About Us

The Germans from East Europe SGGEE Y-DNA Project welcomes all participants. Our only stipulation is that the direct paternal line represented by the Y-DNA test must go back to Poland and/or the Ukraine and should be Germanic.  We encourage you to join today!. 

SGGEE is the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe.  We are an international genealogical society registered in Canada that focuses on Germans from Russian Poland and Volhynia and related areas. Our website is www.sggee.org. Participation in this Y-DNA project does not require membership.  We are interested in assisting our members to discover their roots, and broader participation assists this goal.

The Y-DNA test is a way to discover your direct male or paternal line, which would be your father, his father, and back in time. You must be male to take this test since only males inherit the Y-chromosome, and your paternal line should go back to or through Poland and/or the Ukraine. If you are female, you will need to find a direct line male in your family tree to participate and represent your tree. 

We encourage males to order a Y-DNA test for 37 markers, or more if possible. If you order 37 markers you can upgrade later, though this costs a little more than ordering the higher marker tests at the beginning.  We recommend the Y-67 or Y-111 marker test if you believe that you are likely to match someone from this area.  The more markers that you test the easier it will be to know when your common ancestor lived and if your common ancestor is within genealogical history.

Both males and females may also be interested in learning about their direct female line, which would be their mother, their mother's mother, and back in time. Both men and women inherit mt-DNA, although only women pass it on to their children. To explore your direct female line, you would order a mt-DNA test. For matches in a genealogical time frame, order the mt-DNA Full Sequence test.  SGGEE also has a mt-DNA Project which you can find by searching for SGGEE and looking for the mt-DNA project.  Your direct maternal line must go back to Poland and/or Ukraine and must be Germanic.

NOTE: SGGEE also has a Family Finder (autosomal DNA) Project.  You can find this project by searching for SGGEE or at this link:  

To participate in this project you must have at least one ancestor from Poland/Ukraine.  This project will allow you to sort your FF matches based on our geographic and ethnic requirements.

If you have any questions, please contact one of the administrators or go to the SGGEE Facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/1812539775626960/).