Y-DNA is a tool that traces the paternal line of men who take the test. Y-DNA is passed nearly unchanged from a male to his son, then to his son, and so forth. Currently, we have seven samples of Counts men who are direct paternal line descendants of John Counts of Glade Hollow. As expected, all of these men match exactly on their Y-DNA because they received their Y-DNA from John Counts. Hopefully, in the future a match to these men will surface that we can trace back either to the undiscovered father or grandfather to John Counts.
Autosomal DNA is a tool that matches people who share common ancestors through both the paternal and maternal line. This is the type of DNA test that is most popular and can be found on sites such as Ancestry.com and MyHeritage. Currently, we are trying to use this type of test to determine the maiden name of Mary Magdeline, wife of John Counts of Glade Hollow.