With the development of Autosomal DNA, the discovery of our ancestors and living cousins has become much easier, but it is still limited. It can only reliably find living DNA matches who are related up to 5 generations back. Due to how DNA is passed down from parent to child, one child might have DNA from a great-great-great grandparent, but the other child will not. This means that to get the best results out of Autosomal DNA as many children, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins need to be tested as possible. Each person will have a different part of an ancestor’s genome.
Y-DNA and mt-DNA are the other ways to try to track your ancestors through DNA. However, like Autosomal, it has its limitations. Y-DNA only tracks the male paternal direct line (Father’s, father’s, father’s, etc.) This is the same as the mt-DNA, which only tracks the female/male maternal line (mother’s, mother’s, mother’s, etc.) If this is the line you are trying to track then these tests will help you find your deep DNA roots going back in time. However, for everyone else, these tests aren’t an option.
I recommend everyone to do an Autosomal DNA test even if you have done a Y-DNA or mt-DNA test. Ancestry has the easiest-to-use DNA match database from my experience and you can download your DNA and upload it on other DNA sites like MyHeritage, FTDNA, GedMatch, etc. 23andMe, however, is more accurate with its ethnicity estimates, but its DNA matches are limited. Unfortunately, you can not cross-upload between Ancestry and 23andMe, so you either have to choose one or do both to get the most information possible.
The more Watson descendants, male and female, that do an Autosomal DNA test the easier it will be to connect all the different branches of the tree. If you don’t want to make a huge investment, these tests usually have their best sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The Watson Y-DNA project is run by Gail Riddell and William Watson on the FTDNA website. You can upload your DNA and add it to the project whether you are male or female to find DNA matches, but only the male DNA will be added to the full project. If you are interested in the Watson Y-DNA project you can check it out here.