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Near Term (atDNA and xDNA)


Note: The pages under this heading are available to registered members only. Membership in a DNA Group to access a page here occurs when you have matching DNA results with others there. Best way to join is start genetic genealogy testing and match some in our membership. Or talk to the admins about starting a new branch.

Autosomal (atDNA) and X (xDNA) SNPs are tested used to look for near term cousins along any branch of your ancestry.  Obviously, this cannot cross by marriage boundaries.  Meaning, you can head up to a common ancestor and then back down from to another tester that is descendent from that common ancestor.  Due to the introduction of new (procereation) spouses each generation and crossovers during the creation of eggs and sperm, the expected matching of DNA test results quickly reduces to zero with each generation back for the common ancestor.  Only 4th cousins or closer can reliably be tested and assured a match.  5th to 10th cousins, if potentially cousins, may still show some matching.  It is a crap shoot as some segments keep from breaking up in cross-overs and luck happens to pass it down far enough in the line.  Hence the generalization that this only works for 200 to 300 years out.  200 mostly reliably. 300 likely possible with deep analysis and other supporting material to cooberate the test results.


Often, our DNA Groups for near term are subsets (subgroups) of our Active Branches in the Patriarch Lines.  This because we are primarily a Surname Study and supporting near term matching for members already in the project.  The benefit with this expansion is if you have the surname in your ancestry in the past 200+ years, we can likely help confirm that to be true here if someone who is at least within a 4th to 8th cousin tests.  Therefore, our Near Term groups are identified first by an Active Branches Gnn nomenclature and then a nearer Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) along a branch there that defines this sub-group/sub-branch.  Generally, everyone tested and descended from this nearer term MRCA will show as matching and related.