What if you could handpick the people sitting in your family tree? Would you choose rich ancestors? Beautiful ones? Ancestors who could get you the best seats at the finest restaurants or the kind whose mere mention would get you out of a parking ticket? Would healthy relatives be your choice? Great storytellers? Or would you just want to have relatives you might have had a chance to meet because they lived to be 100 years old—or more?
We challenged four family historians with the task of selecting people for their own dream trees—but we did so with a hitch: each would be relative would have to fit very specific criteria. Albuquerque Tribune columnist Mary Penner was asked to pick ancestors because of the material goods she would have inherited from each. Katherine Hope Borges, founder of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, was to select ancestors because of their DNA. Aha! Seminars president and author of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com, George G. Morgan, was asked to pick ancestors simply based on the fact that each left a great trail of records. And Ancestry Magazine columnist Myra Vanderpool Gormley was asked to fill her family tree with people whose lives and tales would make good cocktail party conversation. So who did they choose? See for yourself.
Cont. here:
http://www.ancestrymagazine.com/2008/07/features/if-wishes-were-ancestors/
The Lost Colony DNA Project websites are:
http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Colony_DNA_Project
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~molcgdrg/