After a silence of almost two years, I am now going to take another stab at blogging about my life's hobby and passion, the study of my hometown and its people. If nothing else, I hope this blog will serve as a journal of the various projects I'm working on from time to time and the findings I'm making. These days one of the most exciting new areas of research is genetic genealogy. It is nothing less than amazing what we can now learn from a simple cheek swab. Several companies now offer this type of testing at a fairly reasonable price. Of them I think 23andMe does the best job of pinpointing a person's "ethnic make-up." But Family Tree DNA seems a little more suited for genealogists and it allows its participants to join "groups" either by surname or geographic region. These groups have administrators who can compare and analyze the results for all the group's members.
Several months ago, I created and became the administrator of the Mason DNA group. The project welcomes anyone who had ancestors living in the Mason, Tennessee, area in or prior to the 1880s. Our goal is to determine connections between families that could not otherwise be documented through traditional methods. This approach holds particular promise for learning more about the early African-American families of the area. The fact that their ancestors were enslaved in our area until 1865 often presents a "brick wall" for the researcher. Furthermore, it would be another several decades after the Civil War before Tennessee enacted the systematic use of birth and death records. DNA testing has now provided us with a new tool to break through previous barriers in genealogical research.
With the test results currently available, we have been able to make some remarkable and interesting conclusions. In my following posts, I will attempt to highlight some of these while at the same time protecting the privacy of all participants.
Visit the Mason DNA project at the following linkhttp://www.familytreedna.com/public/masontennessee
