Genealogy

  Genetic Genealogy in Practice by Blaine T. Bettinger, Debbie Parker Wayne. National Genealogical Socety; 2016 Chapter 1: Basic Genetics Questions to which you will want to know the answers What are the types of nuclear DNA? Autosomal Sex: X, Y What is the other DNA which can be tested for genealogical purpose?   Mitochondrial Which test can be taken only by one sex?   Y If the mother of a family has died, which of her children can be tested for mitochondrial DNA?   Any or all of them From which parent do you get your Y dna ?  Father  Your X?   Men: mother. Women: both What are the DNA variations tested for genealogical purposes?   SNPs and STRs(Y). Both are often called "markers." What is a SNP?  S ingle nucleotide p olymorphism What is an STR?   S hort t andem r epeat How much of our DNA is identical to all other humans?   99.9% What is a DNA match?   Enough matching DNA with a person above the threshold, usually 5-10 or 20...

As the year draws to a close, it feels time to start something new in a an old container: this blog. I've been writing for my society at  https://skcgs.blogspot.com/ . I've learned a lot about DNA and how to do better research, and it's about time to tell some of the stories uncovered along the way.  I'll also be writing here for the new study group we are beginning in January, of the book Genetic Genealogy in Practice .  First though, new book for Christmas: Mastering Genealogical Proof , by Thomas W. Jones, 2013: National Genealogical Society, Arlington, VA Thank you Paul & Tara! It is a textbook, with questions at the end of every chapter.  Mastering Genealogical Proof Chapter One: Genealogy's Standard of Proof 1. What is genealogy? Genealogy is the study of families, known and unknown, by "accurately reconstructing forgotten or unknown identities and relationships of all sorts.[1] Research is drawn from all sorts of records, including those created by ...

This Veteran's Day is more special than usual because this is the centenary of the Armistice in Europe. So I was very excited to discover that my aunt Florence Estella Rawles who was born and died in Montana (1925-2007), trained for the World War II Cadet Nursing Corps in both Montana State College in Great Falls, Montana and in Providence Hospital in Seattle! It seems that the war was over before she was sent to serve, and later married my uncle Hollis McBee. When I shared this new information with some of my genealogy buddies, David got excited because he also had an aunt who served in the Nursing Corps, and also trained in or around Seattle. However, it turns out that his aunt served in the Great War, which we now call the First World War. David sent me his research on his great-aunt, which has been written up so well that this will be a guest post. "Zowitza Nicholas left Dawson to study nursing in Seattle. She joined the American nursing corps and served in France, ...

SKCGS is on the move! At the last Board Retreat, we created a twitter account and set up a blog. Follow @skcgs1 and watch the website to see the blog go live soon. Our newsletter will publish a final issue, at which point our blog will be our broadcast to the world about South King County past, records and stories and how you can help our society preserve and educate about these resources. The big story is our Seminar which is coming up Saturday, September 22 at Salish Hall on the Green River College campus in Auburn. Register now! http://skcgs.org/2018-seminar.html If you have not yet registered, please do it now!

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 ...

I was reading the excellent genealogy blog on  https://wasgs.org/blog , and came across the Tip of the Week: https://wasgs.org/blog/2017/12/01/seattle-genealogical-society-tip-of-the-week-58/  about surname search in the National Archives Catalog . Just put your surname of interest in the search box at the top right of the home page: http://archives.gov . I did so and my first hit was an unknown cousin! I searched for "baysinger" and the first hit was  https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-lists/wa-alpha.pdf . I was both saddened and proud to read of my cousin's sacrifice and service. Using MyHeritage to search for Donald Freeman Baysinger  with the keywords of his hometown Buckley, Pierce County, Washington where my daddy used to live, led right to FamilySearch  where I found his family tree. We share gxgrandparents Peter Baysinger 1808–1886 and Elizabeth Rice 1814–1895 whose gravestone my cousin Terri placed for ...

For quite awhile, I've been cautioning people that 23&me did not want genealogists, and was not serving us. Now although they still hide the tools, they are available. First, many people have now "opened" their profiles, allowing matches to see what the match IS. Of course this is the default on all other sites. And I've figured out how to see all those opened matches on your matches page:  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/#people . Sort by Open Sharing . Now for the fun stuff. Go to  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/dna/  and search for your first open match. The code controlling the search is a bit funky, but keep at it and search for the rare part of the name, rather than the common part -- "hiram" rather than "smith". One can compare two other users as well as with yourself. I do that before before writing to people, so I can give them a bit of information. Be sure to scroll down below the simplified chromosome map to the...

This book by Alondra Nelson is only tangentially about genealogy and family history and sheds no light about how to use DNA to do research. It is about how our recent knowledge of the genome has fundamentally changed how we view facts about our ancestors. The modern popularity of genealogy research began with Roots as a mini-series being televised in 1977. Before then, genealogy in the US had been mostly an upper-class pursuit, by white people. Of course, the LDS (Mormon) church had long been encouraging their members to document their ancestry -- also a mostly white project. Roots changed that, and now there are large numbers of black Americans looking for their ancestors both black and white, slave and free. And many want to go beyond the racialized labels assigned by the culture and the records and the African continent to find ancestral countries or tribal groups of origin. Research both archaeological and "coroner's method" removal of graves in the "Negro ...

If you have been considering buying a DNA test to use for genealogy, here are a few things to consider. First, have you found most of your ancestors through old-fashioned research? If not, DNA might not yield you much information. That said, even if you are adopted and don't know much about your birth lineage, with a lot of work, you can make some matches, and learn more. However, the more you know, the better you will be able to use what you learn from DNA. Next, what sort of test will help you learn the most? If you want to learn more about your "surname line," that of your birth father, his father, and on up -- then you want a yDNA test, and FamilyTreeDNA is the only place to get it. You will need a male of this line to do the test; daughters do not inherit their father's yDNA. Of course, you can test a male in *each* of your surname lines, but again, this only tells you about the male lines. You will want to test as many markers as you can afford; at least ...

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...

* Outreach - finding cousins and other relatives * Research - answering questions and solving mysteries * Paying respect - finding and telling the stories of those who can no longer speak All of these aspects of family history research have energized my interest in the past, and I'm liking the new tools available to support that. A few years ago I was fascinated by the new use of DNA in genealogy research, and have used 23andme, Ftdna, and Gedmatch. I started using MyHeritage because 23andme chose to use that site to display family trees. When MyHeritage offered a special deal ($99) for one year of access to their research resources, I bit. One feature I particularly enjoy is that when you find a person in, say, the census, the MH software queues up the rest of the family as well. You can quite easily not just link the family together, but also attach the source attribution to each of them. Another nice feature is their software matching each person in your tree to resou...

Hi everyone, there are lots of ways to delve into history, including genealogy and your own family history research. One of my favorite ways to get a new view on the past is reading a biography. One of my favorites of the past few years is The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy , by David Nasaw. Read more about it  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/books/review/the-patriarch-a-joseph-p-kennedy-biography-by-david-nasaw.html . That book in particular gives some insight about the present political situation both here and in Europe, since Joe Kennedy Sr. was a famous isolationist. Another very revealing one is that of President Wilson in Woodrow Wilson: A Biography . He's more than the president who led us into and through World War I and then failed to create the League of Nations. In some ways he reorganized the American government for the future, and in other ways, by encouraging official segregation, set us back generations. Recently fi...

The Goosics didn't come quite as early as the Disneys, and were not as numerous as the Baysingers. Here is what I find on a search of the Warren Co. IA Genweb: WARREN COUNTY TAX LIST – 1855 in Washington Township: Goosic, Andrew Index of Warren County Marriages 1849-1899 (Brides) BRIDE GROOM DATE Goosic, Delilah Nichollson, Elisha 15 Oct 1854 Goosic, Margaret Stierwalt, William A. 14 Apr 1870 Goosic, Mary Nichelson, William 8 Aug 1866 Goosic, Sarah Basinger, Elias H. 15 Aug 1861 Wilkinson, Nora C. Goosic, James E. 1 Mar 1877 Index of Warren County Marriages 1849-1899 (Grooms) GROOM BRIDE DATE Nichelson, William Goosic, Mary 8 Aug 1866 Nichollson, Elisha Goosic, Delilah 15 Oct 1854 Goosic, A. T. Jr. [Andrew Jackson Jr.] Burner, Lavina 17 Jun 1813 Goosic, James E. Wilkinson, Nora C. 1 Mar 1877 In order to take a more global look, I went to Linkpendium's Goosic page . * Findagrave reports 54 Goosic graves, mostly in Nebraska, some in Iow...

The history of the Disneys in Warren County, Iowa begins very early, 1846, and continues in pioneer deaths, as is told in the Warren County, Iowa Genweb page here:  http://www.iagenweb.org/warren/cemeteries/carlislehistory.html . Hadleys, Ormes and Browns, and even a connection to the underground railway during the Civil War also weave into this story. Names, dates and places: * Jacob Disney arrived in the Summerset-Carlisle, Iowa, area in the spring of 1846, from Knox County, Ohio. With him: Richard Hadley and Jacob's brother Mordecai Disney. * Hadley and Disney were the first burials in Carlisle Cemetery, in summer 1846, both dead of cholera. *  Eliza and Joseph Petre, relatives of Disney, finished out the claim and deeded the cemetery to the county in 1860. Eliza and Joseph's son, Albert Petre , was the first [white] child born in that area. * Mordecai Disney , blacksmith, later went to California (1849?) to dig for gold. * "The third burial in Carlisle ...

Quick shout-out to the fine work that Iowa GenWeb does. My mother was born in Warren County, and her Baysingers, Disneys, Goosics had all been there for generations. Her father's people, the McBees were there for a time as well. (Below is what is found for the Baysingers, not including the Census, which I find at MyHeritage.) Tonight I happened upon a database I've never heard of before, the OLD AGE PENSION TAX LIST – 1935 Otter Township Assessor’s List of Those Subject to Old Age Pension Tax for the Year 1935,  Otter Township, Warren County, Iowa , Filed March 16, 1935 by A. H. Traub, Warren County Auditor To the Treasurer of said County: This book contains a complete list, arranged alphabetically, of residents of Otter Township in the said county, who are over 21 years of age, and subject to a tax of $2.00, payable in 1935 for the benefit of the Old Age Pension Fund, as required by Section 34, Chapter 19, Acts of the Forty-fifth General Assembly in extraordinary sessio...