Getting Home-Schooled in Y-DNA
As I wait patiently for the results of my recent Y test from
FTDNA, I’ve carved out some time from my schedule over the past week to attend
two webinars on the subject of understanding Y DNA and its application to family
history research. Each of these were free
live webinar sessions, and each have an additional session coming up soon for
which I will include registration links.
I’ll give you my brief take on the webinars, and why I would recommend
attending both.
First Lesson
The first class I attended was given by Vivs Laliberte, who I had the
pleasure of briefly meeting last summer at a genealogy conference held in
Burbank. You may know Vivs as one of the
admins of the popular Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques group on
Facebook. His webinar was hosted by the
Utah Genealogical Association. In a
session that lasted just over an hour and a half, Vivs walked us through the
basics of Y-DNA inheritance, all the way through understanding how genetic
distance is calculated, and how we can use Y-DNA data in a surname study to
make predictions about which branches of our paternal trees split off earlier
than others. Vivs’ content was detailed
enough to capture the imagination of a fellow physics major (and made me even
more impatient to get my results), while his delivery and skilled use of
analogies made even the science-dense portions of the training completely
accessible to beginners. Regardless of level
or background, I feel like everyone in attendance came out learning quite a bit
more than when they came in! Vivs’ next
webinar is entitled “How to Choose a Y-DNA Test or Choose Not to Do” and will be
held live, Tuesday, June 23, at 6:00 PM (Mountain Daylight Time; GMT-6). Advanced registration is required, and you
can do so via this link.
Second Lesson
I attended a second webinar last night, Diahan Southard’s “Using
Y-DNA and mtDNA in Your Family History.”
Diahan is the founder of Your DNA Guide, which provides DNA consulting
services, and has recently published a book by the same name. This is the second time I’ve attended one of Diahan’s
courses, the first being a live course at RootsTech 2019 where she introduced
attendees to all the latest DNA analytical tools. Diahan’s webinar took a different approach
from Vivs’, as her focus was on strategic application of Y-DNA as a tool to
solve genealogy problems. She explained
the importance of techniques like targeted testing, and gave some valuable pointers
on interpreting genetic distance, and how to use Y-DNA results in conjunction
with autosomal results to accomplish specific goals. My favorite part of the session was her
conversation on why one may have few or many matches, and why those matches may
or may not share my surname. If you’re
looking for some practical and creative ways to apply Y-DNA techniques to your
family research, this is absolutely the course for you. Fortunately, she is giving a second live
webinar on this same topic tomorrow afternoon, June 4, at 2:00 PM (Eastern
Daylight Time; GMT-4). This course also
requires advanced registration, and you can follow the registration link below.
I recommend going for the two-punch knockout and attending both
seminars, as you’ll be schooled in how the science works, what your results
mean, which test is right for you, and how to strategically apply your results
to solving specific genealogy problems.
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