A thought about AncestryDNA retiring products

Maybe you read the news on the blogs or news feeds? AncestryDNA is retiring both the Y-DNA and mtDNA products (along with a couple more products including one I particularly enjoyed, MyCanvas) and deleting all trace from their site, which will include content and matches. See what CeCe Moore posted to her excellent blog, Your Genetic Genealogist here. Below is part of what she wrote.

Q: Will the entire Y-DNA and mtDNA site interface be retired? Will you be able to view and contact your matches?
A: The entire interface will be retired, including the match lists and the ability to contact your matches.

My comments: If you have tested there, I strongly encourage you to contact your matches before September 5th (and so does Ancestry.com) because you will not have another opportunity to do so.  You can download your raw data (CSV file) until September 5th by going to www.DNA.Ancestry.com and upload to other services like Family Tree DNA.

This is scary stuff if you ask me. If you tested with these products your stuff is gone as of September 5th. Just gone. So of course, as CeCe suggests, you need to get on over there and download your stuff soon if you want it.

The reason I find it scary is that some folks paid for a service and aren't going to get it anymore and to me that's a big ol' black eye on Ancestry and calls into question their commitment to products. It's not about the money and paying for a service that one would assume is offered indefinitely, but about it calling into question Ancestry's commitment to those of us who chose to use it. How hard would it be to leave that part of the AncestryDNA web site up and running? What would that cost them? Peanuts, I'm thinking.

But my own take-away is that when we buy a DNA testing service we are depending on that company's commitment to a business model that is dedicated to DNA testing. Ancestry is a gigantic corporate entity with fingers in many pots. It's revenue stream has many sources and a very small part of that is likely the earnings from AncestryDNA's Y and mt testing. If they were making money on it they'd just continue on offering it, wouldn't they? How serious can their commitment be if a product isn't earning as hoped for? It must go... is that what they're thinking? Is their priority the revenue stream and not users? It would seem so, at least in this case. Makes me wonder what will eventually happen to all the Member Trees if revenues from the main site ever falter? Sure, genealogy is real popular now but what's going to happen in 50 years? Will that tree I've been working so hard on with all the photos and documents just up and disappear? For the first time I'm thinking, yeah, maybe.

I don't know about you but I am so far into this DNA matching thing that if either 23andMe, AncestryDNA for autosomal DNA testing, or GEDmatch went away, I'd be a hurting cowgirl! Sure I've downloaded everything you can, but now I depend on the interfaces and how they work, and that point has been driven home recently now that GEDmatch is down for service.

When we buy a DNA product we're buying into a corporate philosophy and commitment... or lack thereof. To us it's not a product so much as it is a tangible connection to our ancestors.

My great grandparents and Mom's grandparents on her mother's side. Gone now but their DNA lives on in Mom and me... and at 23andMe and AncestryDNA.

 



Catherine Elizabeth (House) Whetstone 1865 - 1947
and Joseph Hampton Whetstone 1858 - 1939.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-thought-about-ancestrydna-retiring.html

The Thomas and Judah Farrell DNA Project: First try at chromosome mapping and GEDmatch is down

I love GEDmatch and my most serious DNA analysis work is done there. Sure, it's fun to contact DNA cousins at 23andMe or AncestryDNA but I really need a good chromosome browser and GEDmatch is the ticket. But today it's down and right at a critical junction when I badly need the use of its tools and it's going to be down for a couple of weeks. Grrr.

Now that I've moaned and groaned a moment let me tell you what I'm up to. Cousin Rich and I have about a dozen or so people in various states of DNA match. Mom and Uncle Sonny are the most solid match and share the most DNA. They both descend from the two oldest daughters of Thomas and Judah Farrell. (You can read the overview of the Farrells and this project here.) Mom tested with 23andMe and Uncle Sonny and his sister Aunt Mary tested with AncestryDNA. Mom has now tested at AncestryDNA too. Rich and I have kept a list of DNA cousins and some have good trees and some don't. One guy is adopted so we don't know how he fits in. But they all have some matching segments shared with Mom and Uncle Sonny.

Mom and Uncle Sonny are our "benchmarks" because they share the most DNA. Here's a look at the chart GEDmatch whipped up for us showing exactly how they share their DNA. Nice, huh?

Chromosome browser from GEDmatch.

As each new DNA cousin popped up an idea kept forming and reforming in my noggin. I could see the relationships and the stream of chromosomes, but a pattern wanted to form but just couldn't. Ever have that happen? Now let me tell you how I stumbled into exactly what I needed.

First, I saw that there were two terms and that I might have confused: chromosome browser and chromosome mapper. What you see above is a chromosome browser. It is a tool that lets you compare the DNA of two or more individuals to see exactly which segments of DNA are shared. You can then introduce a third person into this mix and that's called triangulation. If you have three people sharing exact (or very close) chromosome segments, that's called triangulation and with solid trees for all three and only one shared most recent ancestor, it's a sure bet that the chunk of shared chromosomes came from the shared ancestor.

A chromosome mapper is a spread sheet that shows you which segments on which chromosomes are shared between many people. In this way you can determine which chromosome segments came from which ancestor with even greater confidence. With any sort of luck, you can then know that anyone with those exact segments descends from that same ancestor. Yes, that's right. If an adoptee who knows nothing about his ancestors also shares those specific segments they descend from that common ancestor.

Chromosome mapping spreadsheet using a Kitty Cooper template with our DNA matches.

Thank you, Kitty Cooper!!!

 

 

You need to know that I have never used Excel before, and it kinda scared me. Looked too complicated. Never mind, because I wanted to do this mapping thing so bad I just jumped in the Excel water. I went on ahead and downloaded a template from Kitty Cooper which you can find here. It's the CSV one. I googled how to use Excel and played with it for a while and found out that I could enter any value in a column and then use Sort and Filter on the Home bar to get the numbers in numerical order. Sounds way, way harder than it is. (Cousin Rich is a whiz at spreadsheets and he'll have a good laugh at my expense reading this! He's in Scotland with family playing golf so maybe he'll miss this post.)

 

Next step was to decide what the column heading should be. You can see the ones I chose but now that I've played with it, think I'll add "number of generations to MRCA" or most recent common ancestor. See post before this for an overview of our requirements and that should tell you why this is important. There are two columns that you don't see here and those are GEDmatch kit number and email. And obviously you can see the attempted redaction of surnames. Not pretty but it works. 

 

There are two names that don't have any MRCA or most recent common ancestor info and they are Stephen and David. One is adopted so he came to our DNA matching party with no tree. What we can now tell him is that he shares some of the DNA that came down to us through the Thomas and Judah Farrell pairing. It could be DNA that came with them from Ireland and thereby came from ancestors "upstream". Or it could have come to him from one of the other of Thomas and Judah's children. We just don't know. But he's real family to us.

 

The second name without a MCRA has a nice tree and ancestors who lived about 10 to 15 miles from where Thomas and Judah lived in what's now West Virginia. We have yet to find our shared ancestor and connect our trees. He's one of us but we don't know exactly how.

 

There's more to this spreadsheet than you can see here. I have some names and GEDmatch kit numbers but not too much more than that ... because GEDmatch is what I need right now and it's down. Again. GEDmatch, I love ya but you're about to drive me crazy!

 

The GEDmatch web site says that they are moving to new servers and once that's done the world will be bright and new because the new servers should increase reliability. It's going to take a couple of weeks. Ugh.

 

The old railroad overpass on the Potomac River near what was once Magnolia, Vest Virginia, home of the Farrell, House, Hartley, and Biggerstaff families who are the subjects of this DNA study.

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thomas-and-judah-farrell-dna.html



DNA with 23andMe and now AncestryDNA for Mom

Mother's Day is coming up and what do you give the mom who is 95 and has it all, and is an avid genealogist? Another DNA test, of course!

Just in time, the results are now in for Mom's AncestryDNA test. Mom got a 23andMe test for Mother's Day last year and we've had so much fun with it that it seemed like a good idea to do it again this time with Ancestry. Cousin Rich with whom we've been working on the Farrell DNA Project, highly recommended AncestryDNA. He was a newbie when he started but he's experienced now and likes it a lot. And now that Mom's results are back I can see why and I'd like to share a few observations and thoughts about its advantages as well as a place or two where they could tweek it.

First, and this isn't news to anyone, is the ethnicity profile, also called in common parlance, ancestry composition. Here's the AncestryDNA screen for Mom's ethnicity.

 

Now here's the one for her Ancestry Composition from 23andme.

 

 

You'll be noticing that the AncestryDNA chart shows Mom as having 49% Irish DNA, and she'll like that! It also shows her Great Britain ethnicity as 6%. 23andMe breaks it down into Non-specific Northern European as 45.1% and  British and Irish as 38.9%. That's a bit different but similar enough that I'm satisfied with it, and see it as indicating that Mom mostly descended from a whole lot of Irish and British folks (including the Welsh) and not so much from the Native American population. And that's what we expected. But that said, have to note that 23and Me does have a more detailed breakdown of ancestry categories.

 

Mom and I don't have too many mysteries about who our ancestors were, but the role composition of ancestry can play got underlined for me recently when a DNA match contacted me and was searching for their grandfather. All of her DNA tests showed a largely Portuguese heritage but there were no Portuguese people on her tree. We're all about the Irish and British - and have no Portuguese going on - so we couldn't help her. At least she was able to eliminate us and our ancestors from her search.

 

The bulk of the work for me in using DNA for genealogy has been contacting matches. This is where AncestryDNA excels. Just look at this, below.

 



There ya' go. It's all I need in order to evaluate a match. No more waiting and hoping that the person you match will be interested in genealogy as has been my experience on 23andMe. There is a lot of information on this screen and let me point out a few of the features I particularly enjoy.

 

First and foremost, look at the trees! Whoop-de-do! The middle column tells us how big the tree is, if it's private which is indicated by the lock, and if Ancestry has already spotted a shared ancestor indicated by a leaf. I really like that.

 

The look of the screen is visually intuitive, I think. 2nd cousins are grouped together with a color band separating them from third cousins. You can see right away if the match is male or female and you can also tell if the match is in an account managed by someone else so you know what you're getting into when you send a message.

 

The real pay-off for me is the little green leaf that indicates that Ancestry is taking a shot at matching us up and showing me and my contact where they think the shared ancestor is. Take a look when you click through and review the match. Now this is cool.

 

 

I have to say that this is way better than playing "do you have a tree online" which was my least favorite game over at 23andMe. At AncestryDNA when there's a match and both of you have a public tree on Ancestry then all the work is done for you.

 

Where I run into problems is people who don't have a tree on Ancestry even though they did a DNA test there. (Why would you do that? Oh, wait, I take that back. They might if they were adopted and have no clue as to who their parents were.) Then there are the people who have a private tree so I have to message them pleading for a peek at the goods. What if they fell off the edge of the world just yesterday? How's that gonna' work? It's not. Just put up a bare bones tree with only direct ancestors on it and make it public. That would work for both of us.

 

The second cousin match that I contacted for Mom knows her real well and is in frequent contact. We went back and forth a bit chatting about relatives and holes in our trees and documents we'd just love to have. It was just plain fun. And of course Rich's Aunt and Uncle were there on the list of third cousins, as expected and should be.

 

I'd like a chromosome browser on AncestryDNA. That would be very useful. But overall, we're real happy we tested with them.

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/04/dna-with-23andme-and-now-ancestrydna.html

The Thomas and Judah Farrell DNA Project: Now for the DNA part

If you're now jumping on board this fast moving train, you might want to go read the previous post and get caught up. It's about one of those family lines that you start thinking about and then they move right in and inhabit your entire brain to such an extent you feel genealogically possessed. Know what I mean? Yeah, you do, I can tell;)

So last year both Mom and I did the 23andMe DNA test in hopes of finding relatives. There was a learning curve but it really wasn't too painful at all. I had an easy time moving around the 23andMe web site and locating my connections and contacting them. Oh sure, some people didn't get back to me and one even declined my invitation to share. That was to be expected because at that time 23andMe was busy advertising their health results, which they no longer offer. But some good connections were made and one of them - that's Ed and his father Harold - lead right back to our ancestors Thomas and Judah Farrell. That was very exciting!

Funny thing about working with autosomal DNA results is that you don't pick the line you are going to be exploring. Instead, it sort of picks you. You hear from matches or reach out to them and it's simply the luck of the draw as to weather you'll make a good connection and which ancestral line you'll be digging around in. There's much that's not in your control, or at least that's how I feel.

Having a fully built out tree, to the best of your ability, and having it accessible online is very important in this work. A goodly number of those contacts we've made over the last year didn't know where to start, but that's changing rapidly as more people get tested and become knowledge about terms and tools and how to use them.

Now, let me introduce you to cousin Rich. His wife is a descendant of Thomas and Judah Farrell so he's technically not a blood relative but we like him anyway and are glad to call him cousin because he's passionate about genealogy and finding out about the ancestors, just as Mom and I are. Mom has been in touch with this couple for years, first emailing his wife and then when Rich took over the search emailing Rich. He even visited Mom last summer to get copies of her files in his seriously dogged search for one court document. He's a good solid researcher and very organized too. And he likes spread sheets. How cool is that?

Don't quite remember how it came about but Rich's wife, our blood cousin, had her elderly aunt and uncle tested. They are both in their 90s, and so is Mom. Now we had four individuals in our informal grouping who were tested and two well researched trees we knew to be accurate. When the results came back we could see a lot and it has to do with shared chromosomes. This looking for shared chromosomes is often referred to as chromosome matching.

What we're looking for in chromosome matching is segments of DNA that are greatly similar - so-called sticky chromosomes - because they are passed down through the generations relatively intact. And if you can identify folks with a specific known lineage descending down from one couple and no other connection, that share those sticky chromosomes, then you've really got something. And if you find even more people with those same chromosome segments as well as the same ancestors on their tree, and no other shared ancestor, then you're really cooking.

When Rich and I looked at the DNA test results, Mom and I having tested at 23andMe and both Uncle and Aunt having tested at AncestryDNA, we needed to meet in the middle so to speak so we uploaded our raw files to GEDmatch. At GEDmatch we could do some chromosome matching and then look for others who match both Mom and Uncle. Let me show you the results and you'll see what I mean. Here are Mom and Uncle's results. I used the One-to-one matching utility which is great as a way to see where a match exists.

As you can see, Mom and Uncle share a bunch of DNA on seven different chromosomes. I find this practically mind blowing when you consider the nearest common ancestor. Look at this, below, to find Thomas and Judah Farrell, back four generations.

There on the bottom row you'll find Mom and then just follow her female line back to Thomas and Judah Farrell. Uncle's Farrell ancestor was through the second born daughter of Thomas and Judah while Mom's was through the first daughter.

Another anomaly is that Uncle shares quite a lot of DNA with Mom but Aunt doesn't share quite so much. Just shows me how strange and mysterious are the ways of autosomal DNA.

The next thing we did is go see who matched both Mom and Uncle, and here's what that looked like.

Once we had that, and I've cropped out the email addresses there on the image above, off we went to contact them. As of right today we've heard back from all. That's right, ALL.

And so that's pretty much where we are at the moment. From the nine on the list three are our group, and one person has a parental mismatch and is playing a round of who-da-baby daddy so we'll find no answers there. Four don't yet show Thomas and Judah on their trees even though we all suspect that the connection traces back to Ireland. And that leaves one person we're still working with. He knows that his mother's people come from Paw Paw, West Virginia and that's the next town over from where Thomas and Judah lived in Magnolia. He can't email back fast enough for us!

Rich did a work sheet with each of the players, their GEDmatch kit number and which chromosomes they matched each other on. For some reason that I don't yet totally understand, Mom, Uncle, and Harold and Ed all matched heavily on chromosome 13, and the rest only matched on chromosome 9. Fascinating.

My exercise now is to go through each of these matches and do a one-to-one comparison with Mom and Uncle looking for shared chromosomes and then see if that tells us anything at all. Maybe I'll write about that soon. But first, and next time, let's look at Rich's Great Idea: the Thomas & Judah Farrell Connections tree on Ancestry.

And this is funny: not one of my matches so far from either 23andMe or GEDmatch is from Dad's side. What is that about?! It's all Mom's people.

Along the old road to Magnolia, Morgan County, West Virginia, now gone but not forgotten by her descendants. This is in the general vicinity where Thomas and Judah Farrell had their farm and raised their family. The town is gone, most of the homes are also gone, but their memory lives on in us.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-thomas-and-judah-farrell-dna_14.html

DNA Monday: The beauty part more relatives getting tested

Now I get it: it's way better when more relatives get DNA tested.

At first it instinctively made sense, but now that Mom's 4th cousin has been tested and her uncle and aunt also tested, along with my brother and Mom, well, it's a DNA party over here. Her husband is managing her project and I manage Mom and brother's accounts so he and I have been working together. Let's just call him "Rich" because he's rich in genealogy stuff. This guy knows how to research like a blood hound!

Rich's wife is the direct descendant of the sister of Mom's 2nd great grandmother... or the direct descendant of my 3rd great grandparents. (I had to use the Steve Morse One-Step Relationship Calculator to be sure. http://stevemorse.org/relation/calculator.html ) OK, now I'm real willing to admit that the cousins and their removal is like jello in my mind! I think I have it nailed down and then, poof, it's gone. My Family Tree Maker says one thing and Steve Morse's One-Step calculator says something else so it's operator error for sure. (I have a self-inflicted headache now.) The point being that Rich's wife and Mom and I are blood relatives. Whew.

Rich's people tested with Ancestry DNA and Mom and all of us tested with 23andMe. We met in the middle and uploaded raw files to GEDmatch. It's so lovely that there's a place to upload your raw files and compare across DNA platforms.

Rich and I are new to this, although in full disclosure I have been working with my DNA results almost a year now, stumbling as I go and learning by trial and error. But DNA for genealogy got so complex so fast that I always feel as though I've just scratched the surface! He and I spent an hour or so chatting by phone and while our conversation happily rambled here and there, we did talk about the connections that our DNA results show.

Recently I've read about "sticky" chromosome segments, ones that are passed down through multiple generations. I think I read it on Roberta Estes blog, DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy. Here's the recent article in which she mentions "sticky" segments. This blog post is really good at explaining a phenomenon I've seen in the results for the known relatives who have tested. By identifying known relatives and our shared segments, especially when three or more are tested, I can go look for others in the GEDmatch database who match on those chromosomes looking for the segment match.

In the case of Rich and his wife's relatives, we are looking at sticky segments for Mom and Uncle. Here's what we see on GEDmatch.

Minimum threshold size to be included in total = 500 SNPs
Mismatch-bunching Limit = 250 SNPs
Noise Reduction Threshold = 0.85
Minimum segment cM to be included in total = 5.0 cM

Chr	Start Location	End Location	Centimorgans (cM)	SNPs
3	191,215,300	195,414,546	10.3	976
6	2,311,198	5,104,224	7.7	969
9	90,880,292	115,766,725	28.5	6,192
10	88,087	6,035,498	17.0	2,241
13	45,249,456	68,027,160	12.7	4,681
13	68,030,461	73,908,815	8.1	1,674
17	63,017,961	68,974,712	11.9	1,611
20	50,632,750	56,584,252	15.9	2,016

Largest segment = 28.5 cM
Total of segments > 5 cM = 112.2 cM
Estimated number of generations to MRCA = 3.5

And we can go looking for matches on that loaded chromosome 13. And here's what that looked like.

Comparing Kit M120110 (Mom)   

Kit Num Name Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs A470427 Uncle 13 45,249,456 67,361,541 12.4 4,702 A470427 Uncle 13 68,030,461 73,896,659 8.1 1,706 A541390 13 89,533,759 97,889,635 11.5 2,524 A894557 13 34,638,877 39,193,129 7.4 1,355

As you can see Uncle and Mom show up as we would expect. And two other people also show up but they don't match on the same locations on chromosome 13. Too bad but we'll keep looking.

I find it astounding that those segments on CH 13 have been handed down through two descendant's lines intact! Talk about sticky!


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/03/dna-monday-beauty-part-more-relatives.html

Friday musings

I seriously don't know why anyone reads this blog. Really. But they do, or rather you do, whoever you are. And thanks for stopping by even when I'm off doing something else I call life and can't do my blog. So thanks.

I don't know why but it warms my heart to look at the stats and see that so many people looked here and even left comments which takes a couple of minutes out of their day. So thanks to the comment leavers especially.

I miss writing this blog when I have no time to do it because of important matters. Sometimes, and this will sound outright silly, I even pop in to read it and mostly like what I see even though I have to resist the urge to edit and rewrite the whole thing. Reading my own blog might sound either vein or ridiculous but it's a way of returning my mind to the wonderful world of genealogy when time doesn't permit me to actually work at it.

I'm not one of those hyper-serious genealogists who would rather spend the family vacation visiting graveyards. At least I'm not right now. Maybe later again. I kind of envy those who do because I know that I'd be further along if I did. And, truth be told, maybe a tad guilty about that too.

Where I am investing my time, genealogy-wise, is getting Mom's stories into book form and then soon taking it to the local quick printer for printing and binding. Presently the photos are all being tweaked for contrast and crispness. They need to look as good as possible on my screen because when they go into the book and get printed they will lose some measure of quality at each step.

I've had a couple of friends who know what's what in the graphic design area take a look and they made some small suggestions that improved the look of it. Lucky to have their input. Now feel like I'm coming down the home stretch of the project!

After that's finished, I've promised a short article on my/our experience with DNA testing for the Old Pike Post, the newsletter of the Allegany County Genealogical Society. Mom and I have written a couple of other articles for them and I look forward to doing this one too. I enjoy writing because it helps me organize thoughts and stories in a useful way instead of them simply rambling around my noggin.

Because I now have an appointment with the metabolic genetics clinic at UCSD, I feel more free to spend less time researching my rare inborn error of metabolism and devote more time to these backlogged genealogy projects. Did I tell you about this? I found out about a problem that's been bothering me for years, no decades, and was left undiagnosed, through a 23andMe DNA test. It was the first clue as to what wasn't working on me. I'm missing one little enzyme! Too bad the FDA has told 23andMe to stop giving health results. They could be helping so many people if they were free to.

And to the good, I did get out a Winter 2014 edition of "What Virginia Knows", our family history newsletter. It does take a chunk of time but it's so worth it to keep family history stories alive and share new finds such as the photo of my second great grandmother. Now all the Kelly cousins know what she looked like.

There's so much more to share. I feel like genealogy happens all around me even when I'm not paying 100% attention to it. A second cousin found me through this blog recently and I'm so glad to be in touch with her and her son who is working on a genealogy project for school. Genealogy is family... and it lives in us now.

Nancy Ann(e?) (Troutman) Workman (1826 - 1882)

My second great grandmother.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/02/friday-musings.html

2013: Is it too late for a glance back?

Oh, dear. It's 2014! Where does the time go? And why do I feel at the end of the year that I could have done more, at least with genealogy? Actually, a lot went on last year, now that I think about it. Maybe it would help me feel better about myself if I took stock and made a list of all the blessings of the year gone by. Yeah, counting blessings always makes me feel better.

1. 23andMe.com DNA Test Results

I just love you, 23andMe! It was about this time last year that I sent my $99 for a DNA kit. Back then, 23andMe was also offering health results along with the genealogy results. Lucky me for getting the test done then because I found that I have a rare inborn error of metabolism and can't process medium chain fatty acids. I'm just missing an enzyme to do that. I always knew something was screwy in that regard but good luck finding that particular needle in a haystack without something like 23ndMe to point me in the right direction. So here I am a year later waiting for my appointment with a geneticist and feeling way better because I now have more than a clue as to what is going on with me. Yes, lucky indeed!  What a big blessing right there.

If you still want your health results, go get tested at 23andMe and then upload your raw file to Prometheus. It only cost $5 and it's another way to either double check your health results or get your results if you missed the 23andMe open window. For more on Prometheus visit SNPedia. Cool, huh?

Now for a report on DNA cousins. I really am mystified by folks who say that don't find any matches by DNA testing. I have DNA cousins crawling out of the emails! Maybe I'm just lucky. Having a tree online and a list of surnames matched with places and date ranges speeds things along, I've found.

My favorite DNA cousin story from last year is the guy who is a fourth cousin and whose father was terminally ill. Mom and I were able to send him a packet of all sorts of interesting family tree info including reports, photos, and a story or two. His dad passed but we're still in touch.

Then there's the speedy connection cousin Angel and I made: match found in two emails! Land speed record, at least for both of us. That was a ton of fun.

This year I want to transfer test results to the other major players and see what happens.

2. Going Local

I just love it that my ancestors had the good sense to all congregate around the general vicinity of the little mountain town of Frostburg, in Allegany County, Maryland. The history buffs and genealogy addicts that focus a lot of energy there are wonderful, friendly, and can't do enough to help. Here are some links to a few of the people and organizations that make working there a happy place.

*The Genealogical Society of Allegany County and their newsletter, Old Pike Post. Go to.
I get a warm and cozy feeling when I think of this group and whenever their treasured newsletter arrives in my inbox. It used to arrive strictly by snail mail which meant that Mom got hers before I did and I'd have to listen and not know what she was talking about for three whole days! Harriet Moore keeps it going and runs the newsletter and I'm happy that she does. All that for only $12 a year!
* Our Brick Walls. Go to.
Here's an excellent example of the very best in grass roots genealogy! Run entirely by Genie Ragan, Editor by Default, and her band of merry volunteers, obits are indexed and entered in their entirety, Civil War Draft list form Allegany County is transcribed, and texts of wills and probate posted. What a cozy home-made web site!
* WHILBR, the Western Maryland Historical Library. Go to.
Although they cover Garrett County and Washington County, their resources on Allegany County are great. From the 1936 flood (which Mom remembers well because she had a new green dress for St. Patrick's Day) to African-American history, or even the 1872 tax rolls for Frostburg, It's all there and more.
* The Cumberland Road Project. Go to.
The old history of Allegany County was largely shaped by coal and transportation, and often the two worked hand-in-hand to move people. My Kelly, Williams, and Thomas people came because of the coal. My Eckhart ancestors were part of the National Road (also called the Cumberland Road.) In addition to important history of the area, this web site has lots of old photos, and you can see some of the little town of Eckhart here. Learning about the history of the area has been very important to my understanding of what my ancestors did and why they did it.

3. New to me cousins!

When I started out 2013 one of my goals was to craft more "cousin bait". Surname Saturday did more to further that task than anything else. Here's one post that caught me a Trimble cousin, and another that netted a Porter cousin. I trailed off doing those Surname Saturday posts because I felt it was getting too far out on the tree and back too many generations to be of much further use, but I might just have to get back to it. I have also thought about going around another time with updates on what's been found lately. And corrections. Yeah, there were mistakes. Yikes!

I often make contact with cousins through Mom's Big Tree on Ancestry.com when they post a comment or send a message. Sure, it's only reaching the folks who have Ancestry.com subscriptions, but for now I'll settle for that.

It's funny but I rarely make contact to anyone through the message boards. Wonder why that is? Are people using other avenues? Hmm, interesting.

4. All the work that Mom has done since the early 1970s. Go to.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't thank my lucky stars that Mom got interested in genealogy and began her quest to link as many people as she could to our family's direct line. It took me a while to discern Mom's objective, but I think I've finally got it. (Sure, you're thinking why didn't I just ask her? That would have been too easy.)
She loves to find people and to that end of doing what she is passionate about, she sought out anyone and everyone that linked up to her tree, no matter how distant. In doing so she linked many of the original settlers of Allegany and Garrett Counties, along with the same in the Hampshire and Morgan Counties in West Virginia. Standing at over 70,000 individuals, it's a true Magnum Opus. It's not done and it's not perfect, as Mom will readily tell you, but as a distant cousin who is a genealogist with solid and thorough skills said to me, Mom has made an important contribution to the history of these families.

Well, yes, I do have a lot to be thankful about! Now I feel pretty good. Time to start 2014 in earnest.

Congregational Church Ladies' Aid Society Picnic.

Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland. About 1938.

 

 

The URL for this post is:  http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/01/2013-is-it-too-late-for-glance-back.html

DNA Monday: 23andMe's troubles and two things to do about that

23andMe.com is having troubles with the US FDA, or Food and Drug Administration. You can read more about the issue from a genealogy perspective here. Roberta J. Estes runs an excellent blog about DNA and genealogy and what's going on where, so thanks to her for being first in my inbox with this blog post!

If you feel strongly about this issue, there's a petition to be signed here requesting that the White House take it under advisement and step in. I couldn't wait to click through and sign that sucker!! I have personally benefited from the medical results on the 23andMe test. It pointed out an obscure genetic anomaly that I have taken up with my doctors and that we're pursuing together. So, thank you 23andMe.com.

As Roberta writes, anyone who tested with 23andMe.com should go download both the raw data as well as the medical results overview, and she gives a nice tutorial on exactly how to do that. Those are the two things all 23andMe testers should do now. Right now. That secures you in case of a worse case scenario and the FDA bring 23andMe to it's knees and having to close its doors. And that would be a tragedy of monumental proportions in this blogger's eyes.

As for my own thoughts on the matter, the FDA needs to focus on more serious matter and get up to date on consumer DNA test kits. These tests do not by any means diagnose disorders but simple give clues about stuff you might want to look at and maybe bring to your physicians attention. We, as consumers, should not have to get a prescription from out docs for a home DNA test, a pregnancy test, or glucose sticks. Why, oh why, can you test at home for an STD but not DNA?

As I read the FDA's statement, or rather letter to 23andMe, it seems that they are concerned that we consumers might be afraid of the results. What humanly civil might be said about that, I don't even know. My thought is that anyone who uses a home DNA kit for genealogical or medical information might have the intelligence to comfort themselves should the results not be rosy. And to know what to do next. And errors? The FDA is worried about errors? Have you ever had a false positive on a medical lab test? I sure have, and where's the FDA now?

Ugh!

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I've made doubly sure that both Mom and I have downloaded our raw data as well as the health report overview and any other health information that might be useful, should the worse case scenario come to pass. We've pretty much contacted all the DNA relatives we care to, so we're good there and are simply waiting for new ones to arrive.

Guess that we're lucky that my brother and his wife chose to test when they did because their kits are now at the lab being processed. Talk about good timing!

DNA Monday: Stuff, random and otherwise

My DNA test results from 23andMe are continuing to work to connect me to new DNA cousins. And some interesting projects are in progress over on GEDmatch. Additionally, a tip off from the medical results from 23andMe.com has helped me solve a personal medical mystery. These are exciting times, my friend!

DAR soon to accept DNA: Hey, check this blog post out from The Legal Genealogist, Judy G. Russell about the big news that the DAR is going to be accepting DNA evidence for membership approval... along with the other usual stuff they want. As Judy sharply points out, they are only taking Y-DNA, which is a guy thing. Please read her blog post because this is a very big deal (at least to me) and marks our changing times.

The Basics of DNA testing for genealogy: If you are wondering about DNA for genealogy, here's a wonderful blog post by DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy, and you can see it here. Here is a lovely beginner's guide to the topic and while I know a bunch of stuff covered in this post, it was really good to have a re-check to make sure my understanding was clear. Thanks, Roberta!

A new GEDmatch project: Got an email from someone named Vivian because we matched through GEDmatch and 23andMe. She sent the same email out to a couple of hundred people telling them about their shared connection and letting us know that if we were interested in participating, to reply to the email. I replied, of course. Why wouldn't you want to?
In a couple of days she sent a rather long email letting us know that she'd found a sub-group of participants who all had Quaker ancestors. One of Mom's brick wall ancestors married a mystery man named Waggoner and that was one of the surnames included in the list. I just about stumbled over myself in crafting a quick reply!
This Waggoner guy has us stumped, but good. Sarah Wooden (1810 - 1870) married the mysterious Mr. Waggoner, had a daughter from whom we descend, that being Sarah (Waggoner) Whetstone (1825 - 1880). Presumably Mr. Waggoner died or otherwise made himself scarce such that Sarah Wooten then married Peter Yeast (1808 - 1851) in 1829. On his passing she married Phillip "Major" Durst (1817-1888) and they owned a whole big bunch of land together in what is now Garrett County, Maryland.
We know nothing about Mr. Waggoner and it's about to drive us (Mom and I) crazy! Maybe this DNA study group will give us a hint. There were very few Waggoners in what was then Allegany County around 1825 when Sarah Jr. was born and most of those were residing a ways east of where Sarah lived. Other researchers have suggested to Mom that Sarah wasn't married to Mr. Waggoner at all and that she was a "grass widow", meaning left in the grass where he lay with her. What Mom has found is that her marriage record to Peter Yeast states that her name was at the time of the marriage "Sarah Waggoner".

My medical mystery: I feel like one of the older ladies sitting on the porch chatting about their aches and pains in writing this:) Just to say that a clue for the 23andMe DNA test has uncovered a medical mystery that has been bothering me for a very long time. K304E: that's my mismatched gene. That was all I needed to get going and do a lot of googling to find what ails me. Science is amazing!!

Yours truly and Grandma Williams, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897-1956)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/10/dna-monday-stuff-random-and-otherwise.html

DNA Monday: Mom's full results are back! Let's go find DNA relatives!

I tested with 23andMe.com back in January, then Mom tested with them in July. A couple of weeks ago we got her results back and as with mine the health results came first and the ancestry/genealogy results came back later. In January, my health results came on a Sunday and by Tuesday, as I remember, I had all of my results. There was about a week lag time before the ancestry results for Mom came back and that's slightly longer. So let's take a look at Mom's ancestry results, shall we?

Her health results are stellar and just about anyone might want to trade her for them! No inherited conditions to watch out for. The health traits are things she already knew about because she's 95 and in real good shape, and you can read an earlier post about that here.

We're both in the haplogroup H3, which could be expected of mother and daughter. And, oh yeah, 23andMe picked up our relationship right away! No doubt, I'm her kid:) You can read about haplogroup H3 here in a previous post on this blog. Funny, it's one of the most popular posts and is getting more frequent visits, I guess, as more people do DNA testing.

Now here's the thing, Mom's DNA relative matches are a little different than mine, which is to be expected as she shares only 49.9% of her autosomal DNA with me. The rest I got from Dad. So, if we had Dad's DNA to test, and sadly he passed in 2006, then I('d know more and have the other half of "me". But for now, I need a list: a list of Mom's matches and a list of my matches and a table showing where those matches are the same.

Now I want to state right here that I'm no expert on this and learning as I make my way slowly through the forest that is DNA. There's so much I don't know... and I took Ce Ce Moore's wonderful introduction to DNA for genealogy seminar this past spring. My ignorance is not her fault;)

But I'm looking at the two lists of Mom's DNA matches on 23andMe and my matches on 23andMe and wondering why. Are my matches that don't match her because of Dad's DNA? And should I look to those people (if they will answer my inquiry messages and have a nice big tree online) for a match to Dad's surnames? Maybe.

And Mom's matches that don't match me, what about them? Is that indicative of the DNA given her that wasn't passed on down to me? Maybe.

Frankly, I still have a kid's sense of wonderment about this DNA stuff. I love to marvel at the thought of my mitochondrial DNA handed down from women who were mother to my mothers, all the way back in deep time, deeper than I can even think about.

When I look at our family photos I think about that long line of mitochondrial DNA. There's a concept I just learned about called "daughtering out". (Wish I could remember whose blog post that was so I could give credit and a hug.) It means that there are no more women in a line to hand down the mitochondrial DNA. When I look at our line of female mitochondrial DNA and our present family ties I see that our best chance for passing it on is my niece, Molly. Anyone know a nice young man about 30 or slightly less, loves science, smart and funny, and attractive?

Me, about 1947 or 1948.

Mom on her 21st birthday.

Emma Susan Whetstone Williams (1897 - 1956).

Photo from Aunt Betty.

Emma's mother, Catherine Elizabeth House Whetstone (1865 - 1947)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/09/dna-monday-moms-full-results-are-back.html 

Wisdom Wednesday: New-to-me Cousins

My life at the moment is full of new-to-me cousins. Some have been found by connecting through Ancestry Member Trees and to be totally accurate, most found me. It's nice connecting that way because we can look at each other's trees and spot the connection pretty fast. Patti messaged me about a possible connection a week ago wondering about our relationship because we had so many matching people on our trees. I took one look at her tree and spotted a remote connection, went to Mom's GEDCOM on Family Tree Maker and looked at our cousin relationship... and it's so far distant I think it broke FTM. Kidding, of course. We're connected through Meshack Browning and you can read about him here.

Another new-to-me cousin is cousin Norma. We share a great grandfather and found each other on the Facebook group, You Know You're From Frostburg When... after I posted a photo of him in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform and you can see a post about that here. The historian from the FFD is still trying to determine the date range of the photo but meantime, it's hanging in the new Day Room in the fire house! Norma and I have been emailing and it seems we're about the same age and she still lives in Frostburg, as does Mom. They run into each other all the time at the Food Lion, but for the life of me, I don't think I've ever met Norma... or maybe the ol' memory is going:) Yeah, that's probably it.

DNA cousins are dropping in so often it's become an everyday occurrence. Am I becoming jaded about the magic and mystery of my DNA? Not really. It's just that as I come to see how powerful testing is and how important your results can be, I'm more impressed all the time with the marvel of the science of it. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future it will be something every genealogist does automatically at the very start of their quest to find family. Last weekend at a seminar here in San Diego I had the delight of sitting next to a man who found out that his presumed grandpa wasn't. But the next door neighbor's descendants were about as close a match as you'd every want. Now that's impressive. How would you ever know that otherwise?

It makes me super happy when I connect up with a new cousin. And about the happiest I can get is when I can share by email a PDF of their family tree. More and more I see that it's all about sharing your work... and those wonderful old photos!

New Price Day Room at the Frostburg Fire Department, in Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland.

(Our donated photo is in the upper right by the bulk head.)

 

Here's the image!

 

 

Many thanks to GeneaBlogger's for their blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays.

 

The URL for this post is:  http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/09/wisdom-wednesday-new-to-me-cousins.html

Wisdom Wednesday: My kind of day

Some weeks have gone by and I really have nothing to post on the GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays. There's just no "wisdom" to be had here under the nut tree. But today, just as time was running out and I had decided to skip the whole thing, I realized that this was my kind of day. This is the sort of day for which I "do" genealogy. What in particular made it good for me today? Just three things, but that's all it took. So let me share them with you very briefly.

Just about an hour ago I got an email from a person who stumbled into this blog and she said: How totally bizarre that you are a distant cousin of mine! To be honest, the number one reason I blog is to attract cousins, both close and distant. I figure that if there are cousins out there doing genealogy, sooner or later, they'll go to Google and plug in our shared ancestor's name. She did just that and found a blog post about Honora O'Flynn and William Logston. Mention of this notorious couple was in a post that also contained a reference to GEDmatch. Short story even shorter, she and I have exchanged GEDmatch kit numbers and are now off looking to see if we share any DNA from this couple. This morning I didn't even know her and this afternoon, we're comparing chromosomes!

Then a lovely email greeted me this morning from Cousin Rich, who I must say is a very good researcher! Mom and I were just wondering last week how he was doing. He's doing great! He still hasn't found the official documentation of a particular law suit we were all looking for, but never mind. What he has done is document the Revolutionary War contribution made by a shared ancestor... and now he's off to fill out DAR forms. He said, and we all support this, that these Patriots should be listed and honored. Go Rich!

I'm sitting here this afternoon listening to Big Band Era music on Jazz 88.3 radio station out of San Diego, working on my uncles on Mom's Ancestry.com Big Tree, adding photos of them during the war years. Perfect accompaniment:) I've decided to add more informal and candid photos there. I like the formal, "official" portraits well enough but the candids taken with those Brownie cameras are closer to my heart.

My kind of day!

Uncle Harold Conrad with his new bride, Mom's sister Dorothy Williams Conrad.

Dad in the middle with his two brothers, left is John Delbert Kelly, and right is Bernard Michael Kelly. Delbert, Pat and Bernie, about 1942.

All of the Kelly women, 1942.

Here and below, Bernard Michael Kelly.

Cambria Williams Jr., "Camey", Mom's brother.

 

Here and below, John Delbert Kelly. That's Mom looking sassy!

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/08/wisdom-wednesday-my-kind-of-day.html

DNA Monday: Mom's results from 23and Me are starting to come in!

It went like this: I gave myself the 23andMe DNA test as a holiday present this past holiday season. I give myself a present every year, and that might sound self-centered or childish but after all the holiday fuss and buying a boat-load of presents for others, somehow the thought of having one for myself (and if it's from me I know it will be perfect) keeps me going. You do what you gotta do to keep it all moving along. I'm not above self-bribery. So when Mom's birthday came along this past July 29th, and it was her special 95th birthday, and I asked her what she wanted and she said "A DNA test", I was right on board!

There are two types of DNA results that can be had from 23andMe. The first is medical in which they estimate your chances of reacting to a number of common drugs, they likelihood of you having a genetically-based inherited condition, and some fun stuff like your eye color or if you have wet or dry ear wax. They send these results out first. Mine came about three days before the genealogy stuff. That gives you some time to delve into the medical information and focus on it before you start chasing down cousins... because, if you're like me, once you start chasing the cousins, the medical stuff is left in the proverbial dust.

When your medical results are ready and you sign in, there's a notice that says:
We need a few more days to finish calculating all of your ancestry results. Each ancestry feature will be made available as soon as it's done being calculated. Check back soon!

Mom's medical results have just come in and we will be checking back real soon for the ancestry results. What's the news on the medical results? Not much new news, really, because at 95 you kinda know what's up with your body... or should. She has some glaucoma and macular degeneration going on but it's under control, and that was there on the results. Only to be expected. And then she did have trouble with gall stones a while back, so it was no surprise to see that it might be a problem for her, or rather was! Arthritis also showed up and we knew that too. As I say, no big surprises.

There were no variants present for any unusual inherited conditions that are genetically based... wacky genes, if you will. None. Not a one. Maybe that's why she's 95 and pretty much just fine:) We should all be so lucky! My ACADM variant isn't there on Mom's DNA so I'd be looking to Dad if he were still with us and able to donate a sample. But he's not, more the pity all around.

I'm so glad Mom decided to jump in and have her DNA done! Now we can go looking for DNA cousins together:)

Mom, on the right, with her parents in the middle, and her sister on the left.

Front row, left to right: Dorothy Williams Conrad (1920 - 2007), Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897 - 1956), Virginia Williams Kelly (living),

back row: Cambria Williams (1897 - 1960).

Hill Street School in the background, now the Frostburg Museum, Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland.

 

Mom's eye color: blue, ear wax is wet;)

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/08/dna-monday-moms-results-from-23and-me.html

Wisdom Wednesday: Mom's DNA Test Tip

OK, so you might have seen the post below about Mom's 95th birthday. What do you get a woman who has everything she wants and more? A DNA test!

Mom and I are both genealogy addicts, so it was past time for her to take a DNA test. Mom lives in the wacky and wonderful state of Maryland so 23andMe can't sell their DNA test kit into the state because it contains "medical" results which can only be ordered by a doctor. My thought is that it only gives you back sort of sketchy results that show what your tendencies might be, and that's not a result you can write a prescription or do surgery for. But, hey, that's Maryland. Without breaking any of Maryland's idiosyncratic laws, Mom got her test and the little box is in the mail back to me in California.

23andMe wants a saliva sample. It's said that the older you get the harder it is to drum up saliva. I know it was hard for me and I was really surprised how hard! I passed on to Mom all the tips I could think of. Take your time, you'll get enough eventually, so no rush. Rub the side of your cheek. That's the hint 23andMe gives. But Mom had a better idea: watch the food channel! Mouth-watering deliciousness! It worked and within minutes she could have filled the whole tube with saliva, way past the line:)

Now we wait for the results and the fun to start!

Mom at her 95th birthday party!

What can I say: we're all foodies:)

This post is inspired by a GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays.


The URL for this post is:

DNA Monday: What Worked For Me

Bingo! Got a real live cousin match on 23andMe.com! And I feel good about this one because I can pin-point exactly where on the tree we connect. That's a first.

I've been working at GEDmatch and 23andMe.com looking for a cousin connection since, what, March? Yeah, it's been a while. A couple hundred emails later and we finally have a true cousin match. Listen, brothers and sisters, if you think that you'll swab a cheek or work up a lot of spit and send that sample off, then magically get a whole boat load of genealogy back, it just doesn't work that way, sad to say, or at least not for me. I kinda thought and hoped that it might, but no great big genealogy truck driven by a DNA cousin has pulled up and dumped a ton of stuff in my lap.

So here's what worked for me, and heavens knows if it was just a fluke or if it would work for others. I attended a Ce Ce Moore's seminar held at the Chula Vista Genealogical Society here in greater San Diego, and she spoke about triangulation and other sophisticated techniques, but I'm a simple person and just did it the best way I could think to do. Ce Ce Moore is wonderful and I do think that I've gotten this far because of her information:) Thanks, Ce Ce!

1.) On 23and Me.com as well as GEDmatch.com, I check back about once a week to see if new matches have popped up. At first I didn't have a feel for how long it took for new matches to show so I went from every five minutes to once in a blue moon. Once a week feels about right for me now, and since Monday is my day to work on DNA stuff, that's when I go check.

2.) The avalanche has started! As prices drop lots of new players are on the field! 23andMe.com has said that they are on target for reaching their goal of one million users by the end of the year. Impressive. And, I'm kinda shocked when I check into GEDmatch and find a couple hundred new people I match with.
You need a systematic way to cover this because a lot of them won't be matches that are close enough to bother with, at least not for me to bother with because I don't have that kind of time because of the laundry and all the rest getting in the way of me doing genealogy.

3.) There are two kinds of matches in my book: those with nice trees with a surname list and some locations and those who have a "mystery tree" or no tree at all. The really cool players are the ones - and you can spot them right away on 23andMe.com - who have a lot of surnames and locations. The other guys want you to supply a tree for them to pick over... and they never get back to you because they don't know what they are doing, bless their hearts. At least that's been my experience. Finally they say, I guess our match is just too far back. And it might be, but I'll never know because they have a mystery tree.

4) Go for the closest matches first, and for me that's less than fourth cousin on 23andMe.com, and the dozen closest matches on GEDmatch with the largest total number of autosomal segments. And while there, check out the green highlight on the kit number (in the left column) which indicates that the results are newer. I like GEDmatch's generations matrix because from that I have a clue as to how far back the match might be. I like it when it's four or less:) Whoop!

5.) Make contact and wait. You might hear back and you might now. I don't take it personally... anymore;)

Oh, yeah, about my match on 23andMe.com, Cousin Andrew. You know how I'd hoped that some DNA cousin match or other would show up and drive up the big genealogy truck with loads of info and drop it in my lap? Well not here and not with Andrew. He and his dad, still with us, don't know diddly about their ancestors. So ya know what? Mom, Aunt Betty, and I drove up the big genealogy truck and dumped it all right in his lap, charts, reports, photos and all! Genealogy good deed done for the week:) That felt great!!


From Aunt Betty's file:

Probably the wedding portrait of my great grandparents.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/06/dna-monday-what-worked-for-me.html