This month, we talked about surprises in our DNA results.
But first, some news items:
Barbara Vines Little’s book, A Researcher’s Guide to Virginia’s Historical Records, is now available through the Virginia Genealogical Society. See https://www.vgs.org/product/a-researchers-guide-to-virginias-historical-records/ for more information.
Also, Barbara will be speaking at the Library of Virginia for the Friends of the Virginia State Archives on November 8. See https://friendsvirginiaarchives.org/ for more information. A great opportunity to learn, and, hey, take your book and maybe get it signed!
If you like newspaper research, Elephind is a search engine that searches multiple archives at once. It closed a couple of years ago, but it’s back! Check it out at https://www.elephind.com/
MyHeritage announced that it will be using Whole Genome Sequencing for its testing from now on. Read their press release at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251014913163/en/MyHeritage-Upgrades-Its-Consumer-DNA-Tests-to-Whole-Genome-Sequencing and Debbie Kennett’s blog post at
https://cruwys.blogspot.com/2025/10/myheritage-upgrades-its-consumer-dna.html
UPDATE: MyHeritage has since posted a blog post about it: https://blog.myheritage.com/2025/10/myheritage-upgrades-its-dna-tests-to-whole-genome-sequencing/
We also talked a little about the recent ethnicity estimates updates from Ancestry and 23andMe. Ethnicity Estimates will be our focus next month, but in the meantime, see:
https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/dna/ancestrydna-2025-origins-update
https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ancestry-composition-version-7-is-here
Here are a few resources for dealing with unexpected DNA results:
https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Unexpected-Ethnicity-Results
https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Unexpected-DNA-Matches
https://www.legacytree.com/blog/unexpected-dna-match-life-changing-discovery
https://familytreemagazine.com/dna/case-study-handling-dna-surprises/
https://blog.23andme.com/articles/navigating-dna-surprises
https://npestories.com/
https://www.npeguide.com/guide
And here are some suggestions for contacting matches:
https://blog.familytreedna.com/contacting-dna-matches-strategies/
https://www.legacytree.com/blog/13-secrets-to-getting-replies-from-dna-cousin-matches