Making the most of your dna test

I was going to start this month’s article by talking about why we love this hobby so much but I realised that this isn’t really a hobby at all. Genealogy/family tree research/ancestor hunting or whate

‘DNA isn’t a magic bullet,’ says DNA Detective Michelle Leonard. ‘Sometimes people think it’s going to be, and they think it’s going to “throw up the answers”.’ Occasionally this happens, ‘if you’re r

Most of us have unfortunate brick walls in our family trees – those frustrating relations who seem to have appeared into the world as if from nowhere. Perhaps a person does not feature in the baptism

Earlier this year I looked at using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) tests for genealogy, looking at how reader Lynne could make use of her matches from this test (the Full Mitochondrial Sequence (FMS) from

Picture this: you have followed that advice, spending countless hours building your family tree, squinting at faded census records and wrestling with handwriting that makes doctors’ prescriptions look

Everyone has a family history story they can tell, but many people do not think they have the skills to do it justice in a publication. Frequently comments are heard such as, “I do not have any experi