It’s The New Year, So Y Not?

Shortly before Christmas, I traveled back home to visit with my parents and family for a week and a half in Philadelphia.

At the time, the news was still pretty fresh, with minimal opportunities to process.  Starting a new job had been VERY busy, especially since it began mid-school-year (the person who previously held the position left fairly suddenly mid-year, so I had a lot to catch up on in short order).  That left very little time for thinking about myself or my identity.

My brother, James, was staying at my parents’ house while I was there, so we got to do a good bit of catching up.  Naturally, figuring out our “womb-story” became a hot topic of discussion.

James mentioned that he was interested in getting tested, too.  After all, two sets of tested genes are better than one!  After doing a bit of homework on the topic, we decided that it would make the most sense to order a Y-DNA test, since it seemed that this would yield the best chance of narrowing down our paternal line.  It turns out that, of the “Big Three” genetic testing companies (AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, and 23andMe), only FamilyTreeDNA currently offers a Y-DNA test.  And it ain’t cheap.  The least expensive version, the “37-marker” test, is $169, the next level up (67-markers) is $268, and the 111-marker test is $359.

We ultimately opted for the 67-marker test, which is heralded as the lowest level test to accurately yield surname paternity clues.  The order was placed on New Years Eve, 2015.  It arrived at our parents’ house shortly thereafter (and they were none too pleased to learn of the additional test this way).  After following the simple directions and shipping back, FamilyTreeDNA received my brother’s sample in their lab on February 7th, 2016.