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The Theory, the Test, and the Grandmother from Saratov

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Real Research Stories The Theory, the Test, and the Grandmother from Saratov It started, as these things do, with a very confident theory and absolutely no evidence. A friend was certain another friend had to be part First Nations purely on the basis that he tans well in the summer. Naturally, the only sensible response was to settle it with a DNA test. I love these moments. Someone walks into a DNA test expecting one story, and the results hand them something else entirely, usually something far more interesting than the theory they started with. The results came back No First Nations ancestry, what the test actually showed was as textbook British Isles as it gets: mostly Scottish, a good chunk of English, a slice of Welsh. Exactly the kind of result that would normally get a quick glance and a shrug, case closed, theory disproven, on with the day. Except for one line sitting at the bottom of the report that nobody expected: a small, unmistakable percentage of Russian DNA. Scottish Ma...
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You Don't Need Much. But Here's What Helps.

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Getting Started You Don't Need Much. But Here's What Helps. The number one concern potential clients have when they reach out to me is that they don't think I have enough information to get started.  Most of the time, they have more than they realize, and even when they don't, that's rarely the obstacle they think it is. People come to me in all sorts of states of readiness. Some arrive with a shoebox of old documents, a family Bible, and a list of questions going back four generations. Others come with a first name, a country, and a feeling that something in their family story has never quite added up.  Both are great starting points. Here's why. Most official records, births, marriages, deaths, census returns, are sealed for 100 years. Which means that no matter how much information you walk in with, my only objective is to connect them to someone who was around 100 years ago.  That said, the more you can tell me at the outset, the faster I can start pulling o...
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A Soldier, a Tenement, and a Family Found: The McDonalds of Abbey Street

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Real Research Stories A Soldier, a Tenement, and a Family Found: The McDonalds of Abbey Street  Dublin, Ireland  ·  1896 – 1979 It started with a Commonwealth War Graves certificate and a name: Corporal Christopher McDonald, who died on 8 July 1916, age 19. What followed was one of those research conversations that reminds me exactly why I love this work. A client reached out with a photograph of a memorial certificate, the kind issued by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. On it: a young soldier, buried at St. Patrick's Cemetery, Loos, France. Son of Francis and Catherine McDonald, of 143 Abbey Street, Dublin. She had one question: could I find anything about Christy and that address on the census? It seemed simple enough. What unfolded over the next 48 hours was anything but. The conversation that started it all This is how a lot of my research begins, not with a formal brief, but with a message, a photograph, and a family's curiosity. Here's how it went: AW Amanda ...
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When the Records Tell You Something You Didn't Expect

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The Harder Stories When the Records Tell You Something You Didn't Expect Most people begin genealogy research hoping to find connection, a famous ancestor, a homeland, a story that explains something about who they are. Sometimes that's exactly what they find. And sometimes the records tell a different story entirely. In twenty-six years of research, I have uncovered a great many things that families didn't know. Some of them were joyful, many were moving, and some stopped people in their tracks. Discoveries that rewrote what they thought they knew about themselves, their parents, their grandparents. This is that post, the one about what happens when the research doesn't go where anyone expected. I want to be honest here, because I think it matters: unexpected discoveries are more common than most people realize. The past was complicated, people made difficult choices under difficult circumstances, secrets were kept, sometimes out of shame, sometimes out of love, someti...
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It Started With a School Project: How I Fell Into Family History

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Behind the Research It Started With a School Project: How I Fell Into Family History  26 years and counting Twenty-six years ago, my daughter came home from school with a homework assignment: draw a family tree going back two generations. It seemed simple enough. It wasn't. And I have never really stopped looking since. The project was straightforward on its face. Names of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Fill in the boxes. Hand it in. But when my daughter set the sheet in front of me, I realized I couldn't fill it in. I had so many gaps. My father's side was almost entirely a blank.  We had names, a few of them, but dates, and places, the connecting tissue of a family's story? Nothing. I didn't know my father's side well enough to put pen to paper.  My daughter's father's side was non-existent, but this is a whole different story for a later post!  I could have written in what little we knew and left the rest empty. Instead, something in me re...
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DNA Testing and Genealogy: What Your Results Really Tell You

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DNA & Genealogy DNA Testing and Genealogy: What Your Results Really Tell You Millions of people have spit into a tube and waited anxiously for their DNA results to arrive. But once they do, many people aren't sure what to do next. Here's what your DNA test actually reveals and how to use it as a powerful genealogy tool. The Three Main Types of DNA Tests Not all DNA tests are created equal. The type you choose determines what questions it can answer about your ancestry. Autosomal AncestryDNA / 23andMe Tests DNA from both sides of your family. Best for finding cousins and close relatives. Useful back roughly 5–7 generations. Y-DNA Paternal Line Passed father to son only. Traces your direct paternal line deep into history. Essential for surname research. mtDNA Maternal Line Passed from mother to all children. Traces your direct maternal line. Very stable across centuries. Ethnicity Estimates: Exciting, But Not Evidence The colourful ethnicity pie chart is usually the first thi...
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