Today, I invested 26 minutes in watching a video presentation by Crista Cowan from Ancestry.com on using DNA to hunt for family connections. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loR7dN1Qm9g&t=6s

The title of the video, which was published two weeks ago, is “AncestryDNA: You Won’t Match Everyone You Are Related To“. The title caught my eye because it represented exactly what I needed to understand when we share DNA with cousins and when we don’t. The upshot is that you may have to look at a lot of tests to find the DNA connections you are seeking, especially when that sought-after connection is several generations back. Finding cousins with shared DNA is the key to finding such connections.

AncestryDNA holds out the strongest possibility of doing just that because the service has the largest database of DNA test results in the world (8 million tests and counting).

After watching the video, I posted this comment for Crista, which outlines my main project and a secondary one:

Thanks, Crista, for this presentation. I understand much better what I need to do to possibly break down the brick wall of my wife’s paternal 3 great grandfather’s unknown parents. We both have tested with AncestryDNA.

Also, I am going to dig deeper into our shared DNA results because the paper trail shows that we are sixth cousins 1 removed. It may be a stretch to expect to prove this with DNA, but I will be looking. Wally Huskonen