Doing your DNA for family research

After Peter Sherlock’s [E.4.1a.6b.5c.1d.2e] talk and Q&A session (at our AGM on 8 November 2025) about Tom Winder, we had numerous members excited and offering to help with their DNA. There are special price deals for AncestryDNA and MyHeritage just about to end, so try to read this today.

The simplest and quickest way to help is to invite us to collaborate on your AncestryDNA kit. On AncestryDNA, go to Account Settings, then DNA Settings, then scroll down to sharing. Choose the relevant test name if you have more than one test, then press the Invite button. Our usernames are davina393 and psherloc. Collaborator role allows us to put your matches into groups and make notes against the matches.

The other ways to help are a bit more complicated. Below are various steps which might be relevant for you. Collectively, they will all help us find the missing ancestors of Tom Winder and Ellen Johnson – ancestors for many Hungerford Loane descendants.

Autosomal DNA – AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA FamilyFinder, GEDmatch

Autosomal DNA is carried on the 23 chromosomes of males and females, so this is the best, broadest starting point. We have always recommended buying a test from AncestryDNA because they have the largest test database and don’t accept free uploads from other companies. Now we have to recommend buying a MyHeritage test, because they have stopped accepting uploads. MyHeritage has the second largest database, often with matches who are not in AncestryDNA, so it’s very useful.

For our Winder Johnson research, we would really like to have all our Winder Johnson test takers appearing in each of the different testing sites listed above. Each of these sites has different strengths and tools, but we really need to be fishing in all four ponds, not just a favourite one. So you can help us by doing any of the steps below which you haven’t already done:

• buy an AncestryDNA test (for your earliest living relatives – parents, aunts and uncles on both sides) on sale for AU$69
• buy a MyHeritage DNA test (myheritage.com) on sale now for AU$52
• download your AncestryDNA file (once your results have been processed – this can take six weeks)
• upload the file to FamilyTreeDNA (for free)
• upload the file to GEDmatch (for free)

Link a family tree to each of your DNA tests, because this helps humans to know where you fit in, and it enables the AncestryDNA and MyHeritage algorithms to make connections which would be really hard work manually.

You can create a family tree in AncestryDNA or MyHeritage while waiting for DNA results and download the GEDcom tree file, then you don’t need an ongoing membership unless keen.

If your elderly relative has passed away, they obviously can’t do a test on MyHeritage, so I hope these companies will offer an alternative. Meantime, please do upload their DNA file to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, because they are likely to have stronger than matches, which might help us reach remote matches who are clues.

mtDNA – mitochondrial DNA – the female line

This is a special test which traces back along your maternal line only. Females and males can do this test (yes, men inherit their mother’s mtDNA but they never pass it on). This can match you to people who share a common female ancestor tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the past, which is interesting and powerful, but a bit of a gamble because not many people have done the test. For our research, it’s useful for testing a hypothesis, for example when we think we have a person who might be a descendant of Ellen Johnson’s mother or grandmother.

Fortunately, we have an mtDNA test from a matrilineal descendant of Ellen Johnsons, and we’re just waiting for a match to appear or to find a remote match who we think might be descended in a female line from Ellen Johnson’s mother or grandmother.

How can you help?

FamilyTreeDNA has their Million Mito Project underway to refine the mtDNA haplotree by getting a million mtDNA tests taken around the world. If you do an mtDNA, you might find interesting connections and you will contribute to this indirectly by filling out branches and leaves of the tree. Tell a friend or colleague for wider spread. Perhaps it will be an Australian match who will link us to Ellen Johnson’s mother. You can assume you have the same mtDNA haplotype as your mother and save money by just testing yourself or your mother or your maternal aunt.

The mtDNA test costs US$129 at the moment. Find out more here: https://www.familytreedna.com/products/mt-dna

(PS I mentioned a book called the Seven Daughters of Eve, because it inspired a lot of interest when it was published in 2001, but it is not scientifically accurate any more. Invest in a test – not the book.)

Y-DNA – the male line

Y-DNA is carried on the 23rd chromosome of autosomal DNA and is passed from father to son with infrequent mutations. Like mtDNA, it can match you to people who share a common male ancestor thousands of years back. It requires a special test available from FamilyTreeDNA and the odds of finding a match by chance are low until more people do the test. It is most useful for testing a hypothesis about a remote match.

This is what we did for Tom Winder research. We asked David Winder to do a Y-DNA test, we confirmed it with a test from Peter Winder, then we hunted for a living man down the male line from Ishmael Winder. Max Winders showed as an exact Y-DNA match to David and Peter, even though they share an ancestor 9 or 10 generations in the past. This is too remote for an autosomal test to detect reliably. Y-DNA is also how we tested whether John Knight was really the son of Emanuel Hungerford.

Which Y-DNA test should you choose? These are expensive tests and your hypothesis might be wrong, so the less expensive Y-37 is a good starting point. If your hypothesis is correct or nearly correct, your test taker will get an exact match or close genetic distance, such as 1 or 2 steps. This is what happened with David Winder and Max Winders. The 1 step distance on Y-37 could not be a coincidence, so then we paid to upgrade the test to a Big-Y which is the most informative test in the long run. Over time, the Big-Y will show us more matches and an interesting picture of where the Winders lived at a different times.

We don’t need more Y-DNA for our Winder Johnson research, but you might find it useful for another part of you family research. Do contact us if you would like help.

X-DNA – no extra test and everyone has it

Everyone has X-DNA, but I suspect most people don’t know about it and it’s hard work to decipher.

Females have an XX pair on chromosome 23 and males have an XY pair. A female gets on X from her mother and one from her father, but they also do a crossover before creating a new XX pair. A male can only get the Y from his father and the X from his mother. These rules or patterns help deduce which way X might be inherited down to any given person and from any given person.

X-DNA is captured but not displayed in AncestryDNA or MyHeritage. To see how much X-DNA you share with another person, you need to copy your Ancestry or MyHeritage DNA file over to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch. There we can filter for X-DNA and display it in chromosome maps.

This is where you can help most for our Winder Johnson research.

In the next phase, we’re analysing autosomal matches more closely in chromosome browsers, especially looking at X-DNA matches for clues. It’s a process of elimination based on who matches who and where they are in the tree from Tom and Ellen, or from William Winder and Mary Norman, as this determines where their X-DNA can come from. For example, people descended from the son of Tom and Ellen, or from two generations of sons of one of their daughters can not inherit X from Tom’s father or mother. People descended from a daughter of Tom and Ellen could inherit X from Tom’s mother but not father (and from Ellen’s mother or father). It boils down to the sequence of sons and daughters in these lines.

Don’t worry if this isn’t clear. I’ve traced the X-paths for about 20 of our “oldest” test takers and I have access to some of them in FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. I’ll be doing similar analysis for some of our remote matches in interesting clusters.

Please copy your DNA file over to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA. For GEDmatch, I can analyse your matches if I just know your kit number. If you use a cryptic username for privacy, you could send me an email through HAFS to let me know your username and real name. For FamilyTreeDNA, there’s no mechanism for inviting a collaborator, but we might create a group project.

Link a tree to each kit and respond to messages. If you don’t have a subscription for building a tree, we can create on for you or a friend with a subscription can.

Make sure someone is looking after your DNA tests and responding to emails. If you’re too busy or unwell, ask a family member or trusted friend. Peter Sherlock or I can do this in the interim, if you wish. In the long term, we all need a way to care for these valuable tests we’ve all done.

Finally, it was great to meet more of our cousins in person at the AGM and we really enjoy the relationships we’ve developed with some people helping us on this big project. If you’d like to contribute but are not sure how, please do contact us and we’ll help.

Davina Best [E.2.2a.2b.4c.2d.1e]