23andMe

As I continue to research my ancestry through DNA, using various tools and services, and gaining experience and perspective, my views of DNA services evolve. These are my thoughts about 23andMe at this time, nearly three years into my DNA research.

Pros:

(1) The biggest advantage from 23andMe is that they provide DNA-related health and trait reports, both interesting and potentially important. (23andMe is not authorized to provide medical information, but a 23andMe report would certainly be a good basis for seeking medical advice from your doctor.) They offer different analysis products, and I believe the least expensive does not include health reports, so make sure to order the level of analysis you want.

(2) 23andMe has a large number of DNA contributors. I have found many known relatives there and have identified many matches. Though my already well-developed family tree has made that easier, perhaps, than for others.

(3) 23andMe provides a list of DNA matches in common (ICW), as do the other services. They also indicate which of your common matches "triangulate", a much higher level of confidence that a match is related. On the ICW list are shown, too, the relationship of your principal match to you and to the ICW. (MyHeritage does this; Ancestry and GEDMatch do not.) Sometimes it is necessary to construct trees for your matches, a slow, labor-intensive process, and information about how some ICW are related to each other can help enormously in focusing on fewer possible branches.

(4) 23andMe uses a prominently displayed star next to each match in your primary list of DNA matches, that you can toggle on or off. This is very helpful for showing which matches you have placed in your tree. (Browsing through matches for matches to work on next, it's very helpful to easily see those already completed.)

(5) Ethnicity estimates seem as accurate as any, at least for my very homogenous ancestry. I think my best estimates come from my own family tree.

(6) 23andMe analysis includes the X-chromosome, which others do not. Since males inherit X chromosomes only from their mothers, a match on this chromosome can make tree research easier by eliminating some lines of ancestry. This has not led to identifying a match for me yet, but it is one more analysis tool.

(7) While they do not provide a detailed analysis of the Y-chromosome, they do identify a paternal haplogroup for males, which is a pattern found on this chromosome. Theoretically, this could be another tool to help connect to male relatives. In practice, I find it confusing because some haplogroups are closely related and a father and son may be identified with different haplogroups. If you know enough about haplogroups to recognize those that are closely related, perhaps this is not a problem. So I list this as a pro because it could be a useful tool, even though not yet for me.

(8) 23andMe has so far tolerated the use of third party tools, like 529andYou, to help gather DNA match information. (529andYou gathers lists of triangulations.) Though recently there has been more use of Captcha to, I assume, distinguish between people using data collection tools and robots.

(9) Though the lack of tree building is listed as a con below, the associated pro is that the user profile allows you to list birthplaces of your grandparents and family surnames and a link to a tree located elsewhere. This is enough information, often, to start a tree that can be continued by finding grandparents in census records (currently born before 1940).

(10) 23andMe allows you to download files for your raw DNA analysis, your matches and your shared DNA, which can be used for your own analysis offline.

(11) 23andMe seems to show matches down to about 7cM. (The bigger limitation is, perhaps, the number of matches displayed. I believe that MyHeritage and 23andMe limit the number of matches displayed, to about 8000 and 1000, respectively. When you have long-time American families, like my Dad's ancestry, these limits are reached before you reach the lower shared DNA threshhold, so there are not many matches shown below about 8cM. Ancestry's limit is, rather, the lower DNA match threshold, which they recently raised from 6cM to 8cM. All of these limitations are to avoid overwhelming [most] users with matches well beyond their interest and to reduce the load on their servers). So this could be a pro or a con.

Cons:

(1) 23andMe is not a genealogy service. There is no sister company with historical records, there is no family tree building feature. As part of your descriptive profile, you can list family surnames, your grandparents' birthplaces, and a link to your family tree. Personally, I don't need the paid access to historical records and have a public family tree with a link, so don't find this "con" a disadvantage. However, the lack of trees does make research quite a bit more difficult and I find my self searching for relatives more often on Ancestry and MyHeritage because of this.

(2) Managing or researching others' DNA can cause confusion. I have access to some DNA tests. Because I don't want to be seen as impersonating someone, when I send a message to a DNA match I explain that I am not their DNA match and what my relationship is to their match. Then I send a message, but since it's not my account I'm not sure how the message sender is shown. I usually include an outside e-mail address to make communication less cumbersome. Ancestry makes it easy to assign a management role to me. (Though I'm not sure how clearly communications are identified with them, either.)

Overall, I generally recommend this service, especially if you would like to get DNA-related health and trait reports.

MyHeritage.com

As I continue to research my ancestry through DNA, using various tools and services, and gaining experience and perspective, my views of DNA services evolve. These are my thoughts about MyHeritageDNA, at this time, nearly three years into my DNA research. (Note: though I use the name MyHeritageDNA to distinguish the DNA matching service from the record searching service, both are accessed through the address myheritage.com, and the services are closely linked.) (Another note: MyHeritage is an Israeli company.)

Pros:

1) MyHeritageDNA has a large number of DNA contributors. Even though they are relative (no pun intended) newcomers to DNA analysis, they have allowed people to submit DNA analysis files from other services in order to quickly grow their contributors.

2) MyHeritage allows contributors to build family trees linked to their DNA, essential for exploring your relationship. While trees are generally smaller than what is available at Ancestry, in most cases you have full access to the whole tree. (Ancestry limits access to 5 generations, 23andMe doesn't have trees, GEDMatch does allow trees, though I find few contributors have them.) 

3) MyHeritage (currently) allows the use of third party tools that gather family tree data and DNA match data for exploration offline.

4) MyHeritage's list of common matches (ICW) also shows the relationship between the match and the ICW. This can be helpful in focussing your search for a relationship, or for selecting closer relationships to investigate. (For instance if you know that one of your ICW is a great aunt to the match you're reviewing, you can limit your investigation to the great-aunt's ancestor tree.)

5) MyHeritage has a closely linked (for pay) records collection, though I have never used it and can't comment on how it compares to other records services.

6) MyHeritage also owns one of the premier genealogy products, Legacy Family Tree, which is my genealogy software. While I know that Legacy has features that facilitate genealogy research, I don't use these features myself.

7) MyHeritage allows you to download your DNA analysis file, as well as match files. The former allows users to submit their DNA analysis to matching services like GEDMatch (I'm not necessarily recommending you do that). The latter allows users to keep track of DNA research offline using, for example, tools like Genome Mate Pro.

8) MyHeritage shows detailed information on shared DNA segments and which matches "triangulate", a much higher level of confidence of a family connection than the ICW relationships. (Ancestry shows only ICW. 23andMe shows both ICW and triangulation. GEDMatch shows only ICW, though I'm not sure what they offer to paid subscribers.)

9) Has an interesting DNA research tool:. DNA Clusters shows groups of related DNA matches. It used only about 100 of the several thousand matches, but as I identify more of my matches it is showing some promise.

10) MyHeritage ethnicity estimates seem as accurate as those from other services. At least compared to my own family history estimates.

Cons:

1) MyHeritage shows matches down to 8cM. Ancestry recently raised their minimum to 8cM as well. 23andMe seems to show down to about 7cM. For those, like me, with well-developed family trees, smaller amounts of shared DNA are needed to extend our histories. Smaller DNA matches are admittedly much less certain, but I have made several 6cM matches (at Ancestry before they changed their minimum match criterion) so far and would prefer to have access to these possible more distant matches.

2) MyHeritage flags are not very useful. I can neither set a flag (or star, as in Ancestry or 23andMe) nor read an annotation (as in Ancestry) to indicate that I have already connected a match to my family. In MyHeritage I have to open the attached note to know the status of this match.

3) For whatever reasons, I have identified far fewer matches through MyHeritage than through 23andMe or Ancestry. I assume this is mostly the relative popularity of this service.

Donnellys from the Irish Free State

 The information isn't new, but the realization is. The death certificate of Nellie Donnelly, daughter of James Donnelly and Mary Buchannan, says her father was born in the Irish Free State. James was the oldest son of Patrick Donley/Donnelly and Ann Larkin. While the Donnelly name was most commonly found in counties Armagh and Tyrone, Larkins were more likely in Tipperary. Donnelly is such a common name, that I haven't even searched for the family in Ireland. Since it seems just about every surname could be found in Dublin, I've wondered if the family might be from there. If the death certificate information is accurate, it at least moves me away from continuing to consider Northern Ireland as our Donnelly origin. At least, after the Donnelly-Larkin marriage.

AncestryDNA

As I continue to research my ancestry through DNA, using various tools and services, and gaining experience and perspective, my views of DNA services evolve. These are my thoughts about AncestryDNA at this time, nearly three years into my DNA research. (Note: though I use the name AncestryDNA to distinguish the DNA matching service from the record searching service, both are accessed through the address ancestry.com, and the services are closely linked. AncestryDNA clients get many notifications of digitized records and family trees available with paid subscriptions to the Ancestry.com historical records service.)

Pros:

(1) AncestryDNA has a large number of DNA contributors, so a large opportunity for connecting with cousins whose common ancestry could help extend your own known ancestry. I have found, though, that Ancestry has more "closer" connections in some of my ancestor branches and fewer in other branches, compared to DNA matches in other DNA services.

(2) AncestryDNA, through its sister genealogy research service, Ancestry.com, has access to family trees for many of its DNA customers. AncestryDNA furnishes a five generation summary tree (just names and lifespan years, organized in a tree) for those matches who have posted a tree and allow it to be "public". For those trees that are not public, it is easy to request viewing privileges. I find that about half will not grant privileges (protecting privacy) and half will (collaborating on research). Also, once you are granted access, AncestryDNA conveniently keeps all trees to which you have access in a convenient tree drop-down list.

(3) AncestryDNA provides a list of DNA matches in common (ICW), though more limited than other services.

(4) You may post a limited tree and link it to your DNA so that others may search for family connections. (Available to AncestryDNA customers, though I don't know if it is available to other Ancestry.com subscribers who are not DNA matches.) After a certain size, a fee is charged for hosting the tree.

(5) If you choose to post a family tree, AncestryDNA has two related analysis features that help identify common ancestors: ThruLines and Common Ancestor. These tools basically compare your tree to those of your DNA matches and shows you how you are related, sometimes piecing together parts of several different trees to create the path. Even though these tools don't generally show me the ancestries I'm most interested in, they do identify which ancestor branch the DNA match belongs to, and allows me to focus my work on those (usually different) branches that are of most interest to me. The most useful result from these tools, so far, has been confirming a relationship between my Patchens and an old, well-researched Patchen family, and introducing relatives in a recently discovered ancestor so that I have found distant cousins that will help add a new branch of descendants to my tree, if I decide to pursue that. (I'm much less interested in finding cousins, aka other descendants of common ancestors, than I am in discovering new ancestors.)

(6) AncestryDNA is available independent of Ancestry.com . I initially stayed away from AncestryDNA because ... well, originally because I have strong reservations about posting DNA in public places. But in addition to that, I assumed that in order to have access to DNA matches, I would have to subscribe to the ancestry.com service which, as a long time researcher, I find expensive and of very limited use. This is not the case. A DNA analysis costs about $100 (often on sale for about $60?) and this includes access to the DNA matching for as long as you leave your DNA hosted on the AncestryDNA service.

(7) AncestryDNA provides very easy granting of privileges for sharing your DNA information. For example, though some of my DNA analyses were done by others, they have been able to easily grant me a management role, allowing me to research and annotate DNA matches, and post related family tree data.

(8) The annotation features are better than for other services. You can assign a prominent star for relationships established and color coded dots for various branches of your family, and it's up to you to decide how you want to use the star and dots. You can also attach a note, say a detail of how your related, or a suspected branch. All of this is visible in search results, making it very valuable for keeping track of your research.

(9) AncestryDNA has probably more experience than most  in estimating ethnicity (geographic origins) from DNA. Their estimates are fairly detailed. I would say, however, that our ancestry is fairly homogeneous (predominantly Irish and English, completely western European) and it is very difficult to isolate geographic origins from DNA. So I think their estimates are pretty good, but should be viewed as approximate. I attribute better accuracy to my genealogy research. From time to time, they change their estimates as they tweak their algorithm.

(10) You can indicate in a profile your research interests, outside links, languages spoken, etc. This is useful for giving a link to a family tree located outside of Ancestry.com .

Cons:

(1) Unlike the other services I've used (so far GEDMatch, 23andMe, MyHeritage), AncestryDNA does not allow you to download your match information. (They do allow you to download the DNA analysis.) So if you wish to perform some DNA analysis outside of AncestryDNA that involves matches, you must hand transcribe each match. Some data "harvesters" have been developed to make this transcription and analysis, and research management, easier, but Ancestry recently threatened them with legal action and they have abandoned their support of Ancestry data. (Harvester can no longer facilitate the painstaking transcription of family trees, for comparison with those of other matches, either.)

(2) Unlike the other services I've used, AncestryDNA does not show details of DNA segments that you share with your DNA matches. Since these segments are inherited, their identity can help identify your common ancestry.

(3) AncestryDNA does not identify "triangulations", only "ICW". (ICW is a list of matches you have In Common With one of your matches. In other words, ICW is the intersection of your list of matches and the list of matches of one of your DNA matches.) Triangulation is stronger proof of a common ancestor than is ICW.

(4) If your family tree already goes back several generations, like mine, the five generation tree shown by AncestryDNA is inadequate for finding a common connection. [To get deeper access, there are two options: (a) subscribe to Ancestry.com, or (b) try to find the matches full tree through your library's access (during Covid shutdowns, may be available from your home computer).]

(5) Searches results among DNA matches and your list of ICW are limited to matches sharing 20cM or more of DNA. Fourth cousins share on average about 13cM, so the AncestryDNA limits your searches to those more closely related than fourth cousins, or to common ancestors back only four generations. If you have a well-researched tree, you probably know history back to your immigrant ancestors, in my case four or more generations. AncestryDNA makes it more difficult to research more distant ancestors, a severe limitation.

(6) AncestryDNA does allow you to view matches down to 8cM in your unfiltered, unsearched, list of DNA matches. Other services allow down to 6cM. I've made several connections with 6cM shared DNA. On AncestryDNA, actually. It was just recently that they raised their lower limit to 8cM.

(7) Messaging, especially if you are managing someone else's DNA, is "clunky". Since I'm not a subscriber to ancestry.com, I frequently get messages that I must join to send messages. However, if you click in other places, you are allowed to send a message. If I'm managing someone else's DNA,  I don't think the DNA match I am writing about is shown in my message, so I'm careful to describe how I am related to the DNA, and why I may be requesting access to a family tree. Also, when I try to find messages already sent, I find it difficult to find what I'm looking for, often resorting to scrolling through all sent messages until I find what I'm looking for. With MyHeritage and 23andMe, when I click on a message button, I'm shown the thread of previous communications. As with other services, I usually include an outside e-mail address because that is more usually more convenient, especially if you wish to share documents or communicate with more than one person at a time.

Overall, I generally recommend this service, especially if you are not trying to extend an already well-developed ancestry, or relying on outside tools to analyze and keep track of your research from multiple services.

Book: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

It's been a few years since I read this book. The Killer Angels is a book of historical fiction, published in 1974 by Michael Shaara. As I've explained elsewhere, I find non-fiction difficult to read, and appreciate well-researched historical novels that give historical context to some of my ancestors.

Shaara's novel follows General Robert E. Lee and several of his staff of officers from June 29, 1863 to July 3, i.e. through just the days of the Civil War. Shaara draws heavily on statements and communications from the officers and combatants to make the account more personal and present, giving the reader the feeling of witnessing the events as they take place, but also the personal struggles of those who participated. While there are many in our family tree who fought in the Civil War, almost all on the Union side, my own Donnelly ancestor is known to have fought with the 60th Regiment of New York Volunteers at Culp's Hill, and I was fascinated and proud to learn about the key role that battle played in the eventual outcome of the larger Battle of Gettysburg and the War itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.

GEDMatch

For years, I avoided GEDMatch, fearing as-yet-unknown risks of publicly posting DNA. Recently, having discovered that close relatives had already posted their DNA on other DNA matching sites, I decided to try GEDMatch. Here are my first impressions.

Cons:
(1) I found no first cousin or closer relatives on GEDMatch, making my DNA a sole source for identifying close relatives. I may have my DNA deleted from this service.

(2) Because there are no close relatives among my matches, it is exceedingly difficult to identify any matches.

(3) Gathering match segment data, needed to determine common segments between matches, is tedious using the free version of the service. This information must be gathered individually for each match. There is a paid version of the service, and I don't know if gathering segment is any easier with it.

(4) For now, as a newbie to GEDMatch, I'm concerned about determination of amount of shared DNA. Often, a cM amount that is given in the list of matches does not correspond to the sum of the segments. Often, when I find that the same individual is listed on a different DNA analysis service, the amounts of DNA shown by the two services is significantly different.

(5) The ethnicity estimating tools are much less precise, geographically, than available at other services.

(6) There is no ability, at least in the free version, to annotate or tag matches as you identify them, something available in the other services.

Pros

(1) It's free.

(2) Using the free version of the service, it is easy to gather a list of matches, a list of common matches, and a family tree (if available). Note that I use Pedigree Thief (a Chrome extension) and Genome Mate Pro to harvest information and keep track of my research. 

(3) Email addresses are available for each match. (Though I have not tried any, so don't know to what extent they are valid.)

(4) There are many matches at GEDMatch that I don't find on the other services that I use. However, since I'm having trouble identifying these matches, this may not be useful.

(5) You can upload your DNA file from any testing service. Ancestry and 23andMe do not allow this. MyHeritage does allow this, though I'm not sure what limitations they currently impose on free uploaded DNA data vs. DNA analyzed at MyHeritage. 

At this point, I would not recommend GEDMatch unless you are an advanced DNA user with an extensive tree and many DNA matches identified with other services. (It's possible that the lack of close matches is an anomaly for my DNA and others would benefit more. I have no knowledge of this, yet.)

Book: The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherfurd

Edward Rutherfurd wrote a pair of historical fiction novels called The Dublin Saga: The Princes of Ireland (2004) and The Rebels of Ireland (2006). I don't generally enjoy non-fiction, so these types of books are my way of learning some history and, more enjoyably, getting an historical setting for people and places in my family history.

The Princes of Ireland begins with mythical peoples and progresses through the druids, Christianity, the Vikings, conquest by England and subsequent centuries of rule. The Rebels of Ireland continues from about 1600 with the powerful animosity between Catholics and Protestants, the constant back and forth between British rule and Irish independence, takes us through the horrible Great Famine, the schism between Ulster and Catholic Ireland, rebellions, the rise of Sinn Fein, and through the partition of Ireland. I found especially interesting the intertwining of the American Revolution, relationships with France, massive emigration to America, which were occurring in about the same time period as the emigration of our Irish and French ancestors to America. The descriptions of the religious animosities between Catholics, Protestants, and Puritans added context even to the earlier emigration of Puritans to the New World, also part of our family history.

Though the saga is principally located in and around Dublin, the famine takes place mostly in Ennis, in west Ireland, and some of the stories include other counties. In Princes, Rutherfurd explains origins of many place names and families. Written very recently, he explains that the historical context that he portrays includes the current understanding of Irish history. I enjoyed these books immensely.