List

I‘ve found, as an amateur genealogist and family historian, that researching ancestral roots and capturing stories to bring life to mere facts requires many competencies and skillsets. A family historian must wear many hats, including that of a: genealogist, historian, reporter, researcher and archivist. In that way, I liken my efforts for discovering the past to a Historical Investigator. As a Historical Investigator, I’ll need to conduct many activities in parallel: interviewing living relatives to establish a baseline of knowledge of our family history, searching for ancestors, validating their connections to my tree, documenting and archiving family artifacts (photos, heirlooms, antiques), finding historical context for my findings and finally, figuring out a way to write about my discoveries in a cohesive manner. The internet ushered in a new era in access to information, making genealogical research much easier than what our grandparents endured in their quest to learn about their past. Even so, the wealth of information at our finger tips makes the verification of the data we find, difficult.

Before exploring my family origins, I think it makes sense to first review the DNA science which will influence the course of my research. In January of 2018 I took the AncestryDNA test and received my results a few weeks later. The AncestryDNA test focuses on autosomal DNA matching and provides a DNA footprint of ancestral origins by including genetic ethnicity estimates matched to any given region and the identification of DNA matching (autosomal) to other people in their database. The test provides insights into making new genealogy tree discoveries by genetically identifying cousins and distant cousins through DNA matching to confirm information in your family tree, while providing insights into cultural roots. Autosomal DNA testing provides a broader and more comprehensive survey of a person's entire genome, while Y-DNA and MtDNA testing provides more focused DNA results.