Finding Immigrant Roots
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About us

Since "project" implies cooperative sharing, please do not join our group if you insist on "minimum" administrative access.  Sign up as "Limited" or "Advanced"
Here you may find:
       * A way to crack your genealogical "Brick Wall".
       * Lost family lines.
       * Your Colonial connections.
       * "Your" migrations before and since the last ice age.

When your paper trail to the past is missing, what is suggested by surname alone may be misleading. Our surname was taken up by many genetic lines, spellings change, and around 2% of each generation acquires a surname with genetics from another. Yet genetics has constancy, and genealogists can now exploit DNA to crack such brick wall problems. Robotic technology has made this tool affordable!

If you wish to compare your surname DNA to other Adkins/Atkins lines, the sample must come from a MALE.  We can also display mtDNA results for Adkins/Atkins participants.  Be aware mtDNA is generally used to trace maternal lines.

The Y Chromosome is unique to men. Made of coils upon coils of DNA, it is the only chromosome passed to the next generation without being hopelessly splice-mixed with the spouses chromosomes; hence Male Y chromosome tests are used to trace surname lines.

DNA means DeoxyriboNucleic Acid, an organic chemistry term for the spiral ladder molecule containing our genetic code.

Genetic Code is held in ladder rungs made of complementary coupled pairs of amino acids. When the coupling splits open, the revealed sequence of amino acids is our genetic code.

Amino Acids: Adenine (A) couples with thymine (T). Guanine (G) couples with Cytosine (C). This results in ladder rungs of T-A, A-T, G-C, or C-G. Rarely the wrong amino acid pair is copied into position. This type of mutation is called an SNP.

SNP means "Single Nucleotide Polymorphism", being exceedingly rare they are useful in tracing genetic branches of the human tree back 10s of thousands of years ago. SNPs can be tested to discover your Haplogroup.

Haplogroups are people with common long-term genetics. They sit on the same branch of the human tree.

Haplotype is the term used for any individual's unique sequence of STR markers, akin to a final twig or leaf on the tree.

STR stands for "Short Tandem Repeat". The Y chromosome has a lot of nonsense DNA, including hundreds of places where the code repeats itself as in, GATAGATAGATAGATA etc. About once in 500 generations the number of repeats increases or decreases. This is far more frequent than SNP mutations, making STRs useful in genealogy. DNA tests count and report these repeats at up to 67 different DYS Markers. Testing 67 markers brings the total odds of a mutation in each generation to about 14%.

DYS Marker stands for D-NA of the Y- chromosome in S-hort tandem repeats. Each marker is numerically identified such as DYS 439 so as to know which STRs were counted. The more DYS Marker counts you match to another individual, the higher the probability of a recent common ancestor.

MRCA is the acronym for Most Recent Common Ancestor. TMRCA is Time back to the Most Recent Common ancestor. This time is given in years or generations.