More about DNA relatives at the new 23andme

Aug5

It is so delightful that you can now easily view your past correspondence with a 23andme match! To do this go to DNA relatives, which defaults to the People section, and click on the person. This takes you to a one-to-one comparison page partially shown below.

Your most recent message will appear in a box in the right hand column and you can scroll back in that box to see previous messages, both sent and received. Not all my oldest messages are there and I am not sure why. I did find one from 2012 and all the ones since 2014 seem to be available.

Past correspondence - as always, the red arrow has been added by me

Past correspondence in the People view – as always, the red arrow has been added by me

I used to have to use the chrome add-on 23++ in order to search my inbox or outbox which took a long time with four years worth of messages to search. Sometimes it even crashed! This is much better.

More on the People view in DNA Relatives

Can’t find the person? You can use the search box on the right in the People view to find them, an improvement over the first roll-out of the new site. Note that the search in the DNA view works immediately as you type, no buttons to push, while the search in this People view requires you to press return. Annoying that they are different.

You can now download your aggregated results from the bottom of the People view page. Continue reading →

The new 23andme transition is here!

Jul28

Many months ago we were promised that the transition would come in August. Last week on July 15, several of my accounts got an email that it was coming in a few days. Today, twelve days later, two of the ten or so accounts I manage at 23andme got emails that they have actually transitioned to the new experience, mine and my dad’s.

new23andmeWelcom

This is particularly exciting for me as I can now try out the new automated triangulation tool (click for previous blog post on that) with Dad and my Norwegian 3rd cousin. You need to participate in open sharing to have access to this tool.

When I visited Norway last summer, kits in hand, my third cousin gave me his DNA, so of course he got the new 23andme. I did a blog post on the new experience with his kit and went into the details of how to do the things I was used to doing on the old site on the new site – comparing people, asking for shares, checking new relatives, and so on. In this post, I will try not to repeat myself but rather to report on how the transition worked for me.

If your kit has transitioned, when you log in you see a big green button that says Get started that you have to click, as in the image above.. Continue reading →

How many cousins share my 5th grandparents?

Jul19

Matching DNA has put me in touch with an extremely large number of Norwegian cousins who share my fifth grandparents from Fatland farm on Halsnøy Island in Hordaland, Norway. What’s more, perhaps due to the large number of them, I am seeing some triangulation of segments among their results.

Halsnoy

Halsnøy Island in Hordaland, Norway from the ferry

This started me thinking about the effect of many generations of big family sizes on the number of sixth cousins I might have from a specific set of 5th grandparents. It would seem to me that the larger the number of cousins, the more likely it is that there are some who share good sized segments with me and Dad.

So I did a little simulation in a spreadsheet. It’s very simple, it assumes that the number of children reproducing in every generation is the same so that you can see the differences for different family sizes. I also did a line or two with the real/estimated numbers from the Fatland couple.

If your family consistently had two children who had two children reproducing for six generations you would only have 64 fifth cousins, but if everyone in your family had six children who had six children then you have almost 50,000 fifth cousins. Quite a difference!

HowManyCousins

Continue reading →

Genealogists, time to give back: indexing

Jul15

Most genealogists I know are very grateful to the LDS church for microfilming so many records around the world. Now we can express our thanks by assisting with their world indexing project this weekend. Details are on this page https://familysearch.org/indexing/get-started-indexer

IndexingFS

You have to download their indexing software to participate. I found the video at the bottom left of the start page called Quick Start Video most helpful.

My first effort was indexing some 1880 Chicago mortality records …

Continue reading →

Great New Features at Family Tree DNA

Jul13

Family Tree DNA has some terrific new features for its Family Finder matches as well as for its tree. The most exciting addition is the ability to automatically assign matches to your mother’s and father’s sides via close relatives, even if you do not have a parent tested.

In my case, my Dad is tested as well as two of my maternal aunts, so my aunts provide me with matches on my late mother’s side. This is how my family finder match page looks now. Notice the Paternal and Maternal tabs each showing the number of matches assigned to that side. Also each match gets an icon indicating which side. Of course my brother is related on both sides. Clicking on a tab shows just those matches.

KittyFTDNAsmll

So how do you get a page like this? Well you need to assign your parents or other close relatives on your tree. If you do not have a tree at ftDNA yet, you can upload a GEDcom from your genealogy program.

Continue reading →