SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2018 • GOOD LIFE, DAILY COURIER, Grants Pass, Oregon 7

Family From Page 3 Dig your DNA If you want to learn more about “I often remind people that their ancestors are just not your ancestry and family heritage, dates (birth, marriage, death) on a piece of paper. Put consider kits. some flesh on those bones so you know why you are the With a quick scrape, spit or swab, way you are.” your DNA is analyzed and put into a Interest in genealogy for Guillory began in 1993 after database that can help you not only her parents passed away, and she remembered her moth- find your ethnicity, but matches your er saying she never knew what happened to her father. DNA to help you find previously “She said shortly after the 1906 earthquake and fire in unknown relatives. San Francisco my maternal grandfather deserted the A few top-rated include 23andMe, family. He left my grandmother and two children to fend AncestryDNA, National Geographic for themselves, and even though my mother lived to be Genographic Project, HomeDNA and 91, she never knew what happened to her father.” MyHeritage DNA which range in While she couldn’t find information on her grandfa- prices from $99 to $199. ther at that time, Guillory did find a family cemetery plot ¥ Some companies also test for in Los Gatos, California where three generations of kin genetic markers of diseases and were buried, including a great aunt who died in a state medical conditions. institution where her ashes went unclaimed for over 50 ¥ Check the site’s terms of ser- years. vice to see if there any restrictions “Eventually I did find my grandfather, in Chicago. He and hidden shipping costs. worked for the railroad and had deserted another family, ¥ Results are different for women leaving that wife with one child. I am looking for her and men. Women, who have the XX family and that’s my focus now. He died in 1941 when I chromosome, can only trace back the was just a few months old. maternal line. Men, having the XY “While doing this research I discovered many interest- chromosome, can track back the ing facts about that side of my family and have connected maternal and paternal line making a with kin in Slovenia, where they originated in 1867.” more complete picture. Yearly society membership dues — $15 per person, $20 Celeste Guillory, the president of per family — are requested, but the organization also the Grants Pass Genealogical Society says, “DNA kits are definitely accu- sponsors a free workshop each September and co-spon- rate. If you’re interested in genealogy, sors an annual genealogy seminar in October aimed at this is a good way to back up what educating its members and anyone interested in family you found. You go into a data base, history research. The society has also met at other TIMOTHY BULLARD/Daily Courier but there are strict privacy rules in churches, the Historical Society and the Ben Bones Room Celeste Guillory, president of the Grants Pass Genealogical these companies. The option is there at the library. for you and it’s a learning thing. You A Chinese proverb sums it up well: Society, does her own research on tracking down the get your money’s worth out of it.” “To forget one’s ancestors is to a brook without a announcement of the original organizational meeting of the source, a tree without a root.” club in the Daily Courier archives. Experience The Good Life

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