On this date, ten years ago, I started this blog. I used to write a new post once or twice a week but I have slowed down since the death of my husband in 2020, to about once a month. At least I am still blogging.

I started this blog as a way to keep track of my own genealogy and DNA research so that I no longer needed to bombard my cousins with emails. Also I was hoping to teach them how to use DNA to assist their own genealogy research. My first post was about my Dad’s Y DNA test results.

Sample extract of my compact chromosome mapper at GEDmatch

It turned out that my articles were often helpful to others. My focus was frequently on unknown parentage. I even wrote a number of tools to assist people with that research. My most popular tool, Ahnen2GED, turns an ahnentafel list into a GEDcom. Another program, my compact chromosome browser was picked up by GEDmatch, a tools site I blog about frequently. An exciting moment for me was when a screenshot of it appeared on TV in an episode of CeCe Moore’s Genetic Genealogist 

When this blog became very popular (much to my surprise), I started to be asked to give talks about genetic genealogy, first at local groups and then important conferences like RootsTech and the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree. This month I will speak about unknown parentage for the North County DNA interest group on November 19. That group is close to my heart since it was there that I first heard CeCe Moore speak in 2012 and got inspired to do more with my family’s DNA test results.

Thank you all for reading my blog.