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])

Review of RootsMagic 5 New features – New Source Features

Review of RootsMagic 5 New features – New Source Features

Last week I attended RootsMagic’s webinar on New Source Features in RootsMagic 5. I don’t yet have RootsMagic version 5. I am still using version 4. But I wanted to get a sneak peek at version 5 before I made a decision to upgrade. I wanted to see if the source features had in fact been improved at all. Here are some things I noted about the new upgrades:

1. You can now hover over the checkmark under the source key to see a list of source names
2. You can click on the check mark under source box to open it directly. This is probably not a new feature, but one that I do not use as often as I should
3. Detail text is now called "Research Notes"
4. RM asks for the name of the source when you are done filling in the source info. It is a popup box. This list is how source records are sourced by
5. The “Master text” is the information on Master source. Source id goes in first box, ie a reference no.
6. The “Source text” is the text about the source and comments about the source. Does this show up in footnotes? reports?
7. “Detail text” is the information about the text or event being discussed, ie research notes, transcription, abstraction, etc. and comments about how it was used.
8. Each option is now a tab going across the top of the source dialog box (instead of buttons on the right)
9. Research notes report: can do for person or family (this is the same): prints research notes chronologically for each source and adds the source name in the footnote – I was disappointed to see that this had not been improved. However, there is a new feature called the Research Manager.

What is the Research Manager? - this is new. It was mentioned, but not discussed.

Randy Seaver wrote all about this in his post “Exploring RootsMagic 5 - Post 2: The Research Manager” from Nov 30, 2011. This looks really cool and might be worth purchasing the upgrade.

Have you purchased the new RootsMagic version 5? What do you like or dislike about it? 

How I use my Genealogy Software

When I started library school and sat in my first archives class my classmates and professor were appalled when I disclosed that I filed copies of my genealogy records in more than one place. For example, a marriage record was filed in both the groom and the bride’s family’s folders. I simply had not decided upon a standardized methodology for filing my paper records yet. At least not one I could remember and subsequently recall within a few seconds. I’m sure many genealogists have elaborate filing systems and treat brides and grooms as “couples” or a specific “family unit” to which only ONE copy of a marriage record would be attributed. But in my mind, that would require remembering who each bride or groom married, more specifically, the groom’s name and without that, I wouldn’t be able to put my hands on the folder. So early on I decided to treat each person as their own individual and thus, they each got a copy of their marriage record.

So as you can see, redundancy is not new to me, nor is it necessarily a bother or inconvenience. So with that said, I would like to share a little bit about how I use my genealogy database. I have evaluated Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic and found them to be very similar in what I like to do with my software. I eventually settled on RootsMagic because of the ability to take it with me on a flash drive. The way I use my genealogy software has been evolving and continues to evolve throughout the years. Which is one reason why I have been hesitating to share what I do with everyone. I didn’t want to come across as a mad woman. Because frankly, I still haven’t decided how I want to do things yet. But oh well, you got to start somewhere and I think it’s important to share and to read about what others are doing and how they are doing it.

Speaking of, Susan Clark of the Nolichucky Roots blog originally started this thread with her “Getting Down to Basics” post in which she asked for people to offer their reasons and ideas for using a genealogy database. She got a lot of great responses. Check out the comments to her post to see what others had to say. I have posted links to other blog posts below.

Ok, so here goes my whackamole approach at trying to give you all of the reasons why and how I use my genealogy database:

1.       It’s a database and it’s searchable. So when I need to look someone up, I just type in their name and it finds them. It does it much faster than Ancestry.com’s online family tree.

2.       My  place names are indexed in addition to my last names. So if I am attending a conference or planning a research trip to Oregon County, Missouri, I can run a report that will tell me all of the people I have associated with Oregon County, Missouri or in Missouri, period. Be sure to watch the Legacy Family Tree video or webinar on how to enter your place names in such a way that cities and towns in Oregon County, Missouri will also be captured in the report. This applies to all software packages. I, unfortunately, have not implemented this organization schema yet, have you?

3.       I use it to manage my sources to document each event. Here is a screenshot of a birth fact for my 2^nd great-grandfather, James Franklin Lasiter. I have 9 sources for his birth date and place. A lot of people wrote about their wish lists for software. If I had to request a change for RM4, it would be that they include the detailed text in the summary box here at the top where it says “Details.” And for all I know, this may be different in RM5 that was just released. As it is now in RM4 you have to click on the source in order for the detail text to be displayed in the bottom right hand box.

4.       Linda McCauley mentioned Research Notes in her post “How I Use my Genealogy Database” using Legacy Family Tree. We have a similar feature in Rootsmagic 4, which is a report called Research Notes that you can run for each person. It is a breakdown of each source and how it relates to each fact and includes notes and so forth. The only problem I have with it is that it puts the name of the source as a footnote and the report itself lists simply a date and place and then a note. For this to work, you would have to include the name of the source in the actual detailed text of the footnote. So I don’t use this feature. But if it worked the way I would like it to work, it could probably be very powerful. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

5.       One thing I’ve started doing is adding census reports as events, in addition to birth, marriage, death, burial, and occasionally occupation. This makes for easily being able to determine when and where my ancestors were enumerated and this event shows up ok on the narrative report. I have tried to add other source-like events such as obituaries, but found they did not display well (or at all) on narrative reports. This could be rectified if I played with my custom settings more. What RM4 lacks in being able to copy and paste citations between family members, it gains in being able to assign a census report to multiple people in a family. I have found this feature to be very helpful and time-saving. I enter the census as an event for the head of house. I then share it with the other members of the household. I enter the information for the census into the census notes and I add a source. When this event is shared with other members of the house, the census note and source citation is automatically entered into their events list. The only difference between the head of house and the rest of the household is that the census note for the head of house is displayed on his or her report, but not on the report of those that the census is shared with. The report simply says “He appeared in the household of John Riley Lasiter in the census in Jun 1880 in Tomlinson, Scott, Arkansas, USA” with a footnote pointing to the citation. Because of this, I make sure to copy the census note information into the general notes of the household members. I usually do this anyways. This is one of the reasons why I say I engage in some redundancy!

6.       Speaking of redundancy. When I first started working with my database back when I was using Family Tree Maker, I used to put all of my information into the citation/footnote, including my analysis and the full text of the item being cited. This is what it used to look like. And unfortunately I still have a LOT of these left in my database:

When I transferred my database over to Rootsmagic, something happened and now I am no longer able to run reports using footnotes that are “that long.” So I have been trying to chop things up a bit more and use the event notes, general notes, and footnotes as separate entities. Unfortunately because I had been doing things for so long and had accumulated so much data, it is very difficult to change it all even if I were to come up with a standardized way of doing things. The two concerns I always had were this: I wanted to be able to easily pull my research notes and analysis out of my database quickly. And if it is scattered between birth notes, death notes, source citation notes, etc., that always seemed like a daunting task. I also wanted to be able to site my sources on my own just in case my footnotes did not work; as was the case when I transferred to RM. So I often built my source citations and then copied them into my notes. But that just cramped the readability of my reports. Especially when the demand to share with others increased. So now I use a hybrid system. I copy everything into my general notes, that way I can easily extract the information and copy and paste into a word document if I have to. Information entered into the rest of the program relies on my program's ability to export to a report. 

7.       Census Reports: When I used FTM, I used to include the entire census report in my citation because it was easier to copy and paste the citation to each member included in that household. Now I only include the line relating to the person being cited. I include information about a census report in the general notes always. This is what my census report looks like:

1910 Big Apple Twp., Oregon Co., MO

Taken 28 Apr 1910, Line 67, dw 130, fm 133

William Peters, head, 35 yo (b. abt 1875), M1 10 yrs (abt 1900), IL Unk IL, educated yes, rents a house, farm laborer, can read and write

Dora Peters, wife, 35 yo (b. abt 1875), M1 10 yrs (abt 1900), 5/7 kids living, AR Unk unk, cannot read or write

Herbert Peters, son, 9 yo (b. abt 1901), MO IL AR, can read, but c/n write

Danie Peters, dau, 5 yo (b. abt 1905), MO IL AR

Vibert Peters, son, 3 yo (b. abt 1907), MO IL IL

Nova Peters, dau 1 8/12 (b. abt 1908), MO IL IL

Mary Peters, dau, <1yr (b. abt 1909), MO IL IL

NARA Film T624, Roll 804, FHL Film 1374817, Page 7B, ED 117

[The last 3 children's mother's place of birth is listed as IL, but this must be a mistake as Dora was born in AR]

This format is easy for me to read. I add the approximate year of birth in parenthesis. Now that I include my census report information in my general notes, I no longer need to include all of the information for each household member in my citations. Now I only include the information pertinent to that household member. 

And this is what my citations look like:

It clearly states her name, age, and place of birth. I can click through each census that is cited to see if there are any differences. If I did not have this information included in this footnote, I would have to go back to this person’s general notes to see what this particular census report said for her name, age, and place of birth.

With regard to redundancy and census reports, the head of house inevitably will have the census report show up twice on his or her narrative report. This is fine by me. I would rather have too much information than not enough.

8.       I’m guessing this post has gone on long enough, so I will summarize here.

·         I add everything I know about a person in the general notes, including transcripts of death certificates and obituaries, census reports, land records, etc.

·         I have just started entering census reports as their own events and I “share” them with household members.

·         I provide source information for items included in my general notes, although the citations are not complete as I leave it up to the footnotes to do that job.

·         I cite every source for every fact.

·         I include my analysis of evidence (ie, review of sources) for each fact’s sources in that fact’s notes. This analysis is usually NOT copied to the person’s general notes.

·         I only enter a fact once. If some sources point to alternate information, I pick the best one, or a range, and I cite them all. 

I do use my database to create narrative reports for myself and to share with others. But I have found that most people I share with do not care about source citations. And the narrative reports give way too much information. So I guess I would have to admit that it is used mostly for me. I think most of the below posters have come to a similar conclusion. 

Another example of how I use my database to cite my sources and use the fact notes can be found in my “Am I an Evidence-Based Genealogist or Conclusion-Based Genealogist?” post.

Here's what other bloggers are saying:

Jasia’s My Love/Hate Relationship with Legacy Software at Creative Gene

Denise Levenick’s My Needs and Wants for Genealogy Database Software; How Well Does Family Tree Maker Mac2 Measure Up? at Family Curator

Shelley Bishop’s How I Use Reunion for Mac as my Genealogy Database at A Sense of Family

Randy Seaver's Ten Reasons Why I Use a Genealogy Software Program at Genea-Musings

Linda McCauley’s How I Use in My Genealogy Database at Documenting the Details

Am I an Evidence-Based Genealogist or Conclusion-Based Genealogist?

In his post “Are you an Evidence-Based or a Conclusion Based Researcher?” Randy Seaver brought up some interesting points about how we enter facts into our genealogy software and come to conclusions about what information from which sources for each fact is more true. He describes an “Evidence-based” user as one who enters information about a birth source, for example, from five different sources, as five different facts. This user then comes to a conclusion about which fact is most true and makes it a “preferred” fact in their software. The “Conclusion-based” user, on the other hand, evaluates all the evidence or sources and picks the best one, thereby reaching a conclusion as to which fact is most true. This user then creates one fact and cites one source (or multiple sources) for this one fact or conclusion.

I like to consider myself to be somewhat of a hybrid. Because I do sometimes like to use the report functions of my Rootsmagic software, I don’t like to enter more than one version of each fact. Having 5 instances of the Birth fact, for example, clogs up my narrative report and makes it difficult for me to read and understand. Instead I enter 1 fact and if there are differences within the evidence I’ve evaluated, I try to capture that within my fact description, citations, and notes.

For example, with the case of my brick wall, William Edward Peters, I have one Birth fact listed for him. I usually list the most specific information I have found, in this case, my birth fact says William was born 10 Mar 1874 in Thomasville, Oregon Co., MO.

For each piece of evidence I create a source citation and in the detail text field, I add the text that provides birth date and place information. In the screen shot below, the obituary from the Pocahontas Star Herald stated that William was born in Thomasville, MO on March 10, 1874.

Here is a table of information I collected about William’s birth. I used a total of six pieces of evidence or sources.

Birth Date	Mar 1877	1900 Census, Highland Twp., Oregon Co., MO
	Abt 1875	1910 Census, Big Apple Twp., Oregon Co., MO, taken April 28, 1910: lists his age as 35; 1910-35=b. 1875
	Abt 1872	1920 Census, Thayer Twp., Oregon Co., MO, taken Jan 6, 1920, lists his age as 48; 1920-48 = 1872
	Abt 1873	1930 Census, Bristow, Randolph Co., AR, taken Apr 15, 1930, lists his age as 57; 1930-57=1873
	Mar 10, 1874	Obituary Pocahontas Star, Feb 3, 1948
	Mar 10, 1874	Death Certificate, William E Peters, Feb 3, 1948
Birth Place	IL	1900 Census, Highland Twp., Oregon Co., MO
	IL	1910 Census, Big Apple Twp., Oregon Co., MO
	IL	1920 Census, Thayer Twp., Oregon Co., MO
	MO	1930 Census, Bristow, Randolph Co., AR
	Thomasville, MO	Obituary Pocahontas Star, Feb 3, 1948
	Thomasville, MO	Death Certificate, William E Peters, Feb 3, 1948

In the notes field for the Birth fact, I then analyze all pieces of evidence and state which pieces corroborate or contradict each other. I will usually indicate whether I think one piece weighs more than the other based on time it was created or from whom the information was provided.

Here are the notes I compiled about the six sources I analyzed about the birth of William Peters.

This is what my Rootsmagic narrative reports would look like if I had created a new birth fact for every piece of evidence I analyzed or encountered:

I really don’t like the way this example reads and says he “was born” six different times! Instead I prefer the more narrative approach with all of the facts listed within my source citations’ detailed text fields in the footnotes or endnotes of my report. A report with one fact listed and all six sources cited with the evidence analyzed and written up in the birth notes section looks like this:

Rootsmagic does have the capability of identifying one fact as the preferred or primary fact as Randy learned in his later post, however, in my Rootsmagic report, all six of the birth facts are still listed, even when one is identified as the primary fact.

So in conclusion, I consider myself to be an evidence-based genealogist, however:

·         I do NOT enter my evidence as separate facts.

·         I do, however enter them as separate sources under one umbrella fact.

·         In the example above, I used the most specific date and place.

·         However, if I had copied a specific date and place of birth for an ancestor from someone else’s family file off the internet, with no other corroborating evidence to support that information, I would probably not enter it as a fact in my database.

·         If I only have census reports as evidence and they say three different years of birth, I would simply state birth as between the lowest and highest year. In the case of my ancestor William Peters, discussed above, I would state “bet. 1872-1877” for date of birth.

·         Places of birth are trickier for me and I have not yet decided on a course of action. In the case of William Peters discussed above, I initially put “Missouri or Illinois” in the place of birth field. However that screws up my place list. So in that example, I might create two separate facts, one for Illinois and one for Missouri.

And why am I an Evidence-Based genealogist? Frankly because I love the records and what better way to show the love than to cite them and include them in all facts containing the information they reference?

So what are you? Do you evaluate and include every piece of evidence in your software and reports and analysis or do you determine your conclusion and use one piece of evidence to support that claim?

SNGF - My Genealogy Database Statistics

It's that time again...for some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun! Randy Seaver has posted this new fun task on his Genea-Musings Blog to list the statistics from your genealogy program: 


1)  If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database (hint:  the Help button is your friend!).

2)  Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or Google+ stream comment.


Here's mine:


I use RootsMagic 4 as well (so does Randy) for my main genealogy program. In order to see my statistics, I go to File > Properties and the following window pops up: 

According to this, I have the following:

People: 8561

Families: 2795

Events: 17603

Alternate Names:  61

Places:  1711

Sources:  1397

Citations:  22644

Repositories:  67

To do Tasks: 50

Multimedia Items: 2

Multimedia links: 1

Addresses: 11

Correspondence: 17

Obviously from these stats you can tell that I don't mess with multimedia items and from the few number of places I have, either I have done a good job consolidating them, or my people just didn't move around much; I have quite a few sources, but this number could probably be higher if it were easier to create them. However, I am using the citations I created because I have over 20k citations! I'm using the repository function of my software, although I haven't quite figured out its usefulness yet. I do like to have them linked to my to-do list which I have just recently started using. 

Tell us what your stats look like and leave a link to your blog as a comment on Randy's blog. 

Trade Offs - Do We Really Have to Choose?

I took the family finder test in June and to date have about 150 matches. I have made contact with several of my matches so far. Much of the process involves going through my family tree and looking for the surnames that they send me. Sometimes they send me a link to their online family tree on ancestry.com. Although my family tree is published on ancestry.com it is not updated because I do the updating on my desktop application. I prefer to use the desktop application because it is faster than the ancestry.com trees and it is easier to manage my sources which I am very particular about.

My tree is private, but when I do make a connection to a known cousin, I share my tree with them and I assign them as a “guest” which gives them the right to view the tree and to save items from my tree directly to their tree. I have also found it very convenient to view my matches’ trees and to copy their lines directly into my tree. Unfortunately, because I still maintain my most up to date information on my desktop, I then also have to copy information from their trees into my desktop application as well.

The discontinuity between my online tree and my desktop tree hasn’t really been an issue until now - since I’ve taken the DNA test - and I’ve had to rely more heavily on my genealogy database / family tree. This has really made me start thinking on how I can make the process of collaborating and determining kinship with my matches more streamlined.

Last month I read Randy Seaver’s blog posts about his beta user experience with Family Tree Maker 2012 which has the new “Tree Sync” feature between the desktop application and the online tree. I have to admit, this feature is very appealing to me. However, I do have my reservations.

1. You have to either start a NEW online tree or start a new FTM tree. You cannot merge one into the other. Clarification: You have to choose one tree to work with: either an existing tree that is in your Family Tree Maker Software that you want to upload to a NEW online family tree; Or an existing online family tree that you want to download as a NEW family tree into your Family Tree Maker software. Thanks to Russ for pointing this out in the comments below.

2. Sources created in online tree stay in a free-form like or general format. Sources created using the Evidence! Explained templates in FTM 2012 will show up in the online tree, but cannot be edited in the online tree. The only sources that can be edited in the online tree are the ones created as free-form. (From Randy Seaver’s Notes Post)

This 2nd point is a biggie for me. If I cannot access my desktop application, then I will access the online version. And half of my tree editing is done via the source citation process. My long term goal is to become a professional genealogist and in order to achieve that I have to practice writing correct source citations every chance I get, including while I’m using my genealogy software. It doesn’t seem like I can do that with this software or online version of Ancestry.com trees and this is a limiting factor for me.

So what is the trade off? 

I switched from FTM to Rootsmagic a couple of years ago. My number one reason was RootsMagic On-The-Go. Simply said I can take it anywhere with me on my flash drive. I don’t have to have the program installed on any machine to access my files. I actually have it installed in dropbox and I can open it anywhere. I love this feature. And the file is so much smaller than FTM which means it opens up on a dime. (And no, I don’t have any media attached to my file).

I also switched to Rootsmagic because I thought the sourcing features would work better and I liked the reports. However, I am on the fence about these two things and could be happy with either FTM or RM in this regards.

So again, I ask, what is the tradeoff? It’s not that I want to be able to access my tree anywhere I go. If that were the case, I would just use an application on my android. I want to be able to fully use my application, including writing proper source citations.

What do you think? What is more important to you?  

Motivation Monday

Just a quick blog post to say no, I haven't been hiding.  I've been reading reading and more reading for class class and more class.  I got a little bit stressed out last week, but I nipped it in the butt when I knocked out a bunch of reading on Friday night and I was able to pop in on Miriam's Scanfest on Sunday!

RootsMagic....

I've been fighting with RootsMagic4. It's not as nice as everyone made it out to be. At least not for me. When I imported it from Family Tree Maker 2009, all of the sources disconnect from the person's names. A nice person from the RootsMagic user group mailing list took my database and put it back together again and reattached the sources.  Of course now I can't run my narrative reports because the footnotes that are created from all of the sources that are attached to each name is crashing the software. Sigh. Strike 2. However, I am liking the correspondence and repository list and reporting system that RM4 has to offer. Has this been implemented in Family Tree Maker yet?

Godwin DNA Project....

I joined the Goodwin/Godwin family Surname DNA project as a co-coordinator last month and am slowly getting my feet wet and working my way around the reporting system.  We have a LOT of DNA participants. I am trying to get everyone in order and pedigrees posted and arranged before I start another big recruiting process. Last year I recruited 4 or 5 people and that was enough to send me into shock with trying to analyze and compare paper trails and results and figure out mutations and all that jazz. I juggled with the idea of attending the ftDNA conference in Houston at the end of October, however registration has already closed. It would have been an expensive trip anyways. Instead, I decided to go to the Family History Expo in Atlanta in November.

Genealogical Society...

I'm still pulling teeth with my local genealogical society. They have agreed to let me put up a facebook page, however I have not had time to do so.  We have secured Colleen Fitzpatrick as a speaker at next month's meeting. I'm really looking forward to hearing her speak and meeting her! I'm debating whether or not to run for office. They really have a lot of stuff to do to get back into the swing of things, although I'm still proud of what they have been able to accomplish so far this year.

Blogging...

I haven't blogged much at all. I've got the blogger blues because it seems like no matter what I do - participate in memes, comment on other people's blogs, and follow their blogs, I still feel like no one is reading my blog posts. Although I am at least getting a couple of comments a week, which is great. Finally. I couldn't even get that before! It's not an egotistical thing going on, I assure you. Sometimes I simply like to have input. Sometimes I wonder if the information I'm posting is completely wrong. Like the DNA stuff. I discuss it with experts beforehand, but I still lack confidence that what I'm posting is 100% true. It's nice to have others to bounce ideas off of. Oh well, I'll get off my soapbox now. I'm gonna go back to blogging for me now.  So I'm in this Public History class - by the way - it reminds me that Public History is what I really want to be studying - and not necessarily Library studies, although LS can certainly be a key aspect of the field.... Anyways, my Professor secured a grant to build this interactive website, a kind of blog, in which there is text and clickable links and photos and videos and oral histories and such, that is linked to other university archives. I am very excited to be working on this project because it is what I like to do with my own blog. I have toyed with the idea of learning flash and learning how to jazz up my blog a bit. I was surprised, however, that out of the 30 or so undergraduate and graduate students in my class, only one person blogged and used Twitter, besides the Teacher and that person was me! I couldn't believe it! So it looks like I will get to stand out somehow after all at least in my class as a person who already knows how to blog!

Ok, well speaking of class, I need to get back to it. Thanks for reading.