When Family Finder or another Autsosomal Test Is Best

Here's an example of where an autosomal / X chromosome test is a good first choice. I had a lot of information about my mother's ancestors so chose not to do the mtDNA test yet. I have no brothers and my father is dead. I had very little information about my father's ancestors. I could trace my father's maternal grandparents back to numerous Suwalki - Lomza families (Poland / Lithuania). But I had no information on my Frankel great great grandfather (my grandmother's grandfather). I had found a family in another district that looked like it might match my father due to the patterns of given names and because I knew my gg grandmother had family in that area. There was no other way to confirm the hypothesis that this family was indeed my gg grandfather's family except through a test that provided me with matches that might be on my father's side. I was lucky that a family who had Frankel ancestors from that area had contacted me after I posted on a Jewish Gen SIG. So I did the Family Finder test through Family Tree DNA in August 2011. Within a couple of months, I found that my top match by far was the proven descendant of the Frankel family I had hypothesized my gg grandfather belonged to. We have subsequently had four of us tested and every one of us Frankel descendants match for a significant block on a particular Chromosome. This is a true success story.