Get Into the Cycle

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to, you can blame it on FamilyTreeDNA and their darn Family Finder test. Chasing after all the matches of my of two 6th cousins, three grandparents, two parents, and one friend is almost as bad as chasing down those little green leafs in my Ancestry.com tree. If I’ve learned anything at all from this experience, (1) it is VERY time consuming and (2) YOU HAVE TO BUILD YOUR TREES! The latter has brought me the most success. I know it may seem counterproductive since the whole point of taking a DNA test is to help you with your genealogy…but once you get into it, it eventually begins to make sense.

You might even see a cycle form:

Here are some tips to help get you started. 

1. Go back through your notes to see if you missed anything
2. Talk to old contacts to see if they’ve found anything new
3. Take advantage of the online trees that are posted with your match’s profile
4. If you and your match’s ancestors with a common surname lived in the same place at the same time, chances are, they were connected
5. Don’t just build your tree – build theirs too and look for an intersection between your family lines

You can download your match’s online tree from your ftDNA match page by following these easy directions: 

1. Click the little green pedigree icon beside your match’s name 
2. When the new page opens, right click then select to “view page source”
3. Click Ctrl + A then Ctrl + C to copy the entire page
4. Go to James Kelly’s website and paste the source code into the box and click the submit button

A GEDCOM will download. You can then import the GEDCOM into your genealogy software. I usually create a new file in my Family Tree Maker software then use Ancestry.com to build it out. 

Check out my latest post about finding a new Nix cousin through DNA testing and genealogical research – DNA Testing – My Closest Match Yet

DNA Testing - My Closest Match Yet

My grandfather got a “close match” recently, falling between 2nd and 4th cousins on FamilyTreeDNA. Out of all eight kits that I manage, this is the first time I have seen a “close match.” I didn’t pay it much attention at first because the surnames he had listed were Davis, House, and Nix which I’ve found are common in just about every single one of my grandfather’s matches. But I kept it in my radar because his match also listed Missouri in his location list.

A couple of months went by and then I received an email from this match’s wife. She was proposing a possible connection based on some documentation she also sent to me. Her husband’s ancestor was Winnie Frances NIX Crafton. She wanted to know if it was possible that Winnie was the daughter of John NIX of Marshall County, Tennessee, and if so, did my Nix ancestor also happen to descend from the same John Nix.

The John NIX she referred to was enumerated on the 1870 Obion County, Tennessee Census Report.[1] According to the census report, John was 45 years old, placing his date of birth around 1825. Although relationships are not indicated on the 1870 census, it is implied that the next person in the list, Elizabeth Nix, is his wife. She was ten years younger, born about 1835 in TN. There were ten additional people listed in the household, including my ancestor, Dora G NIX, 6 years old, born approximately 1864 in TN. Also living in the household was a Winnie F NIX. According to the people who transcribed this census report, her name looked more like Minnie and was indexed as such. Someone made a correction to her name, though, and changed it to Winnie F NIX. Winnie F Nix was 13 years old, born about 1857 in TN.

1870 Obion Co., TN Census Report for John Nix

Here is an abstract of the above census report -

1870 Obion Co., District 3, TN census report:
21 July 1870 225/225
John Nix, 45 yo (b. abt 1825), TN
Elizabeth Nix, 35 yo (b. abt 1835), TN
Milton M Nix, 16 yo (b. abt 1854),  TN
Mary S Nix, 15 yo (b. abt 1855),  TN
Winnie F Nix, 13 yo (b. abt 1857),  TN [Indexed as Minnie] ← My match’s ancestor
John Robert Nix, 12 yo (b. abt 1858) TN
Minerva P Nix, 9 yo (b. abt 1861),  TN
Sarah I Nix, 8 yo (b. abt 1862), TN
Dora G Nix 6 yo (b. abt 1864),  TN ← My Ancestor
Tennessee F Nix 3 yo (b. abt 1867),  TN
Zilpha L Nix, 2 yo (b. abt 1868),  TN
Acy N Nix, 7 mo (b. abt 1870),  TN
NARA Film M593, Roll 1552, Page 91 (penned)

In 1860, John and Elizabeth NIX were living in Marshall County, Tennessee, which is located in the middle of the State of Tennessee. Evidently they moved “West” between 1860 and 1870 as Obion County, where they were enumerated on the 1870 census, is in the North Western part of the State. There are about 225 miles between Marshall and Obion Counties today.

According to the 1860 census [2], John NIX was 36 years old, born about 1824 in Tennessee. “Winnie” NIX was 3 years old, born about 1857 in Tennessee. My ancestor, Dora NIX, was not yet born. Monroe, Mary, John and Minerva were also living in the household along with his presumed wife, Elizabeth NIX. They were still living in the house on the 1870 Obion County, Tennessee census as well, so I’m certain these two families are one and the same.

1860 Marshall Co., TN Census Report for John Nix

Now you might be wondering how we were so sure that this was the right family for our Winnie and Dora Nix. Good. Because I did just that too. If you question your own work, that means others will question it too. And if that happens, then that just means you haven’t built a solid enough case to prove your point. And we don’t ever want that to happen, now do we? The key to conducting good research is to follow all leads. In this case, that means looking at the other family members.

My ancestor Dora Nix married to William or James Davis about 1882. To date I have not found any documentation of this marriage which probably took place in either TN or AR. The date of 1882 is estimated from the birth of their first known child, Lou Ella Davis. She was born either 1882 or 1884 in Hardy, Sharp County, Arkansas. Her date of birth is unclear because her death certificate says she was born in 1882 [3] and her headstone says she was born in 1884 [4]. But that’s a story for another day. Also, it is unclear what the name of Dora’s husband was because the death certificates of her two daughters had two different names listed - one said Bill Davis [5] and the other said James Davis [6]. I will eventually need to come back to this conflicting information and resolve it. But for now, let’s move on.

On February 12th, 1890, Dora remarried to William Carpenter in Sharp Co., Arkansas [7], with whom she had four more children, and they were enumerated together on the 1900 Sharp Co., Arkansas Census Report [8].

William Carpenter had also been previously married to a woman named Catherine Warren. Their daughter Ellenora Carpenter married Dora and Winnie Nix's brother John Robert Nix about 1880. They had six children before Ella Nora died in 1898. She was buried in the Old Baptist Cemetery in Ash Flat, Sharp Co., Arkansas along with her father William Carpenter, husband John Nix, and several children [9].

Did you catch the fact that Dora Nix's brother John married to Dora's step-daughter? Sigh. Well yeah, that's how things were done back then I guess.

Back to the DNA....

I gave you the story about Dora and John Robert who both moved from Tennessee to Arkansas, but what ever happened to their sister Winnie Frances Nix? Well we know that she got married and had children because one of her descendants came back as a DNA match to my grandfather. It just so happens that Winnie married to William Robert Crafton in 1871 [10]. They had six children together, all born in Tennessee. In fact my grandfather's match's family remained in Tennessee while my family remained in Arkansas. There is no indication that the families knew one another.

Before I learned about my grandfather's match, I had no information about his ancestor, Winnie Nix. After corresponding with his wife, however, I was able to fill in a good chunk of information about her and her family, thus expanding my tree out even further. This is the fun part about corresponding with your matches. I also learned that my grandfather and his match are third cousins once removed. This means they share the same set of 2nd great-grandparents. However, because they are "once removed," my grandfather's match has one more generation between them; therefore John and Elizabeth Nix are his 3rd great-grandparents. I have included their relationship report below:

Relationship Report between my Grandfather and his match

Family Tree DNA predicted they were 2nd to 3rd cousins, so an actual relationship of 3rd cousins, once removed falls right into line with that prediction. They share a total of 126 cM of DNA between them with the longest segment of 29.39 cM being on Chromosome 1.

I hope this blog post will help to encourage you to work with your matches and to keep digging for those common ancestors. More and more testees are being added to each of the three testing companies' databases each month. I know it is overwhelming at times, but finding a connection such as the one outlined in this post can be very rewarding!

I'd love to hear your success stories. Please feel free to leave a comment below or email me.

Sources:
[1] 1870 US Federal Census, Obion County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 3, Troy and Union City, Page 91 (penned), dwelling 225, family 225, John Nix; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : downloaded 24 September 2013); NARA Film M593, Roll 1546.
[2] 1860 US Federal Census, Marshall County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 12, Page 11 (penned), 105 (stamped), dwelling 92, family 75, John Nix; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : downloaded 4 November 2013); NARA Film M653, Roll 1265, FHL Film 805265.
[3] Oklahoma State Department of Health, Death Certificate No. 10879, Ella Otten, 1 August 1947; Vital Records Service, Oklahoma City.
[4] Lou Ella Otten grave marker, Fairview Cemetery, Shawnee, Oklahoma, Photographed by Ginger Smith, researcher, November 2007.
[5] Death Certificate of Ella Otten, 1947.
[6] Los Angeles County, California, death certificate (22 March 1955), Oceola Clark; County of Los Angeles, Registrar-Recorder / County Clerk, Norwalk. (See her post here)
[7] Michael L Peters, grandnephew of Lou Ella Davis.
[8] 1900 US Federal Census, Sharp County, Arkansas, population schedule, Highland Township, enumeration district (ED) 119, page 44, William Carpenter; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 08 November 2013 ); NARA Film T623, Roll 77.
[9] Old Baptist Cemetery, Ash Flat, Sharp Co., AR. Visited by author, May 2009. Also, see Find-A-Grave Memorial No. 21767505.
[10] 1910 US Federal Census, Houston County, Texas, population schedule, Justice Precinct 4, enumeration district (ED) 71, dwelling 112, family 112, William R Crafton; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 October 2013); NARA Film T624, Roll 1565, FHL Film 1375578; William Crafton was listed as having been married 39 years which in 1910 would have put their date of marriage around 1871.

Using 3rd Party Tools to work with my Family Finder DNA Results

In order to determine if 3 people have a common ancestor, you need to have the following two requirements:

1. All 3 of them must match each other on the same part of the same chromosome
2. All 3 of them must be in common with each other

I often cannot get my In Common Filter to work on the ftDNA site using the procedure I outlined in my last post. So I switched to using a 3rd party tool designed by Rob Warthen called DNAGEDcom.

In order to use this tool, you must first have all of your match's relationship status assigned. You do so by clicking on the orange "assign" button next to everyone's names.

I assign everyone as “distant cousin.”

In order to determine if everyone is set to a relationship status, I log into my account, change the filter to “Show All Matches” and then I click to download all matches to a CSV file.

I open the downloaded CSV file in excel. Then I sort by “Known Relationship.” And if there are any names with a blank known relationship, I go back into my Family Finder match list and search for them and then I change their relationship to “distant cousin.” I then download again to make sure they all “took.”

Once you have all your matches assigned, then you can go to the website http://www.dnagedcom.com

And register for an account.

Then click the Family Tree DNA button at the top.

Enter your kit id and password and then click the “Get Data” button. It will probably 15-20 minutes to download it all.

A zip file will be downloaded to your computer. Unzip the file and it will contain 3 files – match list, ICW list, and chromosome browser list.

Open each file and save as an excel file. Now you can check to see if a match is in common with other matches easily. You can also start analyzing your Chromosome data. It is all downloaded for you nicely and you didn't have to download it 5 people at a time!

Many Thanks to Rob for developing this wonderful tool~!

Using the In Common With (ICW) feature for Analyzing Family Finder DNA Results

In order to determine if 3 people have a common ancestor, you need to have the following two requirements:

1. All 3 of them must match each other on the same part of the same chromosome
2. All 3 of them must be in common with each other

I usually get the most responses from my ftDNA Family Finder matches shortly after I've assigned all of my matches a known relationship. You know, that little orange button that says "assign" beside all of your match names?

Clicking on the "Assign" button brings up a list of relationships you can choose from. If you know for sure what the relationship is between you and your match, then select it from the list. For example, I have had my mom and grandparents tested, so I have set theirs accordingly. But for everyone else, I set to "Distant Cousin." I set this for everyone right off the bat so that I can use the In Common With feature on ftDNA's website. 

Using the In Common With Feature: 

To use this feature, go back up to the top and filter by "In Common With." 

Then you can select the person you want to run an In Common With Report for. All of the people that you have assigned a known relationship for will appear in the drop down list. It is alphabetized by last name. 

When you select a match to run an In Common With report on, a list of all of their matches will be displayed. This feature is very useful, for example, when you have an actual known relative who has taken the test, like a parent or a brother, and you want to see who all matches to them (or just the opposite, you can use the next option down, which is "Not in common with." 

This feature is also important because being in common with someone is one of the two requirements for finding a common ancestor. The second requirement is sharing matching DNA on the same segment of the same chromosome. 

A last word of caution though. I often have trouble getting my In Common With feature to work properly. Oftentimes I run it for someone and the results come up empty. I have started using a 3rd party tool called DNAGedcom. This tool allows me to download ALL of my In Common With data at one time. The only downsides: I have to set a relationship to every single match which can be time consuming and I have to re-download each time I get new matches. 

Please check out my other posts: 

Using the Chromosome Browser in ftDNA

Using Third Party Tools to Work with In Common With Matches 

Using the Chromosome Browser in ftDNA

Here is a quick tutorial on how to use the Chromosome Browser in ftDNA to determine how you match someone on your Family Finder test.

Determining how you match someone is important when you are trying to figure out if you share a common ancestor with someone.

In order to determine if you share a common ancestor with someone, you should first be deemed a match with them from ftDNA. Once you are designated as a match, then you can use the Chromosome Browser to determine HOW you match them.

Go into your ftDNA account, click on the Family Finder button, then click on the chromosome browser link.

Once you are in the chromosome browser, click the drop down box and then select “name.”

Then type in the name you are looking for into the box and click the “Find” button. (Don’t hit “enter” or it won’t work). Click on the little box beside their name to add them to the compare list. 

In this example, I am currently logged in to my cousin's account. If I want to see how she compares to me, then I can simply type my name into the Find box. 

You will see your match light up in the chromosomes on the right. Then click the “Download to excel (CSV Format)” Link at the top to export to excel. Open the downloaded CSV file in Excel to see the chromosomes that you match to that person on. 

Triangulation

You are probably wondering how or why this tool is important. Let's say for example you start emailing with one of your matches - we will call you Person "A" and your match Person "B" - and they ask you if you are a match to a 3rd person "C." If you (Person "A") match to Person "B" and Person "B" matches to Person "C" and you (Person "A") also match to Person "C," then the three of you might have a common ancestor. This is called the "Triangulation" process. 

That all 3 people are a match to each other is not the only requirement though. All 3 people must match each other on the same segment of the same chromosome of DNA. And the only way to know this for sure is if all 3 people share their chromosome data with each other - Chromosome data that is downloaded from their chromosome browser. 

So really, it's not just one name that will be loaded into the chromosome browser - but two. 

So next time one of your matches sends you a strange email asking you if you are a match to a 3rd person (or 4th, 5th, and so on), don't delete it. Just follow the instructions I provided above and send the data to them and I promise it will help you get through your DNA results and find those elusive ancestors! 

Kelly Wheaton has published some excellent tutorials on genetic genealogy. Please give her site a look. I have included the link to Tutorial # 9: working with your matches

My next post will be on Using the In Common With Feature to Analyze your Family Finder DNA Results

Comparison of Relationship Report to ftDNA prediction

Click to enlarge my Relationship Report

In my last post, I talked about my paternal grandmother's new autosomal DNA match. We found our common ancestors to be Henry TATE and Sarah NETHERLAND. Family Tree DNA predicted that this match and my grandmother were 5th to Remote Cousins.

I asked this match to send me her direct line descendancy and then I entered them into my RootsMagic software, starting from her descendancy from Henry Tate and Sarah Netherland through their daughter Mary Tate Davis. I then did a relationship comparison and learned that my grandmother and her match were

6th cousins, 1x Removed

Being 6th cousins would normally mean that they share the same 5th great-grandparents; however because they are 1x removed, their common ancestors are 5th great-grandparents for one of them and 6th for the other.  

Relationships can be compared in RootsMagic by going to Tools / Relationship Calculator. Then enter each person and click the "Calculate" button: 

RootsMagic Relationship Calculator

RootsMagic - Select person to add to Relationship Calculator

RootsMagic - Calculate the Relationship between 2 people

Relationship Reports, like the one displayed here, can also be generated in RootsMagic. 

Click on the Reports Menu / Select Charts / Select the Relationship Chart. Select the people you want to add to the chart. Select the options you want - Birth and death years, Marriage Date and give it a Title. Then click the Generate Report button. 

RootsMagic - Relationship Chart

You can then save the Report as an RTF or a PDF. I like to save them as an RTF and that way I can add text to it later if I want. The RTF contains only a bitmap of the report - the report itself cannot be edited but text can be added to it. 

This process has been helpful in determining if the connection found is linked to the DNA. If the relationship determined in my RootsMagic software matches up with what ftDNA predicted, then there's a good chance that the DNA that is shared between us and our match was inherited from these common ancestors. 

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To Cite This Post:
Ginger R. Smith, "A Tate Family Connection" Genealogy By Ginger, 03 July 2013, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])

A Tate Family Connection...via DNA

Last year I started communicating with one of my Family Tree DNA Family Finder autosomal DNA matches. She matched to my paternal grandmother. This means she is a match on my Father’s side. We compared our surnames and soon realized that we had a common TATE ancestor. Henry Tate and Sarah Netherland were my 7th great-grandparents (and my grandmother’s 5th great-grandparents). They were my match’s 6th great grandparents. This makes my grandmother and her match 6th cousins, 1x removed. This is spot on according to ftDNA's relationship prediction. They predicted that my grandmother and her match were 5th to Remote cousins. 6th cousins fit right in.

Although my match did not have my 6th great-grandmother Ann Nancy Tate who married James Anthony in her genealogy, she did have a daughter named Mary Tate who married Chesley Davis. I had Mary Tate in MY database and she was married to Chesley Davis but I did not have their children or grandchildren’s names. I knew Mary Tate had married Chesley Davis because her father, Henry Tate, had mentioned her in his 1793 Campbell County, Virginia will as “daughter - Mary Davis wife of Chesley Davis.” I shared a copy of Henry Tate’s will with my match and she was able to add all of Mary’s siblings to her tree, including my ancestor, Ann Nancy Tate who married James Anthony. This is one of the benefits of autosomal testing - building out your tree with information you collect from your matches.

I was able to add 12 new family members to my database just from my match’s direct line alone! That’s 7 generations of children and siblings I have yet to include; These are what we call the “collateral lines.”

In my next post, I will show the relationship report I made between my grandmother and her match. I will also share how I made it and how it can benefit my research.

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Mario Photo:
Copied from Monkey In The Cage website, 2 July 2013. 

To Cite This Post:

Ginger R. Smith, "A Tate Family Connection" Genealogy By Ginger, 03 July 2013, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])

Updated Family Finder DNA Results

Last Month I talked about the changes that Family Tree DNA was making to their popular Family Finder test. They have been converting their Family Finder test results from Build 36 to the NCIB industry-standard Human Genomic Build 37 – the latest version of the autosomal DNA reference data set being used - for the past two months in order to refine their matching algorithms and provide better matches to their customers.  Many customers saw the following message from Family Tree DNA on their homepage this month:

You may notice that some of the matches you had previously are no longer listed. In almost every case, those matches are in the distant and speculative range. Some may be legitimately related, but many were likely “noise”—small coincidental matching segments that create the illusion of matching. The more distant the relationship, the less likely a match can be predicted with confidence. We are aware that you may have spent a significant amount of time researching those matches, but Family Finder was specifically designed to find matches within the past 5-6 generations.

As the field continues to advance, we're obligated to continually apply the latest scientific advances not only to current and future tests, but to those that have already been performed. Sometimes this will involve changes to your results. Because this particular field is still evolving, it is likely that future adjustments will be made to refine your results.

Fortunately, I wasn’t one of the few who completely lost their matches, but I know some people who were.  Before the upgrade, I had 341 matches. At the time I wrote my last blog post on the 25^th of February outlining these changes, I had dropped down to 298 matches. Today I have 304 matches, however 57 of them are new.

How can I tell that they are NEW, you ask?

Prior to the change to the new build, I had assigned a known relationship to every single one of my matches. This is necessary to do in order to look at your In Common With (ICW) matches.  The ICW feature consists of a list of matches that you have in common with at least one other match. So if I am a match with my mother and I want to know who of my matches is also a match to my mother, or In Common With her, then I can use the ICW feature in the drop down box of my Family Finder matches page, select my mother, and then get this list and export it to a file.

At this time, you have to have a known relationship assigned to each person in order to get an ICW list for them. This is the little orange button beside each match’s name that says “Assign.” You do not have to assign a specific relationship, especially if you do not know what it is. I assign “distant cousin” to everyone. And they do not have to “confirm” or accept it for it to work. Family Tree DNA has promised to eliminate this requirement in the future, however we are not sure yet when this will happen.

Once I have assigned “distant relationship” to all of my matches, I can either pull up each match, all 300+ of them one by one in the drop down box and then download their list of ICWs to excel or I can use a nifty tool created by Rob Warthen that is accessible on www.DNAgedcom.com.

To use this tool, all you have to do is register once, then enter your ftDNA kit ID and password (or 23AndMe) and select to download your data. Three files will be downloaded:

1. Your raw chromosome data – this is similar to your chromosome browser data except you don’t have to go through the painstaking task of selecting 5 matches at a time to download, then compiling 40 or 50+ csv files into one excel spreadsheet – this tool does all of this for you automatically
2. Your In Common With file – again, saves you the time by automating the task of selecting your matches one by one in the drop down box and downloading their ICW matches – these are all compiled into one spreadsheet
3. Your list of matches – this is the same file you would download from the list of matches which includes their name, email address and surnames

The download can take up to thirty minutes to download, so let it rip. Also, it only works if you have every single one of your matches assigned as a distant cousin or some known relationship.

So going through my list of matches again, anyone who has an orange “Assign” button beside their name I have labeled as a new match. In last month’s post I also mentioned that Family Tree DNA was allowing people from other companies such as 23AndMe to transfer their test results to the ftDNA database (which is one of the reasons they had to upgrade to the latest genomic build). So some of these new matches might be 23AndMe matches.

I am excited to be back on track with my matches and to finally be able to work with 23AndMe matches. I am also hopeful that the new algorithms will results in better quality matches. Genetic genealogy is a time consuming “hobby.” Any and all tools that can help to streamline the process of building connections are welcome.

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To Cite This Post:

Ginger R. Smith, "Updated Family Finder DNA Results" Genealogy By Ginger, 24 March 2013, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])

Changes Coming to Your Family Finder Test Results

For the past couple of months, ftDNA has been in the middle of upgrading from build 36 to build 37 in reporting their Family Finder autosomal DNA results. This means they are refining their matching algorithms, specifically based on how the centimorgans values, or the length of DNA shared, are determined and reported. This refinement will reduce the amount of false positives between you and your matches and hopefully result in more accurately predicting relationships between you and your matches.

We are just starting to see the results of these changes come through. But unfortunately, as of ftDNA's announcement on February 24th, 2013, there were some problems with the new build and some kits are having to be re-run.

What does this mean?

If you log in to your account and see a significant decrease in the number of matches it could be for one of two reasons:

1) Their tests are being re-run and when they pass QC will be uploaded back into the database. If they are a true match they will show back up again

2) These matches were refined, identified as false positives, and removed from your results

There is hope!

You may not know this, but at the same time ftDNA is trying to convert to this new build, they are also allowing for test results from other companies such as 23AndMe to be uploaded to their system. This is beneficial because now testers from 23AndMe will be matched up with matches in ftDNA's database and ftDNA testers will receive additional matches from people who took the 23AndMe test. It is a win-win situation for all parties.

In case you are wondering, people who took the 23AndMe test are able to transfer their test results to the ftDNA database for $89.00!!!

Here is a snapshot of my match results for the various tests I manage. I currently manage 6 tests on ftDNA:

Name	#Matches on 2/16	# Matches on 2/25	Change
Me	341	298	- 43
My Mom	376	345	- 31
Grandmother	467	396	- 71
Friend	299	247	- 52
Cousin	292	205	- 87
Cousin’s Half-Sister	351	276	- 75

I’m very excited that our results will be better refined and false positives will be reduced by this new build. I’m equally excited about our match database being opened up to 23AndMe uploads. I’m sure the 23AndMe testers are the most excited as they will now have the advantage of being matched from two databases, not just one. Likewise, integration with the ftDNA database will ensure a much higher success at match interaction and building genealogical connections as these testers did not join for health reasons, like many at 23AndMe did.

What can you do?

I would refrain from spending a lot of time analyzing your chromosome data or looking at your list of In Common Withs until the build has been completed and the 23AndMe data has been uploaded. Continue working with the folks you have been in contact with. Re-run your data after the new build to ensure they are still a match to you, especially if you have not yet found a connection.

Let me know in the comments below how your numbers are progressing. You can look up the number of matches you have by clicking on the chromosome browser. In the list of names, it shows 1 of 10 of ____ total matches.

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To Cite This Post:

Ginger R. Smith, "Changes Coming to Your Family Finder Test Results" Genealogy By Ginger, 25 February 2013, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])

Determining a genealogical connection using Ancestry.com online family trees - Part 2

In my last post, I talked about how to find an Ancestry.com online family tree using a Google search. So now I have identified my match, I have found her online family tree, where do I go from here?

How do I find a connection between us?

I will start by looking at her online family tree in pedigree view. I will assume that my match is the home person in this tree marked as "private." This view illustrates my match's ancestry from her to all 16 of her 2nd great-grandparents.

I don’t recognize any of the people listed in the first page of this pedigree. So I start by clicking through each of the arrows one by one to expand the tree. I start at the top with Leroy Beauchamp. Clicking on the arrow beside his name brings up the expanded trees for the Beauchamp-Martin family. This view shows her ancestry back to her 6th great-grandparents.

The Family Finder test says it can find matches up to the 5th cousin level. 5th cousins share the same 4th great-grandparents. So I should be able to find a connection to my match without going any further back in her tree. I don't see any familiar surnames in the Beauchamp-Martin family tree, so I’m ready to move down to her 2nd great-grandmother, Nancy Ellen Layman. To return to the original view of her 2nd great-grandparents, I simply click on the minus button beside Leroy Beauchamp's name. This will bring the original pedigree chart back into view. Next I click on the arrow beside Nancy Ellen Layman. Again, I go through the surnames, but I do not see any in common. I click the minus sign beside her name to collapse the tree and do the same for the remaining 14 of her 2nd great-grandparents (except for Thomas W. Dyer who does not have any ancestors listed).

When I expand the ancestors of Thomas Daniel Dendy, I see a familiar surname - TINSLEY. I wrote about them last week in my Follow-up Friday post. My match's 6th great-grandmother is Rachel Tinsley. This is what it looks like in expanded view:

I hover my mouse over the name of Rachel Tinsley and I see that she died in Newberry County, South Carolina. My Tinsleys were from Laurens County, South Carolina. My curiosity piqued, I then expand the tree further to show me the Tinsley family by clicking on the arrow beside Rachel Tinsley's name.

The expanded tree includes Thomas Tinsley I and II as the father and grandfather of Rachel Tinsley. BINGO! That’s it! Thomas Tinsley I was the 9th great-grandfather of my match and the 10th great-grandfather of me, making us 9th cousins 1x removed. Our common ancestor is Thomas Tinsley II and his wife Sarah Jackson.

Just for kicks and giggles, I kept going, looking through my match's pedigree. I got down to the very bottom and expanded the tree for Nancy E. Minter, another one of my  match’s 2nd great-grandmothers. Doing so pulled up two Hill ancestors. Hill is another common name that comes up a lot when doing the Family Finder test. I didn't recognize the Abner Hill or Tibitha Hill that showed up in this view, so I expanded their trees further. As it turns out, both Abner and Tilitha Hill turned out to be children of Robert Hill and Tabitha Green. And as it turns out, their grandchildren intermarried with each other (see Abner Hill Minter and Charity Chapman in the red box).

To my surprise, I am also connected via Robert Hill and Tabitha Green's daughter Ann Hill who married John Steed in Brunswick County, Virginia. Robert Hill was my 9th great-grandfather. He was my match's 7th great-grandfather, making us 8th cousins, 2x removed (in addition to being 9^th cousins, 1x removed on the Tinsley line).

Finding a 2nd connection was the "surprise" I mentioned in my last post. I am not really surprised to find a connection so far back as 8^th or 9^th cousins. The test is validated or guaranteed or whatever terminology Family Tree DNA uses in their FAQs to go back to 5^th cousins with a good amount of surety. After that, the DNA gets diluted. In fact, on their FAQs page, they say that the chance of finding a match to a 6^th cousin or more distant is “remote or typically less than 2%.” I have 7 confirmed matches so far and of those 7, 2 are 3^rd cousins, 1 is a 4^th cousin, 1 is a 5^th cousin 3x removed, which can be rounded up to a 6^th cousin; 1 is an 8^th and 1 is a 9^th; and 1 I have not figured out yet.

The reason I'm highlighting this methodology as a post is because when I first started trying to connect with my matches there was a lot of family tree exchanging, especially on Ancestry.com. And the problem I was running into was that I was constantly getting lost in all the profiles of each individual and then losing sight of exactly how my match was connected to the profile I was looking at. In my genealogy software, all of my direct ancestors are color-coded red. So when I look at the index of names, I know immediately who my direct ancestor is. But in Ancestry.com's family trees, especially in the profile view, there are no color coded ancestors.

This is what the list of descendants look like in the profile view. From this view, there is no indication of from whom or how my match is related to Robert Hill. 

I finally figured out that the success to finding a connection to a match is to find the COMMON ANCESTOR and he or she WILL show up in the PEDIGREE VIEW of their tree. I do not have to look at all of the children of everyone in their tree to find my ancestor. I only have to look for the common ancestor. At least this is what has finally started working. So give it a try and let me know if this works for you or not.

Follow-up Friday – Jan 20, 2012

I definitely got sidetracked this week and my surname research took an entirely different turn, but for the better! Even though I have committed myself to setting and following certain goals for the new year, I encountered one of the many quagmires involved with genealogy research and we are only in our 3rd week of the year. I set a few goals for particular surnames that I wanted to research, either because I wanted to learn more about them or because they had presented a brick wall. But I also committed to finding connections to the 178 autosomal DNA matches I have acquired in the 6 months since taking the Family Finder test.

I know I haven't written much about the test and all that is involved in working with my matches (that is also on my goals list - to write more about my experience). But anyone who has taken the test knows that 1) your tree has to be pretty well built up 2) that includes your collateral lines and 3) you will inevitably spend more time exchanging more family and historical data once a match is determined which means building up your tree some more, entering more sources, transcribing more records, etc. but the bottom line is that you will get sidetracked into looking at several different surnames at a time, especially if you have any of those annoying common surnames that you will inevitably have in common with 75% of your matches like Jones, Smith, and Johnson!

So long story short, even though last week I was researching my Ward and Joy, Peters, and Dunlap families and still had a bunch of Ward and Joy information to input into my database, this week I was researching my HARDIN and TINSLEY families!

It started off with one little email to a match who had a few surnames in common with me. I'm not even sure why I picked him. I guess I was bored last weekend and just randomly emailed him. (Now you see why I don't write too many posts about this - wouldn't want the method to my madness getting out). Anyways, he sent me his ahnentafel and told me that we connected through my 6th great-grandmother, Clara Hardin who was born 1793 in Kentucky. She married John Carman LaRue in Maury County, Tennessee in 1811. Clara Hardin's great-grandfather, Mark Hardin, born sometime in the late 1600s, was my match's 7th great-grandfather and my 9th great-grandfather, making my match and I 8th cousins, twice removed!

So I spent the first half of the week (Monday was a holiday for me for MLK's Birthday and then I was out sick one day) looking on the internet at all the conflicting information about where and when said Mark Hardin was born and who his possible parents were. I reviewed sources and analysis and research reports. And then I found out that my cousin Kay Haden (you might remember her because she was featured on the FGS blog as the first registrant for the FGS conference in Birmingham!) is also descended from Mark Hardin! She had done a lot of research on him when she lived in AL years earlier and sent me some stuff to look over.

Then my match and I used this not-always-so-handy-tool called the "In common with" filter on our ftDNA homepage to see who else we both matched to and it came up with two names. I emailed them thinking they might be descendants of Mark Hardin as well. One of them wrote me back and although she did not have and Hardins in her ancestry that she knew of, we did find not one, but TWO connections via the TINSLEY and HILL lines!!! How cool is that???

I never really did much research on my Tinsley line because frankly, there was already tons of information out there on the internet and there looked to be two or three very capable researchers who had posted their research on the internet already, so I figured they had it covered and I could use their research as a guide when the (free) time came. But we know it's never that easy, so of course I had to perform my own research. Including starting an annotated bibliography of the secondary sources on the Tinsley family that came into Virginia in the 1600s which included my ancestor, Thomas Tinsley.

It didn't take long to find the connection to her Tinsley line, even though it was several generations back. It turned out we were 9th cousins 1x removed! She had sent me the name of her Ancestry.com online family tree and I was able to find the link to it by running a google search on it. Her tree was very easy to navigate in the pedigree view and by going through each of her lines I found a 2nd connection to Robert Hill (1678-1766) and Tabitha Brown Green (1690-1765)! My lines goes through their daughter Ann Hill who married John Steed and my match's line goes through their daughter Tabitha Hill who married David Chapman.

I have to admit, I'm getting pretty good at finding connections using genealogical tools like Ancestry.com's online family trees! It does take patience though. Oh and with this connect, we were 8th cousins 2x removed.

So as you can see, I'm a pretty well-rounded genealogist. Or you might say I get bored easily. But I don't think this is a bad thing. Last year I was more focused on one of two things and this year I plan to make more connections and get back to building my tree up some more.

So not bad for a first 3 weeks. Last week I added some new information and worked on breaking down a couple of brick walls. This week I opened two new can of worms and got my brain's juices flowing and started pushing myself to think about how to deal with what I find on the internet, how to resolve conflicts, how to cite my sources, how to deal with not being able to make the report I want to make with my gen software (that's never ending right?), how to find books, and how to start thinking about the historical context of the area that my ancestors lived in. Oh yeah and how cool DNA is! And did you notice that my test seems to be really sensitive? They guarantee to only go back to 5th cousins, but most of my matches have been 8th cousins. I think that's pretty cool!