Posts Tagged ‘Upstate New York’

R1B in Germany

Author:WITLOX

Well I took the plunge and started a DNA Family Group at Family Tree DNA, and I welcome all of you HILLENBRANDs out there to join us.

Last weekend I read on DNAkits.org that FTDNA is having a summer SALE and it is on until the end of the week, so I clicked on an order button on the DNA Testing Kits website and placed my order for a 67 marker Y-DNA test.

Then as no one had yet started a group with my surname I volunteered to become the administrator of the new group.

Have you heard of the Loomis Gang?  This was a family from Madison county, New York that lived slightly more than slightly outside of the law.

Local lore in Upstate New York is often talked about with shock and awe, or chest out proud of, the outrageous acts reported to have been performed by this complete family of thieves.

When you ain’t got nuthin’ you got nuthin’ to lose, comes to mind.  It is said by many that the mom of this group of 19th century Robin Hoods was the instigator and trained her boys that if it ain’t tied down, bring it home, mentality.

Gloria Waldron Huckle was bitten by the genealogy bug many years ago and while digging into her early Dutch Colonial Roots on the WALDRON Family she became so interested in their history that her passion for history sparked her career as a novelist.

From a recent article in the Glens Falls Post Star newspaper she tells her story to a staff reporter and it is a fun story to follow.

She brings her ancestors and their lives to life with her fictional novels, three of them so far, starting in the 17th century up to more modern times you will see how the families progressed through the generations.

There is an enormous amount of discussion on the internet about using DNA testing to “prove” one’s genealogy.  Well certainly genealogy and DNA go hand in hand however there are certain limits as to what may be proven.

DNA Hand-in-Hand

DNA absolutely may be used to authenticate the parents of an individual.  We all inherit absolutely unique codes of information from our parents.  50% of the code in our genomic makeup comes from our father and is known Y-DNA, and 50% comes from our mother which is called Mitochondrial DNA.  As long as you are able to collect a sufficient number of cells from all three individuals, you will have absolute proof that the two parents are indeed the ones that created the child.

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Announcing New Upstate New York Website Review Program.

This is July 8, 2008. Remember this date 070808. We are starting a new service that we encourage all readers to participate in.

The Internet is full of instructional, informative and interesting websites related to Genealogy. The Blogroll and bookmarks that I personally visit almost every day, certainly once a week, runs in very high numbers. Just can’t get enough.

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Many people ask “Where is Upstate New York, and why is it called that?”

The answer is pretty simple. It is generally considered to be all of New York State other than the major metropolitan New York City areas.

For the purposes of this Blog and our main website of Upstate New York Genealogy at www.unyg.com we emphasize Genealogy and Family History Research throughout the whole state starting with Westchester County, north and west.

Regular readers will note the new addition to this Blog.

You may now subscribe to the unyg Blog by just inserting your email address in the box at the left.

Then every time a new Blog is added you will receive a copy of it in your email folder. As with all types of broadcast emails, you may have to go into your security settings and allow them to get past your spam filter.

Every system is different and I am not able to advise you on how to do this on your particular machine. If it is important to you I am sure you will figure out how to do it.