Michael descends from the #48B Francis Bassett of South Carolina family.
Michael V. Bassett recently attended the 10th annual Family Tree DNA’s administrator conference held in Houston, Texas. I attended in years 2, 3 and 4, but have not had time to go back since then. Here is his recap of the conference.
10th annual Family Tree DNA’s administrator’s conference
I drove down from Dallas to the 10th annual Family Tree DNA’s (FTDNA’s) administrator’s weekend conference October 10-12, 2014, in Houston, Texas.
A good summary of the speakers’ presentations is covered by Emily Aulicino on her blog page: http://genealem-geneticgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/10/10th-annual-family-tree-dna-conference.html.
One of the highlights of my trip was an onsite tour of FTDNA’s laboratory. Millions of dollars have been invested in the latest technology to reduce human involvement in the processing of DNA (including more robots that can work around the clock without stopping or making a mistake) making test results’ turnaround time both faster and more accurate. I could go into much detail and show my photos but the lab tour was already well-documented in CeCe Moore’s “Your Genetic Genealogist” blog last year: http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2013/02/visiting-family-tree-dnas-state-of-art.html.
As of 2014, FTDNA, had processed over 1 million test kits and has over 8,000 group projects. The laboratory manager who has a Ph.D. in Genetics, mentioned the harder the cheeks are scraped, the better the quality of the samples.
One of the goals of the Bassett DNA surname project is to get the Y-DNA test (preferably Y-DNA37 or above) for direct male descendants of each of the untested Bassett lines Jeff has listed on: http://www.bassettbranches.org/kits/lines.shtml. I was Y-DNA tested in 2002 and matched the Francis Bassett of South Carolina (#48B) line so my entire line was consolidated under #48B since Francis is our earliest known ancestor. If your line has not been tested, please don’t delay anymore – just get your Bassett males Y-DNA tested!