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Hi
I'm looking for advice on which DNA testing we should do. Our ancestor, Robert Dunbar is from Scotland and came to America. We have not been able to link him to his relatives in Scotland. We have a male descendant willing to do DNA testing. Which test should we have done and by which company do you recommend? I was thinking that it would be best to have it done by a UK company since we are trying to link across the pond. I'd appreciate your thoughts.
Regards, Diane

DNA testing isn't defined by which company does it

As long as it's a genuine company they will come up with the true DNA result

This may help decide whether doing a test will get you the result you hope
https://www.familytreedna.com/understanding-dna.aspx


I had mine done through Ancestry and It does show a huge percentage of my german heritage through my dad. His father was German

Family Tree DNA without a doubt.

First, Ancestry does not do YDNA (male-line) testing, and when you have a male-line descendant to test, that is the gold standard.

Second, FTDNA has many knowledgeable users, both surname project administrators and others, who are more than willing to help interpret results and matches. I have had enormous help from many people there, and I have helped others. (People whose matches with my testees were unfortunately too distant to be meaningful, but I've been able to help them with understanding their results and with regular old family history research).

However - you will find yourself in the same boat as thousands of others in the US looking for connections in the UK: not enough people in the UK have tested to make it likely that anyone who is a match will actually be found.

But - you might find a match with someone in the US who does have a paper trail back to Scotland, i.e. is descended from a common ancestor before your Robert.

This is info about the Dunbar surname project:

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/dunbar/about

And the project gives a good brief introduction to the subject:

http://www.dunbardna.org/dna_101.html

You can feel free to contact the project administrator for advice and info before ordering a test.

There is always a father's day sale on YDNA products, and the price for the Y37 test (the best place to start) should be reduced then.

Eventually, your Dunbar testee would get slotted into this chart:

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Dunbar?iframe=ycolorized

and that way you can visualize what kind of match you may have. But you will also get notices of matches found and you can check them out and (in almost all cases) contact the person to share info that can help figure out the relationship.

I've had men on both sides of my family test.

On one side, I found a 100% match ... with someone in the US who had already contacted me, via notes I left in census records at Ancestry, with whom I share a grx2 grandfather in a family from Wiltshire. Unfortunately, there will probably be no other meaningful matches, as that man, born c1820, was the only son of an only son born c1735, who was himself the last male with the surname born in the village. So that match tells us nothing but that we are both 'legitimate' descendants of that man. ;)

On the other side, I found neither a match with the ancestor's very common official surname nor with his very uncommon assumed surname ... but in a minor miracle, I found a very close match with someone in the US whose great-grandfather was from the same little bit of Cornwall as mine (see my researching line below), giving me a whole nother surname for the ancestor in question. That was a stroke of luck that does not happen very often.

So: very definitely test YDNA, at least to start (family finder, for instance, the autosomal testing that Ancestry also does, could turn up cousins through maternal ancestors). And very definitely Family Tree DNA for that.

Your Robert Dunbar doesn't happen to have married Rose and died in 1693 in Massachusetts, does he?

If so, you might be in luck ...

http://www.dunbardna.org/wfpatriarchs.htm

at least in finding lots of info about his descendants. Not sure about his ancestors!

Thank you all your help. It was exactly the information that I needed to understand what to do about testing. It'll take me a little bit to digest it all again, but it was very helpful. Diane

You'll be digesting it a year from now, and longer. ;-)

If you get at all hooked, you'll just keep figuring out more. I kind of reached my limit -- one of my project administrators keeps wanting me to do more SNPs (yes, you will soon know what that is!) and this and that, but it serves no purpose for me, so I drew a line ... in my piggybank. :-)

That's the main thing to know going in: what you are looking to get out of it. I was a babe in the woods and expected all kinds of wonderful things to happen once my rellies spat on that stick, but that isn't how it works. If what you are hoping for is answers to specific family history questions, you cross your fingers and hold your breath and may strike it lucky. Right away, or down the line when somebody somewhere who is some sort of match does a test.

Good luck, check for upcoming sales -- and if you like, send me an email address privately, and if I get a coupon that would help you during the next sale at FTDNA (they send different coupons out during sales, one a week), they are fully transferrable and I can just send it on to you. It's usually $10 US off the price of a YDNA test, for example, but every little bit helps.

Ah - just one thing. When you say you have a male descendant, he is a Dunbar, son of a son of a son ... of a Dunbar? That is what is needed for YDNA testing, a straight male-line descent, since YDNA is passed only from father to son. It is unfortunately the best kind of testing for finding other descendants from the same ancestor.

Barring that, you would have a descendant do autosomal DNA testing ('family finder' at FTDNA), which can identify cousins sometimes up to fifth cousin, but you have to do traditional genealogy investigation, and sometimes other testing, to figure out the relationship.

I have a male Dunbar 'cousin' who I've asked if he would consider testing. My g great grandfather and his gg grandfather were brothers. It's the best I can do, as our Dunbar line has ended. It's fairly well documented through Robert Dunbar, but there's no positive connection in Scotland yet. There doesn't seem to be a paper trail, and several have traveled looking for it. It's back about 12 generations, so I'm not sure how much it's worth, with degradation all. I feel like it's good for documentation, and maybe someday it'll have more information give.
I may be able to do some autosomal testing on myself for my Russell line, as I have no clues after 4 generations.
I have another line that would be a long shot yielding information as I'm have nothing farther back than two generations. But the connection there would be European based too.
I just don't want to waste my money, and I really needed to understand the different tests.

Your male cousin sounds perfect for the job. The thing with YDNA is that it mutates extremely slowly, so 12 generations is nothing. :-)

The male in my generation in my family and the man in the US who are both great-great-grandsons of the man born c1820 really do have 100% identical YDNA (to the level tested, 67 markers; there might be a mutation in some markers further down the line).

If you could at least match up with another or other Dunbar lines in the US, that would be a start!

Doing autosomal for yourself would cover all your lines - that's why sometimes, testing someone else is needed: to sort out which bits of your DNA come from which side of your family, and which line on that side. If you do an autosomal test, you might get a match from anywhere in your tree, so testing a known cousin on each side might be necessary, to rule that side out or in, but usually it's fairly easy to sort out where the connection is. Also, once the lab has your male descendant's sample for YDNA testing, other tests can be done on it later too.

I have an autosomal kit I ordered over a year ago for myself and put in a pile somewhere and never did. Time to request a replacement kit, I think!