Celebrating 10 Year Blogiversary/ The Best of RootsTech 2021

 

I began this blog on March 1, 2011 so this is the 10th Anniversary of this blog. During the past 10 years I've shared the agony of waiting for DNA test results, and long waits for something in the mail. I've also shared the thrill of the ancestor chase and the satisfaction that came with breaking down brickwalls. 

What have I accomplished and shared over this decade? First of all I've added some branches to my tree. 

Below you can see just a few of the ancestors I've added since 2011 highlighted (couldn't get them all on a 6 generation chart):

With such a mixed heritage my genealogy research has led me to many different places through this decade. 

Some accomplishments and sources I've blogged about in the past decade include:

1. Photos of my Kappel/Kurta Great-Grandparents were shared with me in 2019, I had never seen photos of them. Had no idea what they looked like before 2019.
2. Owens family brickwall came down in 2015 with a lawsuit and resulting deed documents surfacing.
3. Granada Nicaragua Church and Civil Registration digitized records became available online at Familysearch allowing me to extend by Nicaraguan lines and collect family documents.
4. Irish land records became available online such as the revision books for County Galway which extended my knowledge of my Irish families.
5. Irish Civil Registration records online is another online source I've blogged about.
6. Styria, Austria and Burgenland, Austria Church records have come online in the past few years helping me extend more family lines.
7. Civil Registration records for Burgenland helped fill in blanks in my family history 
8. 1851Census Search Forms came online for Ireland allowing me to add mothers of my Irish great-great grandparents to my tree. 
9. In the past decade Findmypast Ireland has allowed me to extend my Irish families to include new dog family members using the dog license records. Court records have added new stories for my family history. 
10. Newspapers online have helped me confirm family lines and added new stories. A newspaper article provided me with the only photo I have of a great-uncle who was killed by a sniper in Germany at the end of WWII.
11. Deed books coming online at Familysearch and other sites have helped add names to my family tree in the past decade. The James Trigg Campbell deed I located in Jackson County, Indiana may eventually break down my Campbell brickwall? 
12. We confirmed many lines through DNA testing. I started a Forgey family DNA project and a Kappel family project at FTDNA. 
13. IDing photos unmarked photos has also been a project I've been working on often using photo recognition websites. 
14. Naturalization certificate files with photos helped ID photos. 
15. I've blogged about information I've found on death certificates available online at sites such as Ancestry.com where old death certificates are available to view for free. Indiana death certificates are available online at Ancestry for instance. Other vital records now online have also been helpful.
16. Virginia Memory Chancery records online has also been an invaluable resource which I've blogged about.
17. I visited a courthouse in person for the first time in 2018 where I found documents not available online. I shared this experience in my blog. 
18. Luckily I was able to get to all of my ancestral related countries and states in the past few years before COVID shut travel down. I've shared those experiences in this blog. 

Blogging about my family history has helped me focus my research and writing down my findings has helped me formulate proof arguments. I often refer back to old blog posts to review previous findings. 

Rootstech 2021

I always enjoy watching streamed RootsTech  sessions. This year all of the sessions are being streamed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Videos of the sessions will be available to watch even after the event is over so if you missed them during the event you can watch later. 

I found the animation of photos at MyHeritage one of the most interesting announcements this year. At the bottom of the page you can see one of the best animations produced for my photos which was of my Great-Grandmother Mary Kurta-Kappel. 

Connecting with cousins through the "Relatives at RootsTech" app was also fun.  The app used Familysearch trees to match up cousins who were also streaming the sessions. Since the shared trees at Familysearch contain errors these matches weren't always correct. I did find that 4th cousins and closer were generally correct. 

From "When Your Tree Is a Banyan: Untangling Endogamy" I learned about different sites where you can upload your family tree or have your DNA results analyzed so you can evaluate how much endogamy you might have. I have a little bit of endogamy as you can see in my French Canadian lines as demonstrated by the sideways sweep of lines. Endogamy makes figuring out how you relate to DNA matches difficult. 

 

Also I learned some tips for getting more out of MyHeritage DNA. 

Clicking on the question mark near the predicted DNA relationship brings up a chart showing how you might be related to a match. Below you can see it correctly outlines my relationship to my mother. 

Ancestry has a similar feature if you click on the shared DNA link. Below you see AncestryDNA is nearly 100% positive this match is my first cousin and she definitely is. I like the chart format however because I like charts for easy visualization. 

Another tip presented was if you click on your communities at MyHeritage DNA more information about the location is brought up which includes the number of people in the community, and first and last names common to families in a particular community. Also there is an animation of migrations through time you can play.

 Aside from the DNA information a session on new features at Familysearch and another on tips for using the site were presented. I watched the sessions "Demo: Getting the Most from FamilySearch Search" and "What's New On FamilySearch". 

I heard about the hints at the Familysearch tree before but didn't know how to see them. After the presentation I  played with the tree features and discovered you can't see the hints in the fan chart view when I changed views I could see them. 

Ancestor pages at Familysearch have been updated to include more features and a different layout. This is the page for my Grandfather Rudolph Kapple. 

The session "Hidden Treasures: Discovering Local Sources in Your Irish Research" pointed out a website that led me to a family history society I hadn't heard of called the "Western Family History Association" which I will join. 

Other sessions I found interesting:

• Tracing Ancestral Lines in the 1700s Using DNA
• Reconstructing Parent DNA 
• Using DNA in a Client Research Project to Solve a Family Mystery (a case study that is interesting even if you don't take clients)
• DNA Triangulation: What, Why, and How 
• Understanding Your DNA Ethnicity Results 
• Ugo A. Perego: A Personal Genetic Journey
• Research in the Southern States 
• Organize Your DNA Matches in a Diagram 
• Research Strategies for Early Colonial Ancestors

Many of the sessions are short so it doesn't take a long investment of time to watch them. I've enjoyed watching the sessions over the last few days and learned some new things. Right now I'm working on my Sarah Campbell Jackson County, Indiana brickwall. I've selected sessions based on this particular brickwall. I'll use some of the tips I've learned to continue trying to breakdown this wall down.  

Comparing the new 23andMe Ethnicity/ A New 2nd Cousin Match

In October 2020 new ethnicity estimates were provided to people who tested at 23andMe with the V5 chip. At the time some thought you could only get the update if you tested with the newer V5 chip. My family tested with the V4 chip and we didn't get the update when it first came out. Checking my ethnicity results at 23andMe recently I discovered updated results. 

A previous update to my results, the one before the current estimates, was disappointing. 23andMe appeared to provide the most accurate estimates for my family before that update. The new update seems to correct some of the issues I had with the previous estimates. I believe the estimates around 2018 were the best.

Comparing my estimates 2015 to the present 2021 

My European ethnicity estimate has been pretty consistent in the 90% range over the years. I was surprised when it dropped to 88% with the previous update, but it's back up to 90%. 

My British and Irish started out at 29.5%, went up to 32.6% with an update, went down to 30% with another update. The current update sent that estimate way up to 44.4%. I believe the previous estimates are more accurate. 

French and German estimates started out at 5.6%. It went way up to 13.9% with an update. It likely went way up after my Mother tested and her results were phased with mine. 23andMe phases ethnicity results if parents test which often changes estimates. Another update estimated I had 14.3% French German ethnicity. The current estimate has taken my French German down to 6.3%, which would appear to be too low because one of my Grandfathers was born in Austria and I have French Canadian roots. 

Iberian estimate started out very low at 6.0%. I believe that was way too low considering one of my Grandmother's was Nicaraguan. When my mother tested and her results were phased with mine the Iberian estimate went way up to 18.4%. It went up again with another update to 19.9%. The current estimate is 12.3%. 

Eastern European started out very low at 1.7% and went up to 4.9% after my results were phased with my Mother's. It went down slightly with the last update to 4.4%. It's gone up to 7.4% with the current. That estimate should be higher since paternal Grandfather's family was from an area on the Austrian Hungarian border. 

Native American estimates haven't seen any wild swings. The first estimate was 6.7%, an update raised that to 7.3%. The last update took that estimate down to 6.9%. The current estimate took it back up a tiny bit to 7.1%, 

Sub-Saharan African from 2015 to the present this estimate has never changed and stayed at 1.3%. 

Ashkenazi has been added to my estimates with the current estimate at a trace amount of 0.1%. 

My Mother's European estimate changed quite a bit from 75.6% European to 81.8% European. I believe around 80% is fairly accurate. 

Conclusions

For some reason the previous update seemed to underestimate European admixture? It's now returned to the previous level. The current update raised my British and Irish from around 30% to 44% which is a substantial difference. My French and German estimates seemed to change for the worse while my Eastern European changed for the better. Looking at the updates from 2015 to the present they have become much more specific as you can see in the growing list of places. Personally I know where most my ancestors came from so the ethnicity results are not that important to me. Many Americans don't know where their ancestors came from so accurate results are important to them. 

Update: When I added up my known British and Irish heritage it came out to 38%. 

A new 2nd cousin match

Reviewing my 23andMe matches I also recently found a new 2nd cousin match. I was able to narrow down which line this match came from by looking at shared matches. The match is on my paternal Grandmother's side. Only one of her full siblings had children and I assumed this person was his descendant. Recently I had discovered my paternal Grandmother also had two half siblings, but I assumed they would have shared less DNA with me. 

I contacted this match and she was nice enough to respond to my message. She indeed is a Granddaughter of my Grand-Uncle Frank Mason. 

I've added the new segments to my Genome Mate Pro chromosome chart. Many of the segments overlapped with previous Mason cousins, but a few were new. One segment was extended as you can see looking at the red segments in the charts below. The one on the left shows all my collected segments before the new ones were added, and one on the right shows the Mason segments after I added the new segments. 

I only met Frank once when I was a child and only remembered him mentioning one daughter. With this new match and two other 2nd cousin matches descended from Frank Mason I realized he had more than one daughter. 

Doing research to find out exactly how many children he had I discovered a passenger list for Uncle Frank Mason and his first wife and daughter. According to this passenger list they were being deported from Cuba in 1939. I knew Frank spent time in Cuba, but hadn't heard he was deported from there. I have no idea why he was deported, but thought it was an interesting fact I never knew before. 

Frank had been in Cuba even earlier than that visit. He returned from Cuba in 1934 at the age of 20. Evidently he used his birth certificate to prove he was a citizen. 

I'm not sure why Grand-Uncle Frank spent time in Cuba? Maybe some of our Mullen cousins relocated there during prohibition? Or he was working as a painter there? He must have stayed long enough to learn to speak Spanish because my mother said his Spanish was very good. 

Frank Mason in Cuba

January was a productive month. Hoping some new genetic genealogy tools are unveiled at the end of this month during RootsTech.