Episode 190 - The Pluses and Minuses of Mitochondrial DNA Testing / A Big Fat Greek Genealogy Experience

Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. David shares some great stories this week, including one about a family that found a funeral home had dressed the wrong corpse in their mother’s clothes, a man who found his father’s and uncle’s letters homes from World War II on eBay, and the story of a Saxon king whose remains may have been found under a tennis court! (Here we go again!) David’s spotlighted blogger this week is FamilySearch.org/blog/en which discusses, among many other things, how to get started in indexing old records. Next, Fisher is going DNA crazy this week, having shipped out three Y-chromosome DNA kits to close and distant relatives. He’s pondering using a mitochondrial test for one of his wife’s lines. “Not so fast!” says LegacyTree.com’s Paul Woodbury. The DNA specialist shares some important insight on when you should and when you shouldn’t attempt to connect ancestors through this female direct line DNA method. Then, Carrie Christos of Cincinnati, Ohio talks about her “Big Fat Greek genealogical experience.” She shares the challenges she faced, the serendipity that (as is often the case) kicked in, and the new relationships she has developed. Carrie will tell you how it all happened. Then, Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com is geeked out over a remarkable time-lapse video he found. It will inspire you to learn how you can do the same. Tom also talks about some local digitizers that he feels will do a great job for you in several states. That’s all the week on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show!