Linda,
One of the requirements of joining the project is to submit a lineage, so that I
can place it online in the form of family group sheets, and I will be
scrutinizing the lineages to the best of my ability, including documentation
wherever available.
DNA can quickly uncover a bad connection, and about 5% of people tested turn out
to *disprove* their paper pedigree. And by the way, I find this a good reason
to be tested ASAP because this news has come as a terrible shock to several
individuals in my projects who have worked on their genealogy for years, only to
find out they are *not* who they thought they were.
DNA test results cannot be used alone because the results of closely related men
will be the same, just as my father and his brother are a 67/67 match. Their
sons (if they'd had any) could not be told apart. On the other hand, my two
STRAUB first cousins, who are brothers, matched only 66/67. A mutation had
occurred between my uncle and *one* of his two sons. From now on, the sons of
those two brothers will be separable by that mutation. Hopefully, we will be
able to pinpoint the locations of the other mutations among the CARRICOs, so at
least some lines can be distinguised from others. But not all will be, at least
not with the level of testing being done now. However I suspect it won't be too
many years before we will have that kind of discrimination in available tests,
so this argues for testing the senior members of your family *now*. (I tested
my father when he was 86, and he has since passed away, so I'm glad I tested him
in time -- his sample will be held in storage for 25 years.)
Speaking frankly, I think a lot of what has been done on early CARRICO genealogy
here in the U.S. is very shaky. It is precisely for that reason that I started
the CARRICO-DNA project. It won't solve all our problems, but it will support
the good connections and highlight the bad ones. DNA testing is not a not a
magic box that will pop out the name of one's ancestor, but it is very solid
evidence of whether or not two people share a common ancestor.
If you have six people claiming descent from your Alexander, and five match, you
can probably figure the one who doesn't match has made a mistake in his paper
genealogy. This is why it's so important to test many individuals. You would
never want to base a major conclusion on having tested just one person, if for
no other reason than that they might have an "NPE" (non-paternal event -- an
unknown adoption or illicit relationship of the mother) in their patrilineal
line. It's why I tested my father *and* his brother (who match) and why I
tested my two first cousins, who were brothers (and who match). I didn't want
to spend years working on a lineage containing an NPE. The two cousins now
match four others claiming the same patrilineal ancestor, so I can relax on that
score (my maternal grandfather's line). I'm still waiting for my father and his
brother to match someone else (my paternal grandfather's line).
Bottom line: you don't base your genealogical conclusions on the test results
of one individual and his paper pedigree, no matter how well documented it is,
because he could have a hidden paternity in his lineage. You base it on the
results of testing many individuals with similar pedigrees. The ones with valid
pedigrees will match.
Diana
-----Original Message-----
From: carrico-dna-bounces(a)rootsweb.com
[mailto:carrico-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Linda Boorom
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 6:42 PM
To: carrico-dna(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [CARRICO-DNA] what will DNA testing tell us
Diana,
Given that some of what has been published on the Carrico's
has had it's faults with reliability, have you set up guidelines for proving
back
to the earliest known ancestor to make whatever information comes of
the DNA
testing reliable?
Just curious,
Linda