Category: Commentary

Topics from the Timeline July Edition

Kris Hocker on 8 Jul 2018

It’s time for another social Sunday with some of the items I’ve shared on my timeline on Facebook and Twitter. What interests you?

  • The Price of Sharing by the Legal Genealogist – With all the news about DNA databases being used to find criminals, Judy G. Russell exams the potential downsides of this practice. I have to say I agree with her statement:
    • ‘I am deeply concerned that the broader genealogical community isn’t talking enough about the risk that “the end justifies the means” is a recipe for abuse. That governments and their investigative arms aren’t always looking for Golden State Killers.’
  • New in Ancestry Trees – Potential Ancestors – I wrote about these — approach with some caution.
  • Getting Started with GEDmatch on Kitty Cooper’s Blog – Using GEDmatch can feel a bit like being dropped into the deep end of the pool to learn to swim. Here’s a guide for those new to GEDmatch to help get you started.
  • Ancestry Product Update: Family Group Sheets are Back! – Another way to look at the information in your family tree
  • New Filtering System for DNA Matches – Now if I could only filter by shared chromosome on MyHeritage

 

New in Ancestry Trees – Potential Ancestors

Kris Hocker on 19 Jun 2018

I’ve been seeing references to this new feature on Ancestry Trees in online social media groups to which I belong. I kept checking my account and couldn’t seem to find what they were accessing.

Until this past weekend.

I finally saw it show up in both my public and private trees. This is what it looks like when you are looking at your pedigree view.

Adam Greulich Pedigree - Ancestry Family Tree

Ancestry Trees – Pedigree View

In this example, Ancestry is suggesting a possible mother for my four times great grandfather, Johann Adam Greulich (18 Feb 1751-21 Feb 1808). I had already located this information through FamilySearch—they’ve extracted vital records from some German church books, but I hadn’t entered the information in my private tree on Ancestry.

According to the information I found on FamilySearch, Johann Adam’s parents were Hans Adam (aka Johann Adam) Greulich (1721-1797) and Anna Elisabetha Gerich (1728-1758). What did Ancestry find?

Potential Mother Adam Greulich - Ancestry Trees

Potential mother for Johann Adam Greulich (1751-1808)

It’s a match!

The question I now have is from where did Ancestry get this information? Their records? Family trees? A partnering website? That information is not provided. No source citation is added if you claim that potential ancestor as your own. In this case, they may have even pulled this information from my public tree. The locations are exactly as I entered them, not Ancestry’s suggested location.

According to posts online, these potentials should also show up in the profile view of an individual in your tree. So far, I haven’t seen that.

What do I think of this feature?

I think it’s pretty cool. If it’s accurate. As with any information you find, you need to be able to assess it and verify it. Without context, without knowing where the information comes from, you can do neither. I’ve already seen some that I can dismiss just by date and location alone.

I’m going to consider these potential ancestors—as I do a lot of what I find—a research suggestion. This means I’ll add the individual(s) to my research to-do list for further digging. Once I’ve verified that it’s correct, I can analyze the source and the information within the context of what else I know about the family, comparing it to other information I may find. Hopefully, this will be enough to determine whether or not the relationship—as displayed—is accurate.

I hope that these potentials turn out to be correct. I like adding ancestors to my pedigree chart. I like fitting the pieces together and making connections between families and places in far-off countries.

Ultimately, however, it’s just a start. Names, dates, locations alone are not all that interesting in the long run. There’s so much more to learn.

Topics from the Timeline Social Sunday

Kris Hocker on 15 Apr 2018

It’s that time again. Time to share articles and posts that have caught my attention in social media and around the web. Here are some of the items I’ve found and shared recently.

The 1873 Colfax Massacre Crippled the Reconstruction Era “One of the worst incidents of racial violence after the Civil War set the stage for segregation” – There are some periods that high school history just didn’t cover well enough for me. Reconstruction is one of them.

New Research Dispels the Myth that Ancient Cultures Had Universally Short Lifespans – There is not current universally accepted method to identify the (ancient) remains of the elderly, resulting in those over 40 all being lumped into one category. One researcher hopes her method can disprove the accepted belief that short lifespans were the norm in ancient cultures. Some of my relatives lived very long lifespans—even by today’s standards—in the 18th century. Apparently the wear and tear on our teeth is the key to identifying the remains of the elderly.

Why putting a citizenship question on the census is a big deal – The census is supposed to count everyone in the United States, not just citizens. Those of us with immigrant ancestors are grateful for it. But in this age of detentions and deportations, this question will most likely make it unlikely non-citizens will be willing to answer accurately, if at all.

Snapshot of Ireland a century ago: an online photographic archive – If you have Irish ancestors an online photographic archive on Ancestry UK may be of interest to you.

Genealogists vs. Historians – Amy Johnson Crow has some thoughts on this debate. What do you think?

Time to paint – Are you using DNA Painter? The Legal Genealogist explains how to use it to “paint your chromosome.” It’s not hard and it doesn’t take a lot of time. I was impressed by just how many segments she was able to identify. I’m nowhere close to that! (Note: to use it you’ll need to have your DNA at 23 and Me, FTDNA, MyHeritage, or GEDmatch; you need segment information to paint.)

Questions You Always Wanted To Ask About Life In Colonial New England: Doctors, Medicine and the Treatment of Illness – Do you have questions about medical care in colonial New England? The Family Connection blog has some answers.

Dear Randy: Why Do You Use U.S. Census Sources from Ancestry.com Rather than FamilySearch? – On the other hand, I try to use FamilySearch for census records I share on this site. Not everyone has an Ancestry account and FamilySearch (for now at least) is free to access.

Please Upload Your DNA Results to Gedmatch.com – Jenealogy and I share the same plea. If you need instructions on how to upload to GEDmatch, you can find them in this post.

Who Owns Your Genetic Information? – The DNA Geek responded to media attention to DNA testing with an article that explains the ins-and-outs and explains each company’s terms and conditions.

The Secrets of the X Chromosome – The X chromosome does more that just determine sex.

Ohio Historical Timeline, 1614-1845 – If you have ancestors who settled in Ohio, this timeline may be of interest to you. When and where did lands “open up” for settlement?

What have you found interesting in your social media timeline or around the web?

Social Sunday - Topics from the Timeline

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

It’s the Little Things that Count MyHeritage Keeps Improving

Kris Hocker on 28 Mar 2018

MyHeritage has recently added several improvements to MyHeritage DNA above and beyond those I wrote about in Stepping Up the DNA Game. They’ve gone from an afterthought in my genetic genealogy work to an “I’ll have to check them out” and now to “I am really liking this site.”

Navigation

Working through a long list of matches can be time consuming and challenging, especially if you can’t easily pick up where you left off. MyHeritage has added two new features that users have requested to help.

MyHeritage Choose Page to View

Page navigation

Page Navigation

The first is to add page navigation so that you can jump to a specific page (see right). This means if you leave off reviewing your matches at page 125, you can quickly jump back to that page when you come back to the site.1 It also shows you just how many pages of results you have. You don’t have to guess.

Results Per Page
MyHeritage Choose Number of Results

Results per page

The second allows you to choose how many results you want to see on each page. Don’t have a fast connection or maybe limited screen space and don’t want a long list to scroll through, set it to the minimum (10). Want to see more, bump it up all the way up (50). You choose.

Distant Cousin Labeling

They’ve also changed how distant matches—those with relatively little shared DNA—are labelled. Initially, they were labelled “3rd cousin to 5th cousin.” While some of these matches may have fit into this category, not all did. They may have been more distantly related or even false matches.

Now, those matches with low shared DNA with Medium or Low confidence are now labelled “3rd cousin to distant cousin.” This will help you to better identify how closely you are related to your matches.

Triangulation

I talked about MyHeritage’s triangulation in my previous posts—Stepping Up the DNA Game and Triangulation Hiccups. MyHeritage added a new method of identifying which matches triangulate with each other.
MyHeritage Triangulated Segments

Now when you view a match, if a shared match is triangulated—all three of you match in the same DNA location—a triangulation symbol (see right) will appear in the shared match’s row.

Clicking on the symbol will take you to the Chromosome Browser where you can see exactly how the three of you match. Now you don’t have to go to the Chromosome Browser, search for the specific people, and add them to the browser to determine if you, your cousin and a shared match all triangulate or not. MyHeritage has done that work for you.

In my opinion, this is a big improvement on Ancestry’s shared matches. Triangulation allows you to determine that you share a common ancestor. Without it a shared match could match your cousin on a different line that doesn’t match you and you wouldn’t know it.

Kudos to MyHeritage for listening to their users and building a DNA tool that we can not only use to take our genealogy to the next level, but better meets our user experience requirements as well.

Triangulation Hiccups Not Quite Perfect Yet

Kris Hocker on 16 Mar 2018

As great as this MyHeritage upgrade sounds, it’s likely going to have some hiccups to overcome. MyHeritage initially had some issues with its matching system1 that were greatly improved with a major update to the system in January.2 It appears there are still some kinks to iron out in the triangulation process, too.

Currently, some users are reporting issues with matches who should triangulate—as shown on other platforms like GEDmatch—but are not triangulating on MyHeritage. Limiting the number compared at one time can apparently impact whether specific matches triangulate, even when they do not triangulate as a group.

I examined two of my mother’s matches (match A & B) whose DNA overlaps on chromosome 17. They triangulate—Mom matches A; Mom matches B; and A matches B. When I compare my Mom, match A, and myself, we also triangulate. However, if I add match B to the mix…no triangulation.

MyHeritage Chromosome Browser Triangulation

MyHeritage Chromosome Browser Triangulation

Match B does not show up on my match list, even though based on my comparison to Mom and match A, they should. (This is not the sole example of a person who should also match me and doesn’t.)

And it’s not an inconsequential piece of DNA. The triangulating segment is nearly 20 centimorgans. It’s not an incidental segment. A lot of the DNA matches I’ve identified sit at this end of the scale, including most of my Schneider-Nuss cousins.

MyHeritageDNA has come a long way in a short time. Once they’ve worked out the issues some users have been experiencing, I think their tools are going to uniquely position them in the marketplace. Add a marketing drive in Europe to attract more European testers and their value proposition will improve even more. I’m going to be keeping an eye on them. I may even find their site becoming the first I turn to for my genetic genealogy.

Stepping Up The DNA Game

Kris Hocker on 12 Mar 2018

When MyHeritage started accepting uploads of DNA results from Ancestry, I uploaded right away. I didn’t initially have a lot of matches, but I figured that would change over time. I still don’t have anywhere close to the number of matches that I have on Ancestry. But that’s okay. Because MyHeritage has something just as good—useful tools.

Like Ancestry, MyHeritage list the matches you share with a particular person. Unlike Ancestry, they also show the match’s estimated relationship to both you and that person, and how much DNA you each share with that person.

MyHeritage also displays your match’s ethnicities. But MyHeritage shows how your ethnicites compare to your match and highlight which you have in common.

Best of all? MyHeritage has a chromosome browser! You can see exactly where you share DNA—which chromosome, which genomic position, and how large a segment—right on the match’s page. You can also download this information—so that you can use it in a program like Genome Mate Pro or DNAPainter for further analysis.

And with MyHeritage’s announcement during RootsTech, it’s gotten even better!

Upgrade

Not only does MyHeritage have the Chromosome Browser on each matches’ page for a one-to-one comparison, you can now compare up to seven individuals in their new One-to-Many Chromosome Browser.1 This allows you to discover where your shared matches actually match. Furthermore, it will show you triangulated segments.

“If a match is shown as triangulated, it means that you, A, and B all match each other precisely on that segment, and therefore all of you are probably related, and you probably got that triangulated segment from the same common ancestor.”

Since this is the point of testing—verifiable relationships—this is awesome and MyHeritage is the only vendor offering it for free.

Furthermore, not only can you export the segment information for each match individually, you can now download all your matches and the shared DNA segment information for all your matches at once or download the shared DNA information for the matches you compare in the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser.

Wait! There’s more planned for the future.2

The company has created one big family tree based on everyone who has tested with them or uploaded DNA to be processed by them. They use this to determine your estimated relationship with your DNA matches.

The next step—and this is the future talking, the near future—is to combine your DNA matches, their trees, and their collected documentation to construct a family tree for you and your matches. They call this the “Theory of Family Relativity.” It would still need to be verified via research, of course, but would provide at minimum a starting point for that research.3

Cool, huh? For some of my matches, this would be invaluable.

For the details of this and other announcements, please visit the MyHeritage Blog (https://blog.myheritage.com).

Social Sunday (March) Topics from my timeline

Kris Hocker on 4 Mar 2018

What I share on social media is not always directly related genealogy. That said, I want to share with you, too, even if you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook. So, here’s some of what’s caught my attention online in the last month.

Immigration has been a big topic lately. If you’re interested in the topic of family integration immigration, I recommend following #resistancegenealogy on Twitter. This research shows just how normal and widespread so-called chain migration is and always has been. It’s nearly impossible to examine an American’s family tree without finding examples. Take my Hockers, for instance, first Adam came in 1749, then George in 1751, then the rest of the family in 1752. And that’s only one instance from my family tree.

Tune in next month to see what I’ve found in the meantime.

How Complete Is Your Tree?

Kris Hocker on 2 Feb 2018

This is certainly not a new question. But it was raised again in the context of genetic genealogy. How much of your family tree have you identified? If you and/or your DNA match haven’t built out your family trees, how confident can you be in determining your most recent common ancestor?

Since the majority of my most recent research has been with the goal of connecting my family tree with those of my AncestryDNA shared matches, I thought I’d try to answer this question. I started with a table based on one shared by The Genetic Genealogist.

Ancestor count chart

Ancestor count chart

As you can see, I’ve identified everyone in my pedigree from myself through my 3rd great grandparents. I’m missing two of my 4th great grandparents and 36—holy cow!—of my 5th great grandparents. Not surprisingly, the number rises even more the further back I go. All told, I know only 477 out of 2,046 direct ancestors going back 10 generations. Only 23%.

Why does this matter?

The majority of my AncestryDNA matches fall into the 4th through 6th cousin category. This means we are expected to share ancestors in the 3rd great grandparent to 5th great grandparent range. I’ve sometimes found a closer relationship and sometimes a more distant relationship, but generally that range is correct, give or take a generation or two for either myself or my match.

If I—or my match—haven’t identified those ancestors, then I’ve little chance of determining how our DNA matches. It also makes it much more of a challenge to break through brickwall ancestors if I can’t find commonalities—even if just by surname—in my shared matches’ family trees. I have been building out trees for some of those matches. But with more than 500 matches in the 4th cousin or closer category, I can’t do that for everyone.

Knowing these ancestors not only permits us to identify a common ancestor, but also allows us to say with confidence that we don’t share ancestors on another line.

2017: A Year in Review

Kris Hocker on 31 Dec 2017

Can you believe it? It’s that time of year again. A new Year begins less than 24 hours from now. Time to look back at the previous 364 days and assess. So how did I do?

My goals for the blog in 2017 were to: “increase the number of posts I write and to share more.”

Here’s what my monthly post count actually looked like in 2017 as compared to 2016 (2017/2016).

  • Jan: 12/7
  • Feb: 7/3
  • Mar: 6/4
  • Apr: 3/1
  • May: 6/0
  • Jun: 0/4
  • Jul: 1/3
  • Aug: 0/5
  • Sep: 2/5
  • Oct: 2/5
  • Nov: 0/4
  • Dec: 6/9

Based on these numbers, I started off great in 2017, easily outdoing 2016 for the first five months of the year. However, I quickly lost momentum after than and did not regain it in the following months. Last year I wrote 50 posts, this year only 45. Not terrible, I know. But I had planned to write 60. So, not great either.

The Year’s Most Popular Posts

What content was most popular this year? Here are the year’s top 10 most visited posts. I’ve placed each post’s place on last year’s list in parentheses after the post title.

  1. 1916 Aetna Explosives Co. Explosion at Mt. Union, Pa.
  2. Lancaster County Deed Books Online (#8)
  3. Making a Deed Map from Old Metes and Bounds (#10)
  4. Surname Study: My Ahnentafel List
  5. Pennsylvania Warrant Township Maps (#6)
  6. 5,000 Acres—Where Did It All Go? (#5)
  7. Huber Immigrants (#4)
  8. Friday Finds: Trinity Lutheran Birth and Baptismal Records Online (#3)
  9. How to Use the Online Lands Records at the PA State Archives (#2)
  10. Pennsylvania Genealogical Map (#1)

This year’s six most popular posts were also last year’s top six; number eight and nine appeared on the 2016 list, too. I was glad to see two new posts appear on the list this year. One—My Ahnentafel List—is basically my pedigree as I know it back as far as I can go. The other post, #10, was my attempt to research a memory that my paternal grandfather shared with me of his father.

However, like last year, not one of these posts were written in 2017. However, just out of the running at number eleven was Ethnicity Estimate Comparisons, a post about my ethnicity estimates at AncestryDNA and Family Tree DNA as compared to my own estimate based on my pedigree. It has received 181 visits since it was posted in February. With the increasing popularity of DNA testing, maybe it will crack the top ten next year.

Top Ten Posts Written in 2017

If I only include those posts written this past year, what does the list look like? (# of visits in parentheses)

  1. How Are We Related? (May; 34)
  2. My Genetic Communities (Apr; 41)
  3. The Early Life of Rev. Frederick Wage (Jan; 43)
  4. Unexpected Discovery from AncestryDNA Match (May; 52)
  5. Henry Landis Jr. (1764-1824) (May; 53)
  6. Pennsylvania Deeds Online at FamilySearch (Jul; 66)
  7. Estimating Ethnicity Percentages (Jan; 82)
  8. Amazon Associates Link Builder Plugin (Jan; 116)
  9. 5 Reasons to Search Orphans Court Records (Jan; 120)
  10. Ethnicity Estimate Comparisons (Feb; 181)

Five—50%—of these posts reflect this year’s focus on my AncestryDNA results. I spent a great deal of time when I should have been writing chasing down connections to my DNA cousins and building out family trees. Much of this has been fairly random, simply trying to figure out how I’m related to the people on my match list.

However, now that I’ve got smart about it and focused on specific research objectives, I feel like I’m making some headway. I’ve been using these DNA results to identify and/or verify some of my ancestors. For instance, my work on Jacob and Catharina (Nuss?) Schneider. Using the DNA results in conjunction with my research is giving me more confidence in both.

So, What Now?

To a large extent, I’ve been struggling with a lack of motivation in my writing. I often feel that in order to be worthy of a blog post, I need to have a revelation to discuss or fully done research report to write up. Otherwise the idea just isn’t worthy enough.

But the majority of my most popular posts don’t bear this out. The most viewed post on my blog is about the Pennsylvania Genealogical County Map. It describes a tool that I’ve found useful in understanding settlement dates and changing jurisdictions while doing Pennsylvania genealogy. The top ten is made up of such posts. They detail a research tool or explain how I use an available resource.

Greater popularity is the result of topics that appeal to broader audiences. Since this is a personal research blog, counting total views is not necessarily the most appropriate metric of success. But it might be a good guide for how I write my posts.

Hopefully, this is a lesson I can take to heart in the coming year. My goal for the coming year is to simply share information that is helpful to my fellow family researchers and other genealogists—regardless of how complete or thorough it is.

Focusing on not just the what I know/learned but also on the how I know/learned it might help me to make my writing of more use to more people. And I think that’s a good goal to have.

2017 A Year in Reivew

My Ancestors Were Refugees

Kris Hocker on 31 Jan 2017

My Ancestors Were Refugees

I don’t want to get political; that’s not what this blog is about. But I can’t help but remember that my ancestors were not only immigrants, they were refugees.

Like nearly every other citizen of the United States, I am descended from those came here from somewhere else. My forebearers came from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. They came from Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, and Denmark. They left their homelands, crossed a dangerous ocean, and made new and better lives for themselves here in the the New World.

Some of them left home for new opportunities, a chance at a better life. Life was precarious for many villagers across Europe. The chance to own your own property, to simply be able to grow enough food for your family—to many it was an irresistible siren’s call.

But some of my ancestors had little choice. Voluntary religion—practicing a religion of your choice instead of the state religion—was considered a threat to the state. My ancestors had their property confiscated by the government. They were imprisoned. Tortured and killed. Some were even sold into slavery. Eventually, the survivors were deported and left to find new homes where they could.

They were refugees.

Some found homes in German regions decimated by religious wars and were welcomed. Temporarily. Their safety was dependent on the will of those in power. If that will or the person in power changed, their welcome changed. They soon found themselves in the same situation. Intolerance and fear made them unwelcome again. Homeless again.

Even my German Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic ancestors—those whose religions were or were to become the state religions—even they had to endure and survive as war raged across Europe decade after decade, as their kings, margraves, and emperors fought over what would be the religion for their people. They, too, saw religion imposed on them based on where they lived. They, too, had little choice.

A New World

But William Penn not only welcomed them to Pennsylvania, he promised them a home where they could practice their religion without interference, without limitations placed on their congregations by the government, without having to pay a surtax simply to be left alone. In doing so, he created one of the foundations of our “American experiment.” That we the people should be free to practice our religion of choice. That the government and religion should be separate and that there should be no “official,” state religion to dictate to us.

My ancestors were Mennonites, Brethren, Schwenkfelders, Quakers, Baptists, Lutherans, German Reformed, Catholics, Presbyterians, and—given what I’ve learned from my DNA test—if I go back far enough Jews. My ancestors were immigrants and refugees. The stood up for their right to practice their religion. Many of them died for that right. Here in America they found both the freedom to practice their religion and safety from oppression.

I will do my part to support the rights of immigrants and refugees today to find that same freedom and safety.