Revealing American Indian and Minority Heritage by DNA Testing and Traditional Genealogy

 It is an honor to announce the publication at JOGG by Roberta Estes, co-admininstrator on the Melungeon DNA Project. This is a peer reviewed article which has passed scrutiny by a panel of highly respected DNA experts. This paper is a must read by genealogists who are using any of the various types of DNA testing available.  -  History Chasers

Roberta Estes's new academic paper has been published as of Sunday. It's free in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy sponsored by ISOGG.

The paper, titled "Revealing American Indian and Minority Heritage using Y-line, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X Chromosomal Testing Data Combined with Pedigree Analysis" is at the link below:

http://www.jogg.info/62/files/Estes.pdf 

The index of the entire journal is available at this link:
http://www.jogg.info/62/index.html

It is a long process to publish a paper at JOGG. Roberta was invited to write this article in March of 2009 and it was submitted a year ago with final revisions in July.

It will also be on her website shortly as well at www.dnaexplain.com under the Publications tab. Lots of free goodies there too.


Abstract

As a project administrator of several historically based genetic genealogy projects, such as the Lost Colony, Cumberland Gap, Melungeon, Carolina Native Heritage and Hatteras Island projects which involve thousands of participants, I routinely receive questions from individuals who have an oral history of Native American heritage and would like to use genetic genealogical tools to prove, or disprove, their oral history.  This paper documents the various discovery steps and processes using different types of DNA testing for a typical individual participant and appropriate family members whocarry an oral Native history combined with genealogical evidence that has been forthcoming during the elapsed years since genetic testing for genealogy first because available.  Each test along with associated benefits and detriments are discussed in relation to the analysis of minority ancestry.  The conclusion combines the information from all the various tests, pedigree analysis and genealogical evidence, discussing which tests are beneficial and most accurate, and which ones are not useful, and why.

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