What are some good websites for tracing my ancestry?

Question

Any website will help

Not too long ago, we had read an article in either Time OR Newsweek magazine about labs that you can send a DNA swab online to determine one's ansestral origins. Now that I can afford to, (approx $300.00), I can't remember the name of the sites. All help is greatly appreciated. Many Thanks!

Answer 1

awesome question - thanks for all the information to all. God bless !


EDIT>>>> Once again thank you to the questioner and answerers for all the great information, I am well on my way to building my own family tree, God Bless you all !

Answer 2

Hey Lolas Dad,

You should really start with your Family Tree as much as you can get. Birth, Marriage, and Death certificates. Interview the living relatives and put the results in a Genealogy Software package. You will need this for FAMILY TREE DNA projects for a specific surname. You could also use the Sorenson FREE dna test.

Anyway here are some tools to help you. The print charts are for when you do interviews of relatives, to collect information and stay on track with the point of the interview.

The Genealogy Software will come with FREE time on PAY sites, where you can get family Tree Branches to fill out a particular Surname - you have to be careful using them, they are not all accurate, in fact I would be surprised if 20% were. So maybe your idea to do DNA will get what you want. This only goes after the SURNAME lineage. So your Fathers Mother will not be included. Your Fathers, Fathers Fathers Mother will not be included. Not a great tool, but useful for the SURNAME.

Answer 3

"Diving into the Gene Pool." Carolina A. Miranda. From Time magazine, August 28, 2006, page 45 (in part):

"Today at least half a dozen companies will, for about $200 a pop, take your spittle, analyze the heck out of it and tell you who and what you are. The tests are popular among adoptees, armchair genealogists and high school seniors praying that a link to some underrepresented ethnic group will help get them into the Ivies. Already a card-carrying minority, I thought a test might help me figure out a thing or two about my forebears --and my mixed-up identity.

"So I hit the Internet and quickly found a couple of companies that looked promising. The first, DNA Tribes in Arlington, Va., filled its website with glossy shots of ethnic types. The next, DNAPrint in Sarasota, Fla., offered a cool Flash movie of a rotating double helix. I was doubly sold. I ordered a test from each and within a couple of days was scraping the inside of my cheek with swabs and depositing my cells into prepaid envelopes ready to be sent off to the labs."