Worth The Cost?

I've been arguing with myself for a couple of years now over doing a DNA test for ancestral research purposes. I just got another ad for DNA testing -- this one was from the National Geographic Society. Ancestry.com and others have been pushing it for a long time now.

But I keep hesitating.

I'll admit that part of my hesitation is that I just don't understand that much about it. I've read all the ads they've sent me, researched it on several different websites, read the Wikipedia article, ... and either there's something I'm missing or I just don't think I'll get enough out of it. Either that, or they are all really bad at explaining the benefits of DNA testing.

Don't get me wrong, they are superb at hyping the virtues of DNA testing -- how you'll learn where your ancestors came from, find long-lost ancestors and relatives, etc. -- but when you read the details it sure doesn't sound like that is very likely. But, like I said, maybe there's something I'm fundamentally missing about genealogical DNA testing, so I'm going to describe what I currently understand and hope that, if I'm wrong about it, someone more knowledgeable will come along and correct me.

There appear to be two types of DNA test: the Y-chromosome test (Y-DNA) and the mitochondrial DNA test (MtDNA). Or, of course, you can buy a package deal that includes both. It looks like anyone can have a MtDNA test done, but only males can do a Y-DNA test since females do not receive a Y-chromosome. Y-DNA tests can be done in a wide range of levels of precision. The most basic Y-DNA tests look at only about 10 or 12 markers, more thorough tests examine 33, 46, or 67 markers, and there are a few vendors offering a 111-marker test. The more markers the test includes, the more accurately it will identify others who share your family line. MtDNA tests fall into three categories: those that test only the HVR1 sequence, those that test the HVR1 and HVR2 sequences, and those that examine the the entire MtDNA sequence including the "coding sequence". The MtDNA test identifies only the direct matrilineal descent -- your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's ... and so on ... mother.

So the first thing that jumps off the page at me is that I'm plunking down all this money just to take a peek at two of my family lines: the exclusively patrilineal descent of my father, and the exclusively matrilineal descent of my mother. In other words, the Y-DNA test will display only the genetic information for my male Pellman ancestors and whatever they may have been called before taking the name Pellman, and the MtDNA test will look at the zig-zagging path through all the woman of whatever surname are in my mother's direct ancestry. So it will look at the sequence from Mom to Winnie Kerr to Maria Groves to Martha Baxter to whoever her mother was, and so on.

Now, at first blush both of those seem promising avenues of pursuit. So far I've only been able to trace my direct paternal lineage back to my great-great-grandfather, William Henry Pellman and my mother's matrilineal descent to my great-great-grandmother, Martha Baxter. So DNA testing offers the promise of a huge breakthrough on both fronts!!! But how?! And that's where I begin to question the benefits of the testing.

DNA cannot identify specific ancestors. It can only assign a probability -- based on the number of identical DNA markers -- that two or more people share a common ancestor within the last several generations. It cannot even identify the specific MRCA (most recent common ancestor) with certainty; only with a stated degree of probability. Worse yet, the only way it can do that is if both individuals are in the DNA database and both individuals have consented to the release of their information. This raises my big question: how likely is that that someone would have done genealogical DNA testing and consented to the release of the test results, but not bothered to post their ancestral information on one of the dozens of searchable genealogical databases or the World Family Tree? If they are interested enough to pay a sizable sum of money for DNA testing and willing to share those results publicly wouldn't they have been interested enough to share what they already knew about their own ancestry? If so, I would have already found them on some search engine and made the connection!

Unless I'm missing something crucial about how DNA test results are compared and shared, the odds of my learning something new about specific ancestors are extremely low.

So, absent a one-in-a-million discovery that leads to identifying one of two possible great-great-great-grandparents, I stand to gain little or no information that would identify a specific ancestor I haven't already found. And the DNA tests do nothing to identify members of other lines in my family tree -- of which I have already discovered more than 500 different surnames. So, unless those other lines somehow don't matter as much as the two that I can trace through DNA, it's usefulness is extremely limited.

The other thing the DNA testing companies tout is that they identify haplotypes and haplogroups. Whoopee! A haplotype is just a group of people who share a common set of genetic similarities. A haplogroup is a larger group of people who share a broader set of genetic commonalities. Often these haplogroups seem to have lived in the same geographic area for a long time, so it means that you might be able to determine that your ancient ancestors were from a particular geographnic region ... Well, not all of your ancient ancestors, but the ancient ancestors who are from just two of your thousands of ancestral lines. So, if my maternal grandfather was of African descent, for example, neither the Y-DNA nor MtDNA test would reveal it! Am I missing something, or is that not really much help in the greater scheme of things?

The high-precision DNA tests run $500 to $1,000 for both Y-DNA and MtDNA. There are low-precision tests available for $150 to $300, which examine only a dozen or so Y-DNA markers and just the HVR1 sequence, but I can't justify either expense for what little either is likely to reveal with any certainty. So, for the moment, I'm waiting until the price comes down significantly.

If I've overlooked anything important in my analysis, I hope my readers will set me straight, so please feel free to comment if you think I'm missing something.

The Kindness of Strangers

Each new year seems to encourage a time of reflection on the year just past, and New Year 2010 was no exception to this. Among my many reflections on the events of 2009, my family, my work, and my friends, I realized that 2009 had produced remarkable progress for me in breaking through several major genealogical barriers.

In both major lines of my mother's family -- Willis on her father's side and Kerr on her mother's side -- I began 2009 having been at an impass for years. On the Willis side, we only knew what we had all known for decades: that her father was Leonard John Willis (my namesake), her grandfather was William Willis, and her great-grandfather was Judge William Willis, QC. On the Kerr side, we knew even less: only that her mother was Winnifred Violet Kerr and her grandfather was the Rev. John Kerr. Despite years of inquiry, we had never been able to learn more about either side of her family, and neither my mother nor I knew of any living relatives who would have any more information on them than we already possessed.

But that was to change dramatically in 2009!

Early in the year, a fellow genealogist recommended that I check the UK website, Scotland's People, for information about my great-grandfather, the Rev. John Kerr. That led me to discover that his father was David Kerr (born 1828 in Dalton, Dumfriesshire, Scotland), a fact I noted in my July 2009 blog entitled, "It's CARE; Not CUR." In November, I stumbled across another UK website while googling around -- a genealogy community called RootsChat. Within 30 days, I had learned another three generations of our Kerr ancestry! So, by year end we knew that David Kerr's father was John Kerr (born 1786), his grandfather was John Kerr (born 1756), and his great-grandfather was James Kerr (born 1718), all of Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Similarly, by mid-year I had discovered two more generations of my Willis ancestry. William Willis's father was Thomas Willis, Jr. of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, and his grandfather was Thomas Willis, Sr. of Toddington, Bedfordshire. Furthermore, I had also learned that Judge William Willis had served a term as a member of Parliament from Colchester, in addition to his years of service as a Queen's Council judge.

But, what caught my notice as I reflected on these discoveries was that none of them were the result of the new technologies I was employing. To be sure, new and improved technologies played a supporting role in the discoveries, but what actually led me to them was a who; not a what. In fact, several who's.

It was the people on RootsChat who provided the names, birthplaces, marriage information, and memorial inscriptions for my Kerr ancestors. This was information they had spent years collecting. Several of them live in or near Dumfriesshire and had gathered much of the information by visiting old parish churches, burial grounds, and local libraries and town offices. It was information some of them had made considerable expense obtaining, yet they all shared it freely with me. Similarly, it was people on the staff of Toddington Baptist Church who provided me with information and copies from the church's old records concerning the Willis family.

Genealogy is all about relationships. Ordinarily, we focus on the relationships between ourselves and the ancestors we are researching, but I've found that the relationships we build -- often with (formerly) complete strangers -- are equally important and more rewarding than the relationships we learn about in the process.

Creating a Christmas Legend

My 33rd great-grandfather was personally responsible for creating one of the great Christmas legends and traditions -- a legend that has been passed down for over 1,000 years and commemorated in the popular Christmas carol, "Good King Wenceslas" since about 1850. It is likely that no one today would know the name and legend of Good King Wenceslas had it not been for the efforts of my 33rd great-grandfather, Duke Boleslav I z Czechy of Bohemia.

You see, "King" Wenceslas was never actually a king. His name was Vaclav z Czechy and he was merely a duke. And even his claim to that title was not entirely legitimate. In order to seize control of the Duchy of Bohemia, he had his own mother, who had been serving as regent following the death of his father, exiled. After usurping control of Bohemia, Vaclav then entered into an alliance with the Slavs and Magyars that resulted in Bohemia being invaded by -- and becoming a vassal state of -- the Saxons and Bavarians into whose lands the Slavs and Magyars had been encroaching and raiding for centuries.

So, to restore the independence of his beloved homeland, Boleslav invited his older brother Vaclav to the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian at the church in Stara Boleslav on 28 September 935. While Vaclav was enroute to the feast, three of Boleslav's retainers ambushed and murdered him, so Boleslav was elevated to Duke of Bohemia. Almost immediately, he reversed the policy of support for the Slavs and Magyars and began fighting for independence from Bavaria and Saxony. He expanded Bohemian territories by crushing the Magyar army, and arranged for his daughter to marry the Duke of Poland to strengthen Bohemia against continued attempts at domination by Bavaria and Saxony. For all of his patriotic efforts, however, my 33rd great-grandfather was given the epithet, "Boleslav Ukrutny" ("Boleslaus the Cruel").

Adding further insult, Vaclav was cannonized as a saint shortly after his death and was posthumously declared "king" by Emperor Otto "the Great" to whom he had been a loyal vassal. To justify this outrage, a fictional account was created of Vaclav's piety and generosity in which he is said to have walked a league (about three miles) barefoot through the snow to bring food and firewood to a destitute peasant on whom he had taken pity. This baseless legend has persisted for over 1,000 years. To heap further abuse on the memory of Duke Boleslav, Vaclav is considered the patron saint of the Czech Republic and the Czech people.

So this Christmas, when you hear carolers cheerfully extolling the virtues of "Good King Wenceslas" just remember that you have the courage and patriotism of my 33rd great-grandfather, "Cruel" Duke Boleslav, to thank for the merriment that charlatan's song brings to your heart!