DNA (even for those men who married women who inherited farms)

Hi Gale and others,

I probably started this DNA thread and if you look at my original query
you will see I have been in contact with several MARHENKE families that
have descended from the same area around HANNOVER as my ancestors did.
We just fall short of making a connection with one another. Their
records are pretty complete but mine are not. If I knew that a family in
Germany had the same DNA as I, then it would make more reasons to explore
their line more fully than I have to this point. My real questions were:
1. is it getting reasonable to do and 2. how does it work.

Do not put too much credence in this 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 theory, as beyond
a doubt in most cases some cousins have messed it up by marrying each
other probably several times before you even get to 32.----Bob Marhenke

... My real questions were:
1. is it getting reasonable to do and

A1 -- Reasonable in quantity of others: check numbers of participants at
http://www.smgf.org; http://www.relativegenetics.com now partnered with
http://www.ancestry.com and http://www.familytreedna.com ... There are also
several in England but I don't know their URLs.

A2 - Reasonable in cost ... They started off with 16 marker tests at about
the same cost that 43 markers are now done ... Under $200. I compare that
cost to what I spent in ordering records; travel to libraries; copying
costs; etc. ... Of people who were not in my same 'genetic family' was well
over $2,000 .. So I consider it a bargain.

2. how does it work.

A1 - it is best to go to the websites (above) as they have a wonderful way
to providing 'how DNA testing works' and how it can help your research ...
At a 'layman' level.

Bonita

Don't know if it is the same price but a few months ago National
Geographic's genographic project was $99. you can go online and get all the
info and order the kit, but don't know if it acutally concenneted families,
but it the results tells where the origanal ancesters are from, western
Europe, Asia, middle East, Africa, native American etc. after all at a
certain point in time you will not be able to go back further, with a lot of
luck somewhere in the late 1500's early 1600's but thats it. Men can do
both the mother's line or father's, females only the mothers line.
father=grandfather= gr.grandfather etc.; mother=grandmother=gr.grandmother
in a straight line. Just a little extra info. Anna Marie

Yes, the NG evaluates a few of the Y-chromosome markers to determine the
haplogroup (I never spell this correctly) and from that they have determined
what area of the World you descendants came from. The Y-chromosome test
which is a little more expensive will not only tell you that .. but, it will
also give you the actual DNA marker results to determine if you have a
common ancestor with the surname male.

True -- a child does receive genes from both the mother and father.
However, the sons ONLY pass on their father's genes ... none from his
mother. Also, the mother does pass genes to ALL of their children, but her
genes are ONLY passed on by the daughters. That is why it is possible (with
testing many more markers than done in genealogy) a proof (to 99% level)
that parents of a child.

Hi Bonita,

I beg to differ with you. Every individual gets genes from both parents and
these in turn get passed on to the next generation. You never heard of a
girl looking like her grandfather?

What does not get passed on to the girl is the Y chromosome, she gets an X
chromosome from both parents making her a girl. There are many genes for
height, hair color, bone structure etc. that get passed from both parents.
The dominant one is what determines an individual's appearance.

A woman will pass her mitochondrial-DNA on to all her children. A man
can't.

At this point in time scientists have been unravelling just exactly what DNA
is. They are not finished. The things that they have found and devised
tests for are Y-DNA, mitochondrial-DNA, and deep ancestry DNA (the
approximation of where your ancestry came from.) This is not to say that
there are not other things that are passed on gender specific. It is just
unknown or not tested for at this time.

Bobbi

Bobbi:

I was only speaking in terms of the genetic markers tested for genealogy
which is an EXTREMELY small sample of our entire genome markers. I did
probably try to make it too simple but if we get into the whole genetic
discussion, it does nothing but confuse people when we are talking about
such a small subset of markers used for genealogy purposes.

Bonita