Something that has revolutionized genealogy in the last couple of years is the use of DNA to uncover information about our ancestors. Just as DNA is used today to solve crimes, or to settle paternity issues, it also used to discover information about our ancestors.

We all inherit the DNA of our ancestors. Our DNA is composed of 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of which is inherited intactly from our parents (men inherit the Y-chromosome from their father and women inherit the X-chromosome from their mother) generation to generation. The rest of our chromosomes contain information inherited from both sets of parents.

In recent years, there has been significant development in autosomal DNA tests, that which studies those 22 pairs of chromosomes with genetic information from both sides our family. This test is particularly interesting because its allows us to obtain information about a person’s ancestral composition (percentages associated to different regions in the world) and can establish relationships with people that have also taken the test. This is especially useful to genealogists because it gives clues about ancestors that people might have in common.

Some of the companies that take these tests are: 23andme (www.23andme.com, not available in Chile) another is FamilyTreeDNA (www.familytreedna.com, available in Chile) and yet another is the National Geographic Genographic Project Kit and their Geno 2.0 (https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/). 23andme is a good test for discovering ancestral composition while the FamilyTreeDNA kit is especially useful to create surname groups based on Y-chromosome tests. The Genographic Project and their Geno 2.0 Kit is useful to those that are interested in anthropology and deep ancestry.

The Archivo Nacional de Chile is a government institution in charge of maintaining custoding and receiving the information that is produced as a result of government acts, from the past as well as the present. From a legal point of view, the Archivo Nacional is dependant of the Direccion de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos that in turn depends on the Ministerio de Educación.

Currently, the Archivo Nacional ha different facilities located along the country. Simplifying the Archivo’s organization, reference will only be made to two of the Archivo’s facilities: the Archivo Historico Nacional and the Archivo Nacional de la Administracion (ARNAD), commonly know as the “Archivo del Siglo XX”.

The Archivo Historico Nacional, located on Miraflores street in dowtown Santiago, is the archive that has custody of archival collections from Chile’s colonial period as well as collections from Chile’s Republican era.

The ARNAD is the archive that holds documents that were brought about during Chile’s Republican Era, although this is not exactly true because this archive also holds records that by law are stored after a certain number of years to remove pressure from government institutions and so they can be at the disposal of it’s users.

From a genealogical point of view, the Archivo Nacional holds one of the most important collections: The Notarial Records Repository. This repository contains public deeds from different towns and cities in Chile from colonial time to the Republican Era.