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



Cousin Joseph's Good Genealogy Deed

 

 

 

 

That screen shot just above was my introduction to Cousin Joseph. Mom and he took the AncestryDNA test and he came up as a match with high confidence... and he had a big juicy tree that is public! You can read a previous post about our search for Farrell descendants and their chromosomes here in which Cousin Joseph is mentioned. We've been in touch, emailing and messaging back and forth. He has been very helpful and eventually lead Cousin Rich and I to an old church register that might unlock a lot of doors, if we can get to it. But that's another story for a later time.

 

So that's how I met Cousin Joseph. He is the proud owner and proprietor of Barn Dog Antiques and Country Treasures at 876 Main Street in Milton West Virginia. Here's a link to Barn Dog's Facebook page. He obviously has an eye for style and old stuff! The photos make ya' want to stop on by and take a look.

When I checked Joseph's personal Facebook page this morning I read this lovely and heart-warming story.

What a surprise we got today. Interesting, back in March we purchased this awesome signed coverlet from 1847 which originated from Lucas County Ohio. Purchased this coverlet from a lady on EBay who bought it in Iowa. Received a message from the seller of this coverlet stating a guy had been researching his 3rd great grandfather and googled the name and this eBay transaction came up from back in March. Just so happens this coverlet was made by his 3rd great grandfather and that he was a professional weaver in Lucas County, Ohio. The lady forwards me his info and I contacted the gentleman in Michigan and the guy has all his documentation and this coverlet was definitely made by his 3rd great grandfather, Joseph Rochte of Lucas County Ohio. He had no idea what a coverlet was until this came up. I am sending this coverlet back to it's family and the guy is extremely excited to get it.  Just a great story.

 

 

 

 

 

Now isn't that a genealogy good deed? Don't you just love stories like this? I sure do. Warms my genealogy heart:)


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/05/cousin-josephs-good-genealogy-deed.html

Wisdom Wednesday: Thank goodness for...

It's that middle day of the week and here we go on a GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays. This week it's all about what I'm thankful for, even though it's not November, which, for those of you not in the USA, is when we celebrate my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. I was talking to Mom the other day and we were marveling at how genealogy has changed as she entertained me with stories of how she did it when she started in the 1970s! How we laughed! I've seen her stacks of 3 by 5 cards, family group sheets, and the rest, all hand written, and they look strange to my eye used to a computer print out.

So here are all the things I'm thankful for most recently, in no particular order. And I have to say that right now I'm in my usual June slump and just would rather sit in a hammock, and let the laundry pile up and up. (But maybe with a laptop and a cool adult beverage.)

The Internet. I shudder to think how slow my progress both in learning about genealogy, meeting up with cousins and fellow researchers, as well as digging as deep as I can into those records, would be if there was no internet and web service! Ugh!

Google Satellite View. I sit here in sunny Southern California emailing Cousin Andrew who lives back east about our shared ancestors who were Welsh. And we're talking about the Barque Tiberius on which our Thomas ancestors sailed out of Newport Harbor, Wales, on 30 June, 1838, and that's 175 years ago this week!!
Wait, I thought to myself, where is Newport Harbor? And I'm especially curious because we don't know where these Thomas folks lived when they were recruited to be coal miners in the George's Creek mines in Western Maryland by the Consolidation Coal Company. Wow, I think, looking at the satellite view, we drove right by there on the M4 when we went to Wales that time in the 1980s! Love you, Google Satellite View!

Latest Guilty Pleasure: Shades of the Departed! A cuppa and a cookie and I sit down to thumb through Shades, the most fabulous on-line magazine this gal has ever seen!  Shades carries the imagination back into the past and over hills and valleys to towns and farm lands to meet ancestors we never knew or people of the past not even connected to us. I feel as though I'm sitting in a late 1800s train station and people arrive and sit and chat and reveal themselves to me, and I can gaze as long as I like without being rude. This is absolutely my new "guilty pleasure" and I use that term because I probably should be doing something else like laundry, but don't really care one fig.

Blog posts that come along at the right time. Here's an example. Research and connecting the dots on the ancestors is especially difficult for me in West Virginia and if you have the magic potion to help me find them, then please have mercy on a stumbling fool and let me know! I always feel like many of the dead-end brick wall situations on the tree lead over to West Virginia... or Ireland and Wales. I can understand the last two because it's a Pond hop. But WV, even though it's just "over the hill a bit" is all messed up! I just love The Legal Genealogist blog by Judy G. Russell. I've learned so much from her. Then she did a blog post about the forming of West Virginia and a light went off: it's not so much me as it is them! Whew. WV, you are difficult. (Go WVU Mountaineers!)

The Encouragers! I do like those in the land of genealogy who encourage and help. Look, we're all trying to learn. So here's to the encouragers, and most are, who daily take up blogging to share and maybe help others, as well as those many helpful and dear souls who come to the local groups to help and find help. Hugs to all!! What a nice community we are!

Thank goodness for so much stuff to be grateful about! (Am feeling so good I might even do some laundry, but later.)

 

Eckhart Cemetery, Eckhart, Allegany, Maryland.

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/06/wisdom-wednesday-thank-goodness-for.html