My Genealogy Blog

Awesome tool just reopened on GEDCOM which added the ability to search your GEDMATCH DNA matches and then look at any GEDCOM's associated with them. I was able to confirm some speculative relationships with this. If you have not uploaded your GEDCOM to GEDMATCH yet, now is the time to do it. Also if you manage multiple tests, there is a way to just use one GEDCOM. After uploading GEDCOM use the "SEARCH ALL GEDCOMS" in the lower left corner and look yourself up. You can then navigate though the page it pulls up to any other person that matches the tests you have recorded.  Ie, I can navigate to my cousin Ang's page, then link her test to it since I know her GEDMATCH number. Then you just put in the GEDMATCH test number to associate with the person in the record and you have linked the person into your tree. I have not tried doing this with all of my relatives, but just the test I specifically manage.

Sometimes people get the impression that they can sign up for Ancestry, and get all of the information they want just by using the hints that are suggested to them. It is great if the hints are correct, but a lot of times they are not. The real fun of the research comes in when you examine the records and find something new. Or you look at records in a different way to bring about more and more hints. Case in point is a brick wall I have been working on for a few years.  My GG grandparents James Guider and Mary Robinson have been hard couple to research. One, because on his first census James and his sister were living with guardians and Mary because Mary Robinson is such a common name. I had a picture of a man named Geroge HULTZ I couldn't exactly make out my grandmother's writing, which stated that he was a cousin of Zua May Guider my Great Grandmother, a daughter of the brick walls. Well I was able to find a George Hultz on the census and built his tree and followed hi...

OK. Pushed into a new family by Ancestry DNA. Now I am supposedly part of the Pleasant Howard and Abigail Wright group. They are connected to the Swafford/Lee families through the Howards, but I am not sure closely enough for the amount of DNA we share. I was able to cross reference and found Raphael Francis Andrews and did some work with our mutual matches. Looking at our Generational Matix got me wondering, why are there no 3rd generation people?  I have 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 but no 3's.  I am gonna have to run some tests and see if that is significant. If there were out of wedlock children, that might make sense or very small families. I also expect that the immigrants are going to limit the number of generational matches I should get, but the families that have been in the country for hundreds of years should be pretty flush.

So the past couple of days I have been about to communicate with Sandra Fisher Woolsey. I was not getting any response on the Ancestry site, so using the power of google, I was finally able to find an email address I sent a simple inquiry to. Luckily she received it and responded.  What a great opportunity.  I was able to convince her to share her ANCESTRY DNA results with me through the Ancestry Site. Ancestry allows you to share your DNA results in a way similar to sharing your tree, in that now, I can look at all of Sandra's matches.  Using AncestryDNA helper, I was able to go through and cross tabulate her results with mine and pull out the line to concentrate on. It seems the next few weeks will be looking at her COZART and PRIEST lines. I matched someone that shows on her list as a 1st/2nd Cousin, someone who shows as 2nd/3rd Cousin and a smattering of people further out. This is awesome in that I can really start narrowing down the search for how we are matched u...

So people have asked me which test I would recommend. As I have used three different companies FTDNA, Ancestry and 23andME, I can say I certainly have a favorite - AncestryDNA. Why do I like it. First, unlike FTDNA and 23andME, Ancestry automatically and easily integrates your family tree. As I am a genealogist, not a geneticist or someone trying to get insight into what role my genes may play in future health issues, this is precisely the type of integration I am looking for. It is not perfect, as you would by reading my blog, but it certainly beats what the other companies have to offer in this respect. FTDNA is useful, but I have found it to be very cumbersome to use and I have not found people all that responsive on the site. The good thing about Ancestry is, I have matches and trees I can get to work on immediately without having to wait for a response from someone else. Second 23andMe is a really disorganized. It was geared to providing health feedback to its users. H...