Family Tree AZ — Ken Waters

Greetings all and I hope you are staying safe and healthy. These are certainly trying times.

As you may be aware, the Mesa Public Library system has been shut down since mid-March due to the COVID-19 response and is projecting to open no earlier than October. This has of course put a hold on my schedule of providing monthly classes at the library including one I was scheduled to teach next Wednesday. I began teaching these classes back in January 2018. I greatly enjoy teaching about genetic genealogy and so do miss this void. I fully intend on resuming my teaching once some degree of normalcy returns.

In the meantime, I have been able to use some of the extra time productively. For example I set up a computerized mailing list. One advantage of that is to allow you to subscribe or unsubscribe on your own. That will be more efficient for all. Also, I’m hoping to allow that list to integrate with my blog which I’ll be going back to keeping current. And, I did add a link on my webpage to subscribe to updates. That took about 10 hours of WordPress training to figure it out, whew!

Another thing that was on my wish list to accomplish was to come up with my own logo for a little better branding. I hope you like it! It does give some identity to Arizona and has a symbol of DNA on it but, more importantly, is overlaid atop a depiction of the globe, thus emphasizing the fact that we are connected with people all across the world through our DNA.

I’m also exploring the possibility of maybe producing some tutorial videos. This is something new for me so may take awhile to polish my video production skills but at least it’s a goal right now.

Even though classes, workshops, and conferences have been cancelled there are still great opportunities to learn more about Genetic Genealogy. In particular, I’d like to give a big pitch to the wide variety of webinars that are available, many of them free at least for a short time. I signed up for notifications of Legacy Family Tree Webinars which are usually free for one week. Also, I signed up to get updates from Thomas MacEntee at https://abundantgenealogy.com/. I have found these to be especially useful as they often point to sales and other timely updates in our field.

Lastly, if you have any suggestions on classes you’d like to see once teaching resumes or are in need of some assistance, please let me know. If you wish to unsubscribe from my updates I believe there should be a link at the bottom of my emails that will do that (this is a new way to send emails so I hope I did everything right). If you know someone who would like to get on my mailing list feel free to send them to http://familytreeaz.com and look for the subscribe box on the left. I probably send no more than 2 or 3 emails per month.

Take care and I hope to see you all real soon in an upcoming class once we get to better times.

Best Regards,

Ken

I’ve always been interested in sharing what I’ve learned over these many years with genealogy and especially genetic genealogy.  So, starting January 2018, I’ll be teaching a 2-hour class at the Red Mountain Library in Mesa (on Power Rd, between University and Brown).  First class will be on Saturday, Jan 20th from 10 am till 12 noon and will be a beginning genealogy class.  Second class is a week later on Jan. 27th, same time, and will focus on genetic genealogy, or DNA.  I’ve always enjoyed teaching but this will be my first time doing it on one of my passions.  Hope to see you there!

 

Screen shot of the announcement below.  Sign up at the library website link at the bottom.

Sign Up

Ancestry.com seems to have sold a boat-load of new autosomal DNA kits between November 2016 and January 2017.  In fact, so many that they’ve apparently become overcome with the load and processing times have doubled.  My first several kits typically used to take only 4-5 weeks from mailing in to getting the results posted.  My most recent kit (#19 for me) took more than two months, received Feb. 15th, posted April 20th.  I heard that they had so many in the queue that they had to open a new lab just to process them all.

Anyway, the new kits are posting like crazy now.  I’m getting new 3rd and 4th cousin matches just about every day.  This morning I got excited while reviewing the DNA matches when I saw this one:

This match was over 100 cMs which is starting to get pretty close, like in the 2nd cousin range.  Whenever I get a new match of interest I always first, document the amount of DNA sharing, 153 cMs in this case.  That amount of matching would seem to point to most likely a 2nd cousin relationship (in addition to 1C2R).  Not surprisingly my mother’s DNA showed a stronger relationship with 278 cMs.  Looking at the very useful chart matching cM levels with relationship:

(found at http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/SharedcMProject.png),

this person is likely to be a 2nd cousin to me and a likely 1st cousin once removed to my mom. Average for a 2C is 238 cM and 1C1R is 512. Both of my results are lower than average but still within the acceptable ranges shown.

Next, I go right into the Shared Matches tool in Ancestry which more often than not can give me a clue as to where this person may fit in my tree—basically looking for other DNA matches that might triangulate, or have a common ancestor (we call them MRCAs, Most Recent Common Ancestor).  This is what I found (my annotations in blue):

 

This is very useful as it immediately helped place this new DNA match into a well-known family line. After doing a bit more digging (Facebook, Google, Intelius, etc.) I was able to figure out who this person was and how I was related to her.  That was further confirmed by checking with my 1st cousin, once removed who helped place her.  It turns out this new match is his niece! And, she is indeed my 2nd cousin and my mom’s 1st cousin once removed.

This is another example of how careful analysis of DNA matches can most definitely help with genealogy research and filling out that family tree.

I eagerly await more of these fast-appearing DNA kits!

 

I don’t typically pay too much attention to the ethnicity (aka admixture) estimates on the different DNA partners but I noticed that Family Tree DNA just updated their ethnicity estimates and there’s been a lot of whoopla over it.  It seemed as if they added more categories, or finer resolution.

Well, here is my map:

This was quite disappointing given that I have a well-documented 25% Portuguese line. The map shows that area as 2% Jewish Diaspora rather than Iberian (which is supposed to be a category).  Also, it indicates that nearly all of my European is from the British Isles.  I do have documented lines back to France, Germany, and Flemish, none of which is covered.

The previous version of their MyOrigins map was much closer to reality.  Oh, well—I’ll just go back to focusing on the real reason I’m into DNA testing so much: doing chromosome mapping to find living cousins and using them to help fill in my family tree.

 

Another opportunity to learn the latest and greatest in the new field of Genetic Genealogy:  the annual DNA Day hosted by the Southern California Genealogical Society.  I went last year and got a lot out of it, including meeting a lot of the early pioneers in this field.  I plan on doing the same in June again.

http://genealogyjamboree.com/2017/speakers-dna.html

Did you just get your Ancestry.com DNA results posted?  Great!!!  Okay, after the shock that you’re 35% Irish what should you do?  Hopefully you’re interested in taking it the next step and using the results to find some living cousins who can eventually be able to help you unlock your ancestry.

I have two suggestions to get started:

(1) PLEASE post a public tree so that others can compare their trees to yours.  And, don’t forget to make sure you’ve linked the new DNA test to the correct person in the tree.

(2) Download your raw DNA data from Ancestry up to GEDMatch.com

With this blog post I’m going to focus on #2.

 

 

There are 3 major steps to do the download and upload:

[1] Download the DNA from Ancestry

[2] Set up a new free Gedmatch.com account

[3] Upload the DNA data up to your Gedmatch.com account

 

 

First step, log into your Ancestry DNA account and click on “Settings”.

 

 

 

Next step, select the option to download raw DNA.

 

You will be asked again for your Ancestry password, just in case:

 

If you made it this far you should now see a pop up window telling you to go check your e-mail account (this has to be the account that’s associated with your Ancestry account).

 

My experience has been that you may have to wait anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes for the e-mail to arrive.  I’ve done this over 20 times and have never had to wait more than 15 minutes.  For some reason some people have had difficulties with this and claim to never get that e-mail.  Anyway, hopefully your experience will be similar to mine.  If all goes well you should get an e-mail that looks like what you see below.  Click on the “Confirm Data Download” link embedded in the e-mail.

 

That should take you to an Ancestry page where you can actually do the download:

 

and your download should begin:

 

Once it’s downloaded don’t try to unzip it.

That’s all the steps needed on the Ancestry side.

 

Now, it’s time to set up your account on Gedmatch.com

Go to http://gedmatch.com and select the option for a new account:

 

Enter your name and e-mail address information and password.  I strongly encourage that you use your real name and do not use an alias UNLESS you have special circumstances such as possibly dealing with an adoption case or have some sort of special concern about privacy.

 

 

You should next get an e-mail with a confirmation code to establish your Gedmatch.com account:

Enter your confirmation code in to the webpage asking for it. With that you should now have a new Gedmatch.com account:

 

Now, the only thing left is to upload your raw DNA file that you already downloaded.

Click on the “Generic Upload FAST” link to get to a page that looks like:

Enter name of donor (again, use your real name here).  If you want to do an alias (per my comment above) enter it now.  Most likely you’ll want to skip the two haplogroup questions.  Be sure to select “YES” for making your data public.  If you don’t select that then there will be little you can do with it, thus defeating the purpose of trying to find other matches.

Click “Choose file” and navigate to the Ancestry raw DNA file you downloaded (good first place to look is your Downloads directory).  Then click “Upload”.

After a short while the upload should be complete.  Note that it will give you a Kit Number in red.  This will be your single unique identifier for this kit.  All of the tools on Gedmatch use one or more kits.  For instance to do a direct “one-to-one” comparison between two DNA kits you would use two different kit numbers.

 

That’s it!  Congratulations!  One other last note.  You will immediately be able to use some of the tools in Gedmatch.com.  However—one important one will require you to wait a certain amount of time:  the ability to get a list of all your matches (known as the “one-to-many”).  This step requires a bit of time on the server to “tokenize”.  I’d give it anywhere from 12 to 36 hours.  Then you can really have some fun.

Enjoy!

 

 

Well, it’s just about time for RootsTech 2017 to kick off.  Main session opens at 3 pm today.  Looking forward to meeting more genealogists, especially specializing in genetic (DNA) genealogy.  Even got some reasonable weather this week in Salt Lake City.  Last year, same time was frigid!

https://www.rootstech.org/rootstech-2017

Today is January 26, 2017.  I just listened to an NPR story remembering the tragic loss of three astronauts on this day (tomorrow, January 27th) 50 years ago.  That was when three suited astronauts: Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee perished in a rehearsal for the Apollo 1 launch when the spacecraft suddenly ignited.  I remember that day.  I was only 10 years old but was a curious boy interested in things science (okay, I guess I still am…  ;-)).  It was one of my first notable memories of following the space program including that Christmas eve in 1968 when I remember (and will never forget) that touching reading of Genesis by one of the astronauts as they completed the first orbit of the moon and it was televised live.  But, I digress….

While listening to the NPR program I heard them read the names of the three astronauts.  I recalled that I have the Chaffee surname in my maternal line.  Now, I don’t know what it is but for me it’s just fascinating to tie history to genealogy (or family history).  So, I pulled up my family tree and decided to see if there was a link.  My great-great grandmother was Arzelia Cummings, born in 1859 in Marcellus, Onondaga, New York.  Her great-grandmother was Esther Chaffee (1767-1838), my latest occurrence of the Chaffee surname.  Esther was born in Ashford, Connecticut before this country even existed.  Her husband was a Revolutionary War hero, Oliver Cummings (see https://goo.gl/EvfVvX), my 5th-great grandfather, who served with the Massachusetts Militia.  Neat!

Now, what about Roger, the astronaut?  Well, using the great resource Wikitree, I was able to easily find Roger’s family tree and quickly discovered similarities where his ancestors lived in the same towns that mine did such as in Michigan, New York, Ashford Connecticut, and Rehoboth, Plymouth, Massachusetts.  So, I figured I was hot on the trail.  I traced my family tree further back along with Roger’s and sure enough, found the common ancestor:  Nathaniel Chaffee, my 9th-great grandfather was born in Hull, Massachusetts way back in 1638.  Hull was settled in 1622 as part of the Plymouth Colony and so was certainly one of the very first European settlements of the “New World”.  That’s another must-see visit on one of my future road trips.

Map of Hull (from Google Maps): 

 

Nathaniel is also Roger Chaffee’s 7th great-grandfather, according to WikiTree.  So, doing the “genealogical math” that makes Roger Chaffee, the astronaut, my 8th Cousin, twice removed.

Thanks, Dear Cousin for the valuable contributions and most significant sacrifice you took to help us explore space.  Cheers!

I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve been seeing a nice surge of new 3rd and 4th cousin DNA matches on Ancestry over the past few weeks.  I’ve been averaging about one new match every 3 days or so at at least the 4th Cousin level.   This morning I just found two new 4th cousin estimated matches.  I’m guessing this surge may be due to some of the holiday kits (half a million sold?!!) that are getting processed.  Unfortunately, so far I haven’t seen that surge roll over to GEDMatch.com where there are so many tools available.  I haven’t had a high-level “green” (new) match for weeks.  Oh, I sure wish Ancestry would bring on a chromosome mapping utility (and, of course these matches would come with a public tree).  That would keep me busy for months!