David's Ancestry and Genealogy musings

Searching by DNA Haplotypes in Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker

david — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:38:14 +0000

As I’ve learned more about DNA with respect to genealogy, I see the need for a future feature in Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker to search on the results of a Genealogical DNA test. This would allow matching on Mitochondrial, mtDNA, and Paternal, Y-DNA, haplogroups and haplotypes.

Some genealogy software already allows the recording of DNA information.

The DNA sub section of Ancestry.com currently provides a surname search, but I’d like to search based on the values from my DNA test. Give me a rating on a match that tells me that I’m related with a most recent common ancestor, MRCA, within “n” generations with a confidence of “m” percent. Aside from of the obvious matching of relatives and ancestors, I would like to see the feature let you send a contact email without divulging identities to another Ancestry.com user that you may have found is possibly a relative. This is similar to the “contact” feature currently offered on the Private and Public family trees. This would support the discovering and collaborating with other genealogists that you are likely related to.

DNA for the Genalogist

david — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:32:31 +0000

Like many of you, I’ve been seeing a lot of advertising and marketing about having DNA tests performed for Genealogy purposes. From watching “Forensics Files” and other crime shows, I knew that Mitochondrial DNA was passed from mother to child. Was there more to “Genealogy by DNA” than simply determining maternal ancestors?

I haven’t taken biology or chemistry since college. I’d had the basics of DNA and RNA, but I could not recall too much of it other than the most basic of facts. I decided it was time to go “back to school”. Luckily, the internet has much information readily available and many colleges and universities have made information available.

After studying and reading several sources, I began to see the “big” picture with current human knowledge regarding DNA and Genealogy. My key takeaways:

Mitochondrial DNA is passed virtually intact from mother to child in the “X” chromosone
Paternal DNA is also passed virtually intact from Father to Son in the “Y” chromosone
DNA identically replicates itself with mutations only occurring once in every billion nucleotides
When mutations occur there are enough markers to still estimate the “Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA)” in terms of number of generations since the separation occurred with high degrees of confidence.

The net sum of this is:

Both men and women can take a test to determine their maternal ancestry. The test will use the DNA on their X chromosome to determine maternal lineage.
A man can take a test to determine his paternal ancestry. The test will use the DNA on his Y chromosome to determine surname lineage.
A women who wishes to determine her paternal ancestry can ask her father, brother, paternal uncle, paternal grandfather, or a male cousin who shares the same paternal lineage to take a test for them
It is important to have the oldest members of your family line tested as soon as possible to capture important information before it becomes too late.
These tests can be used to verify or refute an ancestral claim.
These tests can sometimes yield surprises for reasons like:
- clerical errors
- unknown adoptions
- involuntary or voluntary maternal indiscretion

I see where the Dorsey family is conducting the Dorsey DNA Project. They are using tests conducted by Family Tree DNA to determine the interconnections between the changed surname spellings of Dorsey:

Dorsey/Darsey/Darcy/Dawsey/Dossey/D’Arcy.

If you check out the Family Tree DNA site you will find that there are over 5500 families performing similar testing. If yours is one of them, then you might want to take your own test and join up with your Maternal or Paternal family.

References:

Using Google for genealogy searches

david — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:30:56 +0000

Searching with Google is a great way to locate information about ancestors. However, when using Google to perform genealogy lookups it is good to remember that Google can support complicated searches.

Suppose you were looking for marriage information on George Smith and Elizabeth Doe in North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee; then you might use a Google Search like:

(“george smith” OR “george * smith” OR “smith, george”) AND (“elizabeth doe” OR “elizabeth * doe” OR “doe, elizabeth”) AND (“marriage” OR “marry” OR “bond” OR “will”) AND (“virginia” OR “va.” OR “va” OR “north carolina” OR “n.c.” OR “nc” OR “kentucky” OR “ky.” OR “ky” OR “tennessee” OR “tn.” OR “tn” )

Notice the use of “*” for wild card searching in “george * smith”. This allows Google to return items like George W. Smith or George Henry Smith.

Assuming that you did not find what you were looking for, then you would probably want to search again substituting “betsy”,”liz” and “lizzie” for “elizabeth”.

However, be sure that you also search for Soundex surname equivalents. The Soundex system has been used as one of the methods to index names in the US Census. Soundex can also help you identify spelling variations for a given surname.

The Smith surname calculates to a Soundex code of S530. This is the same code as several other sunames:

It would be good to search for “george smyth” and several other variations as well as “george smith”. However, I’m not too sure I would look for “george sunday”. I would end up with a lot of information about “Thermoman”. Although, some people do tell me I’m from another planet. “Hmmm”, well on 2^nd thought, maybe I should be searching the archives of Ultron. I wonder when Ancestry.com will load that database?

Census records can be misleading

david — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:47:01 +0000

I enjoy watching “Forensic Files” and other crime investigation shows. Genealogy work, in someways, is similar to “Forensics”. A critical source of information when performing genealogy tasks are Census records. However, as in “Forensics” these records may not be a “smoking gun”. They often must be supplemented with other records.

Prior to 1850, census records do not contain the names of individuals in a household. The only name is the “Head of Household” followed by a categorization of the number of males and females in an age distribution. For example: the number of males age 0-5. Beginning with the 1850 census, all of the individuals in a household are listed. If the census taker correctly transcribed the information then you can see both the Given name and Surname of everyone in the household.

I know that a lot of people search the census records for an exact match to the family that they are searching for. For example, if you are looking for a family in Virginia in 1840 and you know that there should be: 1 male 20-40, 1 female 20-30, 1 male 5-10, 2 females 5-10, and 1 female 0-5, then some tend to discard all records that do not exactly match the profile. I’ve seen many emails and post on “Rootsweb” sites that bear this out.

In my own work, I’ve seen how census records can throw you off.

Some time ago, I was looking in the 1860 US Federal census for some of my ancestors.
I discovered that members from the same household were not in the right place or state. In this case, for whatever reason, most of the family was in Virginia, but some of the “youngsters” were in the Kentucky census with a relative.
On another occasion, I was looking at the 1850 US Federal census for an ancestor.
This time, I discovered an older woman with a totally different Surname listed with the family that I was searching for.

As result, I’ve realized that if you are looking for exact matches in the census then you may be ignoring some important clues that you need to find your ancestors.

Look in Southwestern Virginia [or was that Kentucky or West Virginia?]

david — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:30:19 +0000

My family and several generations are from the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the US. From a genealogical perspective this is both a blessing an a curse

With my ancestral trails being in Colonial America, I have access to historical American records dating as far back as the 1600’s. Prior to this time, I have located records in England, France, Ireland and Germany. Some of my ancestors settled in a part of colonial Virginia which has since been split into 3 states: Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. Even county names and county lines have been changed to frustrate the “genealogist”

To help combat this, I’ve accumulated a set of maps and references which show:

How starting in 1770, Botetourt county of Colonial Virginia has become part of 6 states:
Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
How Fincastle county of Colonial Virginia has progressed since 1772.
In 1772 Fincastle covered all of what is now Western Virginia, West Virginia. and Kentucky.
How Montgomery county Virginia was repeatedly split and re-split between 1776 and 1880.
State maps of Virgina for 1795, 1814, 1822, 1836, 1845, 1857.
State maps of Kentucky for 1795, 1814, 1822, 1836 and 1845.
Many US Maps covering the period from 1795-1863.
The David Rumsey Map Collection.
David Rumsey provides a wonderful map collection.

As a side note, prior to 1796, North Carolina and Tennessee have a similar splitting, but to a much lesser degree. I’m sure that this is also true in other states that made up the original 13 colonies.

Even with all of the Computer based online tools at my disposal this “change of ownership” can make it difficult and frustrating to locate: birth, marriage, death, census, wills and other source records. These source records are critical to validating genealogical claims and providing leads on your “ancestral quest”.

How I got into the hobby of genealogy and ancestor research

david — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:12:41 +0000

When I was a teenager, I had a great interest in “all things” related to the US Civil War. My grandaunt, my father’s aunt, was a librarian and genealogist. She recognized my interest in history and got me interested in my family history. I have a number of books that she wrote about our family history.

My grandaunt had traced our family to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This is quite an accomplishment. It is even more so, when you realize that this was done in the 1960s and 1970’s. This was before: ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker, the internet and even the PC. She had to do this “old-school” by performing tasks such as: visiting cemeteries, county court houses, visiting “regional libraries” to read the Federal census from microfiche and writing for copies of records. She had to hand-write genealogy sheets and type with a good old-fashioned typewriter all of her Family trees and other information. I know of 3 books/manuscripts that she published this way.

After High School, my interest was dormant until the late 1990’s. After my grandaunt had a stroke, my dad and uncle decided to pick up her work. It also turns out, that several 2^nd and 3^rd cousins in the family did as well. She has since passed away.

It wasn’t long before I was helping my dad and we were hot on the trail of some family history. I had a copy of Family Tree Maker and a box of CD’s containing published historical records. Shortly thereafter, I discovered ancestry.com, rootsweb, GEDCOM, ged2html, Soundex converters and a host of other tools to aid in genealogy research.

Just a decade later and these tools have grown an order of magnitude in capability. However, that is a topic for another time.