Old Bones Family Research of New England: DNA

Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts

10 November 2015

AncestryDNA Test on sale for $79...

...plus shipping! And the offer is only available through the link in an email. This info just came to me about an hour ago and I have no idea how they chose the recipients of the email notice. I've already tested so perhaps they believe I'll but more tests for family and friends?

It'd really like to know how their sales fluctuate since they seem to have this "20% off" deal quite frequently. So much so that I nearly always advise people who have interest in the test to wait for a holiday or even call them up and simply request the test at the sale price.

All I can be sure of is that by comparing the results I received from AncestryDNA to the results from FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe the most recent results seem to be more accurate. I tested long ago with NatGeo whose results also parallel those of the other major testing labs. I am predominantly Northern European with just a smattering of Eastern European and almost a full half of a percent of Ashkenazi Jew.

Would I recommend one over the other? The famous answer to that is "That depends." It depends, of course, on your needs or your motivation. AncestryDNA is a relatively simple (and inexpensive) "cousin finder" inasmuch as they only test autosomal DNA. Autosomal lives in the nucleus and is the DNA that is 50% Mom and 50% Dad. If you follow that out several generations, the logic dictates that your autosomal is 25% from each of your 4 grandparents, 12.5% from each of your 8 great grandparents, 6.75% from each of your 16 2nd great-grandparents and so on. That same logic demonstrates that the accuracy of discovering 4th, 5th or earlier generations is relatively remote at best. However, since Ancestry.com has a significant data base of family trees, some of which are reasonably accurate, there's also a reasonable chance you'll be able to discover some new relationships up to about 4th cousins or so. But don't try to prove you're descended from Charlemagne with the AncestryDNA test!!

The other companies' tests can be more expensive, but the testing is a great deal more complex. Just keep in mind the Y-DNA is specifically for your paternal line. Why (couldn't resist the pun)? Because only men have Y-DNA. That's what makes the men men! It is the 23rd of the23 chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), on the other hand, lives outside the nucleus but still within the cell itself. EVERYONE has mitochondrial but ONLY the females transmit it, thereby giving us all a genetic map to our mother's mother and her mother as well, back many generations of mothers

.

It starts to get a little technical from here on, but it may be enough to help you make a decision...hopefully!

05 November 2015

Major Changes at 23andMe

Roberta Estes is a very competent genealogist with extensive credentials in the field. If you're familiar with her blog "DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy"you'll likely agree. If you're not familiar but have interest in DNA and DNA research, I suggest you go to her blog and subscribe.

Rather than have me attempt to describe the goings-on at 23andMe, I thought it would be best to simply offer the link to that specific blog to read at your leisure. All you have to do is click here.
She'll do a much better job that I could ever accomplish!

22 November 2014

There's a Whole Lot Happening!

It's been a while since I've had any time to post a new blog. Some might be happy about that but then again, some might be waiting at their computers, anxiously awaiting more words of wisdom from Old Bones. But for what it's worth, here goes!

The Western Massachusetts Genealogical Society conducts monthly meetings from September through the following June. I've been the Vice President for about a year now and as I see it, we've made some great progress. First, I offer membership applications to everyone who attends my genealogy classes. That has garnered for us at least a dozen new members in the past few months. An conversely, some of the members have signed up to take some classes with me! To make our program more interesting, we've been conducting a few of our meetings via Google+ Hangouts. Actually, the first real "virtual" meeting with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, was via SKYPE. We've had 2 others so far, one with Dick Eastman author of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and the other with Dear Myrt, your friend in genealogy. Dick gave us a very comprehensive look at MyHeritage.com, a very competent competitor for Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. It's worth a look. Dear Myrt challenged us in an interactive night of learning how to completely organize your genealogical research in 3 months. Really! 3months!!

Next up is the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists, better known as (and easier referred to) NEAPG. This group is composed of members of the parent association, the APG, who live in New England and find it worthwhile to meet and network with other professional genealogists throughout the region. As of January 1, 2015, I will move from the Vice President seat to President of NEAPG. This one's a little nerve wracking for me. Although I operate as a professional and have several years of professional experience, I find many of the members to be people that I've known and respected for many years, some with national or even international reputations. Nice to be rubbing elbows with this crowd!!

Another aspect of my role in NEAPG is as the delegate to the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium's biennial conference. The next NERGC convention will take place in Providence, Rhode Island April 15th through 18th. If you're interested in attending, click here for a conference brochure and registration form. And I suppose I should mention that I will be speaking there on Saturday, April 18, 2015. Not that you'd come just to listen to me, but I'll be presenting "Search Strategies You Haven't Tried - Search Sites You Never Thought Of." There'll be plenty of "BIG" name genealogists giving presentations in many areas of genealogy and genealogy research. Some of the tracks include Colonial New England, Skill Building, Telling Family Stories, Researching Women, Technology, Heirlooms, Migration (from other countries and across the US), Photographs, Military Research, Immigration/Naturalization, Ethnic Genealogy, DNA, Advanced Methodology and a great deal more!

Quite a bit more to talk about, but I think I need to save a few items for another day.

"Climb YOUR tree!"

05 June 2014

Ancestry.com closes several services

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="75"]

Ancestry.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

Ancestry.com is shutting down a number of their services. Of course, they put a positive spin on it by saying "Ancestry.com focuses on core offerings." So it's half-full versus half-empty. Either way, if you're fond of any of these services, it's time to plan!

Here's a link to the full story right from the horse's mouth: Ancestry.com Focuses on Core Products

Long ago I was a subscriber to MyFamily and I was fairly active. If I remember, at the time it wasn't an Ancestry product. I "almost" used MyCanvas but never completed the one project I started.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="89"]

English: Paintbrush drawn Icon for Portal Mol Anthro (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

Interestingly, what is not in the headline is that the only DNA testing they will continue is autosomal. They've discontinued Y-DNA and mtDNA testing. I wonder what the back-story is on that!!

Read their article to get the low-down. In my opinion, other than the Y- and mt- DNA tests, I don't think the other products will be sorely missed. We'll have to wait to see to what extent the wailing and gnashing of teeth goes!

06 May 2014

OneGreatFamily.com

A few minutes ago, I got off the phone with a customer service agent at One Great Family. I've pretty much ignored that site for quite a long time. In the past several weeks, they've been advising me that my "...family tree is growing!" Well, aside from a new grandbaby born a week ago, I'm not too confident that there are many (or any) ancestors that I could be made aware of. Perhaps there are collateral relatives, but not anything that I'd get particularly excited about.

Today, I decided to take a new, fresh look at One Great Family. It took a while to figure out my username and password eventually figuring out the right combination. I originally signed on with them in 2002! There's no telling when I started to "ignore" them. Certainly it was quite a while ago!

So I had questions, and I hoped they had answers. I'm no big fan of FAQ's so I found a phone number and left a message. They got back to me within a few hours...not bad! So after a brief overview of my not so close relationship, I asked how much a membership would cost. Ready for this? Only $14.95 per month OR $79.95 per year. "Wait a minute," I asked, "$14.95 per month is $179.40 per year!" She assured me that the annual subscription represented a really great deal. I guess so! "Can you or someone else tell me why I would need a subscription?" She explained that users upload family data and One Great Family matches up your upload with what others have uploaded. It was clear to me that this is not the best way to gather genealogical information. To make sure i had that right, I asked if their site was full of user data, unsourced user data? That's correct, she advised.

Well, I told her that unsourced data would be useless to me and probably to any serious family researcher, professional or otherwise. I really believe that One Great Family is doing more to harm good, solid research than it's doing to promote it. so i simply thanked her for the information, removed myself from their mailing lists and removed the "Affiliate" link at my website www.oldbones.info.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350"]

English: The Yuan Dynasty family tree. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

85% of images online go unsourced, here's how this startup wants to fix it

Genealogy Subscription Sites: Worth The Cost?

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Verify

Genealogy: How We are Helping

22 April 2014

Using Ancestry.com's "New Search"

Michael Hait is a well known, well respected Certified Genealogist (CG) who has appeared on many popular programs including "Who Do You Think You Are." His post, I felt was so well written, that rather than rewriting the obvious, I'd reblog his post. I couldn't agree with him more. I've been using "New Search" at Ancestry.com since it broke out about 2 or 3 years ago. I have no problem with it at all. The latest tweaks simply make it better in my opinion. See what Michael has to say and the comments that should come along with the post.

05 April 2014

Facebook for Genealogists

Facebook (FB so I don’t have to type it a thousand times in this blog) to me was a big waste of time. I don’t need to know what all my friends and family are doing 24/7. I suppose I got roped in a little when the grandchildren began to arrive. Who can resist that?? Or, worse, who wants to get caught NOT seeing “that” pic or “that” video….Not me!

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to the social mania of social media, there are really a lot of FB pages that are pretty interesting, at least from a genealogical point of view. FB is rife with useful stuff. Who knew! So I began following a few, especially the pages of the organizations to which I belong: “New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists,” “Massachusetts Society of Genealogists,” “Haplogroup Rib” (What the heck is THAT), “Autosomal DNA” and the list goes on.

Not only did I get involved in all these pages, I actually contribute! Yes, I have opinions….can you believe it? So, I thought that the world would be a better place if I started my own genealogically oriented FB page. It’s called “Find-A-Grave Genealogy Discussion.” Brilliant, right?

Roy, Thomas & Mary A. (Photo credit: WillynWV)

Well, we loped along for several months with 100 or so members who exchanged questions and answers and stories and problems and so forth. Suddenly in February, I was receiving 3, 4, 5 requests a day to join. That billowed in to 8, 9, 10 a day. We’re now at 1,249 members. Scratch that, the number is 1,256…

So, maybe it’s worth a look. People ask questions about Find A Grave, genealogy in general, how to handle difficult research problems….whatever! The only thing I don’t tolerate is negativity. Right after the page began to blossom, one of the members was waging a battle with some other member who “done her wrong!” Well, that lasted about a day. Now they’re both deleted and blocked.

Recommended Genealogy Websites (Photo credit: brizzle born and bred)

Take a look: Find A Grave Genealogy Discussion

In the meantime, Bruce Cortis who is a friend and a member of some of the organizations I belong to, started a FB page of his own: Genealogy - Improving your searches.

There’s been a lot of people who say they've benefited from the posts and many others who have offered help.

Facebook…it’s a good thing!

29 March 2014

First Cousins? Second Cousins? Once Removed? Always Removed!!

In my class on genealogy research, I try to spend some time on relationships. Truthfully, I have family tree software that calculates how I’m related to the 39,700 people in my data base. Really? 39,700??? Yes, really. Many of my maternal lines go as far as Plymouth Colony (Yes, there’s a Mayflower or two in the mix) And you know those folks from way back before TV and the internet….they had kids, lots of kids! So those fecund families spread their names far and wide across this country. That also holds true for my paternal lines. My direct great grandfathers were mostly in Alabama andTennessee but their progenitor, I believe, was an early 1700′s Scotch-Irish immigrant who may have settled first in New England and then gradually migrated south. (Oh….”fecund”…it’s not a bad word but I challenge you to look it up…I just never get a chance to use it!!)

But I digress. Archives.com has published an excellent article that describes in simple terms what those simple terms mean: First cousin, once removed, third cousin 4 times removed and so forth. I won’t get into “Mother-In-Law of the 7th cousin twice removed of the grandson of the 3rd cousin three times removed” but they’re out there.

Anyway, click the “Archives” link above and see if that’s a description you can live with. I also have a chart by Alice J Ramsey that you might like to look at. I can e-mail that to you by you requesting it at dave@oldbones.info.

Have fun!

Neanderthals: They walk among us!

One of the surprises that came with my 23andMe DNA profile was a small reference to the fact that I'm walking around (upright I might add!) with as much as 3% Neanderthal DNA! I can't say that I wasn't surprised, but it made me think of a cartoon that my kids colored for me about 25 years ago. It's a "custom made" Father's Day card of sorts.

Now, how did my kids know 25 years ago that their father was a Neanderthal? I thought it was pretty ironic. I was also a little surprised that I could put my hands on the drawing. When I showed them what I had found and why it was so suddenly appropriate, each had their own unique response, for example, "No kidding!" and other marginally complimentary comments.

I heard an NPR radio broadcast today about the Max Planck research that supported the findings. And the more I read about the significance of these 21st century discoveries, the more I believe this is another case of the naivete of the scientific community. Or at least their slow move to embrace new concepts. It goes without saying that the current, cutting edge theories maintain that Neanderthal wasn't an oafish, bent over, club wielding, thick browed, grunting cave man. On the contrary. We're getting close to the belief that their "culture" was quite advanced. There is strong physical evidence that they were able to communicate, although not in the way we would imagine. Their voices have actually been predicted by modeling the construction of their necks and where and how all the mechanics of speech would have worked. The idea that they "disappeared" is being revised to posit that early humans (Homo Sapien or Cro Magnon) are very likely to have intermingled with Neanderthal but for a variety of reasons, the Neanderthal took a back seat to the development of the species.

: English: First reconstruction of Neanderthal man Español: Primera reconstrucción del Hombre de Neandertal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Much of the current thinking is that Neanderthal branched out from the same species from which we descend. In other words, 2 separate branches or species. There are any number of species of proto-humans such as Homo Afrigensis and others. With this new "blending" theory, it would seem that the two branches actually came back together a mere 200,000 to 250,000 years after the original split.

Well, below is a link to one of the many articles available to explain all this paleoanthropology that I can barely spell, much less completely understand. In addition, I'm reading Chip Walter's "Last Ape Standing: The seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived" which, although filled with scientific data, is pretty interesting and easy to read. It's available at Amazon.com in hardcover, paperback and Kindle. (I use the Kindle editions because their so much cheaper! I read them on my Android or on my laptop. I'm getting accustomed to not having pages to turn.)

Neanderthals: Their genes walk among us. (And links to other articles at the bottom)

Now some of the people I know have looked at me with incredulity when I talk about my new found heritage. It sort of puts a new spin on my genealogy research! They seem to think that this new data goes a long way to explain what makes me tick... I just don't let them get too carried away!

: English: Max Planck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

DNA on a Personal Level I Didn't Expect!

One of the things I enjoy is teaching genealogy. I think I have a pretty good handle on how and where to research, what sites to use, where to go for data that's not on the internet and other areas. Other areas such as DNA and its place in someones research plan.

DNA is one subject in which I know enough to talk intelligently about it, but I'm far from being an expert. As a matter of fact, when I use DNA as subject matter in one of my sessions, the first thing our of my mouth is the disclaimer that I'm not a doctor by even the farthest stretch of the imagination and that I'm just above a beginner in the area of DNA.

: Animation of the structure of a section of DNA. The bases lie horizontally between the two spiraling strands. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So a few months ago, I was conducting a series of classes at a fairly large facility near here. It consisted of 6 sessions every Tuesday for 6 weeks. Since I had so much time to devote to a variety of genealogical subjects, I put my DNA slide into the program. I even put DNA graphics on my desktop. Not just a simple graphic but one that spun slowly to see the graphic in 360°. I think it is the same graphic that I've included here.

After the session, a middle aged woman approached me at the front of the room and joined a few of the participants who were asking additional questions. As usual, I try to take everyone in their turn as they come forward. However, the woman was obviously upset, her eyes were welled up with tears. I immediately thought I had said something offensive, something that didn't sit right with her. Understand that any time I'm speaking to the public, I try my absolute best to remain apolitical, non-discriminatory and thoroughly "G" rated! What am I going to do now?

When most of the folks had stepped away, I asked the woman to have a seat as her husband approached the table where we were sitting. Oh no... Is this going to get ugly? What in the world could I possibly have said?

Once we were in a semi-private moment, I asked what I could do to help them. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. And what happened is absolutely not what I expected.

"Can you advise me about a personal issue," she said. I have to admit that this is not the direction I wanted this to go in but certainly better than what I had feared! But a "personal" issue???

Then the bombshell: "My brother's body was found in his apartment last week and the Medical Examiner will not release it until I can prove that he is definitely my brother. He has no dental records and he never had his fingerprints taken. Is there some kind of DNA test that I could have done to help us?"

After the shock of her dilemma sunk in...not to mention the fact that she was asking ME for advice...I expressed my sympathies to her and her family for their loss. From a human perspective, I wanted to know more but I didn't want to appear to pry into any family issues. I felt the most prudent thing to do was to give her my opinion. First, I asked if she had another brother in the family and she did. To me, the only solution from a DNA perspective was to have a Y-DNA test on each of her brothers. Scientifically at least, the brothers should come back as a 100% match. After a few minutes of explaining why that would work, she and her husband thanked me, and they quietly left the room. But not before I asked her to please keep me informed as to the outcome.

When I got home, I immediately got in touch with a few other researchers I know who were far more knowledgeable in this area. Thankfully, I was assured that the suggestion I made would be effective. About a week or so later, I received an e-mail from her to say that the body had been sent to Boston and the ME in Boston agreed to release the body to the family without going through the DNA tests. I didn't ask how they managed to get through all the bureaucracy and red tape. To me, the fact that what was a very personal tragedy had been resolved was enough for me. She had a service for him a few days prior to the note she sent and was able to bury her brother in a family plot. She was relieved and very grateful for my advice even though she thankfully didn't have to go through that process.

I'm still conducting classes and I still include the session on DNA. I just hope that I'm not confronted with another situation involving a tragedy such as this one!