DNA Testing for Genealogy: What Is It and How Can I Use It? With Greg Liverman

 About This Program

DNA testing has exploded in popularity for uncovering ethnicity, learning about health risks, and finding long lost cousins. It has helped adoptees and foundlings locate biological parents, and even helped investigators crack cold cases. But with so many tests and companies out there, where do you start? And once your results arrive, what do you actually do with them?

This lecture will walk you through it all, including:

• Types of DNA tests and what each one can (and can't) tell you
• A comparison of testing companies and what each one offers
• A survey of real DNA test results, drawing samples from the major testing companies
• Ethnicity reports, and how accurate they really are
• Finding cousins and more distant relatives, and what to do once you find them
• Real case studies showing these tools in action

Whether you're considering your first DNA test or you're sitting on results you're not sure how to interpret, this session will help you make sense of it all.

Meet Our Speaker 

Greg Liverman, Ph.D., began tracing his family history in the 1990’s with an old Macintosh computer and a copy of Family Tree Maker. At that time, family and career pursuits did not leave much time for genealogy work. He was finally able to return to charting his family history in 2009. Greg quickly realized that he could bring to bear all the analytical and problem solving skills he had developed in over forty years of working as a journalist, scientist and business manager.

Living on a ranch on the western slopes of Pikes Peak means there are few libraries nearby, so Greg has become adept at using online resources for both domestic and foreign research. He has researched his family history “on the ground” in libraries, cemeteries and records offices in seven states, with more on the list to visit. He has experience in using various techniques, based on the careful application of reasonand logic, to successfully break down “brick walls”.

Greg and his wife Wendy added genetic genealogy or DNA testing to their brick wall demolition toolkit in 2013 and have immersed themselves in the details of DNA tests and evaluation methods. They have answered several questions about their family history using DNA evidence.

A DNA test can be one of the most powerful tools in a genealogist's toolkit but only if you know what to order and what to make of the results. This lecture cuts through the confusion and gives you a clear roadmap.