dna and histories

[Heat Cikola]

Hi everyone, forgive me if this is answered somewhere else, but I am new to this site and so very confused after reading a lot of the posts.

My fathers mothers fathers family...goes back to the 1600s confirmed.
my mothers mothers family was traced back to Charlemagne

Was thinking of doing the dna tests, and noticed many are for men only.  Problem is, my grandmother (fathers mother) was an only child. Her mother also only child.  As my father is no longer available for testing and he only had me and my sister....does this mean I cant learn anything genetically about my fathers maternal lines? (interested in my grandmothers mothers ancesters)

Also, on my mothers side, maternal line is well figured out, but paternal line is a mystery....and again, it seems as if mostly girls were born in recent years so finding a male to test is a challenge and it is the male line on my mothers side I am looking for information on. 

Using wiki tree to document everyone, it feels like I am filling in everyone elses history but my own (cousins relatives that would only be related to me through marriage) because when it comes to my  direct lines, I keep hitting blocks and thought DNA sequencing might give me some leads ... but maybe not?

Anyone have suggestions? Help please

[DevonCruwys]

If you're looking to use DNA to explore your maternal grandmother's paternal line you will need to find a male relative with the surname in question to take a DNA test on your behalf. You might need to go up the tree and come back down another line to the present to find a suitable candidate.

You can take an autosomal DNA test which will give you matches with genetic cousins on all your ancestral lines but this test is best for finding matches within the last five generations or so.

You might like to read some of the articles for beginners that are linked from this ISOGG Wiki article:

http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guides_to_genetic_genealogy

For comparisons between the three autosomal DNA testing companies see Tim Janzen's autosomal DNA testing comparison chart:

http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_testing_comparison_chart

Note that the AncestryDNA test is only available in the US and in any case it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles provided by the other two companies.