Another Two Weeks, Another Tally

We've barely passed a week since companies celebrated National DNA Day with the kind of sales genetic genealogists are always interested in seeing, but already, the uptick in my DNA matches has doubled—in one case, more than tripled—my usual biweekly increase. Now, that's the kind of incentive to keep someone like me happy.

True, the end result—all the follow-through after making these new cousin discoveries—entails a lot more research work. But I'm okay with that. Not only am I seeing growth in the main tree I've been focusing on since the beginning of 2019—my mother's McClellan, and now Broyles, families—but I've gone back to working on my mother-in-law's large tree, as well as both my father's and even my father-in-law's trees. Even a little leap in the numbers can be encouraging.

My mother's tree is where the bulk of the action happened in the last two weeks, as always. There, I've managed to add another 310 individuals to bring the total in that database to 18,039 people. But with the discovery of another obituary of a distant cousin in my mother-in-law's tree, I made enough notes on that branch to add seventy names, bringing up her tree's count to 16,186 people. And on my father's tree, I'm still working out some discoveries from the prior two weeks' work, which allowed me to again add four more names, totaling 538 names. Even my father-in-law's tree saw some progress, thanks to a new DNA match discovery (which I'm still working on); so far, I've added three more names to bring that total up to 1,518.

So where was the big jump in DNA matches, you ask? This time, the bonanza came from Family Tree DNA, where my matches increased by seventy two new names in the last two weeks, and my husband's matches went up by a more modest—but certainly welcome—forty three. While that big bulge in biweekly additions is likely an aberration and not owing to this most recent sale, I'm sure that increased trend will continue for a short while. By the time I work my way through that additional data, it will almost be time for sales promotions for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and state and national genealogical conferences to add even further to the increase in matches. Any excuse to get some good DNA news is fine in my book!