Missing Link DNA

11/06/2025

The best money you'll ever spend on a genealogy institute!

01/05/2025

Ancestry DNA is only $39 thru May 12, 2025. It doesn't get any lower than this. It's time to stock up on kits to pass around at family gatherings! I'm going to go grab a few for myself.

AncestryDNA is the newest DNA test which helps you find genetic relatives and expand your genealogy research. Order your DNA test kit today.

29/10/2024

Have you ever conflated two people during your research (smooshed them together as if they are one person?) I will admit I have. Either I was going too fast or not paying enough attention to clues in the documents. It's especially easy to do when two people are the same age, live in the same county and have the same wife's name! That's more common than you think Watch as I catch myself conflating two men named Jacob Burton b. about 1810 in Sussex County, Delaware and how I figured it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsIoz78EqnE

07/10/2024

Hello friends! Over a year ago, I conceived the idea of starting a school to train young future genealogists. I've had a lot of bumps in the road since then, so I decided to start with a FREE course for young genealogists wanting to specialize in African American genealogy. If you know of anyone between the ages of 18-30 who might be interested, please pass this along so they can apply. The first class starts in two weeks, so they need to apply fast.

Are you between the ages of 18 and 30? Are you interested in specializing in African-American Genealogy? Then this FREE program may a good fit for you. Apply today for the next available course. (Next course begins October 22, 2024) Important Notes ProGen Trailblazers Genealogists of Tomorrow progra...

20/01/2024

I worked on this family today that I just can't get leave. William and Mary Ann Ousley. The couple started enslaved in Kentucky and makes their way to Wisconsin. Dad is a barber. They spend some time in Chicago and North Dakota based on their kids' birth locations. Their daughter is becomes the first Black woman to graduate from Beloit College, WI. I want to know their story, but the records are hard to find!

28/09/2023

I've been thinking a lot about challenges in genealogy lately and how to overcome them. One of my favorite sayings is "where there's a will, there's a way!"
One of my biggest challenges in my own family research is not understanding the records I need to use to further my family research overseas. Most of my family branches are recent immigrants to the USA from several different countries, so I have to learn where to find the right records in each country, how to read different languages, and how to use those record sets. Some days I definitely consider getting help! What's your biggest challenge?

Helping adoptees, donor children, foster children, and cases of unknown parentage to find their birt

07/09/2023

Saying the names of our enslaved ancestors out loud is powerful!

07/09/2023

It was another great week! The US Black Heritage Project at WikiTree is up to 234,419 family profiles. The more profiles we have, the more family connections we can make.

During the WikiTree Challenge, I connected US Representative Katie Hall to the Global Tree at WikiTree. That means I connected her to what you might call the trunk of the tree. Now everyone can press a button to see how they're related to her.

I was able to connect several new WikiTree members to existing family profiles on WikiTree so they had a good part of their tree already done. That is so satisfying! Now they can add personal improvements to their family.

And I connected a lovely lady to her birth family.

I love my job. I just wish there were more hours in a day (or a way to clone myself) so I can do more!

31/08/2023

The US Black Heritage Project database at WikiTree is at 232,949 family profiles this week. Less than 18,000 to go to meet our 2023 goal of 250k!

This week I created 336 new Black heritage profiles during the WikiTree WikiGames, connected two people to their biological family and cleaned up some messy genealogy. Messy genealogy commonly happens when someone has the name of their ancestor, and when they go to research that person, they don't really look at the documents to see if they pertain to their ancestor or just some random person with the same name. This is how many people end up with wrong ancestors in their trees.

If I could beg one thing from everyone this week, it would be to please check the sources you use to prove the relationships in each generation in your tree. Because people copy from other people's trees. And if your tree is wrong, their tree is going to be wrong and so on. (and if you are going to copy from someone else's tree, check those sources first! Someone born in Alabama isn't going to have a California birth record.)

Help your cousins out and honor your ancestors by making sure your tree is correct.

10/08/2023

We're up to 228,131 ancestor profiles in the US Black Heritage Project database this week. That means we're oh so close to our goal of 250k profiles in 2023! The more profiles we have, the more families we can connect together.

This week I also had the privilege of using DNA to connect a lovely lady to her biological great grandfather. It wasn't just about growing her tree, but about connecting to an untold story between two people who weren't legally allowed to marry prior to 1967 because one was white and one was black. We don't know the whole story yet, but we do know there was a separation between family members because of the racist marriage laws of the time. The family has now been put back together in the year 2023 thanks to DNA. Man, I love DNA!

13/07/2023

It's too late for you to get in on it this year, but if you research in the African American genealogy space, you should definitely consider MAAGI (Midwest African American Genealogy Institute). I just finished a great 3 day DNA class at MAAGI with amazing instructors. This is the first DNA class I've attended in a long time where I learned something new. I'm sad it's only once a year because I want to take more of their classes! Set your calendars for next year.

The Midwest African American Genealogy Institute (MAAGI) is a place where attendees learn, research, and gain the tools needed to become a stellar genealogists and family history researchers.

30/04/2023

Right now, if there's one thing I could ask for, it would be a family tree passed down through my MacBeath family. It's my big brick wall. John and Robert MacBeath are such common names in Scotland!

If you could have one thing to help you in your family research, what would it be?