Laurie Budgar <lbudgar@comcast.net> wrote:

I've been researching my genealogy for years, but have not yet used a
DNA test, and have lots of very basic questions about them:
--I'm hoping to confirm a relationship between my family (BUDGAR) and
another family (BUDGOR). This seems like a dumb question, but to do this
do I need to have both my brother and a male member of the BUDGOR family
take the Y-DNA test, or is my brother sufficient?

No one with either name have used Family Tree DNA for testing yet. (I
used http://familytreedna.com and on the main page, entered both of the
surnames.)

You need one male >from each family. The best result is that they belong
to different haplogroups. Then you know your answer and you can stopping
looking. If they are in the same haplogroup, then one may eliminate some
because of their genetic distances. However, that you still need to do
the paper search to see if the two families are the same. However, in any
case, you should join every projects that you could, especially the
haplogroup ones.

What information,
exactly, can I expect to get >from the Y-DNA test my brother takes? Will
it give names of relatives, or just numbers of haplotypes, etc.?

You would get a list of persons that have a similar Y-dna with the testee.

--Can I get even more information if my brother (and/or I) take the
FamilyFinder test instead? Would that be more info than if my brother
took the Y-DNA and I took the Mt-DNA test?
--Also, I understand that 23andme provides health info in addition to
genealogical information, but that their genealogical info is considered
inferior to Family Tree; can anyone explain why?

Family Tree DNA, 23 and me, and Ancestry.DNA all used the same chip to do
the autosomal testing. The testing would tried to find cousins on all the
branches on the tree. Ancestry is very good if you have a very large
amount of data within their system already. However, the DNA data is not
available to you. 23andMe give the most information and it then can be
transfer to FamilyTreeDNA for a price. I think if you are getting the
autosomal testing done, the best way is to have 23andMe do it and than
transfer the information to FamilyTreeDNA with its larger data base. That
way you get both. However, there is a disadvantage to this. It is that
the later would keep your DNA sample for 25 years and when new tests are
available, it can do it on the same sample. I heard of several times of
new tests run after a person is died.

I believe new federal laws are stopping other companies >from providing
health info. 23andme started before that law was passed and are allow to
keep doing it. Anyway, I do not think that which company one used should
be based on information that I think is not very useful.

Sidney Sachs
Lorton, VA