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Sale at Ancestry until Monday night

ALERT! Ancestry.com DNA testing is on sale for $69 for the four days after Thanksgiving starting now. Also you can save 20% on gift memberships at Ancestry.com– scroll down that same page to see the offer. Click on it for even more membership offers.

Addendum [29 nov]: To see a sample of what you get with an Ancestry DNA test read this old post of mine: http://blog.kittycooper.com/2014/08/in-defense-of-ancestry-coms-dna-offering/

AncestrySale

Exploring the new ancestry.com DNA feature: total cMs

Ancestry.com has a new feature which shows you the total number of centimorgans (cMs) and segments for your DNA matches. You have to go and look at at specific match to find it. Once there, you click on the little “i” in a circle next to the confidence level description and a dark box will appear with the information.

Here is what that looks like for my brother and our first cousin from her account.

AncestryDNAnewCMsSmll

Ancestry has its own algorithm for removing matching DNA that it thinks is not recent. This means that these numbers will not match what you see at GEDmatch. Perhaps some of the excluded data will appear as “Ancient” over at DNA.land but not all these kits are uploaded there yet so that report will have to wait.

Here are a few examples of the numbers for my brother’s family matches at Ancestry, as compared to those same matches at GEDmatch or ftDNA:

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Ancestry.com News

So much to report, teach me to take a vacation! Ancestry.com has a new database: Social security applications and claims index, and DNAgedcom has a new tool to report your ancestry DNA total cMs, and I missed mentioning the Ancestry DNA sale at $79 instead of the usual $99 because it ends tonight. Hopefully there will be another one soon.

SocSecAppIndxI tried looking for my uncle in the index and it found him quickly. It listed his birthplace and parents names, useful information.

To learn more about the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index read this post from Randy Seaver: http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/07/new-ancestrycom-database-us-social.html – I recommend following his blog for news about databases added to familysearch and ancestry plus many good genealogy articles.

I hope to review the DNAgedcom ancestry client soon. It requires a subscription which seems fair as increased usage is bound to be costing them money and it is hard for these free sites to exist on donations alone. I like this trend whereby you can subscribe to a site like DNAgedcom or GEDmatch and get extra functionality but there is still plenty of good stuff available for free.

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate of Ancestry.com and profit slightly when you click my links, see my footer here for all my affiliations.

Kristiansand, where the Monsens came from

KarensLunchOn Thursday my 2nd cousin Karen, who moved back to Norway some time ago, had us to her house for a lovely late lunch.

She lives in a fairly unique house with seven gables that her grandfather Oscar Bie bought and enlarged, staying with the original style, creating a lovely sun porch among other enhancements. The ceiling is low in the old part as you can see; Karen is touching it.

KarenCeiling

She looked through her photo albums and I found two that included my grandmother and many other wonderful ones. I took photos of a number of her photos so we will see how well they turn out

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Visiting WOLD family places near Drammen

My Norwegian friends and relatives have been amazingly helpful and welcoming. Last night and tonight we stayed in the guest apartment of my 4th cousin (Wold side) Rønnaug and her husband Bjørn Erik in Svelvik. I can tell she is a relative not just because she has our family pointed canine teeth but also because she has such lovely flowers. I do so love purple petunias!

Ronnaug by her retirement home in Svelvik

Ronnaug by her retirement home in Svelvik

Our first night was the night they celebrate the longest day with wonderful bonfires. I finally met cousin Anders, the son of Rønnaug whose DNA test brought us together.

RonnaugAndSons

Rønnaug with sons Hans Christopher and Anders

 

Then today, accompanied by my 3rd cousin twice removed Torgeir (also met via DNA testing) and his lovely six-year-old daughter Anea, we went touring ancestral places.

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