After more than twenty years of maintaining my family tree at Rootsweb, I asked today that it be removed. Rootsweb has always been, in my genealogy life, a free web site that facilitated collaboration in researching our family histories. They hosted message boards dedicated to any name or locale or genealogy subject you could request, they hosted e-mailing lists dedicated to these subjects (at some point these were tied together), they provided free web space to individuals and groups, and they allowed users to post their GEDCOM family trees so they could be searched and viewed by other genealogists. It grew rapidly and overwhelmed the volunteers who created the site, so it was turned over to Ancestry.com, a fairly new company that sold access to databases of genealogy records, and was starting to create Rootsweb like features to enhance their service, under the agreement that it would always remain free. I used to use Rootsweb all the time.
So it was a little sad to have my tree removed. For about two years Ancestry has been updating WorldConnect, nominally to make an old site secure in today's internet environment. But I just got a look at the new WorldConnect. It was very hard for me to find my own tree. The search function doesn't find people in my tree, or finds so many people in so many trees, apparently ignoring middle names and birth dates and places etc, that I don't find it useful. And once I did find my tree, there is no mention of me (who collected this data over the past 25 years), nor any way for people to contact me. On the plus side for some, I guess, it does suggest records that might help that are available with a subscription to Ancestry ?
I will probably try to upload a new GEDCOM there to see if it will allow people to contact me, etc. It could be that they just loaded all the old GEDCOM files and the researcher contact information is not part of those files, so is not available. I'll also keep looking for an alternative. I'd rather it be free. It must be findable to the whole genealogy community, not just paid subscribers of a particular service. It must have protections against wholesale downloading of information. And protections against other people just adding things on to my tree. (Many people have a lower standard on what constitutes proof of relationship and I've seen lots of people added on to my family that I know to be false. So I suppose I'm protecting my "brand"; if it's in my tree, you know I can explain why, and the why is pretty solid.) It must allow attribution and contact information. I would prefer to be part of a greater community that will attract researchers who might then find a connection to our tree. (But I may also just host a tree on my own web site and rely on Google to lead genealogists to me.)
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Caseys in Galbally, Limerick, Ireland; Research resources
I recently made a DNA connection to a Casey family, and now am fairly certain that what I had suspected from census records, that Patrick Casey (b. ca 1801 in Ireland, married Hanora Norris in Galbally, where most/all of their kids were baptized) was a brother of Catherine Casey Cussen. This is just a note about some resources.
I've spent a lot of time going through church register images for the parish of Galbally, on the National Library of Ireland site ( https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0264 ). The images are not indexed, so searching is like what we used to do when searching through census and newspaper films at local libraries. Except I can do this on my computer at home. I thought this would be a fairly quick job, but it turns out to be enormous. I'm looking for all Cushing and Casey entries to get a pool of candidates for the family in Ireland. It turns out there are about 500 images, most containing two pages from a register. I'm finding about two or three of interest per image. A baptismal record is typically a date, the child, two parents, two godparents, a page number, sometimes a note about the father's profession or town of residence, or that the child was "illegitimate", so typically about nine fields of information, often difficult to read. A marriage record is the married couple, two witnesses, a date (three fields), with occasional notes and a page number. At the end I add a film numbers, too, so that I can easily find the record again, so the whole is typically eight fields of information. That comes out to an estimate of about of about 2500 records and 20,000 recorded fields of information. So I should have expected a lot of work. I think I'm about halfway done.
The interesting part of this near drudgery is seeing all the names, something of a directory of neighbors of my Casey & Cushing ancestors. Many of the names are familiar as spouses of marriages that took place after immigration to the US, so I wonder if many of the Cushing & Casey kids and grandkids married into families the parents knew from "the old country". I've also seen some of these names in DNA matches to my dad, which opens some paths of searching for common ancestors. Some of the names that were very common in the Galbally register were Barry, Blackburn, Bourke, Brien, Butler, Byrrane, Carty, Casey, Clancy, Condon, Connor, Cronin, Cummings, Cunningham, Cussen/Cushen/Quishian, Dalton, Dawson, Dea, Donohoe, Dunn, Dwyer, Fitzgerald, Fogarty, Fraher, Fruin, Gorman, Grafton, Halloway, Hanrahan, Hayes, Heffernan, Henebry, Hennesy, Ivory, Kiely, Kirby, Landers, Lynch, Mahoney, Mara, Martin, Megrath, Moloney, Mullins, Murphy, Neil, Noonan, Picket, Power, Quain, Ryan, Sampson, Sheehan, Slattery, Sullivan, Walsh. And many of these added an O (O'Brien, O'Neal, O'Sullivan ...) or a Mc (McCarthy, McGrath, ...).
Another site I found interesting is the Irish Placenames Database at https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=galbally&str=on . My browser identifies this as Dublin City University, but I don't know what exactly the project is. Often a register record would have a place name associated with a groom or a father, and the strange name and difficult-to-read writing made it difficult to record a meaningful place name. I didn't have a lot of success, but I found the resource interesting for locating on a map Irish place names more generally. This seems to be related to a project to preserve Irish culture by identifying and officially recognized places.
At the top of web page are links to what seem to be (a brief glance) other Irish collections. Above and to the left of the map is a link to "Meitheal Logainm.ie", which seems to be a place for people to submit local place names that may not be officially recognized, yet. But it's also searchable. I don't see any descriptions, but there are lots of places identified if you zoom in close. Some of the site are in the Irish language. ainm.ie seems to be a collection of biographies, but only in Irish. https://www.duchas.ie/en/ is a site collecting items to preserve Irish culture, through stories and photos. For example, I found this in their schools collection: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922055/4848074/5009531 giving a local explanation of Galbally, which apparently means "town of the strangers".
A last resource, not new but perhaps you haven't seen it, is built around Matheson's statistics (published in a book that people have found very useful) about the Surnames of Ireland. I don't want to go look up the book right now, but from memory he summarized an enumeration of the births that took place in about 1890 throughout Ireland, and it is widely used to find to find families to help focus genealogy research to more likely areas of the country. The country had been decimated by famine related emigration, so the numbers and distributions of names aren't the same as they were in the 1830s and pre-famine 1840s, when most of my Irish ancestors lived there, but it is a valuable resource. Many of us bought the book to look through the tables of names, but now it is searchable online at https://www.ancestryireland.com/family-records/distribution-of-surnames-in-ireland-1890-mathesons-special-report/ . I had to try several spelling variants for Cushen to find the entry in their table, so you might not find your name on a first try. The book will show you all the variants that made up the head count. The book also has some explanation of origins of some names.
I'll post other resources as I come across them. Please post your own in the comments.
Enjoy!
I've spent a lot of time going through church register images for the parish of Galbally, on the National Library of Ireland site ( https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0264 ). The images are not indexed, so searching is like what we used to do when searching through census and newspaper films at local libraries. Except I can do this on my computer at home. I thought this would be a fairly quick job, but it turns out to be enormous. I'm looking for all Cushing and Casey entries to get a pool of candidates for the family in Ireland. It turns out there are about 500 images, most containing two pages from a register. I'm finding about two or three of interest per image. A baptismal record is typically a date, the child, two parents, two godparents, a page number, sometimes a note about the father's profession or town of residence, or that the child was "illegitimate", so typically about nine fields of information, often difficult to read. A marriage record is the married couple, two witnesses, a date (three fields), with occasional notes and a page number. At the end I add a film numbers, too, so that I can easily find the record again, so the whole is typically eight fields of information. That comes out to an estimate of about of about 2500 records and 20,000 recorded fields of information. So I should have expected a lot of work. I think I'm about halfway done.
The interesting part of this near drudgery is seeing all the names, something of a directory of neighbors of my Casey & Cushing ancestors. Many of the names are familiar as spouses of marriages that took place after immigration to the US, so I wonder if many of the Cushing & Casey kids and grandkids married into families the parents knew from "the old country". I've also seen some of these names in DNA matches to my dad, which opens some paths of searching for common ancestors. Some of the names that were very common in the Galbally register were Barry, Blackburn, Bourke, Brien, Butler, Byrrane, Carty, Casey, Clancy, Condon, Connor, Cronin, Cummings, Cunningham, Cussen/Cushen/Quishian, Dalton, Dawson, Dea, Donohoe, Dunn, Dwyer, Fitzgerald, Fogarty, Fraher, Fruin, Gorman, Grafton, Halloway, Hanrahan, Hayes, Heffernan, Henebry, Hennesy, Ivory, Kiely, Kirby, Landers, Lynch, Mahoney, Mara, Martin, Megrath, Moloney, Mullins, Murphy, Neil, Noonan, Picket, Power, Quain, Ryan, Sampson, Sheehan, Slattery, Sullivan, Walsh. And many of these added an O (O'Brien, O'Neal, O'Sullivan ...) or a Mc (McCarthy, McGrath, ...).
Another site I found interesting is the Irish Placenames Database at https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=galbally&str=on . My browser identifies this as Dublin City University, but I don't know what exactly the project is. Often a register record would have a place name associated with a groom or a father, and the strange name and difficult-to-read writing made it difficult to record a meaningful place name. I didn't have a lot of success, but I found the resource interesting for locating on a map Irish place names more generally. This seems to be related to a project to preserve Irish culture by identifying and officially recognized places.
At the top of web page are links to what seem to be (a brief glance) other Irish collections. Above and to the left of the map is a link to "Meitheal Logainm.ie", which seems to be a place for people to submit local place names that may not be officially recognized, yet. But it's also searchable. I don't see any descriptions, but there are lots of places identified if you zoom in close. Some of the site are in the Irish language. ainm.ie seems to be a collection of biographies, but only in Irish. https://www.duchas.ie/en/ is a site collecting items to preserve Irish culture, through stories and photos. For example, I found this in their schools collection: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922055/4848074/5009531 giving a local explanation of Galbally, which apparently means "town of the strangers".
A last resource, not new but perhaps you haven't seen it, is built around Matheson's statistics (published in a book that people have found very useful) about the Surnames of Ireland. I don't want to go look up the book right now, but from memory he summarized an enumeration of the births that took place in about 1890 throughout Ireland, and it is widely used to find to find families to help focus genealogy research to more likely areas of the country. The country had been decimated by famine related emigration, so the numbers and distributions of names aren't the same as they were in the 1830s and pre-famine 1840s, when most of my Irish ancestors lived there, but it is a valuable resource. Many of us bought the book to look through the tables of names, but now it is searchable online at https://www.ancestryireland.com/family-records/distribution-of-surnames-in-ireland-1890-mathesons-special-report/ . I had to try several spelling variants for Cushen to find the entry in their table, so you might not find your name on a first try. The book will show you all the variants that made up the head count. The book also has some explanation of origins of some names.
I'll post other resources as I come across them. Please post your own in the comments.
Enjoy!
Saturday, August 24, 2019
My Genetic Genealogy: Pros and Cons of Too Many Matches
I've been working with DNA kits on 23andMe, MyHeritage, and AncestryDNA. One of my first observations was, after beginning with 23andMe and seeing about 1000 DNA matches, that MyHeritage's 3,ooo matches was ridiculous. Who will ever have time to go through and try to link 3,000 matches! 23andMe is now providing about 1200 matches and MyHeritage is now about 8000. Really? But now I've crunched some numbers and am having second thoughts.
Browsing through matches on 23andMe, I started exploring a not-too-distant match for my father, 0.95% shared DNA, about 70cM, somewhere near average for a 3rd cousin. Except that Dad is in his early nineties and the match was middle-aged, so the relationship is more likely to be a 2nd cousin twice removed. This indicates a common ancestor of Dad's great-grandparents who immigrated to the United States.
Dad's match was able to provide me with his family genealogy back to the early 1800s in Ireland. There was no intersection with my tree, which also geos back this far. Knowing that there is a connection, through the DNA match, the genealogies indicated that the family connection would have to be one or more generations earlier than the 0.8% shared DNA suggested. Something's not right.
Comparing notes, we realized that Dennis's list of Relatives in Common (persons that were DNA matches to both him and to Dad) was different from Dad's list. I've noticed this with others, but hadn't delved into the explanation. So, FYI. Both lists were about 35 persons long, but only about 5 persons were the same on both lists. I asked 23andMe for an explanation.
The Relatives in Common list is created by taking your list of DNA matches - about 1200 at 23andMe - and selecting from them those that also share at least 5cM of DNA with the match you are comparing to. To make this less abstract. Suppose Dad's match is Dennis. [In what follows, Dennis and Keith are made-up names.] Dennis has a list of 1200 DNA matches, one of which is Dad. When he clicks on Dad, he is presented with a list of about 35 Relatives in Common. This list is created by taking Dennis's 1200 matches and selecting those who share at least 5cM (this is a VERY small piece of DNA) with Dad. If I look at Dad's list of all DNA matches, the very last one shares 0.27% (about 20cM). Dad's list of Relatives in Common must be from his list of matches, all of which share at least 20cM of DNA with him. The only persons who who show up on both Dennis's and Dad's lists share at least 20cM of DNA with both of them (though I don't know exactly Dennis's threshold), only about 5 persons. Note that both lists are valid, but this explains why they are different.
Dennis mentioned that his first cousin, Keith, was on his Relatives in Common, though it was not on Dad's. It turns out that Keith shares about 0.15% DNA with Dad, so doesn't make Dad's list of 1200 matches, so doesn't show up on Dad's version of the Relatives in Common. The second thing to note is that two first cousins should share about the same amount of DNA with Dad, while Dennis and Keith share 0.95% and 0.15%, respectively. This is a reminder that there can be large variations in inherited DNA. One possibility is that Dennis and Keith are related to Dad through different relatives, but further research showed this to be nearly impossible. Comparing to the genealogy research we were studying earlier, though, Keith's shared DNA indicates a common ancestor one or two generations further back than our immigrant ancestor, which could fit our observations better. My current hypothesis is that cousin Keith shares a more normal amount of DNA for the relationship with Dad, while Dennis inherited an unusually long strand of DNA.
In this case, I seem to have gotten lucky that Dennis had an unusually long inherited strand of DNA that moved him above Dad's match threshold of about 0.27%. If not, I would not have seen this connection to investigate. This is disappointing. Much of my known genealogy ends with immigrant ancestors who are great-grandparents to my parents (whose DNA I am working with). My findings with cousins Dennis and Keith leads me to believe it is unlikely I will find connections to earlier ancestors in their countries of origin through 23andMe. Remember that my initial thought had been 1200 DNA matches is more than enough to work with. Now I see that it is not enough for the pre-immigration connections I eventually hope to make.
So far, in two of my ancestral lines, I was able to connect with many matches through 23andMe whose common ancestor was a pre-immigration family. Fortunately, there are older participants from these "clans" whose relationship to Mom/Dad were 3rd cousin once removed. The average shared DNA for 3rd cousins once removed is about 0.4%, so above the 0.27% threshold for 23andMe matches. But it is important to seek connections with older matches (say, 60 and up). It remains to be seen whether this population will decrease, from natural causes, or increase as more people get their family elders tested.
AncestryDNA: I don't know the numbers for Ancestry. I haven't found a way to harvest their matches, Ancestry does allow downloads of this information, and I ran out of patience scrolling endlessly through who knows how many matches to find the end.
MyHeritage identifies about 8,000 DNA matches, down to about 8cM. Perhaps overwhelming. Perhaps absurd. But it does seem to allow the possibility of connecting back further in time. Identifying the ancestral line going so far back from smaller DNA segments will, however, require lots of luck and lots of work.
[I've assumed a very simple relationship between shared DNA and relationship, while in reality, it is not simple. A simple relationship is easier to understand, and I think allows me to make my point.]
The Beginning
Browsing through matches on 23andMe, I started exploring a not-too-distant match for my father, 0.95% shared DNA, about 70cM, somewhere near average for a 3rd cousin. Except that Dad is in his early nineties and the match was middle-aged, so the relationship is more likely to be a 2nd cousin twice removed. This indicates a common ancestor of Dad's great-grandparents who immigrated to the United States.
The Genealogies
Dad's match was able to provide me with his family genealogy back to the early 1800s in Ireland. There was no intersection with my tree, which also geos back this far. Knowing that there is a connection, through the DNA match, the genealogies indicated that the family connection would have to be one or more generations earlier than the 0.8% shared DNA suggested. Something's not right.
Different Relatives in Common
Comparing notes, we realized that Dennis's list of Relatives in Common (persons that were DNA matches to both him and to Dad) was different from Dad's list. I've noticed this with others, but hadn't delved into the explanation. So, FYI. Both lists were about 35 persons long, but only about 5 persons were the same on both lists. I asked 23andMe for an explanation.
The Relatives in Common list is created by taking your list of DNA matches - about 1200 at 23andMe - and selecting from them those that also share at least 5cM of DNA with the match you are comparing to. To make this less abstract. Suppose Dad's match is Dennis. [In what follows, Dennis and Keith are made-up names.] Dennis has a list of 1200 DNA matches, one of which is Dad. When he clicks on Dad, he is presented with a list of about 35 Relatives in Common. This list is created by taking Dennis's 1200 matches and selecting those who share at least 5cM (this is a VERY small piece of DNA) with Dad. If I look at Dad's list of all DNA matches, the very last one shares 0.27% (about 20cM). Dad's list of Relatives in Common must be from his list of matches, all of which share at least 20cM of DNA with him. The only persons who who show up on both Dennis's and Dad's lists share at least 20cM of DNA with both of them (though I don't know exactly Dennis's threshold), only about 5 persons. Note that both lists are valid, but this explains why they are different.
Cousin Keith
Dennis mentioned that his first cousin, Keith, was on his Relatives in Common, though it was not on Dad's. It turns out that Keith shares about 0.15% DNA with Dad, so doesn't make Dad's list of 1200 matches, so doesn't show up on Dad's version of the Relatives in Common. The second thing to note is that two first cousins should share about the same amount of DNA with Dad, while Dennis and Keith share 0.95% and 0.15%, respectively. This is a reminder that there can be large variations in inherited DNA. One possibility is that Dennis and Keith are related to Dad through different relatives, but further research showed this to be nearly impossible. Comparing to the genealogy research we were studying earlier, though, Keith's shared DNA indicates a common ancestor one or two generations further back than our immigrant ancestor, which could fit our observations better. My current hypothesis is that cousin Keith shares a more normal amount of DNA for the relationship with Dad, while Dennis inherited an unusually long strand of DNA.
What Does This Mean?
In this case, I seem to have gotten lucky that Dennis had an unusually long inherited strand of DNA that moved him above Dad's match threshold of about 0.27%. If not, I would not have seen this connection to investigate. This is disappointing. Much of my known genealogy ends with immigrant ancestors who are great-grandparents to my parents (whose DNA I am working with). My findings with cousins Dennis and Keith leads me to believe it is unlikely I will find connections to earlier ancestors in their countries of origin through 23andMe. Remember that my initial thought had been 1200 DNA matches is more than enough to work with. Now I see that it is not enough for the pre-immigration connections I eventually hope to make.
Not Quite That Bad
So far, in two of my ancestral lines, I was able to connect with many matches through 23andMe whose common ancestor was a pre-immigration family. Fortunately, there are older participants from these "clans" whose relationship to Mom/Dad were 3rd cousin once removed. The average shared DNA for 3rd cousins once removed is about 0.4%, so above the 0.27% threshold for 23andMe matches. But it is important to seek connections with older matches (say, 60 and up). It remains to be seen whether this population will decrease, from natural causes, or increase as more people get their family elders tested.
What About Other DNA Services?
AncestryDNA: I don't know the numbers for Ancestry. I haven't found a way to harvest their matches, Ancestry does allow downloads of this information, and I ran out of patience scrolling endlessly through who knows how many matches to find the end.
MyHeritage identifies about 8,000 DNA matches, down to about 8cM. Perhaps overwhelming. Perhaps absurd. But it does seem to allow the possibility of connecting back further in time. Identifying the ancestral line going so far back from smaller DNA segments will, however, require lots of luck and lots of work.
[I've assumed a very simple relationship between shared DNA and relationship, while in reality, it is not simple. A simple relationship is easier to understand, and I think allows me to make my point.]
Friday, August 23, 2019
Downloading Ancestry matches
Just a quick note. I have been using Genome Mate Pro to track my research and progress in DNA genealogy. It allows me to take notes on my quick and dirty research, it displays chromosome segments of my DNA matches for comparison, it allows me to screen out the smallest and largest segments for clarity, and it allows me to easily see who among my matches I've connected to my tree and what the status is of my research into others. GMP imports match data from a csv file. Many DNA matching services allow you to download a csv file of match data. You can import them all into GMP so that you can review information from many different services in one place, on your home computer.
Already this note is unlikely to be quick ...
AncestryDNA does not allow you to download match data. As the most popular of the services, they no doubt want you to do all of your work through their service. Third parties have developed software that will log in to Ancestry (with your help) and automatically browse through the match list and gather the essential data, as if you were doing it yourself, then export the data to a csv file that you can use, for example, with GMP.
Now the quick part ...
One of the more popular tools for this has been a Chrome extension called Ancestry DNA Helper. I have been unable to get it to work for me. I haven't seen an announcement, but did see some messages related to RIP as of July 1, so I'm guessing that this software is no longer an option.
I searched for another free program, saw some recommendations for DNA Match Manager, installed it and tried it out, and it did nothing but report a problem. As instructed, I simplified the download task, with no better result, then followed their link to submit a log file to get help troubleshooting the problem, but the link just opens an empty box. So that was a bust.
So I'm still searching. It would be convenient to be able to see my Ancestry progress along side my work from MyHeritage and 23andMe, all in one place.
Already this note is unlikely to be quick ...
AncestryDNA does not allow you to download match data. As the most popular of the services, they no doubt want you to do all of your work through their service. Third parties have developed software that will log in to Ancestry (with your help) and automatically browse through the match list and gather the essential data, as if you were doing it yourself, then export the data to a csv file that you can use, for example, with GMP.
Now the quick part ...
One of the more popular tools for this has been a Chrome extension called Ancestry DNA Helper. I have been unable to get it to work for me. I haven't seen an announcement, but did see some messages related to RIP as of July 1, so I'm guessing that this software is no longer an option.
I searched for another free program, saw some recommendations for DNA Match Manager, installed it and tried it out, and it did nothing but report a problem. As instructed, I simplified the download task, with no better result, then followed their link to submit a log file to get help troubleshooting the problem, but the link just opens an empty box. So that was a bust.
So I'm still searching. It would be convenient to be able to see my Ancestry progress along side my work from MyHeritage and 23andMe, all in one place.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
My Genetic Genealogy: Is It Working?
The short answer is "that depends". Lots of work. Some important progress. So far, I'll give it a "thumbs up": yes, it's working.
It's been about a year and a half, now, that I've been chasing family genealogy through DNA. Here's what I've learned so far.
It's been about a year and a half, now, that I've been chasing family genealogy through DNA. Here's what I've learned so far.
- The power of DNA matching is that it identifies for us persons who share identical segments of DNA, and so are likely related. It also estimates what that relationship is, based on how much DNA is identical and other proprietary tweeks.
- The DNA match information is a starting point, but we still must search for our common ancestors, the couple from whom we are both descended. Most of the matches shown are fourth cousins and more distant. Our common ancestors must be five generations or more back. I'll come back to this.
- Since less than half of DNA matches reply to requests for information, it is often necessary to research several generations of their ancestors, i.e., to do all the research unassisted. Among those who do reply, most have little information beyond their own grandparents, so a lot of work is still required to build their family trees.
- Different people undoubtedly have different goals in providing DNA samples for study. I've been researching family genealogy for 25 years and am not interested in finding more distant cousins. My goal is to extend my families back further in time than I have been able to uncover so far. Some have been adopted and are looking for birth families. Some are confirming or refuting rumored infidelities. I don't know what others are doing because they don't reply to my queries.
- Even though I'm not interested in fitting more cousins in my family tree, I need to do it anyway. An important clue when trying to extend and connect my ancestry is to at least identify which branch of my ancestry I'm trying to connect with. Second and third cousins allow me to identify which DNA segments come from which already known ancestors. When I find one of these segments in a more distant cousin, it at least helps me to focus my efforts on connecting to a particular ancestor couple.
- Genealogy DNA testing services differ. I have been using AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, and 23andMe.
- AncestryDNA has the largest collection of clients, so may provide the best opportunity to find connections. Also, since Ancestry.com has been a genealogy research service, providing access to lots of indexed historical records and to customers' family trees, the matches are often more knowledgeable about their family history and have well-developed trees. Surprisingly, though, I still get replies to less than half of my queries. Ancestry will allow you to download your DNA analysis results, basically a map of your chromosomes, but it will not allow you to download DNA matches information to use with third party services or software. Since I'm not an Ancestry.com subscriber, I did find it frustrating, until recently, that I can't view family trees of matches. Ancestry is currently testing a beta version of their service, though. I can now view up to five generations of a tree attached to a DNA match. This has been very helpful. I've been able to see family tree connections now to dozens of DNA matches. (That's about a dozen per DNA kit. I'm working with DNA results for two relatives. Five generation trees have helped me find connections to about a dozen DNA matches for each of them.) After the initial excitement, I've come to three realizations: (1) most AncestryDNA subscribers don't have well-developed trees; (2) five generations allows me to connect with cousins withing my known ancestry, but does not allow me to see connections beyond my current known ancestry; (3) (not really a new realization, but commonly found in family trees) information in a tree is not necessarily true: some is contradicted by my records, and some is often copied from some other tree with no knowledge of where the original information came from; (4) AncestryDNA members seem to be very happy to provide access to their private trees when I explain how were related and what I hope to see in their tree and send them a link to my own online family tree.
- MyHeritage is my preferred service because they allowed me to load raw DNA files downloaded from other services so that I can get matches to all four of my dna files (two parents, two in-laws). While they still allow you to upload DNA files, there are now limits on what information you may access. MyHeritage also allows access to customers' family trees. Most of these trees are either private or contain only a few individuals, but some are quite large which can make it much easier to find a connection. MyHeritage has a new feature that goes through their subscriber trees, through FamilySearch trees, and other available trees, and proposes connections with matches. It hasn't shown me an "important" connections, yet - and by important I mean one that I don't already know and that helped extend my tree back in time - but it might. It does not propose a lot of connections, yet, but it might be very useful especially for those whose trees are not yet very well developed.
- 23andMe is not a genealogy records company. So unlike the above two companies, I never click on a button and get a message that I have to be a subscriber to use that function. They have a variety of interesting gene related reports, some regarding health predispositions, some regarding physical traits. While they do not have a family trees as part of their service, they do permit self-reporting of family surnames and locations, which is often helpful.
- Note: I've read that the testing services may differ quite a bit in their accuracy with different ethnic groups or geographic origins. My ancestry is white European. I have noticed some inaccuracies that I don't understand. AncestryDNA often predicts a significantly more distant relationship than the true relationship and than I expect from the amount of shared DNA (where I assume a simplistic single path between matches). On the other hand, I'm finding many cousins estimated to be fairly close (third and fourth) are actually quite distant (6th and 7th). This latter only after lots of work tracing back so many generations. These cases seem to be for very old American families when there are multiple paths of relationship over many generations that must accumulate to as much shared DNA as a closer relative.
- Note 2:
DNA Matches by Service Company Relative New matches Matches to Gr-parents 23andMe Mother 37 D & L: 3
C & H: 10 *
H & M:1.5
L & D: 17.5
[closer: 5]Father 13
C & C: 3 *
P & D: 1
W & A: 2
W & M: 0
[closer: 7]AncestryDNA Mother-in-law 18 P & C: 7
H & C: 1 *
C & K: 0
K & R: 0
[closer: 10]Father-in-law 19 M & W: 0
C & McL: 17
M & P: 0
S & B: 0
[closer: 2]MyHeritage Mother 8 D & L: 3
C & H: 0
H & M: 0
L & D:4
[closer: 1]Father 31 C & C: 2
P & D: 27
W & A: 0
W & M: 0
[closer: 2]Mother-in-law 4 P & C: 2
H & C: 0
C & K: 0
K & R: 0
[closer: 2]Father-in-law 3 M & W: 0
C & McL: 3 *
M & P: 0
S & B: 0
[closer: 0]
- Probably the reason that I have been most successful finding connections for my mom is that all of her ancestors immigrated to the US in the early to mid 1800s. So her family history is not that long, at least not in this country. For my dad, it's more complicated. Because most of his ancestral lines go back centuries in the US, it can be much more difficult to research all the way back to our common ancestor. Also, after so many generation, many of them in the northeastern US (or colonies), there has been a lot of mixing of ancestral lines, so there are multiple paths of relationship and, because each path adds inherited DNA, the estimated relationships implied by the amount of shared DNA may be in error by multiple generations.
DNA Case Study: Hayden Family
So far, my typical DNA connections consist of picking a DNA match and trying to piece together a family tree that connects to my own. This is sometimes successful. Sometimes I ask for help from the DNA match, who sometimes replies. It usually involves lots of work. And as I continue down my list of DNA matches, toward more distant relations, it gets harder and harder.
My Hayden family connection was different. While exploring match profiles on 23andMe, I noticed several that seemed grouped together, frequently showing up as common matches. Almost all replied to my messages. Almost all had researched their genealogies extensively. I fairly quickly established that the common family was the Haydens. Some put me in contact with other Hayden family genealogists. One had attached resources to a Hayden tree on FamilySearch, and also replied to my message. After gathering their information and researching the gaps, I was able to assemble a skeletal family tree, just connecting the DNA matches, not including their families and ancestors families that I have typically included in my tree. I then tried to connect my own Hayden ancestor to their tree. No census records together, no Irish baptismal record, no FamilySearch, Rootsweb, message board, FindAGrave, Google, or other public data information. None of the matches had among their records any mention of my ancestor.
One of my matches referred me to an article they had written many years ago in which I recognized a photograph that had been hanging on my parents' wall for decades, in what they called the "Rogues Gallery", their photos of their ancestors. While my match had guessed at the the identity of the person, ours was labeled Anne Hayden Campbell by one of Anne's grandchildren. So although I was not finding the family connection, this photograph implied that there was a connection and that most likely their Hayden family was my own.
Now I wondered, if my Anne was part of this Hayden family, where would she fit in? All of the others traced back to Martin and Katherine Headen, born in 1796 and ca. 1790, respectively, in Ireland. The baptisms of many of their children took place in the Catholic parish of Myshall in County Carlow, where records state the family lived in the town of Shangarry. The known birth dates were in 1817, 1822, 1825, and 1832. Anne was born between about 1823 and 1826, so would fit nicely into an unusual gap in children. Baptismal records in those early years were infrequent, so she could simply have been missed. But Anne could also have been Martin's niece, in a different branch of the family.
Now I turned to DNA. The amount of DNA shared with matches was about right for Anne as a daughter of Martin. But there can be quite a bit of variation in inherited DNA, so I was not comfortable placing Anne in this tree based simply on shared DNA. Yet. So I constructed the following chart. It requires some explanation.
I identified fourteen DNA matches to my parent on 23andMe who were likely related through the Haydens. Of these, I could place ten on a Hayden family tree. In the chart above I recorded in the lower half the relationships between all these cousins as read from the tree and added average amount of DNA that should be shared between these cousins, if only a simple single relationship exists. 3c-2/0.2 , for instance, is third cousin twice removed, who share an average of 0.2% of their DNA. The four empty lines are the four persons whom I could not place in the tree, and so with whom I cannot know their relationship with the others. In the upper half I recorded the estimated relationship and the measured amount of shared DNA as reported by 23andMe. The columns/rows of x's are Hayden descendants whose DNA was either not analyzed on 23andME or who did not show as a match to my parent. The gray boxes are where DNA matches were not detected/reported, even though both were matches to my parent. Finally, I color coded the results. Basically, green shows 23andMe estimates close to true relationships, "red" (purple) not close, and yellow somewhere in between.
First I compared just the matches among themselves. Now I'm down to eight matches: started with fourteen, four I couldn't place in the tree and two did not show up as a match to my parent. Among these eight persons, there are twenty-eight relationships. Of this twenty-eight, eleven (39%) don't show up at all. This is typical for 3rd/4th cousins. Of the seventeen that do appear, eight (47%) are good/green, six (35%) are so-so, and three (18%) are incorrect. Note that by "incorrect" I mean percent shared DNA is different from what I expect by a factor of two or more. This is only half a generation, or, say, the difference between 4c and 4c-1 (fourth cousin vs. fourth cousin once removed). This may not be a huge error, but it is important in determining where Anne might fit into this tree. So the above numbers, % good numbers, are my baseline.
Now I look just at my parent's relationship with the other eight. In order to have relationships from the tree, I have to place her somewhere in the tree. I placed her as a child of Martin and Katherine. There are eight possible relationships. Of these, none did not show up. That's obvious, because those that don't show up are not visible in my results. Actually, I later discovered that one of the persons who did not show has had her DNA tested on 23andMe, but can't find me among her matches, either. Of the eight that are visible, 50% are green, 37.5% are yellow, and 12.5% are "red". I think these compare very well with the 47%, 35% and 18% baseline. My conclusion is that my ancestor, Anne Hayden Campbell, is the daughter of Martin and Katherine Headen.
Now I need to go back and fill in all those quick-and-dirty sources I noted while assembling a family tree ...
My Hayden family connection was different. While exploring match profiles on 23andMe, I noticed several that seemed grouped together, frequently showing up as common matches. Almost all replied to my messages. Almost all had researched their genealogies extensively. I fairly quickly established that the common family was the Haydens. Some put me in contact with other Hayden family genealogists. One had attached resources to a Hayden tree on FamilySearch, and also replied to my message. After gathering their information and researching the gaps, I was able to assemble a skeletal family tree, just connecting the DNA matches, not including their families and ancestors families that I have typically included in my tree. I then tried to connect my own Hayden ancestor to their tree. No census records together, no Irish baptismal record, no FamilySearch, Rootsweb, message board, FindAGrave, Google, or other public data information. None of the matches had among their records any mention of my ancestor.
 |
| Anne Hayden Campbell |
Now I wondered, if my Anne was part of this Hayden family, where would she fit in? All of the others traced back to Martin and Katherine Headen, born in 1796 and ca. 1790, respectively, in Ireland. The baptisms of many of their children took place in the Catholic parish of Myshall in County Carlow, where records state the family lived in the town of Shangarry. The known birth dates were in 1817, 1822, 1825, and 1832. Anne was born between about 1823 and 1826, so would fit nicely into an unusual gap in children. Baptismal records in those early years were infrequent, so she could simply have been missed. But Anne could also have been Martin's niece, in a different branch of the family.
Now I turned to DNA. The amount of DNA shared with matches was about right for Anne as a daughter of Martin. But there can be quite a bit of variation in inherited DNA, so I was not comfortable placing Anne in this tree based simply on shared DNA. Yet. So I constructed the following chart. It requires some explanation.
 | ||
| Hayden DNA Comparison Chart |
First I compared just the matches among themselves. Now I'm down to eight matches: started with fourteen, four I couldn't place in the tree and two did not show up as a match to my parent. Among these eight persons, there are twenty-eight relationships. Of this twenty-eight, eleven (39%) don't show up at all. This is typical for 3rd/4th cousins. Of the seventeen that do appear, eight (47%) are good/green, six (35%) are so-so, and three (18%) are incorrect. Note that by "incorrect" I mean percent shared DNA is different from what I expect by a factor of two or more. This is only half a generation, or, say, the difference between 4c and 4c-1 (fourth cousin vs. fourth cousin once removed). This may not be a huge error, but it is important in determining where Anne might fit into this tree. So the above numbers, % good numbers, are my baseline.
Now I look just at my parent's relationship with the other eight. In order to have relationships from the tree, I have to place her somewhere in the tree. I placed her as a child of Martin and Katherine. There are eight possible relationships. Of these, none did not show up. That's obvious, because those that don't show up are not visible in my results. Actually, I later discovered that one of the persons who did not show has had her DNA tested on 23andMe, but can't find me among her matches, either. Of the eight that are visible, 50% are green, 37.5% are yellow, and 12.5% are "red". I think these compare very well with the 47%, 35% and 18% baseline. My conclusion is that my ancestor, Anne Hayden Campbell, is the daughter of Martin and Katherine Headen.
Now I need to go back and fill in all those quick-and-dirty sources I noted while assembling a family tree ...
Friday, July 26, 2019
Evolving Genealogy Strategies and Successes
It has been frustrating tracing the Cushing family back beyond what we already know. In all fairness, we began by knowing a lot, since one of my uncles recorded the family genealogy in about 1931 in a document untitled "Family History (Exclusive of Darwin's Age of Monkey)". My parents, my sister, and some cousins have travelled to the town and visited the church where many of Cussen family was baptized and where Dennis Cussen and Katherine Casey were married. One of the great milestones in American genealogy research is locating a family prior to emigration, and with this family we were fortunately handed that information before beginning our research.
Now, though, finding more information about the Cussen and Casey families is very difficult. There are very few records from the early 1800s and earlier. It could be that Dennis' father was a Francis Cushen who worked land in the Galbally area, but I haven't spent much time pursuing this because tithe applotment books do not list family members. Church records are rare before about 1825, so I've been unable to research there, either.
My principal strategy for extending the family backwards has been to publicly publish what I know about the family and to seek out genealogists in other branches of the family through which more information may have been preserved. While this has not extended my tree back in time, it has been very productive. Dennis and Catherine had about thirteen children. At the time I began my research, we knew descendants of only one other branch of the family. Of the remaining eleven children, three disappeared (appeared in only one record at some point) and one died unmarried at the age of 22. So that left seven branches of the family, perhaps some who had stayed in Wisconsin, to search for. Through the Internet, especially through message boards like Rootsweb and Genforum, I was able to contact four more branches. It turns out that one of the remaining branches left no children, hence no descendant genealogists, and the remaining two were women, for whom tracing marriages and name changes and moves can be very difficult. I was finally able to track the last two branches about two years ago. During all of this, we were able to share our respective genealogies and learn about the spread of the family. A disappointment for me, though, was that there was no documentation about our family prior to our Age of Monkey.
A second strategy I attempted was a search for Caseys. It turns out that a Casey family lived on the farm adjacent to the Cussen/Cushing family in Fort Winnebago in about 1850. I researched this Casey family and found that they had emigrated from Ireland at about the same time as the Cushings, that there was another closely related Casey family that also lived, albeit briefly, in Fort Winnebago, and that the Casey fathers, Patrick and James, were both just a few years older than our Katherine Casey Cussen. I thought there was a good chance these three were siblings. In the years since, however, I have found no evidence of a family connection. Meanwhile, with the explosion of paid membership-based genealogy services, especially ancestry.com, genealogy research has gone largely behind walls and I have made no contacts with the Casey family that I researched in and from Fort Winnebago.
Now, a new strategy has emerged: DNA. I've been researching DNA genealogy for about a year and a half, now, with disappointingly little to show for it. Perhaps that's too overstated. I feel that given the enormous amount of work I've put into DNA research, I should have more to show for it. But I see that I actually have made significant progress in several branches of the tree.
Yesterday, I was able to connect a DNA match back to one of the Fort Winnebago Casey families, one of my most important goals in my DNA genealogy research! The amount of shared DNA makes is very likely that Patrick Casey was indeed a brother to Katherine Casey Cussen. I was more confident of a close relationship between the two Casey men, since they were living together at one time, so James Casey is probably also a sibling. This gives me enormous incentive to start searching through online baptismal records at the National Library of Ireland to locate these Casey families. The kids were mostly born in Ireland in the late 1820s through early 1840s, and baptismal records were widely available.
Now, though, finding more information about the Cussen and Casey families is very difficult. There are very few records from the early 1800s and earlier. It could be that Dennis' father was a Francis Cushen who worked land in the Galbally area, but I haven't spent much time pursuing this because tithe applotment books do not list family members. Church records are rare before about 1825, so I've been unable to research there, either.
My principal strategy for extending the family backwards has been to publicly publish what I know about the family and to seek out genealogists in other branches of the family through which more information may have been preserved. While this has not extended my tree back in time, it has been very productive. Dennis and Catherine had about thirteen children. At the time I began my research, we knew descendants of only one other branch of the family. Of the remaining eleven children, three disappeared (appeared in only one record at some point) and one died unmarried at the age of 22. So that left seven branches of the family, perhaps some who had stayed in Wisconsin, to search for. Through the Internet, especially through message boards like Rootsweb and Genforum, I was able to contact four more branches. It turns out that one of the remaining branches left no children, hence no descendant genealogists, and the remaining two were women, for whom tracing marriages and name changes and moves can be very difficult. I was finally able to track the last two branches about two years ago. During all of this, we were able to share our respective genealogies and learn about the spread of the family. A disappointment for me, though, was that there was no documentation about our family prior to our Age of Monkey.
A second strategy I attempted was a search for Caseys. It turns out that a Casey family lived on the farm adjacent to the Cussen/Cushing family in Fort Winnebago in about 1850. I researched this Casey family and found that they had emigrated from Ireland at about the same time as the Cushings, that there was another closely related Casey family that also lived, albeit briefly, in Fort Winnebago, and that the Casey fathers, Patrick and James, were both just a few years older than our Katherine Casey Cussen. I thought there was a good chance these three were siblings. In the years since, however, I have found no evidence of a family connection. Meanwhile, with the explosion of paid membership-based genealogy services, especially ancestry.com, genealogy research has gone largely behind walls and I have made no contacts with the Casey family that I researched in and from Fort Winnebago.
Now, a new strategy has emerged: DNA. I've been researching DNA genealogy for about a year and a half, now, with disappointingly little to show for it. Perhaps that's too overstated. I feel that given the enormous amount of work I've put into DNA research, I should have more to show for it. But I see that I actually have made significant progress in several branches of the tree.
Yesterday, I was able to connect a DNA match back to one of the Fort Winnebago Casey families, one of my most important goals in my DNA genealogy research! The amount of shared DNA makes is very likely that Patrick Casey was indeed a brother to Katherine Casey Cussen. I was more confident of a close relationship between the two Casey men, since they were living together at one time, so James Casey is probably also a sibling. This gives me enormous incentive to start searching through online baptismal records at the National Library of Ireland to locate these Casey families. The kids were mostly born in Ireland in the late 1820s through early 1840s, and baptismal records were widely available.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
My Love Hate Relationship with Ancestry.com, continued
I have a few relationships with Ancestry.com. My earliest is my use of the Rootsweb pages, message boards and WorldConnect family tree. At some point, Rootsweb was acquired by Ancestry and I had to set up an ancestry account to post messages and update my tree. Occasionally, I have tried a trial membership of Ancestry's data service, but since I have a pretty well-developed family tree I find that within the trial period I find the small amounts of additional information related to my own family. More recently, I manage some dna test kits for a relative using AncestryDNA. I've made some family connections there, but am hampered by not being an Ancestry subscriber, and so not having access to family trees that are linked to the dna matches.
So two new factors to add to my thoughts about Ancestry.com . The first relates to the Rootsweb WorldConnect trees. Ancestry has just reworked this service. Apparently, many Ancestry.com subcribers also had Rootsweb accounts and used the same passwords for both. Since Rootsweb is over 20 years old, it apparently was easy to hack into and someone did, thereby gaining access to a bunch of Ancestry account passwords. So Rootsweb was shut down, with bits and pieces coming back online as they become secure. What's the point? I (and others who use the Rootsweb WorldConnect family tree) have been unable to update our trees in about two years, while Ancestry updates the underlying software. Which has finally been done. Now, however, by posting a tree, it is no longer mine. Technically, it's mine, but Ancestry users may attach any parts of it - up to it's entirety, I assume - to their own family trees, which then becomes theirs. I realize that I have no copyright to the information itself, but I was okay with making information available to people to copy - more or less manually - if they were interested enough to do that. I'm not ready to provide for free to a paid service 25 years of research that can be copied at the click of a button. So I'm looking for some other way place to make my tree publicly available, but under my own control.
But on the Love side of the equation - which doesn't often happen between me and Ancestry - they are testing a Beta version of a dna matching service. It now gives me limited access to trees associated with the dna kits, allowing me to find a match to my own family tree. This is a huge improvement in the usefulness of AncestryDNA. I would now recommend AncestryDNA for anyone seriously researching their genealogy. (MyHeritage also allows trees to be attached to dna kits. 23andMe does not, though they do provide some other helpful information.)
P.S.: I completely understand how useful and valuable Ancestry is for many people. In many ways, it's just not right for me. Except for the new Beta version of AncestryDNA ...
So two new factors to add to my thoughts about Ancestry.com . The first relates to the Rootsweb WorldConnect trees. Ancestry has just reworked this service. Apparently, many Ancestry.com subcribers also had Rootsweb accounts and used the same passwords for both. Since Rootsweb is over 20 years old, it apparently was easy to hack into and someone did, thereby gaining access to a bunch of Ancestry account passwords. So Rootsweb was shut down, with bits and pieces coming back online as they become secure. What's the point? I (and others who use the Rootsweb WorldConnect family tree) have been unable to update our trees in about two years, while Ancestry updates the underlying software. Which has finally been done. Now, however, by posting a tree, it is no longer mine. Technically, it's mine, but Ancestry users may attach any parts of it - up to it's entirety, I assume - to their own family trees, which then becomes theirs. I realize that I have no copyright to the information itself, but I was okay with making information available to people to copy - more or less manually - if they were interested enough to do that. I'm not ready to provide for free to a paid service 25 years of research that can be copied at the click of a button. So I'm looking for some other way place to make my tree publicly available, but under my own control.
But on the Love side of the equation - which doesn't often happen between me and Ancestry - they are testing a Beta version of a dna matching service. It now gives me limited access to trees associated with the dna kits, allowing me to find a match to my own family tree. This is a huge improvement in the usefulness of AncestryDNA. I would now recommend AncestryDNA for anyone seriously researching their genealogy. (MyHeritage also allows trees to be attached to dna kits. 23andMe does not, though they do provide some other helpful information.)
P.S.: I completely understand how useful and valuable Ancestry is for many people. In many ways, it's just not right for me. Except for the new Beta version of AncestryDNA ...
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