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Jamboree Round Up

Jun3

The SCGS Jamboree is perhaps my favorite genealogy conference because there are so many DNA talks. Of course the i4GG conference, which is coming back to San Diego on December 8-9, is all DNA so I love that one even more.

It was great to meet so many of the people I only knew via the internet, particularly the DNAadoption crew for whom I have written several tools. Here we all are last Thursday night (thank you Leah Larkin for taking the photo!)

Front: Rob Warthen, L to R: Gale French, Barbara Rae-Venter, Pam Tabor, Barbara Taylor, Richard Weiss, Karin Corbeil, me, Don Worth, Kaitlin Mueller (Rob’s stepdaughter)

A shout out to all who came to my Triangulation talk, the slide for MyHeritage triangulation is now included. Those slides are online at https://slides.com/kittycooper/dna-triangulation-8-8-26#/

My presentation about using GWorks with unknown parentage cases went very well. This pleased me since I had worked so hard to try and make this tool understandable. I did this by showing how I used it on a few cases. Here is my favorite slide:


The idea is that you can usually find the ancestral couple to build down from on a second cousin match’s tree by using GWorks alone. Look at the top ancestors in the GWorks compare all trees to see if any of them are on the second cousin’s pedigree tree.  In the image above the tree is on the left and the top GWorks matches on the right. Do you see any names in both places? Click the image to go to the slide, then click the forward > to see the answer highlighted.

All the conference videos and audios are available for sale (Click here). There were talks I did not get to in time to get a seat, and others that conflicted with each other, so I will probably buy a few myself.

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot recently is how to get my younger family members interested in family history and perhaps even DNA.
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This is your life DD Carol!

Mar21

When DNA Detective (DD) Carol Rolnick showed a family network diagram at her presentation last Saturday a voice suddenly piped up from the back of the room. Amazed, she looked up and said, “Sean?” A foundling whose case she had recently solved had flown in from Texas to come and surprise her. They had never met in person before. He saw on FaceBook that she was speaking in Carlsbad, so he got on a plane. Wow.

Sean left, Teri (a DIG organizer) center, Carol (surprised) right, photo by Kimber Motsinger

What a treat for us at our North County DIG (DNA Interest Group) meeting! Not only did we get Carol’s presentation but we got to hear the story of this case from both her and Sean. She mentioned that she has a special place in her heart for foundlings. They took turns explaining how she used DNA to solve this mystery of a 4 year old boy abandoned so many years ago in a motel room with his 2 year old brother. They knew their first names and not much else.

Sean was absolutely compelling when he spoke. Not a dry eye in the house. Preparation for his book tour?

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The i4GG Videos Are Here!

Mar13

The videos from i4GG conference are finally available and I have not yet finished looking at Rootstech videos! You can purchase any or all of these videos from the i4GG site.

Personally, I went immediately to the presentations I missed at the time because they conflicted with another talk I went to.

Carol Rolnick, a fellow member of DIGG (the North San Diego DNA special interest group) gave a talk called “Tips and Tricks from the Genetic Genealogy Trenches” at the same time as my talk on “What’s new at GEDmatch on 2017” so of course hers was the first talk I listened to (after my own).

Several tips she gave were new to me. For example, did you know that in Chrome you can right click on an image and get google to search for it? Sometimes this works to find the name of an individual on your match list who has used a pseudonym. Of course a lot of the time it does not find a name but rather you get something like “official” or “portrait.”

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DNA Triangulation 2017 – My Rootstech Talk

Feb2

Rootstech is almost here and I can’t wait. It is not just the great talks that I love but also all the wonderful displays, shows, and tools in the exhibit hall and, of course, seeing old friends. Naturally I am going in a day early to spend time in that wonderful Family History Library, practically next door to the conference!

My talk is about triangulation, a technique used with DNA test results to prove descent from a common ancestor. I hope to see you there, Thursday at 11:00 in the morning in Ballroom J. As always my slides will be posted at slides.com/kittycooper after the presentation.

Wold line cousins Kitty (me), Ed, Marlys

If you have been to previous versions of this presentation, there will be much that is new this time around. It is amazing how much the DNA technology for triangulation has progressed in just a year. Most American 23andme kits are now on the new experience which includes an automated triangulation feature. Plus GEDmatch has added Triangulation Groups (TGs) to its Tier 1 tools.

Furthermore one of the semi-finalists in the RootsTech 2017 Innovator Showdown is a new Double Match Tool from Louis Kessler that provides triangulation for different ftDNA kits that you have the Chromosome Browser Results (CBR) for. Click here for his blog and description of DMT. Genetic genealogy has come a long way!

There is also news for those of you who remember the story of how I used triangulation to confirm a thin paper trail and prove that Kristine is my Wold side cousin (click here for that blog post and here for the follow up). The DNA test for Marlys, one of Charlie’s 26 grandchildren, came in and provides further proof. Not only that but Marlys had known the story all along about that first child of Charlie’s!

DNA lecture videos are now available from i4GG

Dec13

Cece Moore organized a conference just for genetic genealogy this past October in San Diego. It was terrific, the only problem was that I could not go to every lecture! Now that the videos are out, I can watch the ones I missed, including my own talk on GEDMatch.

For those of you who did not attend the conference, you can purchase all 19 videos for the amazingly good price of $99 or individual ones for $10 each. Click on the image below to order them. The quality is excellent.

i4ggvideoss

Those of you who were at the conference get them as part of the package so check your email inbox for the link and password.