This presentation has been recorded and is available for immediate download. If you ordered and did not receive, please email me at mjnrootdig@gmail.com and I’ll take care of it. In this presentation, we will discuss new and not-so-new features of AncestryDNA matches, including: Groups Notes ThruLines Starred matches Filters Searches Our focus will be on practical, straight-forward applications of these features with particular attention paid to problem-solving and documentation of your analytical process. Also discussed will be the creation of a customized spreadsheet to track your work and to assist in planning your analysis. Our goal is not to confuse you with how complicated we can make things, but to help you actually use the new tools at AncestryDNA to make the most of them. And to do […]
We’ve mentioned it before, but reminders never hurt. Before you spend hours searching an online database, determine how complete the database is. Some sets of data include all records in a specific series. Others may be in progress, only including part of the time span the title covers. The webpage title may say the materials are from 1850 to 1950, with 1850-1855, 1870-1880, and 1940-1950 being included. Always read the details.
Many genealogists start work on their DNA matches trying to figure out their “brick wall.” While that’s definitely a long-term goal, it may not be the best way to start. If you are new to DNA analysis, it might be good to work on your matches for those families where you think “you know everything” already. It’s a great way to build up your skills and learn about DNA methodology. There will be “less to learn” since you already have the family worked up. And you will be better prepared for working on those “brick walls.” You may also discover that you don’t know as much about the “already done” family as you thought you did.
“”Through DNA analysis, I was able to determine the grandparents of a relative whose biological father was unknown. There’s no way at this point to determine which of their sons was the father of the child in question, but it’s clear that one of them was. And a photo of a first cousin of that relative indicated they shared facial features. The similarities between their faces was a nice addition to my DNA evidence, but it really is not considered any sort of evidence itself. We have all seen siblings who bear little physical resemblance to each other and as the relationship becomes more distance the similarities can become even fewer. But distant relatives can share some common facial features or looks. But it’s not the sort of […]
There is still time to register or pre-order my August 2019 AncestryDNA webinar. Attendance links have been sent out and pre-orders can be ordered at a lower introductory rate. Details are on our announcement page–there’s still time!
Did you know there were “second enumerations” of Indianapolis, New York City, and Philadelphia in the 1870 US census? If your relative lived in one of these cities are their enumerations exactly the same? Browse the 1870 census at FamilySearch for these or other localities.
If a person refers to someone else as their “natural child,” it usually means that the parents of the child were not married at the time the child was born. Wills are one place where an individual can acknowledge a child as their “natural child.”
A colonial era deed in what’s now the United States indicated that your ancestor was the grantee on a deed where he was listed as the assignee as someone else. The probable situation is that that “someone else” initially had rights to obtain that property and that “someone else” sold those rights and/or transferred those rights to your ancestor and then your ancestor obtained the property. Here’s the but: if you are looking at a transcription of the deed with this phrasing in it, get an original image of the document so that you can see it completely for yourself. Read the whole thing and transcribe the whole thing. And if it doesn’t make sense: ask someone about it. Look up the meaning of words you don’t know. […]
Many genealogists are self-trained and learn about sources and methods as their research progresses. Hands-on learning, directed towards your research goals is fine, but there can easily be gaps in knowledge when one learns this way. Have you read a general research how-to book or a guide to research in the areas where your families lived? It’s still helpful to read how-to books and guides after you’ve researched for some time. We all have something to learn? What have you learned recently?
Looking at everything you can possibly find is the best way to get as much information as possible. But there are times when that does not happen. Draft registration cards of single men are one thing to pay close attention to. Who did they list as the person who would always know their address? It’s often a parent or sibling. This can be a good way to get additional married names of widowed mothers or sisters and residences of family members who might have been highly mobile.
Indexes to print materials and printed books that are themselves indexes are not all created the same. Always read the preface to see exactly what material was used to create the index. For a book that has it’s own index, read the introduction to the index (if there is one) too see if there are any comments that are relevant. And in books that are themselves indexes, determine how the index is sorted. It might not be strictly alphabetical–I used an index where the items were sorted by year and then by name. I’ve used indexes where the women were indexed with their first and maiden names in reverse order to facilitate finding them when only their first name was known. And I’ve seen other variations. Indexes to […]
I’m analyzing a series of documents from Bedford County, Virginia, on what are likely one woman, the two men with whom she reproduced, her grandchildren, and the spouses of the grandchildren. There are at least two people who were married twice, a few more I think might have been married twice, and too many people with the same first and last name. I don’t have the exact family structure figured out and I’m not certain who is who and how they fit. Yet. I’m taking a back seat to putting all the relationships in my database and tying specific documents to people. After all, I’m not certain which John Carter a record refers to. One approach that I’m trying is making a chronology of every date mentioned in […]
Years ago, when I was still new to research, I was working on a family where the husband purchased federal land in 1849–about 200 miles from where he and his wife (and her extended family) were living. They had been married about three years when the property purchase was made. The couple were easily located in the 1850 census and in later records in that county until his death. A search of the 1850 census for the county did not turn up anyone listed with the wife’s last name. Based upon that, I assumed that her family did not move to the county with them. The wife died before any “good” vital records were kept in the location where she died and extensive searches for her family members […]
There’s a reasonable chance that your ancestor’s family of origin was a “his, hers, and ours” family. Death of a spouse during their childbearing years was not all that unusual before 1900 and for economic or social reasons, a widow/er with children frequently chose to marry again. That may have resulted in a family where some children were the husband’s by a first marriage, some children were the wife’s by a previous marriage, and some resulted from their marriage to each other. Sometimes records will make this clear. Other times it will not. Keep yourself open to this possibility. And it’s also possible that there was a child that resulted from a relationship outside of a marriage.
Some names just seem to have more spelling variants that do others. Remember that vowels sometimes can be interchanged with each other, some letters can be misinterpreted, some clerks did not care, and some ancestors didn’t either. Keep a list of variant spellings and transcriptions for your names of interest. And remember that spelling variants are different from transcription variations.
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