November 2,
2012
DNA
Special Edition
What
will an mtDNA test tell you?
Are
autosomal DNA tests the future?
Find
your DNA partners NEW FEATURE
When
the paper-trail runs out....
Genes
for face shape identified
DNA
may identify remains of King Richard III
Could
a child have THREE parents?
Steve
Robinson interview EXCLUSIVE
Save
$$$s on your Ancestry subscription
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Researching our family tree is all about
finding evidence - evidence that proves or, at least, strongly suggests that a
particular person is our ancestor. The further we go back the harder it is to
find that evidence. But we also know that written records, even official
certificates, can be just as unreliable as family stories that are passed down
the generations. DNA can not only fill in the gaps in our knowledge, but also
verify the evidence that we've collected from conventional sources.
Until quite recently DNA tests were very
limited in what they could do - so some of the companies
marketing the tests invented concepts such as the 'Seven
daughters of Eve' in order to sell tests to a wider market. I was very
unhappy about the claims that were being made, and the
way that tests were being marketed - so for a long time my advice to family
historians was only to buy a DNA test in order to test a specific hypothesis.
I'm glad to say that in the past couple
of years new tests have become available that offer many more opportunities, and
in this newsletter I'll explain why they are so exciting.
Note:
in the following articles I'm going to keep the explanations simple by writing
about what normally happens, and ignore the very rare exceptions - not least
because they are still being discovered!
Humans have 46 chromosomes in the nucleus of our cells, long strands of DNA that -
even under a microscope - are only visible during cell division. We inherit 23
chromosomes from each of our parents, and we get 22 of them whether we are male
or female; they are called autosomes.
The last two chromosomes determine sex: females have two X chromosomes, one
inherited from each parent; males have one X chromosome (inherited from their
mother) and one Y chromosome (inherited from their father).
Cells also contain organelles (the word means 'little organs') called mitochondria which have their own DNA
(it's thought that mitochondria are the relics of bacteria that invaded cells
over a billion years ago); the role of mitochondria is to provide energy for
the cell. These mitochondria are passed by mothers to all of their children,
both male and female - but only the female children can pass their mitochondria,
and thus their mtDNA, to the next generation.
The following family tree illustrates
how the Y chromosome and mtDNA are passed down the
generations:
I've used colours to indicate how the Y chromosome(shades of blue)
and mtDNA (shades of red) are inherited - note
how the Y chromosome inherited by the two brothers has passed down the
left-hand edge of the tree, whilst the mtDNA
inherited by all three siblings has passed down the right-hand edge.
Typically the Y chromosome follows the
surname, although in this example James Bradford was illegitimate and so - as
usually happens in such circumstances - his surname came from his mother. By
contrast on the right-hand edge of the tree the surname changes with every
generation - this makes it more difficult to use mtDNA
to find cousins.
Y-DNA and mtDNA
tests each tell us about just one ancestor from each generation: 2 of our 4
grandparents, 2 of our 8 great-grandparents, 2 of our 16 great-great
grandparents, and so on. This means that the further we go back, the less they
tell us about our overall ancestry.
The fact that the Y chromosome passes
from father to son with only slight modifications means that Y-DNA tests can be
very useful when used in conjunction with surname studies - because surnames normally
pass from father to son - and it allows male cousins who bear the same surname
to confirm that they share a common ancestor. It's even possible to estimate
how many generations back that common ancestor lived, which is very useful.
There's also the tantalising possibility
of using a Y-DNA test to discover the identity of the father of an illegitimate
child - but only in certain circumstances. For a start, the child must be a boy
- otherwise the Y chromosome won't have been passed on - and for the same
reason the person providing the DNA sample needs to be a descendant in the
direct male line.
Let's see how this would work in
practice using the example tree above. Notice that both of Robert Bradford's
grandfathers, James Bradford and Arthur Dent, were illegitimate. Because Robert
carries the same Y chromosome that his paternal grandfather inherited, a Y-DNA
test offers the possibility of discovering who fathered Mary Bradford's child.
However, if Robert wants to use a Y-DNA
test to find out who the father of his maternal grandfather was he's got a
problem - unless Arthur Dent is still alive, or Mary Dent had a brother who
isn't shown in the diagram, there's nobody in the family who has the same Y
chromosome as Arthur and his unknown father.
Even if you can locate such a cousin you
next have to persuade them to provide a DNA sample, which won't always be easy
- and if you expect them to contribute to the cost it could be well nigh impossible! And even after the sample has been
tested there is no guarantee that there will be an immediate match.
Even if there is a match it will only
tell you what the surname of the father might have been, not precisely who they
were - and the surname could still be wrong (for example, if there's another
illegitimacy somewhere along the line). Nevertheless, it's better than nothing,
and if you're lucky there may be some circumstantial evidence that points to a
particular person - for example, there might be a neighbour, a lodger, or a
fellow servant who has the same surname.
Note:
there must have been cases when even the mother of an illegitimate child didn't
know who the father was, which makes it particularly amazing that you or I
might discover the answer 150 years later!
What will an mtDNA test tell you?
Mitochondrial DNA passes virtually
unaltered from mother to child, which means that in theory you can trace back
your ancestry on your maternal line for thousands of years. This was the logic
behind the 'Seven daughters of Eve' concept developed by Professor Bryan Sykes,
and described in his book.
Whilst it has a romantic appeal, so far as genealogy is concerned it's pretty
useless - indeed, I'd argue that it's worse than useless, because it can be
grossly misleading.
Why? Because with every generation you
go back the number of ancestors doubles, and once you
go back more than a few thousand years it's statistically likely that we all
share exactly the same ancestors. This means that identifying one person on one
line 45,000 years ago is pretty meaningless, because everyone else in the world
is also descended from that person, albeit by a different route.
Can mtDNA
tests provide any insight in cases of illegitimacy? Usually there will be no
doubt who the mother was, but there are exceptions - for example, the child may
have been a foundling, or adopted and given a new name. However, because the
surname changes with each generation, it won't be easy to interpret matches in
a meaningful way.
I haven't yet found a way in which I can
use an mtDNA test to help me with my family tree, and
if you're new to DNA testing I would suggest you look instead at the test I'm
going to write about next.....
Are autosomal DNA
tests the future?
Autosomal DNA comes from the 22 pairs of
chromosomes that are inherited by all children, male or female. Whereas Y-DNA
and mtDNA tests can only tell us about the ancestors
at the extreme edges of our family tree, an autosomal DNA test (such as the Family
Finder test from Family Tree DNA) offers the potential to make discoveries
and solve mysteries in any of our family lines.
However, before getting too excited
about the prospects it's important to understand how autosomal DNA is
inherited. You will recall from my introductory article that we inherit one
chromosome in each pair from our father and one from our mother - and that
sounds pretty simple, until you remember that each of our parents has two
copies of each autosome. What decides which one of each pair they pass to us?
In practice we get a mixture - within
each of the autosomes you inherited from your father there will be some parts
that came from his father, and some that came from his
mother. The same applies to your grandparents - they inherited a mixture from
their parents, and so on, and so on.
This means that our DNA literally does
contain a record of our ancestry, though of course, what we don't know is which
bit of autosomal DNA came from which ancestor. The companies which offer auto
tests use sophisticated statistical algorithms to determine which of their
customers may be related - and they're also able to estimate how close the relationship
is (the longer the segments of DNA that two possible cousins share, the closer
the relationship is likely to be).
One day it will be feasible for the
average family historian to have their entire genome sequenced: until then
autosomal tests are the best option for those of us who are looking for more
information about our ancestry than can be reliably ascertained using the
available records. Family Tree DNA's test uses over 700,000 pairs of locations,
which is a phenomenally large number compared to previous tests - and yet it still
represents only 0.024% (about 1/4000th) of your autosomal DNA!
Tip:
taking a Family Finder test is like completing your My Ancestors page at the
LostCousins site - it's something that you only need to do once, but you'll
continue to get matches as more and more people join the project.
Find your DNA
partners NEW FEATURE
No matter how experienced a genealogist
you are, or how well you understand the principles of DNA testing, there's a
limit to how many questions can be answered using DNA samples that you yourself
provide.
Sometimes there will be another family
member who can provide the necessary sample, but even when that is the case,
you may need another sample to test it against (it depends on what it is you
are trying to find out).
That's why I'm delighted to announced that you can now use LostCousins to search for
potential candidates by using the new DNA
research category on your My
Ancestors page. There are plenty of sites that allow you to upload your
family tree, but only LostCousins makes it easy to enter people who aren't on
your tree - either because you haven't worked out whether or how they are
connected, or because you're carrying out a project such as a One-Name or One-Place
Study.
Note:
although the following examples uses a British census, you can use any of the 8
censuses that LostCousins supports, including the US 1880 and 1940 censuses,
and the 1881 Census of Canada.
How does this new feature work? Very simply,
you look for DNA partners in precisely the same way that you search for cousins.
When you click the Search button on your My
Ancestors page every single entry you've made is compared with the millions
of entries made by other LostCousins members (this could potentially involve
billions of comparisons, depending how much data you have entered), and any new
matches found are highlighted with a red tick, as you can see in the example
below:
Whenever you're matched with someone new
the first thing you should do is go to your My
Cousins page, where there will be an entry in the New contacts section.
The
name of the person you're matched with isn't shown - you'll only see their
initials (that's because LostCousins respects the privacy and security of its
members). But you can find out how
the other person is connected to you even before you contact them, simply by
clicking on their initials - this displays the My Contact page for the relationship:
In this example the other member is a
direct descendant of the person you've entered, which increases the chance that
they'll be able to provide the sample that you need. But even if the other
member is connected in some other way, they might still be able to put you in
contact with a suitable donor - after all, they wouldn't belong to LostCousins
if they weren't seriously researching their tree.
Tip:
the My Contact page is available for every person you're linked with, and is particularly
valuable when you're matched with someone who is a relative of yours, because the
information displayed is often sufficient for you to work out what the
connection is - which means that once contact is established you get down to
business right away! Use the Notes box as an 'aide memoire'.
How do you determine who to enter on
your My Ancestors page when your aim
is to use DNA to prove an hypothesis or solve a
mystery?
The key things to remember are that the
Y-chromosome passes from father to son, whilst mtDNA
passes from mother to child. There must be an unbroken chain
from the person whose identity you are attempting to infer or confirm, to the
person who provides the test.
This means, for example, that I can't
use a Y-DNA test to find out who the father of my illegitimate ancestors was
because those ancestors were both female (although one did have a brother who
might possibly share the same father, so there is still some hope).
Tip:
when the terms 'paternal ancestor' and 'maternal ancestor' are used in relation
to DNA testing it is always the ancestors at the very edges of your family tree
- your DIRECT paternal and maternal ancestors - who are being referred to.
Here's the question that you should ask
yourself: "if there is someone alive today who shares my ancestor's
Y-chromosome or mtDNA, who will they be descended
from?"
You might think that the answer to that
question is simply "my ancestor", but that's only half the story.
Why? Because the Y-chromosome or mtDNA in question
didn't suddenly materialise when your ancestor was born - it was inherited from
their father or mother.
Let's consider an example using the family
tree which I used to illustrate how Y-DNA and mtDNA are
passed down the generations:
Imagine you're Robert Bradford, whose
paternal grandfather was illegitimate. You've obviously inherited your
great-grandfather's Y-chromosome which provides a clue to his identity - but
only if you can match it against another sample. In many cases you wouldn't
have any idea who the father of the illegitimate child was, so the best you can
do is take a Y-DNA test yourself and see if there are any matches in the
database of the testing company, or other accessible databases that will
provide a clue to the surname of your unknown paternal ancestor.
But let's suppose that in this
particular case you have a strong suspicion that the father of Mary Bradford's
child James was one Roger Smith - maybe he was lodging with the family at the
time when the child was conceived, but died before James was born. Or perhaps
there is a family story that points in Roger Smith's direction.
Now, because Roger Smith died before marrying, and - to the best of your knowledge - before
fathering any other children, the only person who will have inherited his
Y-chromosome is your ancestor James Bradford. So is this a hopeless cause?
No, it isn't - because Roger will have
inherited his Y-chromosome from his own father, John, and John had another son,
imaginatively called John Smith, who was living at home with Roger and his
parents on the 1881 Census. Perhaps John did marry and have a son?
The only problem is, John Smith is such a common name that trying to track
his descendants would be really, really difficult - and that's where
LostCousins can help. If you enter not only Roger Smith, but also his brother
John and their father using the 'DNA research' category you'll be matched with
the other LostCousins members who have entered any one of them the moment you
click on the Search button.
Of course, you're not guaranteed of a match, and even if there is a match,
you don't know that Roger's brother had any sons. But since it will only take a
couple of minutes to add the 1881 Census data for this family to your My Ancestors page, it's got to be worth
a try!
It's not possible in a short article to cover every possibility, but
whilst this example has focused on Y-DNA, similar logic applies to the
inheritance of mtDNA. Of course, mtDNA will never tell you who the father of an
illegitimate child was, but it might well provide a clue to the identity of a
female ancestor whose baptism or marriage you've been unable to find.
Note: up to now many people have
taken DNA tests without any real understanding of how they might help resolve
their questions about their family tree. Using the 'DNA research' feature I've
created doesn't commit you in any way to taking a DNA test - it merely helps to
create a situation in which taking a test is more likely to tell you something
useful!
When the paper-trail
runs out....
There aren't many occasions when mtDNA can be used to answer specific
questions, so I was delighted when Pamela wrote from Australia to tell me how
it had helped her:
"I used a DNA test to knock down a brick wall around my great grandmother.
There was absolutely no paper trail for her at all - I can't even find a
marriage. The only information was in a biographical index of Western Australia
about her mother applying for poor relief after the death of her husband,
naming her 3 children - but not her. Colonial records being very informative, I
requested the files for that area, but found that her file was gone.
"I had heard rumours about our great-great uncle being aboriginal and
was informed that he was adopted, his mother dying in childbirth."
Pamela wondered whether her great-grandmother might also have been
aboriginal. As the great-grandmother in question was her mother's mother's
mother, she was in Pamela's direct maternal line - which meant that Pamela's
own mtDNA would be virtually identical to that of her great-grandmother - so
she decided to have her mtDNA tested.
The result proved that Pamela has an aboriginal ancestor in her direct
maternal line, and given the other evidence - or lack of it - it seems
extremely likely that it was her great-grandmother.
Tip: although testing your mtDNA
is very unlikely to tell you precisely who your maternal ancestors were, it may
provide some useful clues to their geographical and/or ethnic origin; in some
cases these additional clues will greatly increase your chances of finding
documentary evidence.
Whether we're using DNA or more traditional methods to research our family
tree there could be occasions when we
discover something that we wish we hadn't. Cheryl sent me an example from her
own experience which illustrates this well:
Further to your DNA themed
newsletter this month, I thought I would pass on my experience with DNA
testing. The individual this story relates to has asked me not to publicly
identify him, so I will keep that part vague.
My paternal line is LONG of
Wiltshire whose documented pedigree stretches back to the 13th century. There
is a tradition in the family (dating from at least the early 19th century) that
another line originating in a nearby village is descended from my line - but
with only circumstantial evidence (i.e an administration in 1630 naming names,
but not the relationship to the deceased).
A certain gentleman (I will call
him JL), very proud of his Long name and history, descended from this other
line and a very keen genealogist, decided to settle the question once and for
all. While we waited for the results of his DNA comparison with my brother's,
we felt quite excited that at last we might know for sure, one way or the
other.
Disappointingly, there was no
match. Well, that was that, or so it would seem....
I continued to check his results
and found overwhelming numbers of matches with another name. The same name as
JL's great-great grandmother's SECOND husband. The lady in question was the
daughter of an Earl, and the second husband was a 1st Baronet whom she had
married in 1808, a year after her first husband's death. The hapless first
husband was probably unaware his wife had passed off at least one of her
children with her lover, as his. Not an
uncommon situation in families of all ranks, and one which will affect any
hopeful DNA matches today, unfortunately.
Needless to say, poor JL was
shocked to learn he apparently has no Long DNA. But then again, perhaps my
brother's DNA wouldn't have proved anything either, for the same reason.
There was an even bigger shock for an Ohio woman who discovered (through
DNA testing) that she had married her own father. You'll find the full shocking
story in this Daily Mail article.
There are lots of companies offering DNA tests - and inevitably some are
cheaper than others. My only experience is of Family Tree DNA,
about whom I've only ever heard good things - indeed, that's one reason why I
chose them.
Having a DNA test isn't like buying gas or electricity - where you get the
same quality product whoever your supplier is. Not only does the level of
expertise vary, some companies only offer the cheaper, more basic tests -
presumably in the hope that you'll buy on price alone, without looking too
closely at what you're getting. But equally important, once you've taken your
test you want your results to be checked against the largest possible database
- and that's the second reason why I went with the company that has carried out
more DNA analyses for family historians than any other.
The third thing that appealed to me about Family Tree DNA is
that, like LostCousins, it was founded by someone who had a keen interest in
researching his own genealogy. Bennett Greenspan may be the President and Chief
Executive of the company, but three years in a row he's been at the Who Do You Think You Are? show in London
talking to ordinary people like you and me!
Note:
23andMe are
believed to have a larger database of autosomal DNA tests - their equivalent to
Family
Finder is called Relative Finder.
However, because 23andMe offer tests for purposes other than genealogical
research you won't necessarily get more useful results.
Genes for face shape
identified
A study of
10,000 people has identified 5 genes which are associated with different face
shapes, and could ultimately lead to visual reconstructions of long-dead
ancestors (results from a previous study suggest
that hair and eye colour can also be predicted from DNA).
DNA may identify
remains of King Richard III
The long-running story
of the search underneath a Leicester car park for the bones of King Richard III,
whose death at Bosworth in 1485 ended the War of the Roses and allowed Henry
Tudor to seize the throne, is nearing its conclusion. Remains have been found
which match some of the physical aspects of the King, and by the end of the
year DNA tests should prove whether or not they belong to the monarch.
The DNA sample against which the bones
will be tested has been provided by a Canadian man whose mother was in the direct
female line of descent from Anne of York, King Richard's sister - but tracing
her ancestry through 17 generations must have been quite a challenge! You can
read more about this aspect of the story here.
Note:
King Richard III isn't the only English King whose final resting place is in
doubt, as this BBC article
explains.
Could a child have
THREE parents?
A public consultation has begun into a
technique that could eliminate diseases, some of them fatal, which are
inherited through mitochondrial DNA - but it requires a third person to provide
DNA, so technically the child could be said to have three parents.
According to a BBC News report about 1 child in
200 is born with defective mitochondria, and while most show few symptoms, some
suffer from muscular weakness, blindness, or heart failure. One woman lost all 7 of her children to the
same disease, as another BBC article relates.
If the procedure is approved for use,
let's hope that it is properly documented. It's bad enough that the family
historians of the future may not be able to draw on the census as a source of
information - but imagine if the results of DNA tests couldn't be relied upon
either!
Steve Robinson
interview EXCLUSIVE
When I started reading In the Blood, the crime mystery featuring American
genealogist Jefferson Tayte, I
couldn't put it down. And I'm not the only one - almost two-thirds of the reviewers
on Amazon.com
have given it 5 stars out of 5.
When I then discovered that Steve Robinson, the author,
lives just 20 miles away from me, I couldn't resist tracking him down for an
exclusive interview.
'In the Blood' has been incredibly well-received,
and once I got into it I couldn't put it down. What decided you to write a
series of crime novels with a genealogical theme?
"The story of In the Blood began with something I read in a National Trust
pamphlet about the Helford ferry in 1803.
From that I had the idea for a crime set in that time period and so I
needed a way to uncover that crime.
Having a genealogist digging up the past seemed like an interesting
angle and a logical way to get to the mystery that lies at the heart of the
story. I then imagined that someone in
the present might want the past to remain buried and would try to stop the
genealogist, which added the thriller element to the present day
narrative. I suppose one thing really
led to another."
How much research have you done into
your own family tree?
I've had very little time for my own
genealogical research since I started writing full time and what time I have
has been focused on my maternal grandfather, which was the inspiration behind
my second book, To
the Grave. He was an American GI
during WW2. Soon after the war he went
back to America leaving a young family behind and until recently I've know very
little about him. After gathering some
basic information from my family I found his enlistment record on the NARA
website which opened the door. Then with
the help of an amateur genealogist in Maine, New England, who wrote to me about
my books, I now know his final resting place and even have a photograph of his
headstone in the military cemetery where he's buried. I also found out that I have quite an
extensive American family as he was one of nine children. I hope to continue working on my family
history when I have time and I plan to write the story of my previously unknown
American grandfather, which I will share on my website when I feel the journey
has reached its conclusion.
Was the character of Jefferson Tayte, the genealogist hero of your novels, inspired by
someone you met?
No, I've never met anyone like Jefferson
Tayte, which is a shame because I think we'd get on
really well. I like his sense of humour
and that he cares about people. He's an everyman in a non-stereotypical
action-hero body who is based on the things that I didn't see in other
fictional characters.
Is it as enjoyable writing your books as
it is reading them?
I'm never really in reading mode when I'm
reading my own work. I'm always
editing. I do enjoy that though because
it means the hard work is done. I'm just
fine tuning at the reading stage. The
writing part is something of a pleasure and pain process. You have good days and bad days but you keep
going because it's the only way to get to the end of the story and once I start
a book I really feel the need to finish it.
That has a lot to do with the characters I've created. It might sound strange but I feel I owe it to
them to keep going until their story is told.
How important is it to you that the
details in your novels are accurate?
It's extremely important. I might not always get everything exactly
right first time but I try very hard to and I think having that attitude has
helped. I always make edits whenever
anyone points something out to me, too, and one of the great things about ebooks is that changes can be made within hours. I think it's part of
the writer's job to get the facts right.
It might be fiction but it should feel real to the reader.
Who are the other authors that you most
admire, and how have they affected the way you write?
That's a difficult question for me to
answer as I don't really have any firm favourites. When I read a book that I really admire I
tend to analyse it to understand why, but there's no one author who repeatedly
does that for me. I think you find your
own style over time and I really couldn't put my finger on which authors have
influenced me.
Your second Jefferson Tayte novel, 'To
the Grave', is reckoned by many of the reviewers on Amazon to be even
better than the first. What are reviewers going to say about your third book,
and when can we expect to see it?
As I like to make each story different
to keep things fresh I never know what readers might say about a book before I
release it. I can only hope that the key
elements that readers enjoyed from the previous books are maintained and that
they enjoy the story. JT's a likeable
character by all accounts and he's not going to change, and there's always
going to be a past mystery with a present day thriller, but I try not to follow
any more of a formula than that. There's no past narrative at all in the third
book for example, but there's still plenty of genealogy and history revealed
through Tayte's research. I think as readers we all have our favourite
books in any series and it's impossible to make each book better than the last
for everyone. I'm expecting to release
the third Jefferson Tayte genealogical crime mystery
by next spring.
Are you going to kill off Jefferson Tayte at some point so that you can focus on 'serious'
writing, in the same way that Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes?
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'serious'. I certainly take my writing seriously. If you mean 'literary' then no, I'll leave
that to others. I write the kind of
stories I enjoy reading and hope others will too. If I had a mantra for such things it would
simply be 'a good story, well told'.
That's what I aim for. As for
killing JT off, I don't know. His
research certainly gets him into plenty of life threatening situations so he'll
have to watch out and we'll just have to wait and see.
What would your (Jefferson Tayte's?) advice be to someone researching their family
tree who is up against a 'brick wall'?
JT has certainly hit plenty of brick
walls and as I like to carry out the research he does in the book for real I've
had quite a time trying to climb them with him.
The best advice I can give is that the best way to climb a genealogical
brick wall is to find a way around it.
By which I mean that it's good to think differently about the problem
and seek another approach to it. There
is often more than one way to find what you're looking for.
Finally, as I know some LostCousins members
are thinking of publishing their own electronic book, how difficult was it to
put your book into Kindle format, and what was it like as a lone author dealing
with an
enormous company like Amazon?
Publishing an ebook
or paperback yourself and dealing with Amazon are the easy aspects of becoming
an indie author. The process is
straightforward and Amazon are the best when it comes
to helping authors get noticed.
Marketing your work is undoubtedly the hardest part in my opinion and
newsletters such as this are a great way to help with that, so thanks, Peter,
for recommending my genealogical crime series and for this interview.
And thank you, Steve, for interrupting
your vacation to answer my questions.
Note:
the third Jefferson Tayte book is due to be released
on Kindle in December, with a paperback version following in the spring of
2013.
Save $$$s on
your Ancestry subscription
It's amazing that in an era when information
can circle the globe in a fraction of a second a big company like Ancestry can
charge very different prices for the same subscription in different countries -
but they do.
Which Ancestry site is the cheapest?
There's a hint in the title of this article! All of the sites
that charge in dollars - whether US, Canadian, or Australian - are considerably more expensive than
the UK site. Look how little you will pay at Ancestry.co.uk!
Note:
the published price of a Worldwide subscription on
Ancestry's UK website is £155.40, but that includes UK taxes. If you live in
the US, Canada, or indeed anywhere other than Europe you'll pay £135.13, as
shown in the screenshot above - the actual price will, of course, be displayed before
you complete your purchase.
At today's exchange rate that price
equates to just $217 (US), or $216 (Canadian), which is a substantial
saving compared to the $299 you'd
pay for exactly the same subscription (though with a slightly different name) at
Ancestry.com, or Ancestry.ca! And although it says 'Initial Annual Membership
Fee' it isn't a special offer price - renewals are charged at the same rate.
There are four simple steps to take:
(1) Cancel your existing subscription - do it now, even if it isn't due to expire for some
time (you'll still get the time you've paid for). That way there's no risk that
you might forget to cancel nearer the time. I always cancel on the day my
subscription starts - that's the safest approach.
(2) When you're ready to take out a new
subscription* click here
to go to Ancestry.co.uk (note: if you use that link LostCousins may receive some commission - if you
don't we won't).
* when my subscription runs out I can often manage for a week
or two without renewing, so that's a way to save even more!
(3) Don't re-register. Simply log-in
using your existing user name and password - that way you won't lose anything (and
you can even continue using the same site to access Ancestry's records if you
prefer).
Tip:
if you want to share this tip with friends or relatives please send them a link
to this newsletter - that way you'll be supporting LostCousins and its members.
Are you receiving
the right newsletter?
Most LostCousins members have some
British or Irish ancestry, and the main edition of my newsletter is aimed at
those members (it also includes important genealogy news from around the world,
including the US and Canada). If you have British or Irish ancestry then you
would probably find that edition - which is published twice a month - more useful.
Currently your My Details page
indicates that you wish to receive news relating to the US and Canada only - if
you would like to receive the main edition simply change the settings in the My Interests section:
If you haven't already done so, now
would be a good time to complete the other parts of your My Details page - and to change your password if you're still using
the temporary one issued when you first registered.
Tip:
you can get an instant email reminder of your password by clicking here.
I hope you've found this newsletter
interesting, and that you now have a better understanding of how DNA tests
might be able to help you unravel some of the mysteries of your family tree.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2012 Peter Calver
You
may link to this newsletter, and I have included bookmarks so you can - if you
wish - link to a specific article by copying the relevant entry in the list of
contents at the beginning of the newsletter. However, please email me first if
you would like to re-publish any part of the newsletter on your own website or
in any other format.