Tag Archives: genetic genealogy

FamilyTreeDNA Sale – through end of year

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FamilyTreeDNA is having another sale, this time through the end of December. Always a good time to get started with genetic genealogy, or to upgrade existing kits.

For more information on genetic genealogy, see my earlier posts Thinking about trying genetic genealogy? (ignore the old sale info) for a good overview, and Using DNA for Genealogy: Y-DNA and mtDNA for more specific information about Y-DNA and mtDNA testing.

You don’t need any special codes for the sale, just go to FamilyTreeDNA and the prices should on the site.

New Kits
Current Group Price
SALE PRICE
Y-DNA 37
$149
$119
Y-DNA 67
$239
$199
mtFullSequence (FMS)
$299
$199
SuperDNA (Y-DNA 67 and mtFullSequence)
$518
$398
Family Finder
$289
$199
Family Finder + mtDNAPlus
$438
$318
Family Finder + mtFullSequence
$559
$398
Family Finder + Y-DNA 37
$438
$318
Comprehensive (FF + FMS + Y-67)
$797
$597

Upgrades

Current Group Price

SALE PRICE
Y-Refine 12-25 Marker
$49
$35
Y-Refine 12-37 Marker
$99
$69
Y-Refine 12-67 Marker
$189
$148
Y-Refine 25-37 Marker
$49
$35
Y-Refine 25-67 Marker
$148
$114
Y-Refine 37-67 Marker
$99
$79
Y-Refine 37-111 Marker
$228
$188
Y-Refine 67-111 Marker
$129
$109
mtDNAPlus
$149
$129
mtHVR1toMega
$269
$179
mtHVR2toMega
$239
$179
mtFullSequence Add-on
$289
$199

FamilyTree DNA Summer Sale

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DNA Inheritance

FamilyTree DNA is having another sale, this one until July 15th which is this coming Sunday. These sales are always a good way to get started in genetic genealogy, or to bring relatives into it. For men, the price of entry is $59, which you can always upgrade later. Oddly the less expensive mtDNA tests for both men and women are not listed in the sale, and in fact I no longer see any option for the cheapest mtDNA test. It seems FTDNA has opted to start mtDNA testing at what was their second tier test, the mtDNAPlus test, which is $159. In many cases, however, women will have more success with a Family Finder autosomal DNA test, which is on sale at $199 (instead of $289) and is probably the better option.

I’ve written before on Using Y-DNA and mtDNA for Genealogy, and I guess I still need to write something more comprehensive about autosomal tests like Family Finder. In short, Family Finder will let you find relatives who are up to your 5th cousins, male or female, as long as they have also been teted. It’s much more of a statistical test than the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, however, in that if you have a solid match on one of them you can be sure there is a connection on that line, while with Family Finder it’s based on the statistical likelihood and can be thrown off in its estimates if you have cousins who married, etc.

Of note, this the first sale that I’ve noticed the Y-DNA 67-marker test can be upgraded at a discount to the 111-marker test ($109 instead of $129).

Sale prices are listed below. You don’t need any special codes to get the prices, all prices are changed this week when you go to the site. Note that if you were to just go to the site without being a member of a DNA group, the before prices below would in many cases be even higher (Y-DNA 37, for example, is normally $169, $20 more than buying through a group, and Comprehensive is normally $837, is $797 for groups and is $617 during this sale. So go to FamilyTree DNA and buy some kits before Sunday.

NEW KITS
Current Group Price
SALE PRICE
Y-DNA 12
$99
$59
Y-DNA 37
$149
$129
Y-DNA 67
$239
$199
Family Finder
$289
$199
mtFullSequence (FMS)
$299
$219
FF+ Y-DNA 37
$438
$328
FF + mtDNAPlus
$438
$328
Comprehensive (FF + FMS + Y-DNA 67)
$797
$617
SuperDNA
$518
$428
UPGRADES
 
 
12 to 37
$109
$70
25 to 37
$59
$35
25 to 67
$159
$114
37 to 67
$109
$79
37 to 111
$220
$188
67 to 111
$129
$109
mtHVR1 to Mega
$269
$209
mtHVR2 to Mega
$239
$199

So go to FamilyTree DNA now and save some money.

Linda Chavez Discovers Her Converso Roots

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For those interested in genealogy, the past few years has been great for a number of reasons. The large genealogy sites like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have grown by leaps and bounds. Ancestry.com just recently announced passing 10 Billion records on their site. FamilySearch volunteers index millions of new names every month, in many languages and from many countries across the globe. Many smaller niche sites have also popped up, and the Internet as a whole as connected people across the globe in way never before possible.

The 1940 Census, released less than two months ago is now over 40% indexed and whereas earlier censuses took years to complete and were usually available first on for-pay sites, the 1940 Census will be finished in a few short months and will be available for free from the start. Sites working on the 1940 census, as mentioned in my earlier post on the subject, including the 1940 Census Community Project, FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com.

In the US, there have been three seasons of the genealogy-focused TV show Who Do You Think You Are? on NBC, and PBS also has a series called Finding Your Roots (with Henry Louis Gates Jr.). In the UK Who Do You Think You Are? is already in its eigth series, and the show has other versions around the globe, including in Israel (Mi Ata Hoshev She’ata).

Linda Chavez

Last night an episode of Finding Your Roots aired featuring Linda Chavez. Chavez is probably most famous as almost being the first Hispanic woman to serve as US Labor Secretary under George W. Bush, before she withdrew her nomination. More recently she’s a syndicated columnist and the Chairman of Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that deals with issues of race and ethnicity in the public arena.

Linda Chavez’s family has lived in the New Mexico area for hundreds of years, and was always Catholic as far as she knew. A simple question she asked about a funny habit her grandmother had where she turned a statue towards the wall led her to discovering her family included conversos, or Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism in 15th and 16th century Spain. Many conversos fled to the new world, ending up in Mexico and the nearby US states, including New Mexico. Albuquerque, the capital of New Mexico, even has a page on the city’s web site explaining conversos and their history in the city.

There is even evidence that Chistopher Columbus himself, who sailed on behalf of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, the same monarchs that forced Jews to convert, and in the same year that the inquisition began, was from a Jewish family that secretly converted. See this CNN article, Was Christopher Columbus secretly a Jew?, written by Charles Garcia.

The topic of conversos living in the American Southwest was also covered in detail in Jeff Wheelright’s recent book The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA. The book discusses, among other topics, how families in isolated communities in Colorado and New Mexico discovered their likely Jewish ancestry through the inheritance of a cancer gene that is most common among Jews.

As I’ve been writing this post, the full show was just posted on PBS’ website, and I’ve embedded it below if you’re interested in watching the show.

Watch Adrian Grenier, Michelle Rodriguez, and Linda Chavez on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.

In addition, for those interested, Linda Chavez also wrote about her experience in researching her family history as part of the show in a Boston Herald article titled Nourishing our ‘Roots’.

Ancestry.com Launches Autosomal DNA Test

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Today Ancestry.com officially launched their autosomal DNA test, which they call simply: AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA user interface

Frankly, I think the name is a bit confusing considering they have other tests for Y-DNA and mtDNA, but that’s a minor point. This new test now competes with FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder test and 23andMe’s Relative Finder test. So how does it compare?

The answer, unfortunately, is that I don’t know yet. The only people who have received results so far, considering it just launched today, are those who participated in the beta test, where Ancestry.com sent out tests to various groups of people that were already customers of Ancestry.com. In fact I was one of the people who received a free (not including shipping) kit, but unfortunately there were problems in getting the kit for a long time due to mail problems, so while I have submitted a kit, I haven’t received my results yet.

What I can tell you is what looks good even before I have a chance to look at the DNA results.

For one, I was very grateful they handle something that the other companies haven’t done yet – you can manage the DNA of other people. With 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA, you essentially set up an account for each person whose DNA is submitted. This doesn’t always make sense. If you’re submitting the DNA of your grandfather who doesn’t use a computer, then you don’t want to have to deal with a separate account, remembering the password, etc. Ancestry.com handles this much better by allowing you to attach DNA kits from multiple people to your existing account.

Another place where Ancestry.com seems to have put in some thought, is connecting tests to people in your family trees. Of course, Ancestry.com has a major advantage here, as they have very sophisticated family trees, that already integrate with other features of their web site such as finding records. The other companies that pioneered autosomal DNA tests do not have family trees of anywhere near the sophistication of what Ancestry.com offers, and thus Ancestry.com holds a clear advantage in this area. You can attach a test, whether the AncestryDNA autosomal test, or one of the existing Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, to a person in your family tree, and presumably Ancestry.com uses that information to try to figure out connections between people who match DNA. How well that works remains to be seen, but it looks promising.

It’s not clear yet whether or not you’ll be able to upload data from another company, or whether you’ll be able to download your data either. Ancestry.com does allow you to download your Y-DNA and mtDNA results, so it makes sense they would allow this for their autosomal test as well, but this test is still in beta and there is no way to download the data as far as I know.

The test is supposed to be priced at $99 with a membership to Ancestry.com. What does that mean? I’m not sure. Is that a price you get once? or if you want to order more tests do you get that price on all tests? What if you’re not an Ancestry.com member? If you only get one kit at $99, does that renew every year when you renew your membership? I’m sure the pricing will be explained better soon.

Anyone else reading this take part in the beta? Did you receive your results? What did you think?

FamilyTree DNA Sale Today and Tomorrow

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National DNA Day (April 20, 2012)

Today is National DNA Day, and in honor of this FamilyTreeDNA is having a sale on all its new testing kits, and many of their upgrade kits. If you’ve been holding of getting started with genetic genealogy, or on getting an upgrade on one of your tests, this is your chance to do it a little cheaper. To find out more about how to get started, see my discussion of the topic in an earlier post titled Thinking about trying genetic genealogy?. I also wrote a much more detailed description of Y-DNA (patrilineal) and mtDNA (matrilineal) in my post Using DNA for Genealogy: Y-DNA and mtDNA. For those of you hoping there would be a discount on the Y-DNA 111 test, or the upgrade to it, unfortunately it does not seem to be discounted. No coupons are needed, all the prices are automatically discounted until the end of the day tomorrow.

Discounts in the current sale:

New Kits
Current Group Price SALE PRICE
Y-DNA 12 $99 $59
mtDNA $99 $59
Y-DNA 37 $149 $129
Y-DNA 67 $238 $199
Family Finder $289 $199
mtFullSequence (FMS) $299 $249
Y-DNA 12 + mtDNA $179 $118
FF + Y-DNA 12 $339 $258
FF + mtDNA $339 $258
FF+ Y-DNA 37 $438 $328
FF + mtDNAPlus $438 $328
Comprehensive (FF + FMS + Y-DNA 67) $797 $657
Upgrades
Y-DNA 12 $89 $59
mtDNA add-on $89 $59
Y-DNA 12-37 Marker $99 $69
Y-DNA 37-67 Marker $99 $79
Y-DNA 12-67 Marker $199 $148
mtFullSequence upgrade (HVR1 to Mega) $269 $199
mtFullSequence upgrade (HVR2 to Mega) $269 $199
mtFullSequence add-on $289 $219
Family Finder add-on $289 $199
So check out the sale and get started.