Archives

New Ancestry kit in from my Wold cousin

Jun20

You know you have an obsessive personality when a cousin’s DNA results come in and you put off as many plans as you can for the next 3 days in order to explore them. At least I have some observations to report on the new Ancestry chip as well as more data for my study of the Wold family.

Wold line cousins Kitty, Ed, MM

Wold line cousins Kitty, Ed, MM

According to Ancestry, this new chip has dropped some less interesting SNPs and replaced them with medically relevant ones as well as ones more useful for determining ancestry composition. The details are at http://blogs.ancestry.com/techroots/customer-testing-begins-on-new-ancestrydna-chip/

GEDmatch only tokenized 455K of the 700K SNPs from that new chip. However when I imported the raw data into a spreadsheet I saw that there were 668,961 lines of data as opposed to the previous 701,495 (then subtract 20 for the header), so not that different a number. New is chromosome 26 which is for the mitochondrial DNA.

My Wold cousin MM is the cousin whose doorstep I arrived on, Ancestry kit in hand, because I really really wanted her results. Those of you who have been to my Triangulation talk or read the article here may have noticed that I had no other cousins tested who are descended from my great-grandmother’s brother Charlie, the one presumed to be Kristine’s great-great-grandad. MM’s test has rectified that although she is descended from a different wife of Charlie’s than Kristine.

Since MM is the half first cousin of Kristine’s grandfather, she and Kristine are half first cousins twice removed. Do they match at the expected level?

Continue reading →

Snippets from the SCGS Jamboree

Jun5

Going to a conference about your passion can be a really fun experience. It is wonderful to finally meet people who you have been emailing with and discussing important issues with online. Another favorite for me is the exhibit hall with vendors showing off their new and old stuff.

I had a great time at the SCGS Jamboree this year. Since I came home early, I am watching a talk streamed live about organizing my work space as I write this! The live stream is really well done. A small live image of the person is on the left and their slide is shown, much larger, on the right. Plus you can chat with the other folk watching. The live stream is available free, thanks to Ancestry.com, until July 5 see http://genealogyjamboree.blogspot.com/2016/05/jamboree-2016-registration-now-open-for.html

Richard and Kalani at the ISOGG booth

Richard and Kalani at the ISOGG booth

In order to pace myself at a conference, I try to limit myself to attending two presentations a day and spend the rest of the time schmoozing in the exhibit hall.

Two people who I have communicated extensively with online are pictured on the left in front of the ISOGG table.

Kalani Mondoy blogs about Polynesian DNA, which is tricky because it is so endogamous. His mother was adopted so he turned to DNA to find her biological family. Richard Weiss is a search angel and adoptee who is involved with DNAadoption.com including the building of their relationship calculator. Each has now found their biological families and both are Mayflower descendants!

Read on for some of my favorite snippets from the conference.

Continue reading →

It’s almost time for Jamboree!

May19

The Southern California Genealogical Society puts on a wonderful genealogy conference every year in Burbank in early June. There are only a few days left to register so, unless you have done so already, head over to http://genealogyjamboree.com/2016/about.html by May 22.

Thursday June 2 is DNA day and there are many terrific presenters and topics: Tim Janzten, Blaine Bettinger, Diahan Southard, Emily D. Aulicino, Katherine Borges, Jim Bartlett, David Dowell, Paul Woodbury and me to name a few. I will be giving my updated talk on DNA Triangulation as well as my Breaking Brick Walls talk. The full schedule is at http://genealogyjamboree.com/2016/schedule-dna.html

Friday morning there are a number of FREE events, including round tables led by experienced researchers both for DNA and genealogy. I will be hosting a DNA table about Triangulation.

The rest of the conference has numerous genealogy talks and a few more DNA presentations plus an exhibit hall of vendors (always one of my favorite parts). Since this is the year I plan to master German genealogy I was pleased to see that it is one of this year’s themes.

A particularly good feature is that you can sign up for a one-to-one consultation with an experienced researcher to help you with one of your genealogical problems, described towards the bottom of this page: http://genealogyjamboree.com/2016/special-events.html

Hope to see you at Jamboree!

My Dad, Larry Munson, 1920-2016

Apr4

A week ago on Easter Sunday my 96 year old Dad died. He was ready, but I was not. He had a wonderful life and everyone in his assisted living facility adored him. I was told he was a real gentleman, he was sweet, he sang so beautifully … When mother died seven years ago, we did not expect Dad to last long after her. They were married for 62 years and were still very much in love.

But that Norwegian optimism kept him going. Some days he thought I was my mother, some days he thought I was his mother, but after about a year he was back to his charming self and usually knew I was his daughter. This is one of my favorite pictures of them taken when I was a toddler.

KittywParentsasToddler

Larry Munson, baby Kitty Munson, Gretchen Munson 1951

Here is his obituary in the Garden City News [UPDATE 23 Dec 2020 the Easthampton Star one is no longer online]
https://www.gcnews.com/articles/lawrence-shipley-munson/
We are taking him home to East Hampton for his final rest, service on April 22 at 11:30 St Luke’s church.

Continue reading →

Rootstech Wrap Up

Feb8

Rootstech is over and I am exhausted. This year I was up early enough to go to the keynote sessions almost every morning. Wow! In a huge hall we saw great multimedia presentations over many screens while listening to a star speaker. I particularly loved Paula Madison and her Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem; so of course I bought the kindle version of the book. [update: the pictures are better in the physical versions but it is still a great read]

Perhaps it is because of my work with adoptees and DNA that I so appreciated her story, but more likely it was just that she was terrific and the tale was so well told. I also got to see the short form of her documentary at the media dinner, definitely worth seeing.

My other favorite keynote speaker was David Isay and his StoryCorps. His concept is to get two people in a booth, facilitate their conversation, and record the result for posterity. I think the story I liked best was the one where the boy with Asperger’s interviews his mother – Sarah and Joshua. But every snippet he played for us brought tears to my eyes, the wild grandad, my son the veteran, and the boy who became close to the mother of the boy from the rival gang that he had killed.

And of course it was great to see A.J.Jacobs again and hear a report on the Global Family Reunion.

Usually my favorite things at Rootstech are the exhibit hall, networking with fellow genetic genealogists, and learning a few new things. This year I have to add to that the sensational MyHeritage after party (click here for the slideshow over at Geneabloggers) and the Keynote sessions. [Addendum: The keynotes and other recorded sessions are available at the Rootstech video archive]

Continue reading →