The Van Zandt County Genealogical Society held its regular monthly meeting on June 25 at the main county library in Canton. In addition to regular Society business, the meeting featured awards to two persons with deep roots in Van Zandt County.

Dennis Rowan was given a First Families of Van Zandt County certificate, signifying that he has ancestors who lived in the county in 1860 or before. Rowan expressed his appreciation for the hard work of the Society in staffing the Van Zandt County Genealogy Library, preserving local history and helping people find their roots.

Imogene Kirkpatrick, who is the Second Vice President of the Society and a librarian at the Genealogy Library, received a 100 Year certificate, which is given to persons who have an ancestor who lived at least 100 years ago in the county. (Anyone wishing to apply for a First Families or 100 Year certificate should contact the Genealogical Society at vanzandtgensoc@ gmail.com and ask for information on these certificates.)

The speaker for the meeting was Larry Youngblood, a retired software engineer and business owner (and part-time musician) who has been involved in genealogy for decades. Youngblood took the meeting attendees on a virtual journey back several centuries, describing how he found his own family’s roots by using YDNA research.

As Youngblood explained, most people who get their DNA tested for genealogy purposes use the more general autosomal DNA testing. An autosomal test measures all of a person’s DNA except the chromosomes (X and Y) that determine a person’s gender. This sort of DNA testing is very good for finding many hundreds of potential cousins to help a researcher fill out his or her family tree. Such test results are ”diluted” or not as reliable four or five generations into the past, however.

Some genealogists therefore opt for YDNA testing, which yields much fewer matches but can pinpoint exact links to brothers, grandfathers, uncles, etc. going back hundreds of years. YDNA changes very little over the generations, so it is very accurate. But it can only be acquired by testing males.

The Youngblood family, like many families all over the world, has been researched extensively. There is plenty of information available, online and elsewhere, but as Youngblood and his late father Charles discovered while they researched their line, many errors and dead ends had crept into the masses of information available.

Once DNA research, especially YDNA research, became a possibility, Youngblood decided to track down as many lines of his family as possible, ask everyone he could in the family to do a YDNA test, and see if he could compile a complete and accurate archive of all Youngblood lines related to him, going back many centuries.

As a computer expert, he has been able to amass his archive and make it available online. The work is ongoing, and, as he noted, he and his father did plenty of old-fashioned research that didn’t involve DNA testing. Many leads came from documents they found all over the southern U.S. at libraries, courthouses, and anyplace else they could go, and from talking to people. He also used the more common autosomal DNA testing. As with all genealogy, Youngblood stressed that perseverance and organization are the keys to success.

Larry Youngblood has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics from Texas A&M University (1971) with an emphasis on Math and Computer Science. He taught high school physics, math and computer science before joining the oil industry, specializing first in writing engineering software and later training engineers, geophysicists and accountants in using the software. He sold his company in 1999 and his software, updated to the latest languages, is still being used today. He and his wife, Marie, have two children, Christina and James. He has been a Project Administrator now for 18 years using the Family Tree YDNA Tools.

At the June 25 meeting, he donated a copy of his book The Colonial Youngblood YDNA Project: Knocking Down “Brick Walls” to the Van Zandt County Genealogy Library. The website for his project is https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/youngbloods-of-edgefield-sc/about