I had no info at all on BF. I have done autosomal testing and have definitively identified one set of paternal great grand parents. They had 7 or 8 children all of whom had 2 to 5 children. I suspect my father is from this last generation. I have identified several candidates. I have spent hours analyzing shared matches and tracing each of the spouses lines of those 7 or 8 children in order to see if they throw up new shared matches which point to one line or another. To date this has not yielded a firm result.

My question is this. Would Y-DNA testing be a useful device to attempt to identify from which of these 7 or 8 couples comes my father's father. My thinking here is that Y-DNA testing might suggest surnames and if one of those surnames matches with one of these 7 or 8 couples, then I am that much closer to figuring out the mystery.

I am reluctant to reach out to the candidates or their families at this time, as I believe I am unknown to my BF and do not want to unnecessarily upset family relationships (particularly if I identify the wrong candidate).

My BF is from the England.

Does Y-DNA testing make sense on the above scenario. If so which test to have done.

Thank you for any assistance you can offer.

[Jim Barrett]

Of the 7 or 8 children, if some were males and if you believe your father was a son of one of these males, then Y-DNA probably would not help as all of the grandsons, descending from sons would have very similar Y-DNA. And of course it would only help if someone related to them had also done Y-DNA. However I would still consider Y-DNA, at least 67 markers. Any additional hints you receive could be helpful. Watch for a Y-DNA sale around Father's Day.

[georgian1950]

Not many males do Y-DNA testing, so in the short run, you are unlikely to find a match. Perhaps you could substitute the goal of finding out how far back your patrilineal line can be traced back for the immediate problem of finding your birth father. If you can afford it I would go ahead and take the BY700 test, so that as others test to that level, new branching points can be determined. As you are able to delineate your patrilineal line more, you may find the clue which leads you in the direction of your birth father.

If you can't afford the BY700, test to whatever level you can now and look for sales opportunities in the future to expand your level of testing.

[KATM]

And as I always point out, the Big Y-700 includes the Y-111 STR markers, so take that into consideration if you decide to do any Y-DNA tests.

[ianJF]

Thank you for your responses. I am not really expecting to find a y match to a particular individual in order to identify father. In fact of the 7 possible grandparent couples all of whom had boys and one of those boys is my dad, I felt that a Y test might point to one patralinial line rather than another. Having said that the truth is that as a result of some recent DNA matches and judicious use of dnapainter i believe I have narrowed down which of the 7 grandparent couples it could be. Am thinking of springing for big y-700 for the additional insight about my distant male line. Frankly, I am finding genetic genealogy addictive

[Stevo]

Thank you for your responses. I am not really expecting to find a y match to a particular individual in order to identify father. In fact of the 7 possible grandparent couples all of whom had boys and one of those boys is my dad, I felt that a Y test might point to one patralinial line rather than another. Having said that the truth is that as a result of some recent DNA matches and judicious use of dnapainter i believe I have narrowed down which of the 7 grandparent couples it could be. Am thinking of springing for big y-700 for the additional insight about my distant male line. Frankly, I am finding genetic genealogy addictive

I think you will really be happy that you did the Big Y-700. I am extremely pleased with all that I have learned through Y-DNA testing with Family Tree DNA. I can't recommend them highly enough. For me, FTDNA is the gold standard in Y-DNA testing.

[ianJF]

Last question for now. Am I likely to do any better than 70 dollars off the price of the big y any time in the near future?

[ianJF]

Trigger pulled, now the waiting begins!

[ianJF]

Answer to my own question. No I was not likely to do better than 70 dollars off. Glad I pulled the trigger. Just noticed that my STR results in up to y111. Now just waiting on bigY.

[Stevo]

Let us know when you get your results and what your terminal SNP is, if you wouldn't mind. Hope your results come in earlier than expected.

[ianJF]

I came back to this thread to remind myself of whether I had previously thought 70 dollars off was about as good a sale as I would see (I see i thought it probably was) and I just gave that advice to a friend who is going to pull the trigger on the dna day sale.

But I also saw that bad me never came back after I got my results. BY-264. Autosomal DNA cracked my mystery. Longish story I won't repeat here except to say uk matches less easy to come by, but i got lucky (and made my own luck by asking someone to test).

Having said that YDNA was interesting because I have two str matches with the surname i suspected from autosomal (before I got a bang on autosomal match from someone at the nephew/uncle range). It turns out I can place one of those people on the family tree of the family in question and the other I can place pretty close in geographic proximity. So YDNA has been useful to me. I am glad I did it. It did not crack the case as it were, but was another piece of confirmatory evidence and I am contributing to a greater understanding of the genetic picture of us all.