Searching your Surname Roots

If you are having difficulty in finding your ancestors that go beyond the ones that you already have found the paper trail for and know that you descend from them. If so, then consider the following situation that may give you some assistance.

You have been invited to a family reunion of males that have the same surname that you are looking for and within the group of 100-1000 persons at the reunion it is known that there are 5 people that are your distant cousins. How would you go about finding them? They do not know the name of your earliest ancestor so by going to everyone and asking if they know anything about your ancestor you just get a blank stare. All is lost and you get nowhere using this approach, you are just wasting time. However, not all is lost as everyone in at the reunion has had their Y-Chromosome DNA analyzed for a 37-Marker profile and all those with similar Haplogroup are to meet in a separate areas. The haplogroups are further divided so that all those with the same haplogroup are in different rooms. Since you know your Y-Chromosome Haplogroup and have had a 37-Marker test done then by going to the room associated with your haplogroup and finding those that match your profile within 0 to 5 difference(Genetic Distance) in 37, these people are your distant DNA-Cousins. You will not know who or when your common ancestor lived but you will know that these are the people that share common Y-DNA with you. Now you can start to find out about their lineage and determine what part of the world their ancestors came from and what local areas were associated with their ancestors and compare this information with what you know about your earliest known ancestor. This approach is just another way of determining additional information on your ancestry and is a very powerful tool that can be used to give insight into your ancestral roots.

The following links show some examples of different Surname projects that a number of persons have had their Y-Chromosome tested and are grouped according to their Haplogroup( Krause,  Bradford {scroll down the page to near the end to see the chart}, and Corning )

Many people that search on forums for their ancestral roots but do not have a Y-Chromosome DNA profile for the surname they are searching for are just wasting their time just like the person who tried to find the 5 distant cousins in the situation shown above. For a cost of about $150.00 it is well worth the cost to have these tests done so that you narrow down the field that you are searching in.

This approach has worked for me and as a result of having my DNA done, I have found 6 additional branches that have a DNA profile that matches mine so we are all DNA cousins. If you are interested in more about our findings then go to the following link: Krause Branches-01 known as Krause Klan Reunion.