This article is written with a focus placed on family history research in the United Kingdom but many of the principles apply worldwide.
The use of Autosomal DNA tests, from genealogy companies Ancestry and 23andme are absolutely essential to avoid burying yourself further and further in incorrect information when using family tree building and research tools.
Economic changes in the United Kingdom have resulted in many people and even family branches moving, either to a totally different part of the UK or even to a totally different part of the world! As work dried up or people had enough of poor conditions, people moved but some held on to where they knew for dear life. This presents a key issue: When you trace your family backwards, you have to ask yourself “Does the next generation back live in the same location or did they move here from elsewhere?”.
It can be very useful to look at historic roads across the United Kingdom to identify trade routes that connected places in finding our Ancestors and even in tracking modern day cousin DNA matches. Many of these connecting roads, and the relationships they helped people form between villages and small towns and larger places have either partly or fully disappeared or they have been cut dead with the building of motorways and other major highways.
An example is/are the Watling Street(s) in England which is/are in parts, over 2000 years old. The changes in the road network and the advancement of ease and affordability of travel for leisure have all contributed to our Ancestors and our Cousins settling in surprising places.
One can presume that a family unit stayed put in a specific location but, of course, there is then the risk of mixing up family units or the order of a family in terms of branches that stayed put and those that moved that all share the same Surname.
To complicate matters, most girls, of course going on to become women, marry and ordinarily adopt their husband’s surname whilst marriages in England and Wales, before around 1920, do not contain a spouse name in public records, for example, FreeBMD, making it often very difficult to track who married who. This is where your DNA results, should you have taken a test, will come in very useful.
Another example is one particularly applicable in Wales where Surnames are repeatedly used. These include surnames such as “Jones”, “Roberts” and “Lewis” and, additionally, first names are also repeatedly used. The matches that you will eventually receive from undertaking your DNA test will also contain a projection, but not a guaranteed position, of the people who most closely relate to you who will know, first-hand, the order of their family branch in comparison to the occasional and vital new Surname that is introduced to the existing family unit through marriage.
I recommend taking a DNA test with both Ancestry and 23andme (not either/or) and building your family tree using the free Ancestry tree builder tool where you can build more than one tree and where you have the choice of making your tree private whilst you make sure, as far as possible, that your research is as accurate as it possibly can be. I also recommend that, for your ongoing family research subscription, that you use Ancestry.
Additionally, to aid those on a low income, it is worth uploading your DNA to the free Gedmatch website to match against other members. Not everybody can afford the £200 that it costs, in total, to test on both Ancestry and 23andme.
Although there are cheaper DNA companies, for example, FamilyTreeDNA and My Heritage, less people, at least historically, undertook their DNA test with them and so the number of matches and proximity of matches is much smaller. Ancestry and 23andme allow you to digitally export your DNA and import it for free to FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage where access to your DNA matches there are also free and there is no cost to send messages to your DNA matches or to receive them whilst these smaller companies grow larger DNA pools to advance and expand their offering in return.
Researching your family tree is a rewarding experience but it can also be not only a daunting one but a stressful one. Those embarking on such research should be open to the prospect of surprises. Whilst many such surprises will be nice ones, some may not be and family research does have a habit of unearthing many old skeletons from the closet. In such cases, diplomacy, discretion and tact are key, as is avoiding jumping to the most salacious conclusion.
I wish you well with your endeavours.
I receive no commission for my recommendations above.
This article is co-authored by Katherine Hammond and Beanie, the Founder of englandgenealogy.co.uk.
