Recently, on October 8, AncestryDNA released a major update to its ethnicity estimates, a feature it calls Origins. One of the driving forces behind this update was a significant expansion of Ancestry’s Reference Panel—a curated collection of DNA samples from individuals with documented, multigenerational family trees and verified regional heritage. According to Ancestry, its Reference …
Continue reading Why Igboland May Be Your Top Ancestral Region
I confess that I am not entirely comfortable asking ChatGPT to conduct genealogy research for me, especially research involving enslaved ancestors. Part of what I love most about genealogy is the thrill of the search, and enslaved ancestral research is often far too complex for me to want to rely heavily on artificial intelligence to …
Continue reading ChatGPT’s Analysis of an Enslaved Ancestral Research Case
If anyone had told me before 2025 that I would be attending the House of Ogburn Family Reunion in Richmond, Virginia, this weekend, I probably would’ve looked at them strangely. I had never even heard of the Ogburn family! But in 2025, more genealogy research and DNA research finally helped me break through a 30-year …
The Danner research saga continues In many of my DNA-focused blog posts, I have demonstrated how a genetic network—also called a genetic group—can reveal previously unknown connections, solve longstanding mysteries, identify a potential ancestor, and confirm family relationships. DNA matches, especially when analyzed as part of a network, are at the heart of genetic genealogy. …
X-chromosome DNA, commonly called X-DNA, is an important component of genetic genealogy, yet it seems to receive considerably less attention today than it once did. I suspect that part of the reason is simply accessibility. Many DNA testers do not have easy access to information about their X-DNA matches. Nevertheless, X-DNA should not be ignored …
One of the many challenges of genealogy is dealing with names. Variations in spelling are common, but researchers must also account for nicknames, middle names, aliases, and even individuals who appear in records under two entirely different given names. This case presented exactly that possibility. As I traced the history of a likely relative named …
My mother's great-grandmother, Louisa “Lue” Bobo Danner, was born on January 21, 1842, on the plantation of Dr. William J. Bobo in Union County, South Carolina. She was the eldest of the many children born to Clarissa Bobo, an enslaved woman on the Bobo plantation. Around 1859, Dr. Bobo relocated to Panola County, Mississippi, bringing …
Continue reading Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Genealogy
When I recently made the breakthrough discovery involving the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Flora Davis, in which I wrote here, it prompted me to revisit the research I had conducted years earlier on her husband, my 3rd-great-grandfather, Jack Davis Sr. of Panola County, Mississippi. I originally documented that investigation in a blog post published on …
Continue reading Artificial Intelligence and Enslaved Ancestral Research
Last week, I made a remarkable discovery. Quite unexpectedly, I learned that after the Civil War, my great-great-grandfather Hector Davis's brother, George Burnett, returned to South Carolina to reunite with his wife and children, leaving his parents, Jack and Flora Davis, and his siblings behind in northern Mississippi. Until then, I had no idea what …
Wednesday evening began like so many others. I logged into my DNA accounts to see whether any new matches had appeared. One match immediately caught my attention. "KM" shared 44 cM across three segments with my mother, 37 cM with me, and 28 cM with my mother’s brother. AncestryDNA correctly identified her as a maternal …
