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.
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Martinucci DNA saga
So some excellent results from my brother Todd's DNA test. He matches someone with ancestors from a town called Villa De Chiavenna, Italy. I had already identified this town as a possible origination point for my Martin(ucci) surname.
I also revisited an older site http://photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BTN-Lombardi.htm which points to a photographer named Eugenio Lombardi Martinucci (1849-1920). He is also for Chiavenna and bears a striking resemblance to my father.
I contacted the owner of that site, and he said he would try and reach the Martinucci descendants for me.
I was able to contact the Maraffio from Chiavenna. He did not know much about genealogy, but his sister in law is a Mormon and is supposedly working on the family tree. I am also trying to conatct her.
I also tried running a search on my matches for people born in Chiavenna, and I was able to pull up one family from there Panzeri. This match was also a match to my cousin, who is descended from my Italian Grandfather. This is a good lead.
It sounds like a trip to Chiavenna is in order in the coming years. It is nearby to Andermatt and my mother's grandmother's home so I can do research there as well on the REGLI family.
This adds more surnames to my search including PANZERI, GINI, NYE, DOLLIMORE, and TAYLOR, MARAFFIO,
I have been busy entering this information into familysearch and wikitree.org and I am actually going to write a little about those sites and findagrave right now.
I also revisited an older site http://photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BTN-Lombardi.htm which points to a photographer named Eugenio Lombardi Martinucci (1849-1920). He is also for Chiavenna and bears a striking resemblance to my father.
I contacted the owner of that site, and he said he would try and reach the Martinucci descendants for me.
I was able to contact the Maraffio from Chiavenna. He did not know much about genealogy, but his sister in law is a Mormon and is supposedly working on the family tree. I am also trying to conatct her.
I also tried running a search on my matches for people born in Chiavenna, and I was able to pull up one family from there Panzeri. This match was also a match to my cousin, who is descended from my Italian Grandfather. This is a good lead.
It sounds like a trip to Chiavenna is in order in the coming years. It is nearby to Andermatt and my mother's grandmother's home so I can do research there as well on the REGLI family.
This adds more surnames to my search including PANZERI, GINI, NYE, DOLLIMORE, and TAYLOR, MARAFFIO,
I have been busy entering this information into familysearch and wikitree.org and I am actually going to write a little about those sites and findagrave right now.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
More on the new Ancestry DNA feature
So I am working on Jennie Mae's tree. Ancestry suggests she is related to Nancy Louisa Brock (1842-1896).
Now Jennie's tree is pretty clean to 1900 so it should be easy to spot this relationship. Originally I thought the link would have to be through one of Nancy's kids if she descended from her. However, all of Nancy's children were all born, lived and died in the same area in which they were born, Georgia.
By 1900 Jennie only had family in Oregon and Minnesota. There is no crossover.
Now chatting with a Brock researcher, it appears there is another way to interpret the Ancestry hint.
Nancy Louisa Brock and a child out of wedlock. His name was James Leander Brock. His father is unknown and not really included in Ancestry's database.
My new theory is perhaps Jennie's ancestors, the Ray's who lived in Kentucky, might have been related to the man that Nancy had a child with. If we cut out all the generations in between, Jennie would be half cousins to this James Leander Brock. Since Ancestry would pick up on this genetic match, and the only person in the database which James Leander Brock was related to was his mother, it would show that Jennie was likely related to her as well.
This is an exciting new way of looking at things and may provide more satisfactory results with my Lee Miller family.
Now Jennie's tree is pretty clean to 1900 so it should be easy to spot this relationship. Originally I thought the link would have to be through one of Nancy's kids if she descended from her. However, all of Nancy's children were all born, lived and died in the same area in which they were born, Georgia.
By 1900 Jennie only had family in Oregon and Minnesota. There is no crossover.
Now chatting with a Brock researcher, it appears there is another way to interpret the Ancestry hint.
Nancy Louisa Brock and a child out of wedlock. His name was James Leander Brock. His father is unknown and not really included in Ancestry's database.
My new theory is perhaps Jennie's ancestors, the Ray's who lived in Kentucky, might have been related to the man that Nancy had a child with. If we cut out all the generations in between, Jennie would be half cousins to this James Leander Brock. Since Ancestry would pick up on this genetic match, and the only person in the database which James Leander Brock was related to was his mother, it would show that Jennie was likely related to her as well.
This is an exciting new way of looking at things and may provide more satisfactory results with my Lee Miller family.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
DNA problems
Ancestry DNA gave me some nice answers. The proved I was related to my sister and my cousin. They also proved that I had a first-step-cousin I had only discovered this last year. I will write about the whole discover later. A few other relationships were confirmed, and then there were the questions.
In my last blog, I talked about my great grandfather Sherman Andrew Miller and the possibility that he had a completely unrelated dad that I never had researched or that maybe his dad was actually someone I thought was his brother.
In this blog I want to discuss another conundrum.
What to do when you order DNA tests for your relations? I had thought this was going to be straight up. I would test certain relatives who were related to me through certain ancestors which would lead me further back in time by cross matching people who matches us both.
Simple on paper, but in reality there are some real problems with it. These are things you probably will want to discuss with people BEFORE you have them tested.
The biggest problem that turned up was not being related at all. That can only mean the family tree we had drawn for ourselves was incorrect and there was either infidelity, and early pregnancy or adoption involved. How do you tell your relative, hey sorry, I think you were adopted? Also, one of my relatives knew there was a problem with her tree, and didn't tell me until after I had ordered the test. Not a huge deal, but if I had been testing her for only one specific thing, or if she had been adopted rather than just a product of and early pregnancy by another man, I might spent money where it didn't do much good.
Simple on paper, but in reality there are some real problems with it. These are things you probably will want to discuss with people BEFORE you have them tested.
The biggest problem that turned up was not being related at all. That can only mean the family tree we had drawn for ourselves was incorrect and there was either infidelity, and early pregnancy or adoption involved. How do you tell your relative, hey sorry, I think you were adopted? Also, one of my relatives knew there was a problem with her tree, and didn't tell me until after I had ordered the test. Not a huge deal, but if I had been testing her for only one specific thing, or if she had been adopted rather than just a product of and early pregnancy by another man, I might spent money where it didn't do much good.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
A confusing DNA story
AncestryDNA has a new feature that links your DNA results to family that are not included in your tree.
This is all well and good for finding your way through brickwalls, but when it affects a portion of your tree you thought you had all mapped out, it is quite upsetting.
This happened to me in the case of Burrell Russell Lee (1804-1877) and Louhaney Paralee Swafford (1800-1863). AncestryDNA states there is a very good chance I am related to this couple.
First I thought I had a great breakthrough for one of my brick walls. Mary Matilda Robertson (1845-1901) or James Jesse Guider (1849-1909), both of which I have not been able to trace back to their parents. However, this was quickly dashed when I realized two things. The birth dates did not make sense and the location was off.
My first task was to find out about the Lee family. I saw that they lived in Tennessee where my Miller family was. As I looked closer I saw that they did not have any unaccounted for kids, with birth dates that would link up. I looked at my Miller family and saw that Sherman Andrew Miller was born in 1865.
Digging a little deeper I noticed that the Lee family was not living in Tennessee for the period when Sherman would have been conceived, except for one son, Anderson Lee (1837-1905). He was actually living in Tennessee, and was a traveling preacher. There is a story posted about him online, going from community to community staying at people's homes. Hmm. Was John Manson Miller away at war during 1864? I know that he was a G.A.R. solider from the same article regarding his 90th birthday. Perhaps Anderson Lee did a visit to my great grandmother Malissa Ann Stiles (1832-1885).
This seems to make a lot of sense on the surface. Especially considering that Anderson Lee was also know as "Andrew Lee", Andrew being Sherman's middle name.
OK. So that was all a pretty good bit of detective work I thought until I did one more search. I went page by page through the 1860 Census of Bradley County to see if my family was living there at the time. I have never been able to find them on the census before, and it was suggested to me I might find them there. So indeed, there they were, classified as McMiller. OK Case made.
But then in cleaning up everything I thought I would go to familysearch.org and make sure that I linked the McMiller census record to my family. As I was doing that, I noticed the oldest son, William had already been linked to someone else, that, get this, had married a Swafford and had a child named Olena Miller (1879-1967). Olena Miller married Henry S. Randolph.
What could this mean? Well to save the name of Malissa Stiles, it could mean her son, William got a girl pregnant when he was 13 years old and had Sherman Miller in addition to later marrying the Swafford and having Olena. If it is the Swafford previously mentioned, no first name was given, but a birth year of 1856 or 1857 was reported, it would make her about 9 or 10.
Then, Malissa and John would have raised Sherman as their own. This would indeed make the 90th birthday story accurate in the number of children John and Malissa had.
All of this is curious. I hope to find out the answer to it someday. I am hoping to find some of Olena's descendants.
This is all well and good for finding your way through brickwalls, but when it affects a portion of your tree you thought you had all mapped out, it is quite upsetting.
This happened to me in the case of Burrell Russell Lee (1804-1877) and Louhaney Paralee Swafford (1800-1863). AncestryDNA states there is a very good chance I am related to this couple.
First I thought I had a great breakthrough for one of my brick walls. Mary Matilda Robertson (1845-1901) or James Jesse Guider (1849-1909), both of which I have not been able to trace back to their parents. However, this was quickly dashed when I realized two things. The birth dates did not make sense and the location was off.
My first task was to find out about the Lee family. I saw that they lived in Tennessee where my Miller family was. As I looked closer I saw that they did not have any unaccounted for kids, with birth dates that would link up. I looked at my Miller family and saw that Sherman Andrew Miller was born in 1865.
Digging a little deeper I noticed that the Lee family was not living in Tennessee for the period when Sherman would have been conceived, except for one son, Anderson Lee (1837-1905). He was actually living in Tennessee, and was a traveling preacher. There is a story posted about him online, going from community to community staying at people's homes. Hmm. Was John Manson Miller away at war during 1864? I know that he was a G.A.R. solider from the same article regarding his 90th birthday. Perhaps Anderson Lee did a visit to my great grandmother Malissa Ann Stiles (1832-1885).
This seems to make a lot of sense on the surface. Especially considering that Anderson Lee was also know as "Andrew Lee", Andrew being Sherman's middle name.
OK. So that was all a pretty good bit of detective work I thought until I did one more search. I went page by page through the 1860 Census of Bradley County to see if my family was living there at the time. I have never been able to find them on the census before, and it was suggested to me I might find them there. So indeed, there they were, classified as McMiller. OK Case made.
But then in cleaning up everything I thought I would go to familysearch.org and make sure that I linked the McMiller census record to my family. As I was doing that, I noticed the oldest son, William had already been linked to someone else, that, get this, had married a Swafford and had a child named Olena Miller (1879-1967). Olena Miller married Henry S. Randolph.
What could this mean? Well to save the name of Malissa Stiles, it could mean her son, William got a girl pregnant when he was 13 years old and had Sherman Miller in addition to later marrying the Swafford and having Olena. If it is the Swafford previously mentioned, no first name was given, but a birth year of 1856 or 1857 was reported, it would make her about 9 or 10.
Then, Malissa and John would have raised Sherman as their own. This would indeed make the 90th birthday story accurate in the number of children John and Malissa had.
All of this is curious. I hope to find out the answer to it someday. I am hoping to find some of Olena's descendants.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Welcome to my blog
So I am not really sure why I have a blog at this point except maybe to draw in some help from other genealogists in my family.
My goal is to get the pages at WIKITREE set up as best as possible and to send traffic their way.
I also want to write a book. I want to get all of the work I have put into this, into hard copy so that I, and anyone who wants it, will have actual source material to pass on to their descendants.
I am always looking for new photos and information on the family. I also have groups on Facebook for all of the branches of my tree that I have photos for and that I am researching.
I also have stored DNA test results on FamilytreeDNA, Ancestry, 23andme and GEDMATCH.
At the time of this writing, my major brickwalls are my father's grandfather Andrew Martinucci, my mothers grandmother, Maria Louisa Regli(?) and my mother great grandparents James Jesse Guider and his wife Mary Matilda Robertson.
Anyway, welcome and I hope this all works
My goal is to get the pages at WIKITREE set up as best as possible and to send traffic their way.
I also want to write a book. I want to get all of the work I have put into this, into hard copy so that I, and anyone who wants it, will have actual source material to pass on to their descendants.
I am always looking for new photos and information on the family. I also have groups on Facebook for all of the branches of my tree that I have photos for and that I am researching.
I also have stored DNA test results on FamilytreeDNA, Ancestry, 23andme and GEDMATCH.
At the time of this writing, my major brickwalls are my father's grandfather Andrew Martinucci, my mothers grandmother, Maria Louisa Regli(?) and my mother great grandparents James Jesse Guider and his wife Mary Matilda Robertson.
Anyway, welcome and I hope this all works
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