Cece Moore

And so you might get a bunch of Kellys, but if there was an adoption or a break in that line, maybe you'd get a bunch of Smiths.

Right.

And then you really have a mystery.

Then you say, OK, why is my brother or father's white chromosome connecting to Smith's instead of Kelly's?

And so it's just a way of confirming or learning more about that direct paternal line.

And like, for instance, in my family, there was this argument whether our Moors were from Germany or Ireland.

So that was one of my interests, was trying to prove which it was.

Is it an Irish origin Y chromosome or a German origin Y chromosome?

And so when we were first using genetic genealogy, it was looking at this very deep ancestry.

It wasn't looking at anywhere near present day.

Now it could help.

So where do you start?

There are different origins for both of our surnames, Moore and Kelly, because they're so common.

And so you would only match those Kellys or Moores in my case that have the same origin.

You know, Moore is from all over the world, basically.

Now, Kelly, you're probably looking at Ireland.

And so you might get lots of Irish people, not necessarily with the last name Kelly, because the Y chromosome goes back so far, you might connect before they even adopted the surnames.

But you're only going to match that group, not all the other Kellys in the world.

And my dad's more...

line was actually really unique.