Genealogy

Rootsweb was offline for some months, and is now coming back online, one piece at a time. First to return was World Connect: https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ and the Message Boards have continued to work and were not offline. http://boards.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ Now lists have been upgraded and restored, and the archives are being re-filled from backups. Find your way here: https://mailinglists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/listindexes/ . Create a new login here: https://mailinglists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/lists/setupmail . Once you have set up your account, you will be able to control list mail and how you receive it. Remember to link older email accounts as well. Washington State lists are here: https://mailinglists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/listindexes/USA/Washington/ -- including the Washington State Genealogical Society lists. If you would like to support this effort, why not become a listowner? Create a login: https://mailinglists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/lists/setupadmin and ...

Given the way that autosomal DNA tests for genealogy work, there are two things that are important for success in using that DNA data to find matches: finding your ancestors back to ten generations, and finding all possible descendants from them. I came to this conclusion after reading the excellent blog post, How Much of Your Family Tree Do You Know? And Why Does That Matter?   where the author says, whenever we make a conclusion about a particular ancestor or ancestral couple based on segments of DNA shared with a relative, we absolutely must address whether we do, or could, share other ancestors with that relative. The author made a nice little chart summarizing how much he knew, so I did the same thing. Mine is not as pretty, but here it is anyway: Key:   Generation: from me; Relationship: to me; Date of Birth: roughly averaged; Matches: description; # Poss. Anc.: total number of possible ancestors in each generation; # Identified: number of ancestors identified...

I've loved the search for genealogy and my family's history since my children were young. I wanted to understand my roots, and why some of the difficulties my family endured happened, and how those events changed all those who were touched by them. I found young orphans, babies born before marriage, rape, and tragic death by fire among the more normal events. I've also found some family lines that are rather well-researched, which took away the challenge. For some years other projects took my time. Then, the yDNA tests became affordable, and I bought an Family Tree DNA kit for my dad for Father's Day. Because those "beginner kits" don't tell you much, and have far too many meaningless matches, I kept paying for upgrades, all the way up to 67 markers. This took his high-quality matches down to under 10, but as we followed up on these matches, we realized that this line of Cowans came from Stirling, in Scotland. The recorded part of the family went to t...

It took me a year to really start using 23andme. I think it was because it is hard to know what to do. Recently I got tired of waiting for something to happen, and decided to just wade in and make it happen. As of now, I have over 85 people I'm sharing with, with another 252 invitations to share. Altogether, tonight I have finished contacting all 962 matches that they report, unless I skipped someone inadvertently. The page where you can make this happen too is https://www.23andme.com/you/relfinder/ . This page links every match up to 1000, and you can sort it various ways. What I did first was sort it this way and that, randomly messaging people, with very few responses. When I got serious, instead I made a little text: We may be related according to 23&me. I've been doing genealogy research for quite awhile, and my old GEDCOM is online at Rootsweb: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~valoriez. And GEDMATCH: kit # M186808 Main surnames are Baysinger, Booth, Cowan, Disn...

How to search the mailing list archives : http://genweblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/searching-list-archives-by-joan-young.html List Archives : start at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ to browse, or click the Search link to search one or all of the Rootsweb lists. http://lists.rootsweb.com/ if you don't know what list you want. Formulaically - Archiver (browse) : http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/LISTNAME One wonderful tool Rootsweb has, that many people fail to use, is the Post-Em . You can place Post-Ems on individual records found in WorldConnect , the Social Security Death Index , User-Contributed Databases , and some of the other available vital records databases . Don't forget to register your research interests in the Rootsweb Surname List . If you have a website, add a link to the RootsWeb Resource Pages . If you don't have a website yet, get one ! Once you have created it, register it . Search all of Rootsweb with Google , by clicking Advanced Search , filling in yo...