Mossie's Musings

Revised version: June 2025 Welcome to this comprehensive guide to working with your AncestryDNA results. These notes accompany the Society of Australian Genealogists’ webinar  “First Look at AncestryDNA”  and are intended to support individuals who are beginning to explore the use of autosomal DNA in their family history research. The content is regularly updated to reflect changes in available tools and improvements in understanding.  If you would like to reuse this material beyond personal research, please contact me at  chrisw9953[at]gmail[dot]com .  AncestryDNA offers a range of features that can assist researchers in identifying biological relationships, confirming lineages, and uncovering new connections. However, the effective use of DNA evidence requires more than just receiving test results - it involves a clear understanding of genetic concepts, thoughtful analysis and careful integration with documentary research. To help you navigate, here’s a quick ...

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with a group of family historians about something that has quietly transformed genealogical research over the past decade: the use of DNA evidence to break through long-standing brick walls. The session was titled  DNA to the rescue . That might sound slightly dramatic, but for many researchers it genuinely feels that way. For generations, family historians worked almost entirely with documentary records. Civil registration — births, deaths and marriages — together with parish registers, census returns, probate files, land records, newspapers and local histories formed the backbone of reconstructing earlier families. But the search rarely began in the archives. More often it began at the kitchen table — with stories told by older relatives, a name written carefully in the front of a family Bible, a bundle of letters tied with ribbon, or a photograph whose faces were half remembered but never quite forgotten. Sometimes it was a diary, a certific...