Monday 27 May 2013

Caithness (SCT)

No sooner had this Caithness DNA post been posted than an official Caithness-Sutherland DNA project sprang into being.
Those interested in the DNA of either county are encouraged to join the official project to help us all understand the genetic heritage of our Caithness (or Sutherland) ancestry.
Should your surnames match those of interest appearing on the DNASurnames Caithness page, you are welcome to get in touch and be listed there as well.
Further details on the specific families of particular interest are available on Lorna's personal webpages.

Monday 13 May 2013

Caithness (SCT)

DNA Surnames has been updated.
Main changes are the inclusion of a link in the surname projects list to the MANSON project, and in the Lineage section, the inclusion of a catch all Caithness "project", which contains a MANSON result for my MANSONs - another being searched for to validate the signature.
Another BAIN result has also been included.
The Caithness page is not an official geographical DNA project, merely a convenient place to group those DNA tests for surnames of interest to me, where some may not have a surname project of their own. 
Hopefully there are also a few less broken links as yet more of the background renumbering for easier maintenance has been done.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Y-DNA12 success story

As a project administrator of several Y-DNA Surname projects, whilst welcoming their interest in at least beginning the fun of testing and exploring the history locked inside ourselves, I admit to inwardly groaning when someone who has only tested Y-DNA12 joins.

So although any price reduction is great, the recent drop in prices for the Y-DNA12 tests were met with another inward groan that more time would need to be spent convincing people to upgrade to at least Y-DNA37 IF their interest is in genealogical time frames.

That said, I did actively promote this price reduction to someone who had been teetering over whether or not dna testing was for him.

His story can be read on my personal blog and is a tale of coincidences and lucky finds that has connected him to his maternal grandmother's family, all previously unknown to him, and had identified his potential biological paternal grandfather's family.
However the doubt still existed that he didn't really know if his father's surname by usage from his (step) father, was indeed his biological surname, his grandparents having married in the year following his father's birth.

The price reduction was enough for him to decide that he would begin the journey.
He was cautioned that at 12 markers it was more likely that he would get a number of matches from a variety of surnames, and that it really was only the start of the process, unlikely to be at all definitive.

The Y-DNA12 results arrived today.
How many matches - one.
Surname - his.
Most distant ancestor - the same as that identified in the research of his assumed step-grandfather.

I'm not sure I want to suggest further testing and see this match fade away as the markers increase!



Sunday 5 May 2013

Family Tree DNA pricing update



IMPORTANT

PRICING UPDATE


FAMILYTREEDNA
HISTORY UNEARTHED DAILY


Dear Group Administrators,
With the end of the DNA Day promotion, we (Bennett and Max), considered how to continue offering the best prices, yet keep control in the lab to avoid delays from high volume. Since demand is directly related to prices, we decided to implement a temporary price rollback whenever lab capacity allows us to do so.
Despite an extremely successful sale, we believe that with our increased lab capacity, we are able to continue offering reduced prices on several tests. While the prices are not as low as they were for the DNA Day promotion, you will notice that these temporary reductions are extremely attractive, and should be a real incentive to anyone that did not take advantage of the sale to order now, while the prices are reduced. With this system in place, prices may go up on different tests at any time based on lab volume.
Additionally, on April 1st when we permanently reduced the price of the Y-DNA12 to $49, we mentioned that our R&D team was working towards a price reduction for the equivalent mtDNA basic test. Good news! Not only did we manage to achieve this goal, but we did it for the mtDNAPlus test that covers both HVR1 and HVR2. Therefore, we're discontinuing the HVR1-only test. Our basic mtDNA test will now be the mtDNAPlus (HVR1+2) at the $49 price point! We hope that with the basic Y-DNA and mtDNA tests very reasonably priced, a whole new group of people will be tempted to begin their own DNA experience and increase the size of your projects!
You are welcome to spread the news, and as always, we thank you for your continued support.


Max Blankfeld
Bennett Greenspan
Family Tree DNA



•• NEW LOW PRICES ON THESE AND MANY MORE ••
Full Mitochondrial Sequence:
$199
Family Finder
$199
Y-DNA37 +
Full Sequence:
$368
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