DNA or Not to DNA - that's the complicated question!

Within the last 12 months, my husband and I have gotten into the DNA testing. Why DNA? Well, my reasoning was to see how much it would pick up and in what areas of the world. Also, if I could find any cousins - still alive (I was thinking Poland here) - this would maybe help to do it.

My Origins Map in FamilyTree DNA from my kit F342056

My husband's reasoning was a bit more purposeful - he wanted to see if he could find out what faction of the Fitzgerald's in Ireland he was.

Before we got too far ahead, the question was - which DNA company do we go to? Ancestry? 23andMe? Family Tree DNA? Is there any others better? Which ones should we stay away from? I put it in the too hard basket and moved on. The husband did not. Away he went researching his little heart out and then he had a person who thought they were related ask him if he would do one as her father was adopted and she wanted to compare her families DNA with his. He agreed and she sent him one - from Family Tree DNA.

He did get into some conversations with others who were using this technology and found it really useful. One of which was Dr Maurice Gleeson MB who has actually sat down and looked at these DNA companies.

Taken from Dr Gleeson's lecture in Aug 2014

As you can see, depending on what type of result you want and who you want to find, is which test you should use. Below is the whole talk of Dr. Gleeson.


We have gone and done the Family Tree DNA. The reasoning behind this was because we want to know closer as well as far away cousins to connect to. This way we can use as much paperwork as we can, as well as DNA, to link up with other family.

Other tools:
Be aware once you do the DNA test, send it in and get the results back (mine took about 3-4 months), then you can look at matches. However, if you want to find cousins that cover just who took the DNA test at the same place you did, you just use the company's software.

However, if you want to try and connect with other cousins from other companies, you will have to use another type of tool to do this. One the husband's been using a bit is GedMatch. This allows you to put your kit number (you get this once your DNA test is done) in and then it will match with others who have uploaded their kits.

A snip of my Gedmatch matches.

Its not the easiest tool to use, but at least there is one out there to be used. It can also test certain links between multiple people (triangulate) as well.

Different Types of Tests

Some of the TV shows like Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are? have used the DNA or at least talked about the DNA side of things.

Remember females care 2 X's of DNA and males care 1 X and 1 Y. This is why there are different
DNA tests for each sex.

They've said terms like:

Haplogroup - from wikipedia - a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation in all haplotypes. Because a haplogroup consists of similar haplotypes, it is possible to predict a haplogroup from haplotypes.

Autosomal - from wikipedia - a chromosome that is not an allosome (i.e., not a sex chromosome). It can take the X and then use an X or Y from either person and so on. It could for instance do mother-grandmother-grandfather or something along those lines.

X-DNA - this is using only the X's in your DNA which is half of them typically. This is use to disprove DNA and it can reach back many, MANY generations. Think of Daughter-Mom-Mom-Mom (and on and on).

cM or centimorgan - from wikipedia - The number of base-pairs to which it corresponds varies widely across the genome (different regions of a chromosome have different propensities towards crossover).

Confused yet? I know my head's spinning by me just going over the terms. Like I stated at the top, we've used it for about a year now and I'm confused, but my husband is determined and each night I have at least 2 hours worth of talk (usually its replays of the past nights of talk) about DNA information and people.  

 As I said in the title of this post - It's a complicated question! It depends on what you want to do the test for? To prove something? Disprove? See if others are out there? All of these are valid. If you want to do the test just to do it? Well, I wouldn't do it then if I were you. We've had experiences as we've tried to reach out and contact some of these people only for the email addresses not be valid, or them not contacting us back, or them getting very annoyed and finally them telling us to never contact them again when we only asked if they knew a certain ancestor or how far they could go back. All innocent questions, but they took it as we wanted all their information. Wrong...we wanted to talk about the information to see if we had a common link.

On a side note, since joining the DNA testing, I have had an experience where someone in the kit has died. Talk about awkward and upsetting as it would have been great to see how we were connected but I just found him about 9 months too late.  

How did you get started doing Genealogy?

It was about 2 weeks before my wedding in 1997 and the next day I was to get on an airplane for the next 30+ hours to fly to Australia to move there and to get married - all in one month. My mother turns to me and hands me a silver pair of US Air Force wings and tells me these are mine, but to cherish them forever. I look at them and at her and ask her who are they from and all she would say was "They were the last thing my cousin Jimmy gave me before he died." and then turns away and doesn't speak to me again about it.

1943 James J Sherman wings

Among everything else going on, it didn't hit me completely until right before the wedding day when one of the people in the wedding party asked me about the old "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue". I told her the something new was the dress (as is tradition), something borrowed was a necklace a girlfriend from Canada let me borrow, something blue was within my bouquet and the something old was the World War 2 Air Force wings from my mother's cousin Jimmy. Everyone loved the thought of all the trinkets and the wedding happened. However, afterwards, the questions in my mind started - why were they the last thing given? Who was Jimmy? What happened to him?

Anyhow, it was a few years before life settled down and we moved into our house. Then I started asking questions and doing searches throughout the internet. I knew my husband's aunt had done some genealogy work and ask her about how I go about it, and she said she'd check in with some of her contacts to help.

Within a few months, I found out who Jimmy was - Staff Sergeant James J Sherman from the 745th Bomber Squadron 456th Bomber in the Air Force. He died in World War 2 when his plane went down on a training mission.

Upon finding out this information, I emailed the US Air Force library in Florida and upon the correspondence found letters, some pictures and other items which were his mother's things that were found at a book shop in NY. However, they would not allow them to either be copied for forwarded to me as they wanted them kept. I was told I was able to go to Florida and view them with prior warning. To date, we have not been able to visit.

The wings Jimmy or James received before heading into World War 2 and he gave them to my mother, so she could keep them for him. Only he never returned as he was listed as Missing in Action for years. It was only in 2009, I was able to show her what happened to him via reports (above) from a few others that were still alive then. 

I was proud to find he served his country the best he could. I did ask and get an answer from my mother about why he signed up for duty. She said he wanted his mother to feel safe at home and to do that he had to serve his country. In the end he did serve his country - with his life. He now has a tablet in Florence, Italy with his name on it as his body was never recovered in the ocean. I plan on visiting here and putting a wreath on his tablet in honor of the whole family.

The US cemetery in Florence, Italy where Jimmy's tablet is

After finding out this information, it made me start asking other questions about other relatives and want to find out answers. The researching but has definately hit and its not slowing down. In fact, if anything its growing with my husband starting to research his families genealogy background and now he's even deeper than me.

This year, 2014, we decided to take DNA tests through myFTDNA to see if we could get any information on other relatives. It has helped my husband, in narrowing the factions of which Fitzgerald clan he comes from, but its all theory at the moment. I have the DNA on my to do list to figure it out - if I can.