I recently had the opportunity to attend “Conference for a Cause” sponsored by the Larimer County Genealogy Society in Loveland, Colorado. The featured speaker throughout the day was DNA expert Blaine Bettinger, pictured with me above.
I’ve bought many DNA kits through Ancestry.com for members of our family, and will buy several more at RootsTech next March. The Ancestry kits test our Autosomal DNA and give us potential matches of “cousins” and give us estimates of our original Ethnicity.
I own Blaine’s book “The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy” and was fortunate to have Blaine autograph it while at the Conference.
I won’t comment here on what I learned, except to say I understand now how much more I have to learn about the topic of DNA in Genealogy! I’m happy to follow Blaine’s instruction as posted on his Facebook group “Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques”.
Some memorable quotes from my notes:
“We never know which ancestors we’re getting our DNA from”.
“We don’t inherit DNA from every ancestor.”
“We don’t know which of our DNA comes from which parent.”
“We each have two trees: (1) Genealogical Tree missing from my Genetic tree. We can’t predict our Genetic tree.”
“I have very little of my Ancestors’ DNA.”
And finally, Blaine advised us “If you see ‘Not Known’ as the name of a father on a Death Certificate, that’s probably not his real name!” Wise words.
My husband and I had so much fun during our weekend in Loveland. It’s a beautiful city. We had the chance to meet a longtime Facebook friend and enjoyed breakfast with her at the “always-interesting” Cracker Barrel restaurant. Attending this Conference was a treat for me. And now my husband and I look forward with eager anticipation to attending the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, UT Feb 28-Mar 3, 2018.
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