Welcome to the Van Eessen DNA Project which is open to all men worldwide with surnames Van Eessen, Vaneessen, Vanheessen, van Ees, van Es, Van Essche, van Hees, van Heese, van Heesen, van Heeze, Van Heezen, Hees, Heese, as well as any other of the myriad of variants or similar surnames that exist (for a broader but still non-exhaustive list of possibilities, please have a look under the tab 'Surnames'). If your surname is similar to one of these, you are invited to take a Y-DNA test and participate in the project, especially if you also have a genealogical paper trail.

For more information on how this project unfolded, please see the project's Background page. The van Eessen DNA blog will provide updates and news as the project progresses. You are encouraged to ask questions, provide information, etc. in the comments to the blog posts. For a short and high level overview of the many technical terms used in DNA projects and DNA testing, you may want to read through ISOGG's Y-DNA project help page.

What is Y-DNA testing?
Just like the surname, Y-DNA is passed on from father to son. A Y-DNA test allows you to link your patriline with that of others and establish common paternal ancestry. As only men have Y-DNA, all men with any of the many surname variants or men with a different surname but who have reason to believe they descend patrilineally from a man with a surname variant, can take a Y-DNA test and participate in the project. Are you female? No problem: although you cannot take a test yourself, you can ask your father, brother, uncle, cousin (or other any other male relative sharing your father's Y-DNA) to take a test in your place.

What does it mean to take a DNA test?
When you order a DNA kit via the Family Tree DNA website, it gets delivered to your home address. The process of taking the test is very simple, painless and takes only a couple of minutes. The kit contains two cotton ‘toothed’ swabs with which you need to scrape the inside of your two cheeks. You can find more explanation and a short instruction video showing how it is done here. It is best to take the test first thing in the morning before brushing your teeth, eating and drinking in order not to contaminate the test sample.

Which Y-DNA test should you take?
Y-DNA testing usually consists of two parts: first testing on a set of so called STR-markers to determine your genetic signature which we can then compare with that of others to confirm or rule out common ancestry in a genealogical timeframe, then one or more so called SNP ('snip') tests to confirm your haplogroup, to learn more about your deep ancestry and to rule out false positive matches.

• Family Tree DNA offers Y-DNA tests for 12, 25, 37, 67 or 111 markers. The 37-marker test is recommended as a minimum to confirm common paternal ancestry within a genealogical timeframe (the historical time period until the present for which genealogical archive records exist). The more expensive, but higher resolution 67- and 111-marker tests will allow you to go even beyond this genealogical timeframe, and potentially find matches with other surnames and gain insight in your deep ancestry. They are very useful, but only if there is a sufficient number of other participants testing 67 or 111 markers as well (since the value of the test is exactly in comparing the results with others). Upgrading to a higher number of markers is always possible.
• Once the results of this test are in we can decide together which SNP test(s) to take. Three types are available: single SNP tests, SNP panel tests (testing specific collections of SNPs) and the advanced Next Generation Sequencing or NGS tests (used for SNP discovery). The NGS test offered by FTDNA is the Big Y test.

When you order a test through this project you get a discount on the standard FTDNA price. FTDNA also occasionally offers interesting seasonal discounts on particular tests (e.g. Christmas sale for BigY or STR tests), so it might be interesting to wait with ordering until such discount is offered.

Sharing the cost of a Y-DNA test
With the DONATE button at the left of this page it is possible to contribute funds to the van Eessen DNA project. Contributors can choose to make a general contribution or require that their donation should be used to test a specific participant. This way, if you are a male (with a surname in the scope of this project) and you are interested to participate, you could convince close family members with an equal interest in the test results to split the cost of testing and contribute equally to the project, with each of them requiring that the funds be used to test you.

Privacy
As opposed to other types of DNA testing (incl. tests for forensic and medical purposes), Y-DNA and other genetic genealogy tests do not reveal personal information. For very close family members they normally yield the same result and marker values and hence do not uniquely identify an individual. In a DNA Project context, the project administrator(s) strictly adhere(s) to the Group Administrator Guidelines for Family Tree DNA Projects and the ISOGG Project Administrator Guidelines. Please also see in this context the Family Tree DNA Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. These terms of use state among others that you will be individually asked for consent if Family Tree DNA ever wishes for whatever reason to share your genetic data with anyone.

Disclaimer
There is no guarantee that, if you participate, you will immediately match anyone in the DNA project or in the overall Family Tree DNA database (the higher the number of participants the more likely a new participant will have a match, so as more people participate the likelihood of a match will increase).