Starting this week and running through the first Sunday of January, the DFA blog will publish more than thirty new articles on a steady weekly rhythm. Here is the currently scheduled full calendar, so you can mark the ones that matter to your research.

The Weekly Rhythm

New articles appear at 8:00 a.m. Central. Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday articles each run every other week. Most Wanted appears every Thursday.

• Sunday: Dillman Families
• Tuesday: Methodology & Standards
• Wednesday: Genetic Genealogy
• Thursday: DFA Most Wanted
• Friday: Sites and Software
• Saturday: Industry News

Dillman Families

• Oct 25: Below the State Line: Village Origins in the Dillman Family Groups. Only 76 Family Group Sheets name an actual town or village for the earliest known ancestor, including two Volga villages, the former Duchy of Nassau and seven Baden towns.
• Nov 8: Names You’d Know: Notable Descendants in the Dillman Family Groups. The notable descendants recorded on the sheets, from a family connection to a former U.S. Vice President to an actress, a biblical scholar and a Major League Baseball player.
• Nov 22: Following Each Other: Chain Migration in the Dillman Family Groups. A relative already there, a fare paid by an uncle, cousins arriving within weeks of each other.
• Dec 6: For Better, For Worse: Marriage in the Dillman Family Groups. Parents’ names reaching back generations, a surname settled only once a wedding happened, and a date on one family’s own sheet that turns out to be a year off.
• Dec 20: How Long They Lived: Longevity and Mortality in the Dillman Family Groups. Twenty documented lifespans from 27 to 95 years, the infant losses beside them, and the few records that name an actual cause of death.
• Jan 3: When They Came: Immigration Waves in the Dillman Family Groups. Why nearly 40 percent of dated arrivals fall in a single 30-year window.

Genetic Genealogy

• Oct 14: The American Genetic Privacy Act of 2025: What It Actually Covers. A House bill to bar testing companies from selling or disclosing customer DNA data to China, and why it is narrower than its name suggests.
• Oct 28: The Genomic Data Protection Act: What Would Actually Change. A bipartisan Senate bill (S. 863) that would let every customer access and delete their data, with 30 days’ warning before data changes hands in a sale.
• Nov 11: Endogamy: When Your DNA Matches Don’t Mean What They Seem. Why a bloated match list is common for Volga German ancestry, and how to adjust thresholds and tools to work with it.
• Nov 25: Is Your Family Group One of the 175 That Has Never Been Tested? Most of the DFA’s documented family lines have never had a single DNA test submitted. This article lists them.
• Dec 9: Three Family Groups the DFA’s Own Records Already Suspect Are Related. Suspected connections noted in the DFA’s own records, including one that names a half-brother, and how testing could settle them.

Methodology & Standards

• Oct 13: Reasonably Exhaustive: When to Stop Searching. What the Genealogical Proof Standard means by “reasonably exhaustive”: not every record, but every type a careful researcher should check.
• Oct 27: The Vocabulary of Honest Genealogical Writing. Why words like “probably” and “unproven” are precise reports of what the evidence supports.
• Nov 10: A Field Guide to Genealogy’s Standards Organizations. CG, AG, NGS and APG: which organizations test your work and which do not.

Sites and Software

• Oct 16: yourDNAportal: A Free Second Opinion on Your Raw DNA Data. More ancestry calculators, real Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroups, and a chromosome-by-chromosome view.
• Oct 30: Genomelink and YourRoots: From Trait Quizzes to AI-Powered Genealogy Research. How a trait-quiz upload site grew an AI research arm backed by a FamilySearch partnership.
• Nov 13: Heredis: The Best Genealogy Software You’ve Never Heard Of (Unless You’re French). France’s long-time best seller, on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, and worth a look for German or Alsatian lines.

Industry News

• Oct 17: Cheaper DNA, Pricier Records: Is Testing Now a Loss Leader? A quarter-century of DNA test pricing, from FamilyTreeDNA’s first $99 Y-DNA test to today’s whole-genome tests.
• Oct 31: $150 Million Sounds Like a Lot: What 23andMe’s Settlements Actually Pay. Why the headline figure is far larger than the actual recovery, and what a separate class-action settlement is worth to those whose data was exposed.
• Nov 14: Your DNA, Your Property? Five States Just Passed New Genetic Privacy Laws. What South Dakota, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Utah now require, and what the federal gap still leaves open.

DFA Most Wanted

Each Thursday the DFA spotlights one family group and asks, “Could you be connected?” Oct 15: Group 20 · Oct 22: Group 42 · Oct 29: Group 34 · Nov 5: Group 23 · Nov 12: Group 33 · Nov 19: Group 37 · Nov 26: Group 31 · Dec 3: Group 47 · Dec 10: Group 44 · Dec 17: Group 49 · Dec 24: Group 52 · Dec 31: Group 50

More articles will be added to the calendar as they are scheduled, and dates may shift. Bookmark the DFA Blog and check back each week.

Note: This post was researched and written with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). All content has been reviewed for accuracy as of October 2026. All errors are the responsibility of the author.