British Censuses, Probates, and BMD Records at Ancestry.com

Nov17

Sometime in the last year a whole slew of British records from the 1800s, at least for the London area, came online at Ancestry.com – I think it has been that long since I last looked for my UK relatives.

ReginaGundelfingerGugenheim

Regina Gundelfinger Gugenheimer

Last night, around midnight, I followed a green leaf for my 3rd-great-aunt Fanny Gugenheimer Mandelbaum, who had moved from Germany to London, fully expecting it to be yet another person who had copied my tree. Instead I found her and her husband David in the 1851 and 1861 London censuses. I had thought that they had no children but there were suddenly two daughters, and one of them married a fellow named Anton Benda and had many descendants in more censuses, 1871, 1881 and 1891 and other records. When I next looked up it was 3:30 a.m… oops.

I have to admire ancestry’s matching algorithm. Most of the hints were spot on and kept me clicking away until the wee hours. After a while some of the Benda descendants started appearing in other trees so I shot off messages to three new people and all three of them answered (very unusual on ancestry)! So far they are all just related by marriage.

Also now I have a surname to look for in our DNA results and in modern London – Benda. It seems to be East European, perhaps Latvian or Hungarian in origin. Not sure if it is Jewish. The Benda descendants seem to have marriage banns published so perhaps they did not stay Jewish.

Continue reading →

Using Ashkenazi Jewish DNA to Find Family

Nov10

Reading about this holocaust survivor’s discovery of missing family via DNA had me crying –
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4589762,00.html – but it also got me thinking about how few jewish DNA success stories there are. Perhaps that is changing now that more people are testing.
A7734 on facebook
The screenshot at the left is from facebook page A7734 about Menachem’s search. It shows him and the genealogist who helped him, looking at the first picture of his parents he had ever seen.

Frankly, success stories with jewish DNA are rare.  I have none to report from my family. I emailed all my Ashkenazi researching friends to see if anyone had a good success story. Not very many are out there. If you have one, please send it along.

The endogamous nature of jewish DNA is part of the problem. Everyone looks like a close relative in the DNA matching. Another part of the problem is that so few Ashkenazim know their ancestors past their great-grandparents. Too many records were destroyed in WWII, among other problems researching.

In my experience, if an Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) DNA match is not showing as a 2nd cousin or better it is unlikely that you will find the relationship. An experienced Israeli researcher told me to ignore anyone without at least one long segment match of 23 cM.

Below are a few tips from search angel Gaye Tannenbaum who frequently works with AJ DNA.

Continue reading →

One more lookup (humor from Esto)

Nov7

It was midnight and I just wanted to follow one one more ancestry green leaf clue, this led to some fascinating discoveries about an 8th grandfather in Seljford Norway. Then I had to double check my copies of the farmbook pages and make a note on my list of lookups to do next Salt Lake City visit. Then click another leaf…

Would you believe when I looked at the time again it was two in the morning? So you can understand why this Esto cartoon really had me laughing.

Genealogy humor from Esto Frigus
Image from geneapalooza used by permission

The DNA behind the PBS show “Finding Your Roots”

Nov4

On Tuesdays, I usually count down the hours until the latest episode of Finding Your Roots is on, but tonight we will be watching election returns while my DVR records the show. So you all know what I will do when my husband finally heads for bed …

FindingRootsBlog

It looks like tonight’s show will showcase the ancestry of a number of jewish celebrities. Since Ashkenazi research can be particularly difficult and the DNA very tricky due to that population’s endogamy, I am particularly interested to see what I can learn.

 

Cece Moore‘s latest blog entry at the PBS site was just posted. Each week she discusses some of the details of the DNA work she did for the previous show.
Continue reading →

When is a DNA segment match a real match? IBD or IBS or IBC?

Oct27

The current technology for personal genome testing cannot tell you which of the two chromosomes, maternal or paternal, in a pair that an allele comes from. It can tell you that there is an AG at a specific position and a CT at the next position but not whether the A came from your mother or your father. This leads to much confusion about DNA segment matching.

ShipleyKittyDancingSmll

Kitty and Shipley; siblings sharing 47% of their DNA

The matches that these testing companies find are for stretches of DNA that are half identical regions (HIRs). This is due to the fact that a relative who shares a DNA segment from a common ancestor with you will match you along the chromosome you got from the parent who is descended from that ancestor. Thus your new relative will match you for half the alleles in those positions. Only a sibling will share fully identical regions of DNA. Click here for a page that has a picture of the DNA I share with my brother Shipley.

For example, if my Dad gave me AAAAAAAAAAA and my Mom gave me CCCCCCCCCCC then I would seem to match absolutely everyone on that segment because every position has both an A and a C. So an ACACCAACCAC or a CCAACCCACA looks like a match, but only those with an  AAAAAAAAAAA or a  CCCCCCCCCC would be real matches. This is simplistic and the segment runs used for matching are much longer than this to try to avoid that sort of false matching. Also note than when your testing company shows an AC it is really an AT and a CG but just one of the known pairing is shown for brevity.

The term for a real match is IBD, which is an abbreviation for Identical By Descent. The term IBS means Identical by State which would apply to any false match. So in our example, the CCAACCCACAA match would be considered IBS.

Continue reading →