Monthly Work Meeting – Genealogy Discussion & Work Group – March 23 @ 2:00pm

Note – this meeting is “in person” at the FamilySearch Center! This is a great opportunity to work on your genealogy! Share methods, get help finding those elusive ancestors, whether you are just starting or have a brick wall. There are computers available to apply your new knowledge immediately. Come join Shelley McFadden at these meetings and make a success.

If you are having difficulties with Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org come to the FamilySearch Center for assistance Thursday afternoon at 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm in Seaside. Be sure to bring your passwords if you already have accounts.

The door is at the LEFT REAR of the Church Building. See this link for detailed directions. https://mocogenso.wordpress.com/fhc/

Tour a Santa Cruz Cemetery

DNA inheritance using letters in first names!

Ancestry has a nice new help page about DNA inheritance which uses the family names analogy to demonstrate recombination that was in the RootsTech session by Crista Cowan. This can be used to describe to newbies why testing many people in a family can be useful.

https://www.ancestry.com/cs/dna-inheritance

This is a little bit “advertisy” but scroll down to watch the letters change. This will useful for me to explain to my sister why I want to test her! 🙂

Monthly Calendar – March 2023

New Algorithm Cleans Up 23andMe Family Trees

Some types of close relatives, like aunt, uncle, half-sibling, nephew, niece, grandparent, and grandchild have very similar patterns of shared DNA, making predicting those relationships from DNA alone difficult. That’s why some customers might see someone incorrectly labeled as one of these relationships. To help improve detection of these relationships, 23andMe is now using a new technique that analyzes DNA from full siblings

Telling these relative types apart is especially difficult because the amount of DNA each type shares is almost identical. Because of this similarity, Bonsai relies on customers’ self-reported ages to make a decision about their relationships.

You can use this updated Bonsai method by rebuilding your family tree. To do this, you can request a recalculation of your tree through a link in the DNA Relatives FAQ page, in the question called “How do I recalculate my tree?”

The 23andMe database currently includes over 2 million customers who could be affected by this update, which translates to many thousands of relationships potentially changed. For those of you with a full sibling and a predicted half-sibling, aunt, or uncle, the updated Bonsai may produce a different (and more trustworthy) tree.

Keep in mind that unfortunately your tree annotations don’t carry over when you rerun Bonsai. Still, some of you will see changes and the predictions Bonsai now makes are much more reliable for the close relationship types discussed here.

the above is from 23andMe on Feb 22, 2023

Ancestry to Delete WorldConnect Trees and Shut Down RootsWeb Mailing Lists – Prepare NOW

The RootsWeb mailing lists will be gone April 6, and the WorldConnect trees on April 15th. for more details, see Roberta Estes at

https://dna-explained.com/2023/02/19/ancestry-to-delete-worldconnect-trees-and-shut-down-rootsweb-mailing-lists-prepare-now/

Are Genealogy websites confusing to use?

Come to the new genealogical discussion and support meeting next Thursday to clear the cob-webs. 🙂

 

If you are having difficulties with Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org come to the FamilySearch Center for assistance Thursday afternoon at 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm in Seaside.  Be sure to bring your passwords if you already have accounts.

The door is at the LEFT REAR of the Church Building. See this link for detailed directions. https://mocogenso.wordpress.com/fhc/

If you need it, Shelley will help you sign in to FamilySearch will discuss using their site this year. Be prepared!

Relatives anyone?

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (17 February 2023)—Ever wondered if you have cousins, you didn’t know about? Now, thanks to the free Relatives at RootsTech 2023 discovery experience by FamilySearch, you can find and connect with your living relatives worldwide. The fun tool is available today through March 31 through the FamilySearch Tree app, as part of the annual in-person and virtual RootsTech 2023 event (March 2–4) that attracted over 3 million participants worldwide in 2022. To connect with your global cousins through the Relatives at RootsTech 2023 experience, download the FamilySearch Tree app, or go to FamilySearch.org/Connect.

Search for what YOU are interested in at Rootstech virtual

GEDmatch and AutoKinship

There are some folks within shouting distance of this web site that use GEDmatch and have used the Tier 1 app called AutoKinship. The author has just announced that a bug has been squashed as of today (2/9/2023), so you might want to rerun AutoKinship.