Q My name is Orla Carew. I live in County Sligo, Ireland. I started a family tree and did my DNA through MyHeritage (myheritage.com). There have been several male Carews in Ireland over the centuries, mostly under the command of various kings and queens. Is it possible through DNA to find out exactly from which line of Carews I descend?
Orla Carew
ADNA testing is an invaluable tool, but it always needs to be used in combination with paper records, and you are dependent on finding matches with other cousins in the databases. These matches can help to verify known relationships and, if they have done more research than you, it’s possible you will be able to take your tree further back in time. MyHeritage has a database of about 7.5 million people. To increase your chances of finding other Carew relatives, I would suggest taking another test with AncestryDNA (ancestry.co.uk/dna) because it has a much larger database of more than 23 million people. Ancestry has some powerful tools such as Common Ancestor Hints and ThruLines, which do a lot of the hard work of identifying the connections with your relatives. To get the tools to work, upload your tree and build it out for about four or five generations.
The MyHeritage and AncestryDNA tests are autoso
