At Mz Pearl’s Knee ~ My 60 Years of Family History Memories, I wish I had listened more closely.

One of my earliest memories is hanging onto the hem of my grandmother’s skirt, going down worn steps into dark, dusty basements of country offices and locating marriage records. Then back up to the clerk’s office, look for the name and address in the local phone book and off we would go to visit great aunt so’n’sos granddaughter.

Later when I married, I fit right in, my father-in-law and his sister spread charts out on the dining table with connecting names and source notes. Almost 50 years after that we are still looking for the father of Jacob from circa 1750. Yes we have every record and multiple testers for the y-DNA and au-DNA.

Four continents, a dozen countries, and a life in investigative journalism, led to work in traditional genealogical research incorporating DNA for genealogy using y-DNA, mt-DNA and later au-DNA.

I research all the siblings and cousins of all the ancestors – I work them all back in time, but more important I research all the lines’ patriarchs and matriarchs from the past forward to today. One might look for photos, memorabilia and family bibles among relatives but often in-laws and sometimes even neighbors might have been close to family members and might have valuable information.

I have added the DNA of my mother and the sister of my late father, 2nd cousins of three of my four grandparents (the fourth I still hope will come around) and multiple 2nd cousins once removed. I have done this not only for my own family but also for the hubby and family and many of the 1st cousins and then the clients just turned up.

I work using the DNA testing of several of the companies, from my first love Family Tree DNA, then Genographic 1 and later 2, then 23andMe, had to add AncestryDNA and LivingDNA and just for the info added Helix for Insitome (no matching for genealogy). I uploaded to MyHeritage, added to DNA.Land for posterity and also the much loved Gedmatch. For some of the guys, I added DNACymru and who will be the next new comer for DNA testing.

I have traditional research for all family lines with multiple primary and secondary records and am still working to verify my family lines, using autosomal DNA to verify my relationship to male-line cousins of each of my surname lines and then also learning their y-DNA and their family group matches in each of their surname projects.

And I still learn something new everyday.