AncestryDNA SideView/New at Ancestry.com

I've been interested in seeing how accurate our ethnicity results become as the technology advances. It's difficult to gage accuracy without separating the results by parent. 23andMe has been separating the results by parent if at least one parent has tested with them. 

Since 23andMe phases your results with an actual parent, or parents, their ethnicity results are more accurate. Separating the results by parent is called phasing. 

Ancestry.com phases results by guessing the phase based on strings of letters that make up our DNA code, A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosine), and T (thymine). These appear in base pairs, such as A-T, one letter for each parent. In order to separate the base pairs according to parent strings of letters are separated by parent using your matches in their database. It's an accurate process but errors can occur. A phase can turn out to be wrong, which will cause your ethnicity to be incorrectly estimated.

(For a better explanation by a professional genetic genealogist read: "AncestryDNA SideView | Ethnicity Inheritance | What is Phasing?" by Diahan Southard.")

How accurate is SlideView for my mother and me? 

Looking at my mother Edna Forgey-Kapple's SideView gives us a good idea regarding how accurate Ancestry.com's phased results are. My mother's father's ancestry is 100% Colonial American. His ancestors originally settled in the mid-Atlantic and Southern part of the United States. there is no New England ancestry I have been able to find. Settlers of those areas were heavily Scots-Irish and German. Those two ethnicities make up the bulk of his ancestry. There is also likely some English and Welsh ancestry. 

My mother's mother, Graciela (Lucresia) Del Castillo, was Nicaraguan. Nicaraguans are a mix of Spanish, Indian, and African. My grandmother lived in Granada, Nicaragua in an area that was a segregated area where people who were primarily of Spanish/European ancestry lived. Granada had a line drawn in the city separating the indigenous population from those who looked more European. However, all Nicaraguans are a mix of the 3 ethnicities because there was never a large migration of Europeans into Nicaragua.

Now let's look at the split between my mother's parents in her results.

Looking at parent 1 and parent 2 on the parent chart, and the ethnicity breakdown, I can easily tell which parent is which. The breakdown looks fairly accurate. If a person's parents were both from the same places, they wouldn't be able to identify which parent is 1, and which 2. We see parent 1, Graciela Del Castillo, has much more color in her chart representing the fact she isn't 100% European, and she has more trace regions. 

Maternal Parent 1 Graciela Del Castillo-Forgey

It's definitely obvious Graciela is parent 1. 

Below you see African admixtures represented in the chart as coming from the Graciela Del Castillo side. Tracing my grandfather's ancestry, I haven't found any African ancestry. Our mtDNA is L, which is African, and would support this result. Europeans in the United States generally married other Europeans. 

Now looking at the indigenous Indian admixture we see that share is larger than the African representing the fact they were more numerous being native to the area. 

Ancestry estimates that my mother received a 25% admixture share of Spanish from her mother Graciela. 

Below we see Basque, and Portugal represented which would make sense because they reflect the Iberian Peninsula ancestry. The surname Lacayo on my grandmother's side is Basque. 

Some French is showing up on Graciela's side. This could be French Basque or it could be a phasing error? 

Below we see a sliver of Irish on Graciela's side. I don't believe she had any Irish and believe this is a phasing error. 

90% of this so far looks accurate for Graciela Del Castillo. She said she had some German ancestry which is not showing up in my mother's results. 

Maternal Parent 2 Charles Forgey

As I said Charles Forgey had American Colonial ancestry which was a mix of British Isles and German. 

Since many of his ancestors were Scots-Irish we would expect to see this reflected on his side. We do see Irish, and Scottish, represented in the parent chart below. 

England and Northwest Europe below helps fill this Colonial American admixture. Obviously this portion of DNA isn't pointing to anything more specific. 

I would say Charles Forgey was about 1/4 German on paper. According to his breakdown my mother received 8% Germanic admixture from him. 

My mother is said to have received 2% Sweden and Denmark admixture which I believe isn't accurate. That is probably Germanic. 

This again, is very accurate. I think it's accurate because my mother's parents were from such different ethnicities, and their ancestors married people from the same ethnic groups for generations. 

My parents

On my father's side I'm 1/4 Austo-Hungarian, 1/8 Irish, 1/16 French Canadian, and the remainder of my 50% share from my father would be a Colonial American mix which would mainly be a British Isles mixture. On my mother's side I'm 1/4 Nicaraguan and 1/4 Colonial American British Isles, and German mix. On paper that is. That doesn't mean I inherited these amounts of DNA admixture.

Parent 1 Edna Forgey-Kapple

I can identify my mother Edna immediately by clicking on all of the ethnicities associated with Nicaragua. She is definitely parent 1 as we see below with the Iberian and Indigenous. Those ethnicities cover about a quarter of the chart as expected. 

The ethnicities I would associate with my mother's father's side, my grandfather, looks to be over represented. Maybe I did receive more DNA from my grandfather's side? 

I found what is apparently a phasing error. My breakdown shows Welsh and Norwegian admixture on my mother's side. My mother doesn't have those ethnicities in her results? If she doesn't have it she couldn't give those to me. 

Since I'm more Heinz57 than Ivory soap pure my results aren't as accurate. As families spend more time in America they mix with other ethnicities jumbling the letters in our DNA up. 

Parent 2 Robert Kapple

Since my Kapple grandfather Rudolph was Austro-Hungarian and my grandmother Dorothy Maon-Kapple Colonial American, Irish, and French Canadian it's again fairly easy to figure out which quarter share of parent 2 represents each grandparent. 

Paternal Grandfather

The Germanic and Eastern European on the parent 2 side represents my Kapple Austro-Hungarian grandfather. When I first tested 8 years ago I didn't see him represented in my ethnicity results. It's nice to see him represented. These admixtures don't cover a 1/4 of the chart but are getting closer to correct. 

Paternal Grandmother

My grandmother Dorothy Mason-Kapple was a mixture of Irish, French Canadian, and Colonial American is showing up correctly on parent 2 my father's side.

Clearly, we see my great-grandmother Helen Mullen-Mason's Irish showing up. She was born in Ireland in 1880. According to this breakdown I received 23% of my Irish from her. The Scottish could have come from early American Scottish ancestors? 

What's missing from my maternal grandmother's side is French. My grandmother was 1/4 French Canadian. I have many French-Canadian DNA matches so I believe I have some of that admixture. 

I would say the breakdown by parent for me isn't as accurate as it was for my mother. I believe it's because I'm more ethnically mixed and it's confusing their algorithms. Some of my ethnic groups are underrepresented in the database which also makes identifying my ethnicities difficult. The closer someone is to a particular ethnic group the better the results, meaning your family has been in one place for centuries and haven't mixed much recently with other ethnic groups. 

I know where my ancestors lived in the past few hundred years, so the ethnicity results are less important to me (although ethnicity results can help sort our DNA matches). If someone doesn't know where their ancestors are from the accuracy of these results are important to them. 

So how accurate is the Ancestry.com SideView for us? I would say it's in the 90'% range for my mother and about 80% accurate for me. So, I would infer the ethnicity results overall accuracy are in those ranges. 

 

My Experience With the 1950 Census/ How I've found hard to find people

 I live in Southern California so when the 1950 Census became available on April 1st just after midnight eastern time it was only 9pm  in California. I was able to search the census while still reasonably lucid. It was still a learning process. Searching by name often didn't bring up the correct person. The machine generated index does a fairly good job but you have to play with it sometimes. You can get thousands of possible matches when searching the index, or the right one may appear on top or on page 1.

How to search while waiting for the better indexes

Until a better index is ready, basically going through the 1950 Census and manually indexing it, the machine generated index is all that is available if you don't want to patiently wait.  

The NARA site recommends using a place and name of the head of household to search their index for the best results. That didn't always work for me. It didn't work for my Forgey family or my Kapple family in California. I did find my grandfather Kapple that way. 

Below you can see my grandfather Rudolph Kapple's first name isn't spelled correctly, but the last name was indexed correctly. His 2nd wife's last name is indexed as Kappu. 

I found out that if you use both the enumeration district and a name the search results can be much better.

For me anyway I've found the best technique for searching is to find the Enumeration District, or ED, using Ancestry.com's ED finder. This works well if you have the exact address for the family in 1950. 

My Forgey family didn't come up in the search results, or not in the first few pages, not by just searching on my grandfather's name, and place. Using the enumeration district it did appear at the top. 

Going through the ED district page by page I discovered no one was at home when the census taker came to the Forgey family door. 

Going to sheet 75 line 23, as noted, I did find my mother Edna and her family listed.

I didn't have the exact address of my great-great uncle Thomas Mullin who lived in Phoenix, Arizona in 1950. Searching on his name brought up the wrong Thomas Mullin. It brought up a man who was born in California and my Thomas was born in Ireland. I had his obituary and I used his place of death address to find an ED District. He died in a nursing home, but I figured he probably didn't live far away. I used the Steve Morse 1950 ED finder to look for the ED districts around the address. I tried 3 or 4 with the name Mullin in the search box, and eventually his name popped up at the top of the page. 

If nothing works just search the ED districts page by page. 

What did I find on the Census of Interest? 

I found the occupations the most interesting. I knew some of my family's occupations. I didn't know my great-uncle Edwin Mason worked in shipping for the railroad. Great Aunt Mary worked at a window manufacturing company. My aunt Dorothy June worked as a file clerk at an auto insurance company, and aunt Gloria was a typist at a life insurance company. 

My grandfather Rudolph Kapple was still working a Pullman, as his father before him did. 

It was sad to see Belle Kappel and her son Ronald living without William Kappel, Belle's husband and Ronald's father. William was killed in WWII Germany. A reminder of the war that was over only 5 years before the Census. 

Information that will lead to more research

My Kapple grandparents, Dorothy Mason and Rudolph Kapple, divorced in the 1940s. After the divorce my grandmother Dorothy decided to move to California with her 7 children. Her brother Frank already lived in California. Their brother Edwin also made the move along with their sister Mary Mason-Greene. Some members of the family flew out to California and other family members took the train. My father Robert J. Kapple came out to California by train with his aunt Mary. He loved the train ride out to California with the interesting views from the train. 

I used a postcard from 1948, sent by my aunt Diane (Daine in the census lol), to get the address of the family in Los Angeles. Apparently in mid 1948 only part of the family had arrived at their new home in California, but Diane said the family was coming soon in her message postcard. 

My grandmother made out the address and my young aunt wrote the message. 

I assumed those family members would include my great-grandmother Helen Mullen-Mason. When I didn't see her with the rest of the family on the 1950 Census I assumed she was visiting family or friends. 

I was very surprised to find Helen living in the basement of the former family home in Chicago. She had not come out to California in 1948 with the family. 

I thought my grandparents sold the house after they divorced? Did they continue to own it and rent out the upstairs and downstairs? Or did the new owners rent the basement to my great-grandmother? Francis Regan and his family lived downstairs, and Rosina Feehan and her children lived upstairs, in 1950. 

My Helen had family and friends living in Chicago and probably would have preferred to stay there. 

The basement had windows, thankfully, but the current windows don't seem to open. Hopefully they did open when my great-great grandmother lived there. Helen may have lived in a basement before? When she came to Chicago in 1899 she worked as a servant, possibly living in a basement? Living in the basement with water and electricity was likely better than living in the rural village in Ireland she was raised in. In 1950 her Irish relatives still had no electricity. 

The house as it currently looks with glass blocks as basement windows. 

I plan on doing some research on the house to find out when it was sold by my grandparents. I might have to visit Chicago to do that? 

Since my moneysaving great-great grandmother remained in Chicago a little longer, my family could keep the light bulb in the refrigerator a little longer and turn the heat up when it was cold. She definitely ruled the house when she lived with the family. 

Here we see my great-great grandmother is finally out of the basement and in California

 

The 1950 Census research was more interesting than I expected.