The following is from an email I received from a friend about the new Labs tool at FamilySearch. We should all check it out. ==>
I will definitely check out the latest on Pro Tools at Ancestry. Just as soon as I tear myself away from FamilySearch labs. OMG, I’m having so much fun!
I learned about this from Randy Seaver down at the Chula Vista Genealogical Society, in whose monthly sessions I participate. Anyway, check it out.
See the attachment below. At the moment, they mostly have full-text searching for land and probate records only, but I’ve already found a number of additional land transactions from some of my ancestors in early Ohio. Yes, the AI comes up with some very creative spellings, but I’ve not found that to be a gross impediment. Can I just say that it’s way, WAY faster than trying to browse all this stuff.
If you like this new tool at FamilySearch, be sure to give them positive feedback. We want this tool to remain, and to be expanded.
Ancestry® uses the asterisk (*) and the question mark (?) as wild cards.
An asterisk (*) represents 0 to 5 characters. If you wanted to search for different spellings of the name Matthew (like Mathewand Matthiu), you could do a wild card search that would find each different ending: Mat*.
A question mark (?) represents 1 character. If you didn’t know whether a name were spelled Nielson or Nielsen, you could do a search for the name using a wild card where the unknown letter goes: Niels?n.
Wild card rules
All searches containing wild cards must contain at least 3 non-wild card letters. For example, *ill would work, but *ll would not.
The first and last character in a search can’t both be wild cards. Searching *ohnson and Johnso* would work, but *ohnso* would not.
My office had a small laminating machine to create protected sheets of instructions, always 8 1/2 x 11 sheets. Then I turned 65 and got into Medicare. The ID card they provide is paper, yuk. Flimsy is the word. Staples sells small packets of 2 1/4 x 3 3/4 laminating paper that can, with just a bit of shaving, “cover” Medicare cards perfectly. My Medicare card has been safe in my wallet ever since.
One day I realized I could type up my car’s specs, VIN, license plate, color, etc. and make a credit card sized laminated copy of it which I also carry in my wallet. It is useful when the motel wants to know my license plate #!
Once in a while, perhaps at our DNA sig meetings, I get asked about my haplogroup codes. There was the time someone wanted to see if we were related in Gedmatch and I could not remember my kit #. You could see the light bulb flash…
Yup, I created a laminated card of my DNA test data (haplogroups, FTDNA kit #s, Gedmatch kit #s, YFull ID), with my wife’s data on the other side, which I now carry in my wallet. Go ahead, ask me about my Y-Dna terminating SNP —- I am ready for you. 🙂
”The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.” – Jim Barksdale
Google Inc. makes lots of tools available to people, some of which are not often talked about. Besides Searching, my favorite tool is called ALERTS. Simply put, you create a regular Google search and then have Google run it for you every day! The system will email you if it finds something matching your criteria from the past 24 hours (older stuff is ignored). The service sends emails to the user when it finds new results—such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research—that match the user’s search term(s).
To use Alerts, sign in to your Google account using the Gmail you want new discoveries to be sent to, then go to https://www.google.com/alerts. Then create a search and save it! That’s it. You can have multiple alerts, each one is treated individually.
Presumably you have previously tested your search! Alerts doesn’t validate a search, it just runs it. Here are a couple of searches that I am running daily:
“snorkel ai”
starlink OR spacex AND ipo
Yes, of course you can include genealogical searches too. But remember, the results will be newly published stuff, not previously published. Try it, free it is.
“We were born at just the right moment to help change everything.” – Eric Holthaus
From the President of the Monterey County Genealogy Society:
Fellow Genealogy and History Enthusiasts:
I just read in the Monterey County Weekly, 25-31 Jan 2024 edition, that the California Digital Newspaper Collection is “viewable at cdnc.ucr.edu, which is run out of UC Riverside and administered by the California State Library. They announced Jan. 22 that 2.7 million pages have been added to the collection from dozens of titles… …will now feature all the issues of the Californian from 1929 to 2001, as well as issues from the two newspapers that few locals have likely heard of: the Salinas Daily Journal from 1889 to 1899 and the Salinas Index Journal from 1905 to 1942.”
RootsTech 2023 is still going strong. I just watched a session put on by the creator of DNA Painter web site, Jonny Perl. It was not about his excellent site, but instead was about 3rd party tools that are supporting genetic genealogy. If you get a chance, do try to watch it. Below is a link to a wonderful page of LINKS to all things genealogy, created and maintained by Jonny Perl. This list runs the gamut from sites to books. I have included this link on the GG Web Links page herein too.
Many thanks to DNA Painter for their services to us all.
Yesterday the local headlines read “41-year-old cold case solved.” A man had finally been convicted of a 1981 murder in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Last month the national news covered the story of “Opelika Baby Jane Doe” identified after 11 years.” A child’s remains found in Alabama in 2012 had been identified. Both cases had been solved with new DNA technology known as Investigative Genetic Genealogy or “IGG.”
Almost every week now, there is a news story about how IGG solved another cold case. Because it is becoming common place, it makes the new process sound simple. However, the process for solving cold cases, even with the new DNA technology, can be complicated by various factors. These factors include the number of DNA matches that a forensic sample will have when compared in a database and the projected relationships of those matches, whether close or distant cousins. Theoretically, more matches and closer matches make it easier to solve cases of unknown identities.
Investigative Genetic Genealogy involves comparing the DNA files extracted from forensic samples with the DNA files in databases publicly available at only FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) and GEDmatch.
· FTDNA is a direct-to-consumer DNA testing company people use to find out more about their genealogy by working with their matches and family trees. FTDNA also accepts uploads from people who have tested at other companies such as AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, etc. Although these other companies have large databases, their databases may not be used for Investigative Genetic Genealogy per their policies.
· GEDmatch is a database comprised of DNA data files uploaded by people who have tested at any direct-to-consumer DNA testing company. Because the database includes DNA file uploads from a variety of sources, family historians and people looking for biological family members use the GEDmatch database to find more information without having to test at every company.
There is a huge back-log of cases, some decades old. It will take years to solve many of them. If you want to help with the process of Investigative Genetic Genealogy, upload your DNA file to FTDNA and GEDmatch. It is best to upload to both sites because you will have different matches. It would also be helpful to upload your GEDcom! The more people that upload, the more cases that will be solved.
Author: anonymous
Uploading your DNA data requires that you first download your data. Roberta Estes at her blog DNAeXplained has written various articles about how to do these steps. Here is one:
I believe you should always download a copy of your DNA data file no matter what. It is your data and will not change. Get a copy in case the vendor goes out of business! If you want more information about IGG, you can also check in at a session of our DNA Discussions Group.
This is a “how-to” post. One way to find something herein is to scroll down the right hand column to the section titled CATEGORIES and select a group out of the drop box.
If the subject you are looking for is not there, you can use GOOGLE SEARCH with the site: parameter. For example, the term CLUSTER in not a category. Go to Google and type “site:mocogenso.wordpress.com cluster” without the quotes and your search will find quite a few posts that have the term cluster.
Sometimes genealogists have a need to build a family tree. Is that a joke? Really, not. We’ve all drawn trees using pencils. Some of us have an ancestry.com account and build trees there. The tree at FamilySearch.org is wonderful (and free). But still, sometimes we want to create a printable chart without using the big systems. Perhaps we want to send something to family members, perhaps we are helping someone find their missing relatives and need to “show and tell”. Listed below are some ways to create tree charts “by hand”.
Lucidchart.com
A limited version is free, or the individual fee is $7.95/month. Cloud based, stores file locally.
Diagrams.net (or draw.io)
Completely free. They make their money from corporate licenses. Cloud based, stores file locally. This looks and feels just like Lucidchart. I like it, but it requires a learning period.
This is an unusual free-form product, limited in chart elements, designed primarily for idea or note taking. But charts can be tossed together quickly. For those quick-n-dirty trees, this is almost as good as pencil and paper.
The program is installed on your computer, Windows or Mac. There is a one time purchase fee: $20.99, or educational $16.79.
There is a 30 day free trial, fully capable. I was told this trial counts “used days”, so you can skip a few days and it won’t count against you. I can show an example at the DNA Sig meeting.
I was surprised to see charts built using Excel, but it can be done quickly and with limited knowledge of formatting rules. I can show an example at the DNA Sig meeting.
Disclaimer: Of the above, I have only used Diagrams.net. I may try Scapple in the future. I do own Excel and can try it whenever.…
Having read the book “The Sawtooth Slayer” by Nathan Goodwin, I decided to outline the basic methods used to figure out who was the killer. I really enjoyed the book and don’t’ intend to release any spoilers. But I figure the methodology can be useful for those of us searching for our own puzzle.
In Dec 16, 2012 we posted a search method provided by CeCe Moore which you can see here:
I want to compare the methods. I’m guessing that they aren’t all that different, perhaps only terminology differences will appear. The effort might teach me more about the overall procedures. You can work with me, and for sure, email me when I make mistakes. Perhaps we can go over the steps at the next DNA Discussions Group via Zoom.
1. DNA test
In this book, the first thing to do is to have a genetic DNA completed and get it to Family Tree DNA and Gedmatch. The following clustering steps can be done most anywhere, but the book is working with police and FamilyTreeDNA and Gedmatch are the only sites that will allow police involvement.
2. Identify clusters containing unique and in-common-with matches
The clusters are built, manually in the book. You can use auto-clustering at MyHeritage or Genetic Affairs if you wish. Clusters are subsets of the matches that contain unique matches that are in common with each other. Given subset uniqueness, each cluster should have a Common Ancestor (CA) and it is our job to find that person or pair. The book ended up with 7 clusters. Given that there are eight 2x great grandparent sets, that is about right. You start with the highest centimorgan match, select in-common-with, going no further than 10 centimorgans. Call that cluster 1. Go to the next not selected match and build cluster 2.
3. Build a speculative family tree of each person within each cluster, looking for the Common Ancestor
This is where the heavy work is involved. Build the trees at Ancestry.com. I’m seeing one tree per cluster with floating trees inside per person, because after the CA is located, all the “floats” would disappear. You are building the tree backward in time, going towards ancestors. In the book, they built the trees out to 3x great grandparents. I’m not sure why, that might be difficult in some cases.
4. Triangulate within each cluster, this then “closes” each cluster
I know what triangulate means, common segments for 3 or more people. I guess this step is just to prove that the tree building was legitimate, DNA wise. It will sure provide good documentation. Curiously, the first book in the series didn’t need this to close a cluster.
5. Reverse genealogy (p.230)
Reverse genealogy is where all known descendants of the confirmed common ancestors to the genetic network are traced, searching for the overlap between clusters. This is heavier tree building, building forward in time, sometimes using your “find living people” skills. Following the overlap between clusters should lead directly to the original DNA tester.
Monterey County Genealogy Society 