Identifying descendants in Gedcoms to Compare your DNA to

In my last post I talked about looking for the parents of my ancestor, Mary Polly Allen. When I looked her up in Ancestry.com, many online trees had her parents as Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable from Virginia. However, when I looked through the online gedcoms that were uploaded for each of my grandfather's matches on FamilyTreeDNA who had Allen in their list of surnames (there were 40 of them), I did not find a single one of them mentioning this ancestral couple. Since I struck out finding Charles and Ann in this list of matches, I decided to cast a wider net, though not by using the same methodology.

Gedmatch.com is a 3rd party website that allows you to upload your DNA results and then compare them to results that were uploaded from the other two testing companies. Since my family and I tested with ftDNA, we are able to compare our results with people who tested with Ancestry.com and 23AndMe. I am also able to compare to other people who tested with ftDNA. Why would I want to do this? Because I might want to be looking at lower resolution matches that did not meet the minimum 7cM and 700 SNP threshold that is required by ftDNA to be considered a match.

Gedmatch.com offers several tools by which to find and compare matches; but it also offers some unique Gedcom utilities. One that I have just started using is the search feature. I can "Search All Gedcoms" for an ancestor and it will give me a list of all of the Gedmatch members who have submitted Gedcoms and their email addresses. I can then enter their email address into the Gedmatch User Information Lookup Utility (new) and it will tell me what their kit id is. Then I can run a one-to-one comparison between their kit and one of mine to see if there is a match.

In order to determine if Charles and Ann were my ancestors, I did a search of all Gedcoms for their names and it returned one match to a descendant of Charles Allen's sister Anne Allen. (The email was scrubbed for privacy).

I then entered the Gedcom owner's email address into the Gedmatch User Information Lookup Utility to get a list of their Gedmatch DNA kit ids to compare to:

(In this example, I entered my own email address and scrubbed some names for privacy).

Once I got a list of all of the Gedmatch Kit ids for Charles Allen's sister's descendant, I compared them one-to-one with my own family members who descend from Mary Polly Allen. Remember I am trying to determine if my ancestor, Mary Polly Allen (who married Abraham Huddleston), was the daughter of Charles Allen (who married Ann Venable) who was the brother of the Charles Allen mentioned in the Gedcom above. I can probably determine this if one of my family members is a match to one of this Gedcom owner's family members (he also managed multiple kits like me).

I entered the two Gedmatch IDs into the Kit No 1 and Kit No 2 boxes, and I entered a 1 into the Minimum segment cM size to be included in total. I like to add a 1 here so I can see the values for all chromosomes. Sometimes it's good to see if there is any matching DNA on a particular chromosome and you can do this by putting a 1 in this box.

I compared the oldest family members first: my grandfather and his father's aunt.

My Grandfather vs Gedcom owner's Paternal Aunt

FamilyTreeDNA recommends to have a minimum of a 7.0 cM segment with 700 SNPs on that segment in order to be considered a match. The relationship between two people is determined by the total of these segments. In this comparison between my grandfather and his father's aunt, the largest segment is only 2.7cM (987 SNPs). This is nowhere close to being a match.

Gedmatch doesn't have such strict requirements. I believe they only require a 5.0 cM segment in order to be considered a match. When I compared my mother to the Gedcom owner's paternal aunt, there is the possibility of being a match:

My Mother vs Gedcom owner's Paternal Aunt

On Chromosome 8, there is a 5.7 cM segment with 1,232 SNPs of shared DNA between my mother and the Gedcom owner's paternal aunt. There is also a total of 20.6 cM of shared DNA between them. Gedmatch has estimated that the MRCA or Most Recent Common Ancestor was 6.7 generations back. These are just estimates, so they are not exact. If you count my mother as generation no. 1, then James Allen, who is supposedly Charles Allen's father and the father of the Gedcom owner's ancestor, is the 10th generation ancestor from my mother. It is possible that this match with an estimated MRCA of 6.7 is from a different common ancestor all together.

10 generations is pretty far back. In fact, it is completely possible that this DNA test might not even pick up matches to an ancestor this far back! This test is only guaranteed to work back to 5 generations.

Conclusion:

These inconclusive DNA results between my family and that of James Allen's family (the Gedcom owner) leads me to believe that my Mary Polly Allen probably did NOT descend from Colonel Charles Allen who was married to Ann Venable. Even though there is a possible match between his paternal aunt and my mother, there are no other matches between any other his other family members and mine, leading me to conclude we are not descended from the same common ancestor.

However, it is possible that this ancestral couple - Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable - is too far back to be picked up by the autosomal test. But I really don't believe that is true. Mary Polly Allen is only my grandfather's 7th generation back (if you include my grandfather as generation no. 1). See chart below. I have found common ancestors with 8th and 9th cousins with several of my matches, so I know it's possible to do.

But DNA is fickle. Actually, not really. But there are so many factors to consider and possibilities to ponder. My main goal of this post was to show how you can try to verify or eliminate your questionable ancestors by identifying descendants in Gedcoms to compare your DNA to.

Mary Polly Allen - My one and only Allen Ancestor

I learned about my ancestor Mary Polly Allen late last year after corresponding with a descendant of Ridley J. Thomas who had left a "post-it note" on another researcher's Rootsweb family tree on Mary's husband Abraham Huddleston.[1] The post-in note mentioned a Thomas family bible that I was very interested in seeing.[2]

The bible stated that Abraham Huddleston was the father of Nancy Huddleston who had married my ancestor William Thomas and that Mary Polly Allen was Abraham's wife.

Pedigree View of my Huddleston, Thomas, and Allen Ancestors

Nova Lee Peters was my great-grandmother

According to the Family bible, Abraham Huddleston was born 13 June 1773 in Bedford County, Virginia and died 1 Feb 1858 in Thomasville, Oregon County, Missouri. His wife, Mary Polly ALLEN was born 20 Mar 1777 in Virginia. It is not known exactly when she died; however, it must have been after 1850 because she was enumerated on the 1850 Oregon County, Missouri census with her husband Abraham and two grandchildren, Henry and Martha Huddleston.[3]

Mary Allen and Abraham Huddleston were married in Bedford County, Virginia on 2 Mar 1793. Abraham's brother Daniel Huddleston provided surety and Nathaniel Shrewsbury married them. The request was made by Ann Allen.[4]

When I plugged Mary Polly Allen's name into Ancestry.com's search box and added Abraham Huddleston as a spouse, 254 records were returned.[5] About two-thirds of these results did not have any names assigned to her parents and the other one-third had "Charles Allen" as her father and "Ann" as her mother.

Information on exactly who this Charles Allen was or where he came from was not located. Some of the trees had him identified as Colonel Charles Allen, the Revolutionary War Patriot from Virginia who married Ann Venable. Although there were several online SAR applications on Ancestry.com about Colonel Charles Allen who was married to Ann Venable, I could not find any information about who their children might have been.

Since the online trees are notorious for being incorrect and are often bordering on the absurd, I decided to turn to DNA to help me figure out who the parents of my Mary Polly ALLEN might be. I had noticed recently that many of the matches to my maternal grandfather have ALLEN listed in their surnames. Is ALLEN becoming the new SMITH or JONES? I don't think so. But I sure am curious as to where exactly it is coming from and whether or not it is connected to my one Allen ancestor (at least that I had identified so far).

I logged into my Grandfather's ftDNA account and pulled up his Family Finder matches. I typed in "Allen" into the Ancestral Surnames search box.

I got 60 matches back. However, the search box also picked up surnames that contained "allen" including "Ballenger." I can mark these off my list. Off these 60 matches, about 40 of them have online gedcoms uploaded to their profiles.

Next, I wanted to see if any of these matches have Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable OR Charles Allen and wife Ann as ancestors in their online gedcoms. I click on the first gedcom, then type in "Allen" into the search box and click the "Search Names" button:

ftDNA will pull up all of the "Allens" it could find in the tree and give me a list that I can select from:

Since there are so many trees with Allen in their list of surnames, I simply looked for Charles in the list above and if I did not see his name, I closed the tree and moved on to the next one.

Unfortunately, most of what I found were females named Allen with no known parents, dates or places of birth. This did not increase my confidence that my Mary Polly Allen was the daughter of Charles and Ann Allen. In fact, if anything, what it did was made me question this relationship even more.

Next Steps....

1)  I want to look more closely at the Allens in each of these 40 gedcoms. Is there a particular Allen that shows up over and over again? If so, then maybe they are our common ancestors.

2)  Find and contact other descendants of Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable. Ask them if they have done DNA testing and compare our results using Gedmatch.com. If you are a descendant of this couple, or if you descend from Mary Polly ALLEN and Abraham Huddleston, please contact me.

3)  As soon as the Gedmatch.com site is back up and running (and fully functioning), I intend to search the online gedcoms there as well. I will search first for my known ancestors, Mary Polly Allen and Abraham Huddleston. Then I will compare any of this couples' descendants' DNA to that of my family. Then I will perform a search for Colonel Charles Allen and Mary Ann Venable and compare their descendants' DNA to mine as well.

Except,...there's just one little problem...I know how to search the Gedmatch.com gedcoms, but I don't know how to figure out who they belong to, how to contact the gedcom owners or find out their Gedmatch IDs so I can compare our DNA results.

Any ideas? If so, please email me or leave a comment below.

Sources: 

[1] Mary Jo Freeman, maryjo@mjgen.com, WorldOneConnect File, "Willard and Related Families," accessed 11 August 2013, Abraham Huddleston. Post it note left by Jim Gray citing a Thomas Family Bible. 
[2] Thomas Family Bible, last owned by Jackson Thomas, digital copies in the possession of Jim Gray, graytherapy@myway.com.
[3]  1850 U. S. Federal Census, Oregon Co., MO, p. 400A, Abraham Huddleston; digital image, Ancestry.com, (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 March 2014); citing NARA Microfilm publication M432, Roll 408. Mary Huddleston, 73 yo. 
[4] "Bedford County, Virginia Marriage Bonds Database," VAGenWeb, a USGenWeb Project, (http://www.vagenweb.org/bedford/bedf-m_h.htm : accessed 11 August 2013), Extracted from the appendix in Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, Vol VI, Virginia. 
[5] Ancestry.com, Public Member Tree Search, (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 March 2014); parameters included the following: First Name (Mary Polly), not exact; Last name (Allen), exact; birth (1777), not exact; in (Virginia, USA), exact; death (Missouri, USA) exact; Spouse name (Abraham) exact & (Huddleston) exact.

Sneak Peek at the New Gedmatch.com Chromosome Triangulation Tool

For those of you who use Gedmatch.com to view, share, and analyze your DNA results, you might have noticed that the "Check for matches on a specific chromosome segment" utility was removed from the site. I used this feature most of all to find all my matches who matched me on a particular chromosome, but found lately that this utility was too slow to use.

Those of us who loved this tool will be in heaven as it has been replaced with a new tool called "Segment Triangulation." This new utility acts similarly to the previous utility with the added function of showing you matching segments BETWEEN the matches on every chromosome. 

Here is a sneak peek of what it looks like. 

More information on how to use this tool is to come. 

Have you check out the new Segment Triangulation Tool? If so, what did you think? 

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])

Genetic Genealogy – What is my Ethnicity?

The Family Finder autosomal DNA test from FamilyTreeDNA serves a two-fold function with regard to genetic genealogy: (1) it measures the changes in the single points in your genetic code (the A, G, C, and Ts) and calculates the relationship to your matches based on the number of markers you share with each one; (2) and it compares your marker values to those represented by population groups in other geographic regions to determine your ethnicity. This second function of the autosomal DNA test has come in handy several times, most recently with my friend Keith, whose data I am helping to interpret.

Shortly after I sent Keith his list of matches he sent me an email asking if his DNA test could tell him if he was Native American Indian. I get this question a LOT – anytime I mention a DNA test to anyone. It seems like everyone wants to prove their Native American Heritage. The answer to Keith’s question is both yes and no. The autosomal DNA test will tell you your ethnicity but it is only an estimation, not an absolute. It varies depending on the sample size ftDNA  has collected for that geographic region.

Well all ambiguities aside, I was still able to use ftDNA’s Population Finder tool to pull up a map of Keith’s ethnicity based on his results and matches. Here is a view of his map:

According to ftDNA, Keith has the following ethnicity:

90% Western European (defined as Orcadian)

10% Middle Eastern (defined as Palestinian, Bedouin, Druze, Jewish, Mozabite) – primarily Jewish

Keith was disappointed that he didn’t find any Native American Ancestry. To be honest, I’m not sure what it would say if there was Native American Ancestry! I’m still reading blogs and trying to find people who have tested and whose results have come back as Native American Ancestry.

His report didn’t really tell us much about his ancestry. If we look at a map of the world we can determine that the area on his map that is shaded dark blue and labeled as the “Orcadian” population corresponds to the present day UK (England) and Ireland. The Middle East population corresponds to present day Algeria, Libya, Egypt and the Sudan.

Keith said he didn’t have any Middle Eastern heritage that he knew of. This was the first I had seen of this population showing up in a person’s population finder results. Then it just so happens I was reading Roberta Estes’ blog, DNA-eXplained one morning while eating my breakfast and came across her blog post, “The Dreaded “Middle East” Autosomal Result.” In this post, Roberta explains that the result of Middle East ancestry is sometimes a clue to Native American Ancestry! She reports that she often sees this Middle Eastern admixture in the results of people who are looking for Native American Ancestry.  In this post she uses the inhabitants of Hattaras Island as an example of how populations intermarried with persons on the island, mixing very little with non-inhabitants, resulting in very little new DNA being introduced.

Although Keith’s ancestors were not native to Hatteras Island that we know of, his great-grandparents and 2^nd great-grandparents were already in the United States following the Revolutionary War. According to Roberta’s calculations, a 10% ethnicity of Middle Eastern should have come from his great-grandparents or 2^nd great-grandparents which would have been alive during the 1800s. We do not have all of the names, birth dates and locations of all sets of his first and second great-grandparents though, at this time, so there is still a possibility of Middle Eastern ancestry showing up.

  

Ginger R Smith, "Genetic Genealogy - What is my Ethnicity" Genealogy by Ginger, posted 08 August 2012 (http://http://genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). 

Genetic Genealogy – The definition of Customer Service

According to Wikipedia, the definition of Customer Service is “the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.”[i]  With this in mind, if I am working with clients, I need to focus on interfacing with the customer, identifying their needs and satisfying their needs. And as you will see in my post below, I also need to look at WHO my customers are. What do they have access to? Do they have a computer at home with internet access? Do they know how to use a computer? Or do they prefer to “touch” and “feel” what they are looking at?

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When I agreed to help Keith with his autosomal DNA test from FamilyTreeDNA, I thought everything would be easy. He would take the test, find some matches, meet new cousins, fill in the gaps in his family tree and go on about his merry way!

But when that final email came that said his results had been posted, Keith was ready to go! He wanted to know what to do next and he was just busting with questions!  He wanted to know who all his matches were. Who they were related to. How they were related to him. How he could contact them. Would they give him information about his mother’s side of the family. Which side of the family were they from. The questions just kept coming and I was excited for him!

I was totally prepared.

I had the email all written out about how to log into the site with his user name and password. How to view his matches. How to view the pedigrees of his matches.

Except there was one tiny problem.

 

Keith had dial-up internet.

One thing about taking on “clients” is that you have to think of every possibility, probability, or issue that may crop up. You have to think about who your client is, or what kind of client they are. In this case, my client has dial up internet. But what about some of the older generations who prefer to have paper – something they can hold, touch, feel? How do you adapt your way of doing things to satisfy their needs?

After a few phone calls, we determined that the 23 pages of Keith’s matches could not be displayed with his dial up internet service. Well Keith being the inquisitive one that he is, asked a simple question:

“Can I download my match data?” - Why of course you can! And I can take care of that for you.

I can download his matches from the Family Finder section of his homepage into a csv  file which is just an unformatted format of an Excel file. There are a few limitations with this though: First, his list of matches will need to be redownloaded each time matches are added, which could be daily or weekly. Or I could filter his list of matches by date and then download the new ones and add them to the already downloaded list.

Second, one of the things that is lost when the list of matches is downloaded from the website to the csv file is the highlighting of the common surnames and their variations. The website automatically bolds the surnames that are in common between you and your matches’ list of names and includes surname variations. This is lost when the match data is downloaded. You can still do a search within the csv file, but it will not pick up name variations like the website does.

I saved the csv as an excel file and emailed a copy of it to Keith. He received it ok, but when he went to print it, it was at least 40 pages long. Another thing to consider is what if your client doesn’t have the Excel program on their computer? It can be converted to a PDF file which is easily read by a free PDF reader program. 

So far, working with Keith has been a great learning experience. I didn’t realize how little customer interaction experience I actually had. I also hadn’t thought about all the little things that could go wrong! I am definitely on my way to becoming a better professional.

Have you ever hit any unexpected roadblocks while working with a client? If so, please share your experience in the comments below or email me at ginger.reney (at) gmail.com (replace “at” with the @ symbol).

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[i] Wikipedia.com, Definition of Customer Service, citing Turban, Efraim (2002). Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective. Prentice Hall.

Genetic Genealogy - Tapley DNA - Part 2

Last month I wrote a post about my friend who took an autosomal DNA test with ftDNA and asked me for my help in managing his account. I discussed how to set up his account through the website, including how to add his surnames to the site.

Last week his results came back with a list of matches totaling 221 people! That's 23 pages of matches to go through!

The first thing we did was go through all the matches to see if there were any with the last name of Tapley. You can do this by typing in "Tapley" into the Name box. However, then I remembered that Keith's 2nd great-grandfather was really a Swain (son of Sarah Tapley and Cannath Swain; I think they were unmarried), so I also looked for Swain. There was one match with last name Swain and I suggested Keith email him right away.

We then performed the same search on the list of surnames that were shared between he and his matches. You can do this by typing in "Tapley" in the "Ancestral Surnames" box. This match has his pedigree posted with his profile, so we were able to find the Tapley in his tree. It was a Mary Tapley who married a Phillip Prettypool. This family ended up in Millidgeville, Georgia which is a good sign because Keith's family is from GA. I recommended that he email this match as well.

Unfortunately there were no matches with the Swain surname in their list.

The next thing I did was look to see if we were a match. Luckily we were not :-) However we did have quite a few matches in common. This is not unusual. Having matches in common does not necessarily mean we are related to each other. The key is to see what segments we share with each match. If Keith and I both share the same segment of a single match, then technically all 3 of us would be related. 


For example, JG and I share the biggest segment on chromosome 18. JG and Keith share the biggest segment on chromosome 1. However, Keith and JG also share a small segment on chromosome 18, about 1.92 cM which overlaps with the segment that I share with JG. So the 3 of us do share a very small amount of DNA. I did send JG a list of Keith's surnames, but we were unable to determine a connection (we weren't able to determine a connection between he and I either). 

I also added more surnames to Keith's list. Here is a list of additional surnames:

Koon
Lybrand
Creed
Slayton
Spradley
Manning
Quatlebaum
Murrell
Lindsay
Kenny
Gallman
Crosby
Standfield
Crawford
Soper

Next time we will discuss how to interact with his matches and try to determine connections.

Photo of quizzical thinker from the Joyful Public Speaking Blog, by Richard I Garber, accessed 15 July 2012.

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To Cite This Post:
Ginger R. Smith, "Genetic Genealogy - Tapley DNA - Part 2," Genealogy By Ginger, 16 July 2012, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])

Free Webinar on Native American Ancestry

This Saturday Ugo Perego will be giving a live webinar on using DNA to determine if you have Native American Ancestry.

I get a LOT of questions about this. I would say four out of five people claim they descend from a Native American Ancestor and ask me how they can use DNA to determine this. Let me just say this upfront: it is very difficult to use DNA to determine if you have Native American Ancestry. But don't take my word for it. Hear it from the expert.

Ugo Perego has a PhD in Human Genetics and 11 years of experience in the field of genetics and its applications in genealogy, ancestry, population migrations and history.

This free webinar is being presented on behalf of the Southern California Genealogical Society jamboree extension series. You do not have to be a member of the society to participate but you do have to register ahead of time.

Register for this event

Photo: courtesy of Stoneakin's fotothing page: "Native American Indian Chief Bow & Quiver"

Genetic Genealogy – Tapley DNA

I am taking the ProGen (Professional Genealogy) course and our first assignment was to craft a mission statement. I decided to focus on using genetic genealogy to take your family tree to the next level. With this in mind I have found my first guinnae pig – I mean “client” J My friend Keith decided to take the Family Finder autosomal test with ftDNA to learn more about his ancestry. His paper trail is like swiss cheese with lots of holes in it. Throw in some affairs and unwed mothers who gave their sons their surnames into the mix and you have a good candidate for DNA.

We opted out of taking a Y-DNA test because he knew that his surname is not really his direct paternal line surname as it actually came from a female ancestor and not a male. We have an idea of what his direct line male surname might be, but would like to use the autosomal test to see if we can determine this before taking the Y-DNA test. Also, there are no working surname projects at this time to support either of these surnames. Although a Y-DNA test will provide you with a list of matches, it is more beneficial when there is a surname project to support and manage the results data of you and your matches for comparison and interpretation.

I ordered Keith a Family Finder test from ftDNA. He collected the cheek swab samples and mailed them back to ftDNA. He received a kit number and a password for access to his account and home page. I put his account under both his name and my own so I will have access to his home page and be able to help him navigate through his matches and results. While we wait for his test to be analyzed, I have asked him to write down the last names of his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and 2^nd great-grandparents. This is a good starting point for comparing surnames with his matches.

Keith sent me some pedigree charts along with some notes he has made for his own files. He also sent me an Ahnentafel report that his cousin (I presume) made up for him. From all of these files combined, I was able to compile a list of surnames for the ancestors listed above. If you are doing this for someone else, make sure you are clear that you need the names of the biological parents of each ancestor, not the spouses’ names. Here is a list of his surnames:

Tapley

Brown

Minton

Page

Russell

Scoggins

Swain

Horton

Spruill

Moore

Avent

I then logged into his account and added each surname one by one. This is an important step that many testers don’t bother to do leading to a lot of frustration from their matches. Now we wait until his results come back.

Learn more about Keith's results in my post of Part 2

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Photo of DNA kit from ftDNA website.

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To Cite This Post:
Ginger R. Smith, "Genetic Genealogy - Tapley DNA," Genealogy By Ginger, 29 June 2012, (http://www.genealogybyginger.blogspot.com : accessed [date])