Richard Hill, an adoptee known for using DNA testing to find his birth family, has launched a new website — DNA Favorites.
Hill has been writing and speaking about DNA testing for more than a decade. His site, dnafavorites.com, has all the DNA information you might want, labeled using easy-to-understand tabs. The section “Testing Companies” includes a comparison chart of the five major companies; “DNA Education” has links to conferences and webinars; “DNA Books” lists his own work, along with books on how to use DNA testing and those with personal stories of genealogy discoveries made through DNA testing.
The website has many more tabs, all with links. This is the latest and best attempt to pull DNA information together in one place and is certainly worth earmarking. My description is just a quick overview, so check it out yourself.
Even if you don’t need it right now, you may in the future. For genealogists who are asked about DNA all the time, this is a great site to refer people to when they have questions.
Slavery Petitions
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project is part of the Digital Library on American Slavery and is well worth checking out. Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, it has been around awhile.
For information on it, go to https://library.uncg.edu/slavery/petitions/. The site “provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an 18-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the 15 slaveholding states.” To see the actual petitions you have to go to the county records or state archives.
Many names of associates, those who petitioned and the slaves themselves are searchable.
Your ancestors’ neighbors
When combing through records involving your ancestors, make sure you always note who their neighbors were, relatives and anyone listed as a witness on legal documents. Keeping up with friends, associates and neighbors (FANS) could prove useful in your research.
Contact Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., P.O.Box 901, Decatur, Ga., 30031 or www.kenthomasongenealogy.com.
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