Lately I have found a great way to do collaboration on-line with Ancestry. Though I am not sure how it appears to non-subscribers I have had a lot more success with it than using their messaging system.
This new feature is the COMMENT button. You can comment on photos or actual individuals in the tree. I have found most success adding comments to photographs which a lot of people have saved to their private trees.
Typing in a comment on a photo will send messages to all of the people with that photo in their tree. I use it to make connections and hopefully collaborate more. Also, when someone has incorrect information in their tree, or if the information is different from what I have, I can comment and get better response and much more immediate than waiting months to hear back from an email.
Try it out. I generally still try and get people on board at Wikitree, but at least this tool helps over at Ancestry for those not inclined to try out the Wiki.
Showing posts with label Ancestry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ancestry. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Another little success
So I just wanted to share my latest little success with Wiki Tree and Ancestry DNA.
I had been looking at some Ancestry matches again, to see if I could figure out how we were related.
I tried a new trick where I opened an unknown match and then clicked on the "SHARED MATCHES".
Now for Ancestry, I am pretty sure that shared matches to them means people that not only are common between the two, but actually share the same portion of DNA... meaning you have inherited a specific chain of DNA that should be able to be traced back to an individual or marriage. (This gets rid of false matches --you might share a match with someone but are not related. For example, my first paternal cousin and my first maternal cousin both share me as a match, but are not related to one another.)
Now I took those matches and opened each in a new browser window and then arranged all of these windows on my desktop so I could easily compare all of their listed SURNAMES.
I found one SURNAME that stood out, and digging deeper, I found a specific ancestor that two of them shared.
I then took that ancestor's information to wikitree.com and looked him up. He not only existed on Wikitree, but one of his descendants had actually taken a 23andMe test and had entered that information in, as well as his GEDMATCH number.
From there it was a simple report from GEDMATCH which then confirmed my family is also related to this 23andME user, probably through this newly discovered WIKI relative.
I have yet to find the connection to me, but with little success like this, my brickwall is coming down piece by piece.
I had been looking at some Ancestry matches again, to see if I could figure out how we were related.
I tried a new trick where I opened an unknown match and then clicked on the "SHARED MATCHES".
Now for Ancestry, I am pretty sure that shared matches to them means people that not only are common between the two, but actually share the same portion of DNA... meaning you have inherited a specific chain of DNA that should be able to be traced back to an individual or marriage. (This gets rid of false matches --you might share a match with someone but are not related. For example, my first paternal cousin and my first maternal cousin both share me as a match, but are not related to one another.)
Now I took those matches and opened each in a new browser window and then arranged all of these windows on my desktop so I could easily compare all of their listed SURNAMES.
I found one SURNAME that stood out, and digging deeper, I found a specific ancestor that two of them shared.
I then took that ancestor's information to wikitree.com and looked him up. He not only existed on Wikitree, but one of his descendants had actually taken a 23andMe test and had entered that information in, as well as his GEDMATCH number.
From there it was a simple report from GEDMATCH which then confirmed my family is also related to this 23andME user, probably through this newly discovered WIKI relative.
I have yet to find the connection to me, but with little success like this, my brickwall is coming down piece by piece.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
DNA Ancestry VS. 23andMe
YIPPEE.. So I got my results back for my aunt. She tried 23andMe two times. I decided to try her one more time with Ancestry. Bingo, before 23andME would have even acknowledged they had her sample, I had the results.
This is very exciting. Now why did 23andME find it so hard to get results? One difference I note is that Ancestry uses a "stabilizer". A fluid that is added to the test results. Perhaps that is why. Also, since Ancestry seems to get to analyze the sample more quickly, it seems that 23andME might also want to think about adding a stabilizer.
Another idea, perhaps 23andME is more stringent with their results. I ran into a small hiccup uploading the sample to GEDMATCH. I needed to analyze the DNA results file from Ancestry and found that there is an unusually high number of "no calls" in the sample. (roughly 2.1% compared to my sample which was 1.8%) Not really sure what all that means, perhaps the DNA was not intact and the information could not be obtained, but the result, according to GEDMATCH is that I will have an unusually high number of false matches in the new test. Well, that really is not a problem to me. If valid matches are confirmed by a few of the known ancestors, I am fine with her just being the added hint to solve a mystery.
This is very exciting. Now why did 23andME find it so hard to get results? One difference I note is that Ancestry uses a "stabilizer". A fluid that is added to the test results. Perhaps that is why. Also, since Ancestry seems to get to analyze the sample more quickly, it seems that 23andME might also want to think about adding a stabilizer.
Another idea, perhaps 23andME is more stringent with their results. I ran into a small hiccup uploading the sample to GEDMATCH. I needed to analyze the DNA results file from Ancestry and found that there is an unusually high number of "no calls" in the sample. (roughly 2.1% compared to my sample which was 1.8%) Not really sure what all that means, perhaps the DNA was not intact and the information could not be obtained, but the result, according to GEDMATCH is that I will have an unusually high number of false matches in the new test. Well, that really is not a problem to me. If valid matches are confirmed by a few of the known ancestors, I am fine with her just being the added hint to solve a mystery.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
GUIDER ROBINSON REVEAL
Got a new hint today. I do not know why I hadn't thought of doing this before, or maybe I have and this is a new test, but here is what happened.
So on GEDMATCH I have identified a woman that is related to the same MRCA as my and my cousin Vicki. This MRCA couple are both brick walls to me.
I researched this woman (GERALDINE REVEAL FRUMP) and was unable to find anything. I searched my surnames on Ancestry for REVEAL to now avail. Geraldine was actually illegitimate. Her mother's maiden name was REVEAL and her father's name was BROWN.
Well BROWN gets high hits on my 23andME test. (If you don't know, on 23andME they do this surname search where they compare listed surnames in your matches against the occurrence of those names in the general population and then give you a weighted average of the top 20 or so names. The idea being, the names at the top of the list probably occur in your tree.) Brown, though a common name, has a high probability of being significant in my tree according to 23andME. Because of this, I searched up the BROWN line for Geraldine. Unfortunately, nothing panned out.
Now today, I decided to go into Vicki's test. She has kindly shared her DNA results with me on Ancestry. This means I can look at her results as if they were my own. When I typed in REVEAL for a surname search in her tree, I was pleased to find a match. And as I researched this match a little further found that her REVEALS also crossed into the REVEAL ancestors of Geraldine. Also they are all from OHIO which is exactly the right location for my brick walls. Also the REVEAL in the matches tree, was married to an Emmaline BROWN. Hmm... Looks very promising.
EMALINE BROWN and WILLIAM IRVIN REVEAL (1844-1933)
So on GEDMATCH I have identified a woman that is related to the same MRCA as my and my cousin Vicki. This MRCA couple are both brick walls to me.
I researched this woman (GERALDINE REVEAL FRUMP) and was unable to find anything. I searched my surnames on Ancestry for REVEAL to now avail. Geraldine was actually illegitimate. Her mother's maiden name was REVEAL and her father's name was BROWN.
Well BROWN gets high hits on my 23andME test. (If you don't know, on 23andME they do this surname search where they compare listed surnames in your matches against the occurrence of those names in the general population and then give you a weighted average of the top 20 or so names. The idea being, the names at the top of the list probably occur in your tree.) Brown, though a common name, has a high probability of being significant in my tree according to 23andME. Because of this, I searched up the BROWN line for Geraldine. Unfortunately, nothing panned out.
Now today, I decided to go into Vicki's test. She has kindly shared her DNA results with me on Ancestry. This means I can look at her results as if they were my own. When I typed in REVEAL for a surname search in her tree, I was pleased to find a match. And as I researched this match a little further found that her REVEALS also crossed into the REVEAL ancestors of Geraldine. Also they are all from OHIO which is exactly the right location for my brick walls. Also the REVEAL in the matches tree, was married to an Emmaline BROWN. Hmm... Looks very promising.
EMALINE BROWN and WILLIAM IRVIN REVEAL (1844-1933)
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
It isn't all click and add....
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 his descendants all with no luck. I placed him on the back burner as he was not paying off after hours of research.
A few days ago, however, I was paging again through my grandmother's old address book looking at names and I saw Leva HULTY's name again. Now I have photo's of Leva with Charles DAVIS who lived in Chicago and was son to Mary's first daughter by her first husband (before GUIDER). The DAVIS boys were only partially interesting to me because they were only related to me through one great great grandparent, Mary. Also there was a case of the second DAVIS boy, George's will. When he died his estate was contested by some orphan girls in Michigan who claimed to be descended of Charles. Leva, I thought, was Charles' girlfriend. I had never really pursued her.
Well I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the DNA evidence lately, so I decided to do some old fashioned research. First, I went hunting for the address that was in my grandmother's book. I tried to find the address on the census maps and paged though the census records for 1900, 1920 and 1930 with no luck. Then I went online to see if I could find any historical directories for Chicago. I found one from 1920 and decided to see if I could find her. Going through the alphabetical listings, I found a Lena HULTS. Not only had I misread my grandmothers writing for the first name but also the last name.
Bang. I plugged that name into my database and a census record popped up with George HULTS and Emma HULTS as the parents. This was very exciting. I had fit two pieces of my puzzle together in a way I hadn't imagined before.
This whole time I had been researching the wrong George.
Armed with the knowledge of the correct George I was able to trace his records and find his parents. Since George was the cousin I was looking for, it was going to be one of his parents that was brother or sister to my brick walls.
Quickly I narrowed it down as George's father was from New York. No one on this branch of the tree had any connection to NY as far as I knew. That left his mother Lydia. The biggest problem was that Lydia had no maiden name. If I had relied on the hints from Ancestry, I quickly would have gone off in the wrong direction. Instead I pulled up each census record I had already found, and looked closely at it. One census record for the HULTS family had the mother living with her son when she was very old. This is very common and a great way to get missing information. On this record her name had changed to HUBBARD. After plugging in the information for this, I saw where all of the mistakes on Ancestry had come from. All of the hints were for the wrong people. The Ancestry researchers had just accepted the first clues without really delving into the logistics of it. It was a few pages down where I found the correct Lydia HUBBARD. Ancestry volunteers had mistakenly had her listed as the wife of a completely incorrect person. The correct husband was listed on the record but not near his wife. He was a hotelier in Michigan and Lydia was listed a few rows down from him as wife... but the volunteers had chose the man listed directly above her as the husband. I was able to confirm all of this, because as I looked down the guest list at the hotel, I was to discover Lydia's son was staying at the hotel, using his middle name of Oscar. Now that I had Lydia's husband's name I could start researching them.
There were no real records of interest for Lydia Hubbard or George Hubbard. Until I found a record again, by looking closely at each non-hint record. In one I found a wedding for Lydia Halse and George Hubbard. Birthdates and locations were on, but Halse? Well, knowing how I had screwed up the names, of course, HULTZ and HALSE could easily be mistaken for one another. And, something else I learned by pulling up the record and not relying on Ancestry's abstraction. Lydia had a maiden name of Phillips.
BINGO.
I still have not made the connection, but this is the type of real research that click and adder's just can't appreciate.
This was edited to change ROBERTSON to ROBINSON as I have recently discovered that ROBINSON was the last name used on the marriage certificate for Mary Matilda.
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 his descendants all with no luck. I placed him on the back burner as he was not paying off after hours of research.
A few days ago, however, I was paging again through my grandmother's old address book looking at names and I saw Leva HULTY's name again. Now I have photo's of Leva with Charles DAVIS who lived in Chicago and was son to Mary's first daughter by her first husband (before GUIDER). The DAVIS boys were only partially interesting to me because they were only related to me through one great great grandparent, Mary. Also there was a case of the second DAVIS boy, George's will. When he died his estate was contested by some orphan girls in Michigan who claimed to be descended of Charles. Leva, I thought, was Charles' girlfriend. I had never really pursued her.
Well I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the DNA evidence lately, so I decided to do some old fashioned research. First, I went hunting for the address that was in my grandmother's book. I tried to find the address on the census maps and paged though the census records for 1900, 1920 and 1930 with no luck. Then I went online to see if I could find any historical directories for Chicago. I found one from 1920 and decided to see if I could find her. Going through the alphabetical listings, I found a Lena HULTS. Not only had I misread my grandmothers writing for the first name but also the last name.
Bang. I plugged that name into my database and a census record popped up with George HULTS and Emma HULTS as the parents. This was very exciting. I had fit two pieces of my puzzle together in a way I hadn't imagined before.
This whole time I had been researching the wrong George.
Armed with the knowledge of the correct George I was able to trace his records and find his parents. Since George was the cousin I was looking for, it was going to be one of his parents that was brother or sister to my brick walls.
Quickly I narrowed it down as George's father was from New York. No one on this branch of the tree had any connection to NY as far as I knew. That left his mother Lydia. The biggest problem was that Lydia had no maiden name. If I had relied on the hints from Ancestry, I quickly would have gone off in the wrong direction. Instead I pulled up each census record I had already found, and looked closely at it. One census record for the HULTS family had the mother living with her son when she was very old. This is very common and a great way to get missing information. On this record her name had changed to HUBBARD. After plugging in the information for this, I saw where all of the mistakes on Ancestry had come from. All of the hints were for the wrong people. The Ancestry researchers had just accepted the first clues without really delving into the logistics of it. It was a few pages down where I found the correct Lydia HUBBARD. Ancestry volunteers had mistakenly had her listed as the wife of a completely incorrect person. The correct husband was listed on the record but not near his wife. He was a hotelier in Michigan and Lydia was listed a few rows down from him as wife... but the volunteers had chose the man listed directly above her as the husband. I was able to confirm all of this, because as I looked down the guest list at the hotel, I was to discover Lydia's son was staying at the hotel, using his middle name of Oscar. Now that I had Lydia's husband's name I could start researching them.
There were no real records of interest for Lydia Hubbard or George Hubbard. Until I found a record again, by looking closely at each non-hint record. In one I found a wedding for Lydia Halse and George Hubbard. Birthdates and locations were on, but Halse? Well, knowing how I had screwed up the names, of course, HULTZ and HALSE could easily be mistaken for one another. And, something else I learned by pulling up the record and not relying on Ancestry's abstraction. Lydia had a maiden name of Phillips.
BINGO.
I still have not made the connection, but this is the type of real research that click and adder's just can't appreciate.
This was edited to change ROBERTSON to ROBINSON as I have recently discovered that ROBINSON was the last name used on the marriage certificate for Mary Matilda.
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