Roberta Estes began the Cumberland Gap DNA Project in the early 2000s.

"You may or may not realize that when those DNA projects were first founded 20 years ago, we had several administrators to share the work, and many fewer testers. Over the years, the number of testers has increased many-fold, and we have lost almost all of the administrators, many of whom have joined their ancestors or become inactive for other reasons. I want to say a big thank you to all of our supporters over the years and my fellow administrators.

"Mags [Gaulden] noticed that the Cumberland Gap DNA projects had been inactive for some time and asked if we could revive them, and expand the projects to the wider Appalachian region. Most of the Cumberland Gap families came from someplace else in Appalachia, or over the mountains — so this made sense."

— From Roberta's post in the Appalachian DNA and Genealogy Facebook group.

Moving forward, this project will work to document Appalachian genetics and genealogical paper trails. It will help connect our communities in the belief that we are all family.

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