FTDNA has a good deal going. 39.00 Y-DNA test.
A 12-marker test is smaller, obviously, than a 37 marker or 67 marker test: the more they test, the more they’ve got to compare to other people and the more surely they can say you’re related.
If you’re female, this doesn’t help you—but! if you’ve got a paternal-side male reachable, if you pay for the test and they’ll do the simple cheek swab and mail it in, you’ll have access to the results, password and all. A birth-father, father’s brother-of-the-same-father, or son or grandson of same will have the same Y chromosome.
If you want to get in on the ground floor of DNA, this is a reliable company, a pioneer in the field of genetic testing for genealogy. They will not give you modern relationships or medical info unless you pay for a very much ‘tighter’ and differently targeted test and indicate it’s for that purpose. They also will accept GEDCOM (universal genealogical tree access) info and notify you of other matches in their DB: that is the only sense in which it will tell you about a relationship—usually 8th-degree cousins, of which you have potentially, very, very, very many. There is also the possibility of upgrading the test later: read their information. This is a really deeply discounted quality test.
But it offers no clue as to just what a “Y 12” test is, what it determines, and how it is diagnostic. 🙁
Ah. Go to just http://www.ftdna.com and look in via the front door.
The Y-DNA test comes in 12, 37 and 67 or thereabouts. The 12 is a very basic test that compares 12 sites on the Y chromosome, and can determine a little bit about your relatives that it may have in their database—which is one of the largest. THe 37 test more sites, and is the generally ‘best’ recommendation; and the 67 gets much more close and personal.
http://www.familytreedna.com/products.aspx
This is the specific—the test is normally 99.00.
Y-DNA12
Close info…
Order Now was $99.00 now $39.00
For men only.
Lower level of Y-DNA tests.
12-marker matches are highly likely to be related within the past 29 generations.
Provides genealogically relevant matches and recent ancestral origins.
Recommended for confirming a genealogical relationship with another male.
Provides your Haplogroup: deep ancestral origin of the paternal line.
We store your DNA for free so that you can upgrade the tests in the future
NO subscription fees
29 Generations! Only 23 takes me back to Edward III.
Don’t get me wrong, I know the Y doesn’t change much, that’s why it’s useful for archaeological research. But just because I happen to know 2**24 is 16,777,216 [it’s a computer thing ;)], in 24 generations I have that many ancestors in that generation. OK, now reverse it. If each pair of my ancestors back to the 24th generation only had two kids, just their “replacements”, which is way too low as population growth shows, then I’d have 16,777,216 “cousins” now. Rather imprecise, isn’t it?
Y-DNA37
Close info…
Order Now $169.00
For men only.
Recommended level of Y-DNA tests.
37-marker matches are highly likely to be related within the past 8 generations.*
Provides genealogically relevant matches and recent ancestral origins.
Recommended for confirming a genealogical relationship with another male.
Provides your Haplogroup: deep ancestral origin of the paternal line.
We store your DNA for free so that you can upgrade the tests in the future
NO subscription fees
Your matches and ancestral origins largely depend on how your DNA compares to our database. With the largest DNA database in the world, you have the greatest chance of finding close relatives by testing with us. However, if your paternal line is rare, it is possible you will not have matches or ancestral origins information right away. As our database is constantly growing, you may have matches over time, and we will send you e-mail notifications about any new matches.
*Estimated for exact 37-marker matches, at a 95% confidence level.
Y-DNA67
Close info…
Order Now $268.00
For men only.
High level of Y-DNA tests.
67-marker matches are highly likely to be related within the past 6 generations.*
Provides genealogically relevant matches and recent ancestral origins.
Recommended for confirming a genealogical relationship with another male.
Provides your Haplogroup: deep ancestral origin of the paternal line.
We store your DNA for free so that you can upgrade the tests in the future
NO subscription fees
Your matches and ancestral origins largely depend on how your DNA compares to our database. With the largest DNA database in the world, you have the greatest chance of finding close relatives by testing with us. However, if your paternal line is rare, it is possible you will not have matches or ancestral origins information right away. As our database is constantly growing, you may have matches over time, and we will send you e-mail notifications about any new matches.
*Estimated for exact 67-marker matches, at a 95% confidence level.
Y-DNA111
Close info…
Order Now $359.00
For men only.
Highest level of Y-DNA tests.
111-marker matches are highly likely to be related within the past 4 generations.*
Provides genealogically relevant matches and recent ancestral origins.
Recommended for confirming a genealogical relationship with another male.
Provides your Haplogroup: deep ancestral origin of the paternal line.
We store your DNA for free so that you can upgrade the tests in the future
NO subscription fees
Your matches and ancestral origins largely depend on how your DNA compares to our database. With the largest DNA database in the world, you have the greatest chance of finding close relatives by testing with us. However, if your paternal line is rare, it is possible you will not have matches or ancestral origins information right away. As our database is constantly growing, you may have matches over time, and we will send you e-mail notifications about any new matches.
*Estimated for exact 111 marker matches, at a 95% confidence level.
Men can also get a combo Y-DNA/MtDNA run to provide information on their mother’s deeptime origins. MtDNA gives results between 180,000 and 5000 years ago.
Y-DNA can be within 4 generations of present time.
My brother’s Y-DNA isn’t rare but it is most commonly found in European populations and until the database is larger I’m not looking for any breakthroughs. As far as I know, it is illegal for someone in France to have a private DNA test done without a court order. For now I have to rely on people with French ancestry living outside France.
P.S. My paternal family name is an anglicized version of Tissot (not related to the watch people).
Illegal? Quel bizarre! Are they afraid the Capets will rise up and claim the government again? They’d probably constitute a formidable army.
Or the Merovingians?
Ah. PATERNITY testing is banned. http://www.ibdna.com/regions/UK/EN/?page=paternity-testing-ban-upheld-in-france
…for the peace of French families. Germany thinking of following suit.
Mmmmm. One never took seriously the stereotypical rumors of mistresses commonly maintained by most of the government, but one now has a vision of moneyed estates, inheritance lawsuits galore…
…peace of French families, eh?
Well, a small measure of peace for monsieur whose potential progeny are at, ah, issue. 😉
…At least until his wife and mother gat ahold of him… or his mistress’ family…
It may just be for paternity testing as the article said. It just makes it difficult for the average genealogist or family historian to see their DNA. Doesn’t surprise me, however.
There’s a new British DNA testing site starting up at http://www.britainsdna.com/. A bit pricy yet so I’ll wait a while.
It’s also true that you don’t run into nearly as much traffic in the French and German sites as you do in the English. I have my own theory—that very many Americans have, like my family, a family memory of connections to England et al. that just nags at them. The circumstances that drove sensible Englishmen to spend a year’s wage or sell themselves into indentured servitude to take typhoid-laden wooden ships on a two month voyage (if lucky) in cramped quarters across a chancy very deep sea to reach the uncertainties of a wild new continent—were not an abstract longing to go explore the world, heck no. They were escaping—some fearing death at the hands of a religiously motivated mob, some wanted by this and that faction, some driven by fear of the Black Death, some by the Civil Wars, some by fear of the Restoration—all sorts of motives. Among my people, some couples left aged parents behind; some families went entire; but those who parted with parents and neighbors and towns and villages knew they’d never meet again. This was not a whim they were following. It was a desperate act. It left a lot of unfinished business, a sense of things lost. People from that generation want to know. People who’ve come here from other countries, lately people who lost families in the World Wars and who have been displaced, or scattered—they’re trying to get the records together before time erases them entirely. THere’s a sense of, on the one hand, despair that it can’t be done, and on the other, desperation to get what can be gotten.
But people who’ve lived securely in a village for 300-400 years, people who can look at the parish churchyard and see generations of their family—maybe aren’t motivated in the same way. And those who have parental histories tied up in what became war zones—some of the questions are still painful, and even dangerous. That generation is passing, but the curiosity to rake over that past still isn’t quite there yet. I think it will be. I think people ultimately get curious, if the answers seem vague. DNA offers a sudden gateway to finding missing pieces. These companies building immense databases where you can compare with people you never met offer some hope. They’ve got to scare the heck out of criminals, too—there’ll be the day a forensic investigator in a serious crime can say, hmm, related to this family, eh? THere are a lot of considerations about the sudden new DNA village we live in, where nobody’s that far removed….or unknown…
CJ: Two month voyage? My father’s side was sent Down Under, an extremely long and dangerous voyage. My mother left England in 1911 when the voyage was nowhere near as arduous.
Well, if you count the time some poor people languished in port waiting on the rest of the passengers or delayed for repairs, it could be longer—also depending on weather.
True, but going Down Under to the Colonies involved going the long way around the Cape. The coast of Western Australia is littered with ships from all nations getting blown off course & then going splat.
As I recall, the Grand Banks and hurricanes were the principal hazards of the England/Massachusetts route. It could take up to six months on ship in the earliest days, counting what aircraft would call ‘ground delays’, the futzing about to get situated and deal with small problems…the actual crossing could be four months; if you were lucky, it was two. If you look at the outlines of the Mayflower (1600’s) versus, say, Cutty Sark (1869, tea clipper), you can see why: the time, as ships slimmed down and put on more sail, could get cut down to six weeks, during the height of the ‘family’ crossings.
Parents nowadays, especially helicopter parents, would expire of fright to see how my g-something grandfather Pieter Jans Van Deventer, who was not a poor man, made it on the little ship he took with his wife and two small children, to New Amsterdam. They may have afforded a cubbyhole of a cabin. But a month and a half or more of trying to keep children from getting underfoot of working sailors, tangled in rope, falling overboard, or a thousand other hazards of passage, not to mention the hope not to get typhoid from the drinking water. A month and a half in an 8×8 constantly creaking room with two kids, no toilet, and no laundry except seawater? One can only imagine they went far beyond all the ordinary ‘count the white cars’ games.
The once-aristocratic Strodes had it even worse. A former member of Parliament, his son now a wanted man (English Civil Wars) and already fled to the colonies, as best I can put it together, Mr Strode set out from Gloucester (?) headed for Virginia’s Isle of Wight, with his family of 6–or 8, I can’t remember. But typhoid broke out. Strode and his wife both died at sea, leaving teen-aged Martha in charge of the younger children.
For a somewhat romanticized overview of what such a trip entailed, I suggest To the Ends of the Earth, by William Golding (yes, the Lord of the Flies guy. It also was turned into an HBO miniseries. Doldrums, icebergs, storms, and crew and passenger disputes were the least of your worries.
There is the question of whether my fathers people who came out of South Carolina were politicals, thieves or guards. We’re afraid to find out that they were guards, and terrified that they were politicals. You’ve all heard the curse, may your children grow up to be lawyers and politicians!
@CJ, We would do well to remember that, in the context of the times, Martha was a young adult by the time she was 16. In many European countries 16 is the age at which one takes control over certain aspects of one’s life. Age of consent is younger than that in many states of the USA, or was some 30 years ago. I think that I remember Texas raising it from 12 to 15…