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More on the SCGS Jamboree: Free Live Streaming

Jun6

I am very grateful that Ancestry.com has sponsored live streaming of the Jamboree since my foot problems are keeping me home now. There is one selected presentation available in each time slot.

TriangulationSlidesSee the schedule here: http://genealogyjamboree.com/2015/schedule-streaming.html and how to get set up for it here http://genealogyjamboree.com/2015/streaming-overview.html

I really enjoyed my day and a half at the Jamboree. I discovered that most of the San Diego folk had come by train! There is a stop next door at the Burbank Airport and the hotel has a van that will fetch you. Next year …

As always I loved listening to Cece Moore. I learned a few things from her presentation about some of her adoptee success stories. Many more genetic genealogy stars were there: Blaine Bettinger, Tim Janzen, Angie Bush, Judy Russell, and Kathy Johnston. Sadly I had to miss most of their presentations since I gave two of my own.

I was pleasantly surprised by the full house at my triangulation lecture. It was exciting to be live streamed. A number of folk told me afterwards that they felt like they finally understood this concept. What I did was present a number of real life cases from my own research where I used DNA triangulation to figure out relationships. That seemed to work well.

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Happy Mothers Day to my mother’s mother’s mother’s …

May10

On mother’s day it seems most appropriate to celebrate my mother’s maternal line; that is all the female ancestors who passed down their H11a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)* to me and my cousins. As far as I know it, there was only one woman born in each generation until my grandmother, who had three girls. Each of her daughters had exactly one girl, but only one of us three had any more girls. Fortunately for the continuation of our mtDNA line, my cousin’s two daughters each have a little girl of their own now.

The furthest back maternal line ancestress that I have found is my great-great-great-grandmother Veronika Ebner (nee Engl) of Winklarn, Bavaria, born sometime around 1800. She had my great-great-grandmother Karolina Wittmann (nee Ebner)  born 1831 in Eslarn, Bavaria.

Next we get to the women that I know something about and have pictures of.

My mtDNA ancestors

Retta Reiner, Fanny Thannhauser, Thannhauser daughters

My great-grandmother Margarette Katherina Reiner (born Wittmann) is on the far left on her wedding day the 3rd of February, 1889. In the middle is my grandmother, Franziska Thannhauser (born Reiner) in her youth and on the far right her three daughters as children.

My favorite blogger, Roberta Estes of DNA explained, did a post celebrating her maternal DNA which inspired this post. Thank you Roberta.

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Using the GEDCOM capabilities at GEDmatch.com

Apr26

UPDATE 4-JUL-2020: In the column labeled “GED Wikitree” on a Tier 1 one to many report, if the word “GED” appears in the row of a match, you can click on it to get to that user’s gedcom. Otherwise you can find if a match has a GEDCOM by using the User Lookup function. How to navigate that GEDCOM is covered on the second page of this article.


Take the kit number of interest and plug it into the user lookup form. On the next page, with the information about that kit, it will either say NO GEDCOM UPLOADED or there will be a GEDCOM id number. That id number is now clickable and will take you to the person associated with this kit number in the GEDCOM.

GEDmatchUserFrodeIf you have not uploaded a GEDCOM to GEDmatch.com then I highly recommend that you do so. It is helpful to be able to compare your GEDCOM to that of a DNA match. I prefer just 10-12 generations of my ancestors (privatized) as my full family file is way too large. My theory being that is enough generations for DNA matching and I only want ancestors for my DNA matches to look through.

I have used red arrows on the image to the right, which is an excerpt from the current right hand column of GEDmatch home page [as of 4-jul-2020] to show where to upload your GEDCOM file and where to click to do a user lookup.

Here is a the step by step example:
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South African Records Online and Facebook Groups

Apr22

Someone on one of my many genealogical facebook groups mentioned that South African records were online these days and originals could be had for a small fee. Since two of my great-grandmother’s brothers went to Johannesburg to make their fortunes, I could not resist trying out the site at http://www.ancestor.co.za

I searched on the surname “Langerman” and sure enough my great-great-uncles Max and Jacob Langermann appeared in the search. From the dates, these are death records. Note that I have increased the contrast from the original web site (click on the image to see the actual screen shot) as the colors left something to be desired.

LangermannSearchSmll

I ordered the record for Jacob a few weeks ago and paid about $5.00 US. My first search effort ended too soon, 1900, so I did not see Max. The next time I tried it, I used a better search and ordered the record for Max.

Today I got an email that the document for Jacob was ready plus they have found a few more documents!

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