Ancestry.com discontinues original DNA tests

Ancestry.com will no longer offer or maintain its oldest DNA services, the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.  I was notified in an email.  I am not surprised by this announcement.  I have three such tests done at Ancestry.  The results have not been updated in years and are overshadowed by FamilyTreeDNA's offerings.  I uploaded the data file from the Y-DNA test to ySearch.org, which is free.  Although the tests and the results will disappear from Ancestry, you can download the data for use elsewhere.

***Ancestry continues selling and servicing their atDNA (autosomal) kits for $99.  This test captures DNA you inherit from all of your ancestral lines.

Last month, during a sale, I purchased two atDNA kits from Ancestry for my father and me.  The results are pending.  Two years ago I purchased a kit for an adopted person.  A close match appeared recently for her, confirming her surname at birth.  (The person has not responded to my inquiries.)

My very first DNA test was Ancestry.com's Y-DNA test for my father, purchased in 2009.  His results are compared against others in the database.  Men who have the same markers on their Y-chromosome share a common ancestor on their direct paternal line.  The more variation in the marker values, the more distant the relation.  Matches were found, but none were predicted to be related closer than twenty generations.  I cannot trace that far back on my father's direct paternal line.

I tested my aunt and myself for mtDNA, also called mitochondrial or maternal.  Similar to Y-DNA testing, this service matches you against people who share mtDNA with you.  Again, no close matches appeared.

In the last few years, FamilyTreeDNA has grown in popularity.  They offer Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, as well as atDNA tests.  Last month I purchased a Y-DNA test through FamilyTreeDNA for my father.  Results are pending.  When the results are available, I will post them and offer my analysis.

Family Tree Art

Stock photo of family tree vinyl wall decal

Inspired by images of family trees on walls, I ordered one from eBay and gave it a try.  Not bad for a minimalist like me.  I have several bare white walls to choose from.

Jody's rendition of the family tree vinyl wall decal.
I have to add pictures.

The stickers are reusable, but delicate.  You do not have to strictly follow the model in the stock photo.

Family
like branches on a tree,
we all grow in different
directions yet our roots remain as one

Stock photo of my next goal for a wall

Recognizing a Great Grandfather

A third picture of my great grandfather may have been identified!

Howard Lutter (1889-1959) was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey.  He relocated to California around 1950.  A talented pianist and musician, he created player piano rolls, from which I acquired my first picture of Howard.

The second discovered picture was from a digitized trade magazine for the player piano industry:  The Music Trade Review, 1923.

My aunt gave me a batch of family photographs to scan and organize.  My grandfather, Clifford Lutter, was a photographer in Newark.  A lot of photographs are not of our family, but rather people he photographed for various reasons.  Most are not labeled with the name of the subjects.  I created a separate page on this blog for people to view the photos and perhaps recognize someone.

One of the photographs struck me as a familiar face.  It was a man, dressed in a suit and tie, with glasses, sitting among various papers.  With no identification on the picture itself, I posted the picture with the rest on the page for Clifford Lutter's photographs.  I kept looking at the face, feeling that this man was not a random subject.  Then I showed the picture to my aunt and uncle and they agreed that this image could very well be Howard Lutter, maybe in the 1940s, when he was in his fifties.

This man is posed in the same direction as the known picture of Howard Lutter, so we can compare them side by side.

What do you think?  Is this the same man?