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My preliminary schedule for Rootstech 2014

One of the best parts of a conference like RootsTech is meeting people in person with whom you have been corresponding about your beloved hobby. There are a number of folk whom I really look forward to meeting in person.

Reminder there are 2 days left to win a free pass so send me your questions for Spencer Wells.

Since there are so many presentations I want to go to I thought I would try using the Ipad app. So I downloaded it and as soon as I tried to use it though it wanted a username and password. I tried several of my usual combos to no avail and then used the handy “forgotten password help” which kindly sent me my username and a new password.

Meanwhile here are my picks for presentations to attend:

Searching the Digital Archive of Norway RT1486

FINN KARLSEN

How can you find your ancestors in the Norwegian sources? Many of the sources are available free on the Internet, but how do you find what you need?

Thursday, 10:30 AMRoom: 251A

I have used the digital archive but have great trouble with the search engine. I really look forward to improving my skills!

Next I am torn between Tim Jantzen’s presentation, much of which I know already and …

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A deep DNA triangulation success story

So many of these one segment DNA matches that I find with other testers are too far back to find the common ancestors. However those of us with Norwegian ancestry often have very deep trees thanks to the good records and the many farm books for each locality. So when you find a fellow genealogist with Norwegian roots who matches your DNA you get quite hopeful, and sure enough …

I had four matches, the colored lines in the picture below, for my Norwegian descended Dad on chromosome 16. However they span the centromere which is from 35335801 to 38335801, so initially these segments did not seem that promising.

 Chromosome 16 from my one segment mapper tool

Four people overlapping on Chromosome 16
from my one segment mapper tool

Luckily the most recent match had an extensive tree of which only a small piece was Norwegian. So perhaps it would be easier to find our common ancestor with less tree to look through. Note that using a tool to compare Norwegian GEDcoms does not usually work so well because of differences in naming conventions (patronymic, farm name, Norwegian characters, etc)

Here are the details of these segment overlaps from my master spreadsheet for Dad:

Edith 16 31000000 52000000 9.20 1301
Nancy 16 31000000 54000000 9.70 1359
Loretta 16 31000000 52000000 9.90 1423
Aaron 16 33000000 53000000 8.2 1241

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Finding common ancestors with automation: Compare GEDcoms or use a one world tree

It is exciting when you find a new DNA cousin who actually has a family tree. However it can take days to wade through it looking for the common ancestor and more often than not, you do not find it. Sometimes that is because the ancestor is too far back in time. Other times it is on a line that is not documented or is just wrong. Also there can be spelling discrepancies or if you have Norwegians, naming differences (father’s name or farm name used for surname).

You would think that there would be good automated tools to do this and you would be right. These are the ones I know of.

GEDmatchGEdcom

Partial results of a GEDmatch compare one GEDcom to all run

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Found a 3rd cousin in Norway via DNA!

A Norwegian, who turned out to be a descendant of my gg-grandparents Jørgen Wold and Anna Knutsdatter of the Drammen area, tested his DNA on 23andme and came up a close match (3rd-5th cousin) to my Dad with 35 cM over three segments of matching DNA (0.48% shared). Most matches called 3rd to 5th have been just two segments and have turned out to not be that close but rather to share two ancestors. However Henrik was on GENI.com and an exploration of his tree found that he was descended from Jørgen Wold’s daughter Olava. This is the first time it has been so quick and easy to find a relationship! He is much younger than I am, so two generations further down the tree. Naturally I had to use the new DNAgedcom feature where I could compare him to all my shared profiles and see who else he matched. Here is the plot of his matches with my family and the larger shares (surnames removed for privacy except from my Dad and brother) created with my DNA segment mapper tool:

HenrikMatches

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Results for a second cousin on the Skjold line

The results for our second cousin John who shares Skjold and Wold ancestry are just in today at 23andme so of course the first thing I did was compare him to me, my brother, my dad, and a few other cousins. Interestingly John has inherited far more DNA in common with us than our Munson side 2nd cousin has.

Dad shares 608 cM over 25 segments with John and only 389 cM within 18 segments with Dick, our Munson 2nd cousin. My brother shares 281 cM over 13 segments with John as opposed to 155 cM over 7 segments with Dick while I share 282 cM in 15 segments with John as opposed to 175 cM within 10 segments with my Munson 2nd cousin Dick.

Here is a pretty picture I made with my chromosome segment mapper tool:

Our 2nd Cousin on the Skjold line from Segment Mapper

Overlapping DNA from our 2nd Cousin on the Skjold line compared to family with the Segment Mapper

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