I have been doing genealogy for about 3 years now. Both my husband and I have done the autosomal test on ancestry and he has done a Y test with FTDNA and I uploaded his results from ancestry to FTDNA and both of ours to GEDMATCH. I was lucky - I traced down an ancestor from a man with the same surname whose line is proven back to the 1640's. He paid for and did the Y test for us to see if my husband's line connected with his. We had felt sure it would as there are several other family surnames in the same area and some even moved on to where hubby's family did in the 1700's. When that didn't pan out, I found a 4th cousin of hubs and he did the Y test. They do match closely and it proves the line back to the late 1700's. Right now I am trying to prove a connection of my husband's family to my family! Found out that his mother's father's family lived in the same area as my mother's family and that my mother's father's line actually at one time lived in the same county as my father's family. I have even found someone who showed up on my husband's autosomal match list that shows up on my list! It is frustrating when you try to contact someone and they don't respond. I keep my trees private but I always answer when I get a request and try to find a common ancestor. If I feel comfortable doing so, I share my tree then. I would love to have my brother do a Y test but its pricey and when we did my husband's we only did the 37. Now I am told you should do at least a 67(?) one to get results. Problem is - there have only been a dozen or so others with the same last name who have been tested. He does match a group of men with another last name and there are hundreds of them tested. Not sure what is up with that!

caflowerluver: I did not take offence. I merely wanted to mention that most of us today contain a large mix of genes. As far as "fooling around", I have a few in my closet in a joking manner. I have ancestors of whom I can not find a trace of a marriage record, mention in a journal, or any other indication. This doesn't prove they were not married; It only says there are no records to be found. Some of my ancestors were "on the frontier" and official accommodations were scarce. I probably have some common law ancestors as well. Some of my 200 yr old records are not readable and others have been lost in court house disasters. A number of court house records were lost during the Civil War. If a minister of the gospel performs a marriage ceremony, the couple is not "officially" married in the eyes of the law until the marriage papers have been filed at the court house. During pioneer days, the Minister might not get to the court house for 2 weeks to a month after the marriage. I have 2 mariage dates for my grandparents: one is the day of the wedding and the other is the filing date at the court house. if something happened to the Minister before he filed, the record could be lost. Relationships can get messy. I have a great grand uncle who lost his first wife and 2 children. He married again and they had several children and then she died while the last child was very young. Her sister stepped in, married the man, and they had children. In the same community, another man and wife had 4 children of their own and took in 12 orphans at various times. He adopted all the orphans so they took on his surname. That's got to be a mess in the gene pool to straighten out. Another mess: My gggrand father, after his wife died, married the sister of a brother who married his daughter. Oh my!

maire, I still keep my tree at ancestry but I also have the software. I use Macavo for the search. Whatever comes up there I google using the title Macavo used. That works almost every time. Most of their stuff is out of copyright books and old newspapers. Google has a bazillion old history books and newspapers. Sometimes you have to get real creative with search terms. familysearch sometimes is a gold mine. Sometimes not. I subscribed to findmypast when they ran a $49 special a month or so ago. It hasn't proven as helpful as I had hoped. I read a lot of blogs and those people seem to know where to look for stuff so I follow any link they talk about. Individual states sometimes have good historical societies and/or the state itself sometimes has good genealogy information. Ethnic sites might have what you need. My ggrandmother who died in the hospital at Castle Garden was in the German Genealogy Group web site http://www.germangenealogygroup.com/records-search/deaths.php It takes a lot of practice, trial and error and just plain luck to find stuff, especially for free. I did send for the death certificate and paid for that but often the information is indexed on the web site. The death of my great grandmother in S.D. was indexed on their web site. I did send for it. Sometimes it's as little a a couple bucks and sometimes $25 for a mailed copy. If the index is good enough proof, don't buy the copy. But I do like to read the information on the original. Even originals have mistakes though. One place I don't think gets enough scrutiny is the original page of the census. Don't just read the index. Open the original page and read everything all the way across the page. Compare it with all the census you can find for that person. Be aware that the people in the census might have told the census taker anything. Some didn't think the government needed to know anything and answered accordingly. And sometimes the neighbors or whoever was at home answered the questions and might not have known where the people had been born so keep that in mind. I've found people I wasn't even looking for by reading the page before and the page after, too. Some historical societies and GENweb states have a limited amount of census on their site. the ancestry message boards and any other message board might connect you with someone who can help. I have the same problem as you. Either there isn't anyone else out there looking for our ancestors or they aren't looking the same places I'm looking. Finding them is a bit like pulling hen's teeth. In the long run, I've found better "cousins" by looking at the trees that my documents have been linked to. At least that way I know they are in my family. Or MIGHT be in my family. I found one a couple of days ago that uses all my ancestors for their person but that person never was in that family. They've assigned her to the wrong family. I don't know how much work they did, apparently not enough or they would have discovered there was no link. But otherwise, I have connected with cousins by following my own documents to other trees.

Joanie, this blog post might be right up your alley, then. http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2016/05/15/musings-on-a-dna-sunday/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheLegalGenealogist+%28The+Legal+Genealogist%29 If anyone came over before Ellis Island they might be at Ward's Island/Castle Garden from 1820-1892. http://www.castlegarden.org/ I got good stuff there for great grandparents. Some of mine came over before there was anywhere to be "processed". I still haven't found a passenger list or any evidence of them leaving there and landing here. And of course the Mayflower stuff is so documented you can read about it for days. I don't know how hard you've looked or where but ancestry isn't the only place with good records and lots of places are free. About every 3 years new data bases come on line so don't keep a subscription anywhere year after year. Spread them out. And be sure and use the free ship's lists and Germans to America and google books. There is enough free stuff "out there" to keep you occupied for a long time. I want to know the same things you want to know; more than names and dates. It's Time Consuming. But- so interesting I wouldn't do it any other way. I've written a couple dozen stories about my ancestor couples. It puts their life on paper and shows more about their life than born-died. You can put together a good time line from census and birth of children. One Thing: Census. Read the original census page, not just the transcript. And there are years that have more than one page of answers. Look at the page before and the page after to see if your family is continued. Also, you might find more family near by. Copy everything the census asked. Usually they ask occupation and where an individual and their parents were born. Different questions on different census will add up to the story. Then if you really want the birth certificate or marriage license you can usually get it. One time period I've had the most trouble with is 1800ish. The east coast kept records. The rest........well, it's been a headache. A lot of the midwest states weren't even required to keep records until into 1900. My first piece of advice is to subscribe to some genealogy blogs. They know when new data bases come on line and where to find them. They also know stuff that I don't know I don't know ;-) Even reading someone's Irish blog might give you a clue about where to look or what to look for.