genealogy

I've had Legacy for ages. It was free. It was also clunky and akward and in no way intuitive. Of course, it didn't advertise itself to not be those things. It was just what I was looking for as a user. In addition to webinars to "unlock" the dynamic power of fully understanding the secrets of Legacy, there is a sort of Legacy for Dummies manual. If something requires a dummies explanatory guide, I may not have the time or patience to deal with that thing. Last year when they had a sale, I forked over the money, but I never did manage to work up the steam to download the upgraded version of Legacy.

Yesterday I downloaded the free version of Roots Magic 7. I am so much happier with it straight out of the box, so to speak. Of course there are features on the free version that are not accessible, but that is to be expected. The company is still working on getting RM7 to sync with Ancestry which is a huge selling point for me. There is a to-go feature which allows you to copy RM7 to a USB drive and take it with you to run on other computers. There are brief tutorials on youtube which explains how to use particular features. Those I have looked at have been very satisfactory.

Overall my limited experience with both products leads me to think that Roots Magic is a better product for a user like myself. That being someone with little time to spend delving into the mysteries of a program. Mostly, I wanted a software program on my computer that I could use as a backup in case anything ever happens. It's my own little security blanket. I think RM7 and I are going to get along just fine.

Just a heads up, Ancestry is offering half off their dna test kits internationally. Shipping remains the same of course, but still that is not a shabby deal. I've ordered a kit in the hopes I can convince the sole remaining aunt (rarely seen, and sometimes I forget she is still alive) or another relative to test.

Last night I was working on a new line of cousins, and discovered Albert Haines. Albert Haines was born in 1880 near Sandhurst, Kent England. Albert was the son of Emmanuel Haines and Mary Ann Hallett.

Albert first appears on the UK Royal Navy Registers of Seamen's Services, in July of 1896 and served on the ship Impregnable. His last service date was in October 1903 on the ship Pembroke I. At some unknown date, he was employed by the White Star Line. There is record of him working as a boatswain's mate in 1912 for the White Star Line. Want to guess what ship he was working on? You got it. Albert was indeed a crew member of the Titanic and he was one of the survivors when she sank.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg he ended up commanding Lifeboat #9 during the evacuation. He was one of the 82 witnesses examined by the 1912 Inquiries into the Titanic Disaster by the US Senate and the British Wreck Commissioner. There is a wealth of information on the Titanic online and many books and movies as well.

Just a couple of years later, in April of 1914 Albert married Florence Elsie Southwell. They had one son, Ronald Jesse Haines, born in 1917. Albert retired from the sea in the early 1920's. Sadly, Albert was hit by a car, and died on the way to the hospital on June 6th, 1933.

I posted informal reviews of three genealogy books in my journal and thought folks here might be interested. The books in question are:

The Family Tree German Genealogy Guide: How to Trace Your Germanic Ancestors in Europe by James M. Beidler

How to Use Evernote for Genealogy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Organize Your Research and Boost Your Genealogy Productivity by Kerry Scott

Guide to Genealogical Writing: How to Write and Publish Your Family History by Penelope L. Stratton and Henry B. Hoff, CG, FASG

Here's a link to my reviews post.

So, through AncestryDNA, I have met a third cousin. Her mother and my father were second cousins. We shared trees, and a little chit chat and that was it, because, after all, as AncestryDNA "matches" we have no more mystery to figure out. We know how we connect. I'll call her Becky. Well, AncestryDNA also has a button you can push on a match's page called "shared matches." I was looking at someone who is supposed to be a fourth cousin to me, according the the DNA analysis, and she didn't have a real fleshed out family tree for me to browse. I pushed the "shared matches" button and saw Becky there. So I match Becky and this person, J, matches Becky, too. Logically, that narrows down J's and my connection a lot, since I know how I'm related to Becky. J must be a relation on my father's line. Cool. So I messaged J and said, hey do you have any [my surname] in your tree, I think we must be related blah blah because of Becky. She writes me right back to say she doesn't know of any [my surname] in her tree, but it could be on her grandfather's side because he never knew who his father was. His mother raised him alone and gave him her own last name, but she took the identity of his father to the grave with her. Well, that was interesting, but honestly, family trees often have a lot of missing branches so I didn't immediately assume that's where I fit in her tree. She asked where my [my surname] family came from. I told her where my grandfather was from in Iowa, and that his father was from a little Illinois town called Sidell and before that they came from two different counties in Ohio.

"My grandfather was born in Sidell," she tells me.

No shit? Oh my word. She gives me her grandfather's name and birth date in 1929 and I do some sleuthing in the census records and find two lines of my great-grandfather's family living in the immediate vicinity at the time. One line is my own line, and a little back-of-the-envelope family tree drawing shows me that if my own great-grandfather, or any of his brothers or his father had sired J's grandfather, our DNA connection would actually be closer than fourth cousins. But that other branch of the [my surname] family living in the area would be the exact right genetic distance. In 1929, the elder male of that family was in his early eighties. He had two married sons, both living on the west coast. One of those sons had a son exactly the age of J's great-grandmother. So any of these men could have fathered J's grandfather, but it would probably have been during a visit home to see family (okay the 80-year-old was still living there, but I'm mostly giving him a pass). The young man is a tempting suspect, but he wasn't married, so I don't see the strong need for the mother to keep his identity secret, even from her own son. I'm thinking it might have been one of the two married men in their forties.

I laid all this out for J, and she responded excitedly, because she says it's a mystery they've always wanted to solve. Her father must be still living, because she told me she checked some of the facts with him and she gave me a correction or two. We'd be searching for his grandfather he never knew.

On some reflection, I messaged her again with my conclusion that, while those men are perhaps prime suspects, the truth is, if I'm depending on a liaison occurring during a family visit, I have to admit that there were six other "lines" of that family, including the families of sisters (but who had sons) who didn't reside in the area, but could have come to visit. In truth, the search needs to broaden to include all those lines.

She hasn't answered me. That was a week ago. I can't help but wonder. I mean, for me it's a fun logic puzzle, but for them--for her father this could be somewhat emotional and coming out of the blue. I mean, I'm the one who PM'd her with my cheerful "hey, we could be related" message.

Ha! I've always been just a bit scornful of the common myth that people have Native American in their family trees. We know that it's usually spurious -- as a general rule, European immigrants didn't "mix" with Native Americans. Yes, it's probably unprovable in my family, as well, but, well, here's what happened.

I was talking to my uncle about the things I've learned about our ancestors. I said something to him like, "You know what your father told me?" I was talking about the supposed Irish origin of our family (our name does not look Irish), but he said, "He told you he was 1/32 Indian?"

What TF?

Uh, no. I don't remember him saying that. Yeah, my uncle told me, his father -- my grandfather -- said he was 1/32 Native American, probably on his mother's side, since we can trace his father's side straight back to Ireland on almost all lines. We discussed it and decided that most likely one of my grandfather's maternal uncles told him they were 1/16th NA. So I calculated back from that generation, and I swear -- no joke -- I hit a generation where I don't know their parents. I just have nothing.

::hangs head:: so my family has the Native American ancestry legend, too. Of course, my DNA showed absolutely no Native American, so there's that.

I've been satisfied with how Ancestry has shaken loose new information through my dna results. In an attempt to shake more loose, I bought a kit during the last sale and got my sister to test. (There are no relatives left from earlier generations.) That is not optimal but has resulted in more people to add to my tree. So I am pleased by those results.

I've also uploaded both results to Gedmatch. Gedmatch hasn't been as helpful to be honest. The good part is it reconfirmed several individuals for whom the paperwork also indicated a relationship. But I already has those results from ancestry. However, it was good to know ancestry results are valid.

I'm considering asking my brother's son to do a Y test. There is an ongoing surname project to which I'd like to submit his results. There are rumours about being related to some people in American history, about which I'm dubious. But, I'm just curious enough to see if that sort of test might break some walls down in my father's family, while also confirming or denying those rumours.

I've been thinking about doing a mitochondrial test using my sister's daughter. She is soon going to be adding another daughter to the line of women in my family. I can only get back to 1861 so far following my mom's matrilineal line. I'm stuck at my 2nd great-grandmother for whom I only know her first name and that she was born in the US, possibly in New York state. It's a brick wall that has stymied people who have been researching that avenue far longer than I have.

I know very little about genetic genealogy. I've joined some groups and I'm reading up on the subject, so I'm trying to learn more, but the curve is very steep from my perspective. My question is would testing a niece and a nephew help to put a crack in those particular puzzles at all? If so, which company should I test with and should I just do the MtDNA and Y tests, or full tests? From what I've seen the other companies charge a fair bit more for Mt and Y testing than Ancestry does for autosomnal testing. That's a factor I have to consider.

Thanks for reading.

I'm seeing increasing numbers of people complaining that their AncestryDNA results are meaningless or insufficient and on closer inspection it turns out they bought a service called AncestrybyDNA. Costs less and is useless. Why are they not sued into oblivion? THey had the name before AncestryDNA was a thing.

So, anyway, beware.

The University of Strathclyde is running a free online course. This is a basic course in genealogy.

Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree.

This free online course offered by the University of Strathclyde and FutureLearn will help you develop an understanding of basic genealogy techniques and how to communicate your family history. Starts the 18th of July and runs for 6 weeks. The first course run attracted 26,000 students from around the world! Learn more and sign up at:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy

It sounds very basic, but I would be the first to admit I could use some strengthening in my basic research stills. I've signed up for it.

Findmypast.com is offering free access to certain US and immigration records through July 6:

Access to free travel and immigration, US marriage and census records lasts from 9am (EST) Wednesday 29th June until 11:59pm (EST) on the Wednesday 6th July. To access records during this period, you will need to be registered and signed in to the site.

Hello, all! This is my first post to the community.

I'm excited to be getting back into genealogical research after many years of inactivity. As a first step I'm thinking about how best to organize my data, and I would love to hear any advice about working with the same information across multiple platforms.

Say you have a family tree program on your computer (I use Reunion) and are duplicating some of the same content on one or more cloud-based sites such as Ancestry. What strategies do you use to manage changes across the different trees? For example, when you find new information, do you update all of your trees at once, or do you accumulate new information on one tree and only occasionally update the others? Do you have one "master" tree that you treat as more authoritative than the others, or otherwise use different trees for different purposes?

I found out what happened to a son of my second great grandmother. He's always been a name and date of birth and no other information. He was born after the 1861 census in England and then he appears in three Canadian record - a passenger list that documents the family arriving in 1869, and the 1871 and 1881 census. That's it. I assumed he died young, but had no idea when or where. I know now!

I was doing a random search online through old local newspapers, when I spotted a reference to a Mrs. Morley. "Not Drowned" was the header that caught my eye. While the article was not about my gg grandmother, it was about her daughter-in-law and four children. (According to the records I've found so far there were only three children in that family at this point. So another mystery to dig into.)

It's one of those good news/bad news items. It seems Mrs James Morley and her four children had been presumed drowned by their home community.Fortunately for the Morleys, the ship they were to take didn't stop at the place they were waiting. Unfortunately for twenty year old Benjamin the ship stopped where he was and he boarded the Asia on Sep 13, 1882.

The wreck of the Asia is quite well known to those interested in Great Lakes ship disasters. Not me, but if you look on line there's quite a bit of information available. There are ballads written about what happened, and plenty of finger-pointing after the fact, but the end result was the Asia sank Sep 14, 1882. Anywhere from just under a hundred to one hundred and twenty lives were lost. There were two survivors. Benjamin Morley was not one of those two.

http://home.ancestry.com/

Use the coupon code "freeshipdna" for $9.95 off each order you make. Family Tree DNA is going on sale today, too, until Tuesday.

This is all for DNA Day, the day they finished sequencing the human genome.

A lot of wiki-style family tree sites are very particular about copyright on family photos. I tried to educate myself about the issues around copyright, and found this post by The Legal Genealogist, really helpful. There're a lot of complicated permutations that people ask her about in the comments, but here is what I came away with:( Read more... )

I am lucky that many of my immediate family branches have few twigs. Snapshots taken by quite a few of my great-grandparents have almost no one but me to inherit the rights. I have been going through the pictures I have online and attaching "copyright info". If I don't own the copyright, I don't necessarily take the photo down, but I let anyone who might copy it know its status. So here are some examples of what I've been adding to my photos:

"This photo was taken by [-----] [-----], who died in 1955, so the photo isn't out of copyright until 2025. If the rights descended to his heirs, there are only myself, my uncle and my cousin to own them, and all of us give permission for the image to be copied and used with or without attribution."

"I do not own the copyright to this photo. Copy at your own risk."

"This photo was taken in a studio about 1880. The photographer has undoubtedly been dead longer than 70 years, but it is possible his descendants still own the rights."

Yes, I did email my uncle and cousin to ask if they cared if old photos get shared on the internet. They both gave a bemused, "Of course not," which I have put aside for the record, just in case. :)

I have an appointment at the office of vital records on Monday morning. I'll be allowed to do my own records searches for BMD records that are pre-1938. I'm really only looking for one thing, so I'd have plenty of time to look for records for other people.

I spent some birthday money getting my mother tested at AncestryDNA. My own ethnic percentages had almost no surprises, so it was kind of, I dunno, boring. Turns out, if a parent gets tested, there are tools that can separate out your own matches so you know which side of your own tree a match is on (it's called "phase matching"). Cool! Also, any new ethnicities that show up in her, I can claim, too, even though they weren't detected in me. Sure enough, she has some "trace" ethnicites that are much more exotic than mine. :-) Plus, she's a whopping 6% Finnish, which is a juicy mystery for me.

I petered out on doing the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Partly I was dislodged by the shock of learning, through YDNA testing, that my Coffman line never came from German-speaking Kauffmans, as I posted about here. Instead, it was originally Irish Coughlins. My relative's YDNA is a perfect match for a man named Coughlin, and all the men who are a nearly perfect match have Irish surnames. I have still not identified the ancestor(s) who immigrated, but there was a name change involved, and probably a religion change, too. Coughlin is a Catholic name and I see no evidence that any of my Coffmans were Catholic.

Anyway, I've gotten very involved in genetic genealogy, and I volunteered to moderate what FamilyTreeDNA calls a surname project. I am now officially in charge of the Bixby surname project.

And I now make Finnish yoghurt called viili on my kitchen counter every night. :-) What are you finding out?

Just a heads-up in case anyone's interested that findmypast.com is having a Free Weekend from 18-21 Sep.

You do have to register, but it's fairly unintrusive. I've been using the site continually since it first developed out of the old National Burial Index (UK) site. They have records from the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, and Australia. They manage to get a few firsts along the way, too, such as being the first to offer the 1911 UK census back in 2010 or whenever that came available. I guess they outbid ancestry for that coup!

Happy hunting!

She has a picture of him. She's made a video asking if anyone recognizes him.

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/after-a-fruitless-search-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-toni-collette-asks-the-public-to-help-find-her-grandfather/story-e6frfmyi-1227479063433

Family History and DNA

I'm posting this here, because while some of the community might know all about genealogy and dna tests, I for one didn't know anything about how it might work. This is a 101 level post for people like myself who are vaguely interested but not sure it's for them.

Recently, Ancestry has been able to offer DNA testing in Canada. I debated over doing it because it isn't inexpensive, but finally I decided it would be worthwhile. So I signed up and received my kit in the mail. It's not a simple swab, but a saliva test. (I never realized just how much spit they would need. *g*) I sent the kit off and prepared to wait the possible six to eight weeks the company said it might take. Within two weeks they sent an email to say the test had been received and the day after that to say it was being processed. I received the results less than a week after that.

Ancestry promotes the dna test as insight into discovering your ethnicity. Which is cool and all, and probably attracts people who aren't into geneaolgy. Sound business to tap into a bigger pool of users than they might if they just targeted family history explorers. For me, the big attraction was how they connect your test to your tree and then continually search for other trees with tests attached and seek matches for your results.

So, how did that work out, you might wonder. I learned that my results wouldn't be mirrored by the results of cousins, nieces and nephews, not even siblings. DNA recombines in each new individual so every child has 50% DNA from each parent, but it's unique each throw of the dice. Um, it's more technical that that, but you can find plenty of information explaining, if you feel like googling it.

Okay, here are the results, and I'll start with the ethnicity estimate first.

My test indicates that I'm 97% European. The breakdown is 41% Great Britain, 26% Europe West, 12% Ireland and 6% Scandinavia. (As I said to my friend yesterday, VIKING, YAY!)

There are Trace Regions of 2% for the Caucasus which includes places like Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc. And finally the remaining 1% is for North Africa, which includes places like Morocco, Algeria, Niger and Libya, Egypt and so on.

The Trace regions results are so small, they may or may not be accurate. It's best to just disregard them for now and focus on the larger number. Okay and at 97% I'm not at all surprised. Two of my four grandparent's families came from Switzerland/Germany, and the other two originated in Great Britiain. I assume the 6% Scandinavia is remnant dna markers of the Viking expansion throughout Europe and Great Britain. Maybe.

The cool thing is since I received my results I've been contacted by two distant cousins and have new people to add to my tree. Because of a third contact, I've found an error on my tree which is great, because it's best to get rid of those as soon as possible. Otherwise you run the risk of passing it along or simply wasting years on a dead end. I've also gotten links to 64 new to me fourth cousins or closer. There are also some potential new ancestors and relatives I may have uncovered by taking the DNA test. I havent had time yet to explore those links.

Needless to say this is all pretty exciting. I'm happy with the initial results. Some day maybe those dead ends on my tree will be come to life. I am hoping as more people take the test it will become cheaper and more members of my family will also take it. I've already had a cousin and a nephew approach me taking the test themselves. I don't regret taking the test at all.

DNA testing is now available in Canada through ancestry.ca. I've been waiting for this for some time so I was pretty excited. I understand it isn't really going to tell me my ethnicity beyond European. (Unless it does, which would be pretty exciting!) I'm hoping it will lead me to distant cousins who are researching some of the same lines I am working on presently.

There is a six to eight week wait for the results. Colour me impatient!

A very short look at Legacy and Roots Magic.

Ancestry DNA SALE - 50% OFF - INTERNATIONAL

The Unsinkable Albert Haines

Reviews of 3 genealogy books

Uncovering Distant Family Sexual Shenanigans Via DNA

My Cherokee Princess

Genetic Genealogy Question

Don't be fooled by a lookalike to AncestryDNA

Free Online Genealogy Course

Findmypast free access until July 6

Staying organized across multiple platforms

A little mystery solved

AncestryDNA is on sale for $79 until Tuesday!

Using ancestors' pictures and copyright laws

Anyone need Wisconsin BMD records look-up?

And more DNA testing

Free weekend at Find My Past

Toni Collette, after appearing on WDYTYA, still doesn't know her American grandfather's name

Ancestry DNA

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