Women Can Now Use Their DNA Test Results in Surname Projects

We have about 50 people who have been tested in our 23andMe VICK and Allied Families DNA Project, and 21 of them are women. Thirty-two of our project members are descendants of Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight Co., VA. Of the 32, 14 are women.

Some of these women are finding matches with other descendants of Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight Co., VA. The screenshot above shows a portion of Viola Potter’s 23andMe Relative Finder match list. Relative Finder predicted Viola Potter and Faye Paolino were 5th cousins with a range of 3rd to 8th cousin. Viola and Faye compared their pedigrees, and Vick is their only shared surname. They are 7th cousins one time removed, so the prediction is in the range.

We have just begun to collect results from project members, but Faye and Viola are not alone as other female project members are also reporting matches with other project members. Once we collect all the results, these women’s matches will be very helpful in our efforts to reconstruct our Vick family trees.

The Relative Finder Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) state that the odds of two people matching who are as distantly related as Viola and Faye are less than five percent. Fortunately, we have enough project members that we are finding matches even though the average project member is not closely related to the other project members. Of course, we are also benefiting from what we learn from matches with non-project members.

Getting all the data and analyzing it will be a lot of fun. Since new people are ordering 23andMe tests every day we will continue to get new results which help us learn even more about our Vick family history.