Michael W. McCormick, Accredited Genealogist

05/23/2025

Join me in donating to preserve the Veteran Bounty Land Records. Made my donation while waiting in the bus to start my next few days at the National Genealogical Society conference.

05/19/2025

Genealogy is in my blood. Alex Haley, creator of Roots, and credited for helping popularize the hobby in the 1970s, is my patrilineal distant cousin as proven from Y-DNA. Yes, it is very distant, but the existence of DNA science to prove this sort of thing is fascinating.

04/17/2025

Does your surname qualify for free DNA testing? The International Society of Genetic Genealogy has a list of surnames qualifying for free DNA kits. For example, men with these surnames I am researching qualify: McCormick, Calamaco, Dunkes, Grauling, and Severns.
https://isogg.org/wiki/Free_DNA_tests
Another good way to find funding is through joining groups on FamilyTreeDNA. https://www.familytreedna.com/group-project

Free DNA tests are sometimes available to encourage participation in surname projects. Offers are usually restricted to Y-DNA tests with sponsorship being provided by the relevant surname project. Some projects will underwrite the entire cost of a DNA test. Other projects will contribute towards the...

04/09/2025

Honored to be part of a professional organization of such caliber and one that that listens to its members. Even more honored to be among other genealogy professionals with enthusiasm for the profession as well as qualifications equal to my own.

Members! Make sure we hear your voice by filling out the 2025 APG Member Survey. You can find the survey in the Members' Area of our website apgen.org; log in, click on Engagements, then Surveys. Deadline is 15 April 2025.

03/17/2025

Happy
St. Patrick’s Day ☘️

Try Y-DNA to connect with your clan.

03/08/2025

One of many things I’ve been up to at . It was fun seeing many of you at this genealogy conference that attracts tens of thousands of attendees, and millions of online viewers.

02/20/2025

Has your family done Y-DNA? If not, do it. It is not the same as AncestryDNA. Probably near 50 million total people have done autosomal DNA testing for genealogy, but only about 1 million have done Y-chromosome DNA testing for genealogy. (I am just guessing on the 50 million based on what I know of the numbers of a couple of the providers.) Females do not have a Y chromosome, but they can still recruit their male relatives to do the testing. Even among my genealogy followers probably only a small percent have had Y testing done on their families. It does cost more. It starts at like $119, but for those that cannot afford it, if you transfer your AncestryDNA, 23andMe, or MyHeritage results to FamilyTreeDNA and pay the $29 unlock fee you will still get a Y haplogroup on male tests, and be able to join surname projects that look at Y-DNA. It is less thorough than Y-DNA-specific testing, but gets you into the projects. Then you can email the project administrator for your surname and talk to them about if pursuing higher level Y-testing would actually be helpful or not. As a volunteer group admin at FamilyTreeDNA myself, I know how helpful it can be on breaking down brick walls, and that while it does not always help it will be more helpful as more people do it.

01/17/2025

Made a call to a family friend today to walk their friend through setting up accounts and doing a DNA kit. They were at a family history center, but no one there at the time was able to sort it out alone. Helping one person with their genealogy can feel just as special as helping with a project that’ll benefit countless family history researchers. Connecting through helping others in their efforts is one way all of us can feel and share joy, even when facing our own research roadblocks.

12/25/2024

DNA 🧬 and genealogy research enhanced my Christmas mood this year. I’ve been starting group projects at Family Tree DNA, recruiting cousins to test, gifting DNA kits to both close and distant family, getting in touch with distant cousins I’ve never spoken with before, as well as reconnecting with those I haven’t spoken with much, and even busting through brick walls in my research. To me genealogy is both a fun hobby and an act of faith. Countless times I’ve seen God’s hand manifest through my diligent efforts and that’s been true in big ways again. It was a big investment and effort this year to take the family to ancestral hometowns in Ireland and the UK. Upon returning I have continued to make big investments. As I ponder how to proceed I have received raindrops of inspiration on methodologies to try and searches to make in my research. DNA has been a big part of it. Using a combination of autosomal and Y-DNA helped get me the evidence I needed in going another generation back on two major long-standing brick wall ancestors. It has also helped me identify additional cousin lines to fill in my tree and get in touch with more distant cousins. One strategy was to buy a month of Ancestry Pro Tools and look at shared matches. Another was to pursue Y and mt DNA testing on all ancestral lines. I wrote letters to a hundred or so cousins inviting DNA testing. I wrote people who are DNA matches or have online trees with relevant info that may match to mine. I found people whose ancestors come from the same area and invited them to DNA test, or simply those who share a certain surname. People search websites were handy as well as the features to find other MyHeritage, Ancestry, or FamilySearch users in each website. For some I offered to pay the test while for others I mainly wanted to bring the test to their attention. As more tests come back and process I hope these efforts will continue to lead to discoveries throughout 2025. Already we have had breakthroughs that would’ve been otherwise impossible, including on my own surname line where I had been stuck in the 1830s since starting my family tree 25 years ago. I hope you’ll find similar success this holiday season. 🎁

11/30/2024

The biggest mtDNA upgrade in a decade is expected in the coming months. See the linked video for an overview of mtDNA testing and the features that are coming. Basically it’ll make it more similar to Y-DNA as far as the tools you get. Get in on the ground floor with mtDNA by buying kits for all your lines this week. They’re on sale until Dec 4th. Start with yourself and your dad or sibling of your dad if living. If you have a living great aunt or uncle or grandparent on a different maternal line test them as well. Conceptually it can be more difficult than autosomal or Y-DNA to understand. Like all DNA tests what you get out of it will depend in large part on who else tests. You’ll have the best odds of it helping if you try it on all possible lines. What I did next is look at all my 4x great grandparents for unbroken female lines of descent. It only took a couple days of research because I’d already been doing descendant research over many years so I only had to extend a couple generations down and fill in a few gaps. While at that level there are 32 ancestral couples, I identified only about 15 with unbroken lines of female descent. I used my people locating methodologies to find and write to one or more descendants on each line. I tested myself a decade ago. About 5 more of the approximately 15 lines have agreed to test as well. That’s about a 1/3 success rate at getting cooperation and I hope more will come around as I build relationships with their families. I considered my wife’s family and got mtDNA tests for her and her dad, as well as a couple other relatives I wanted to help out whose maternal line I don’t share a common ancestor with. I suspect there will be an increase in mtDNA testing when the new features release. Getting in now may help avoid potential delays due to increased demand upon release of the new features.

Mitochondrial DNA (or mtDNA) has historically been deemed unhelpful for genealogy, but this test can help break brick walls and solve family mysteries where ...

11/26/2024

This week is the best time of year to buy DNA kits. You may already have taken a popular DNA kit, but don’t sleep on DNA as a way to work on your brick wall research problems. Y-DNA, for example, can be incredibly useful. For any genealogist that can afford it, I’d recommend buying the AncestryDNA kit and Y-DNA testing. FamilyTreeDNA does the best Y-DNA tests for genealogy. You can transfer your AncestryDNA results to their platform as well as to MyHeritage to benefit from more matches and tools. Y-DNA is still a stand out not to overlook. You’ll need males for Y testing. I’ve reached out to cousins carrying almost all of my great grandparents surnames to get Y-DNA for each and recommend a similar starter approach to others. You can also identify a name that comes in at great great grandparent or more distant and do Y-testing on a male cousin of that surname which I’ve done when I have a specific need in mind. It’s most helpful when you have a goal in mind and can test at least two people of a specified surname. For example, on a trip to Northern Ireland I met a McCormick that was from the same area as my ancestors. He agreed I could ship him a Y-DNA test which he took and we found out we are distant cousins. It is too distant that it wouldn’t show in autosomal testing but it does with Y-DNA. Now I know to focus on his genealogy as well as mine approaching the brick wall from both sides. Y-DNA may reveal things about your distant ancestry you weren’t expecting and distant cousin matches regular testing (autosomal) won’t reveal. You may determine there was an illegitimate child or surname change in the paternal line when you see most of your matches have a different than expected surname or a surname from a different country than anticipated, as I did with my maternal uncle’s Y-DNA. If you’ve been doing genealogy for years and haven’t done Y-DNA testing for multiple ancestral lines you’re missing out on a useful methodology. Share your success stories in the comments.

11/14/2024

Life has been challenging in new ways with our youngest child having entered school last year and getting some suspensions for bad behavior. This school year started out better, but there has been some trouble again. Some of us have needed therapy and mental health services to keep things afloat. Family life has impacted my work and school life in new ways offering new opportunities to overcome obstacles and stressors. Probably not much different than countless other parents who’ve also been in this stage of life. Somehow it hits differently to actually deal with the stuff oneself. You never quite get what stages of life and challenges will be like until you’re in them. To be doing a dissertation at the same time certainly isn’t an easy thing. For others the challenges might be dealing with health problems in the family or any number of issues, but stacked stressors are always tough. Doing my dissertation is alternating between new levels of burnout and joy. On one hand zoning in to writing, enjoying research, and feeling inspired by the work of others. On the other hand dreading work left to do to the point of shutdown for days at a time. Still grateful to have been accepted into a doctoral program and have the opportunity to focus on researching stuff I’m passionate about: the genealogy field and many great projects people are working that advance the field in ways that’ll benefit future research. I’ll be happy to share more about my dissertation when I’m done. Fingers crossed for 2025.