Going to St. Louis this month.
My WEST Family Surname Group # 5 will hold their annual family reunion this year in St. Louis. Those in attendance will be related to each other proven by matches in their y-DNA. Many of us have found the documentation of records to confirm the y-DNA results. In many cases it was the y-DNA that confirmed the documentation.
Our group used FamilyTreeDNA for our testing... Group #5 is still the largest of 39 groups of West families with 19 individuals. Below is a table of the current status of the West Surname Project.
| Number of Y-DNA participants | 339 |
| Test kits returned | 311 |
| Y-DNA results posted to web page | 310 |
| Number of Family groups identified by DNA | 39 |
We now have Y-DNA results for 310 WEST-surname males, identifying 113 unrelated WEST lines. We are a very diverse genetic group. Our surname was adopted many times by people in different locations. As more WEST's participate in the project, the benefit to all WEST researchers increases.
With so many West families being unrelated, it makes it more difficult to find cousins and very hard to find ancestors. There are many tools to help us in our research... the more we can use the better chances we will have to break down "brick walls" and to find new cousins to help us research records in courthouses and libraries. We have been able to resolve many long standing questions for researchers in our line of the West's and we are beginning to coordinate and focus our research more to solve other mysteries concerning our family history.
Our West family reunion is a great opportunity to get together in person and discuss approaches to zero in on issues that we can attack at different levels & directions.
If you have not yet tried DNA testing, check it out... you may be very much surprised at what you might learn. Long-time TSGS member Chris Myers just recently took a y-DNA test. Let us all wish him success in what he might learn!
- Compiled by JGWest (AKA: Nate Flynn, the Librarian)
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