We had a terrific meeting this week starting with tips
from the NWGC. Linda and Sylvia reported on the Beginners Class. Instructor Amie
Tennant gave her view of what every genealogist should know with an emphasis on
being professional, including citing and evaluating your sources. We have a handout and Sylvia’s notes to share
if you ask.
Elizabeth attended an afternoon workshop on Family
Search. She was encouraged to learn how
to use Family Search which started filming records around the world in the
1930’s and has the largest collection. They
are constantly adding and indexing new records.
I heard they recently opened a new Immigration collection which was
fully indexed by 165,000 volunteers. Their
indexing process is considered to be the most accurate since two people index separately and any differences are reconciled by a third person.
At NWGC I attended an afternoon workshop by CeCe Moore
covering her process for using Ancestry autosomal DNA to find unknown
parentage. She described two methods of
triangulation, that is,using matching DNA of three people to form networks. There is segment triangulation and pedigree triangulation. CeCe uses pedigree (family trees) triangulation
almost exclusively and uses matching DNA segments as needed. To keep track of her “genetic networks”
created using Ancestry Shared Matches, she uses the Ancestry Notes feature and
a handwritten notebook. I have a handout
for this process on request.
CeCe was also the banquet speaker this year. She reminded us that genetic genealogy is a
relatively new area of study and she has been in it since the beginning. Around 2008 they had theories about how much DNA
was inherited from various ancestors but she wanted to have real-life
data. She did a 40-person study with her
family to determine how much DNA was shared by different relationshps. After that her brother-in-law
asked to be tested even though he wasn’t genetically related. Big surprise!
He was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. She works almost exclusively with unknown
parentage. She believes that reuniting
families and helping to heal the past is her most important work to date.
For the last few years she has been asked to do
crime-solving work but she refused, thinking it was not ethical. After the publicity around using genetic genealogy
methods to solve the Golden State Killer case and after GedMatch changed their
terms of agreement, she decided the time was right to go into
crime-solving. GedMatch is the website
being used by law enforcement and they recently stated in their terms that the
site could be used for solving violent crimes. That was a warning to all participants. CeCe is working for Parabon, a company that services law enforcement
investigations.
Genie Loretta reported seeing two 20/20 episodes in which
CeCe Moore works with foundlings (those
abandoned at birth) to reunite them with birth families. Thomas MacEntee says, “you MUST watch them (and
get out your hankies!)”.
Remember Thomas MacEntee with DNA Bargains and Genealogy
Bargains websites. You’ve missed a lot
of bargains this summer while I have been off vacationing. If you are interested, you better sign up for
his emails. They are informative, timely and he
sometimes offers free articles that are helpful. It was just announced that Thomas will be one
of the keynote speakers at the Northwest Genealogy Conference in August, 2019.
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Another fun part of the NWGC was meeting up with
members of the new Virtual Genealogical Association. Especially fun was that many of the members
were speakers at the conference, people I had just seen from afar before. I joined this group for $20 a year. They offer 3 or so webinars each month by
well-known genealogists, a Facebook page for questions, and meetups at conferences. Join over at https://virtualgenealogy.org/.
I continue to update our Events page on the Genies
blog. In case a national conference is
in your dreams, I am adding any info I see about RootsTech, National
Genealogical Society Conference, the Southern CA Jamboree in May, etc. as I see
them. RootsTech in Feb 2019 opened
hotel reservations last month and conference registration open September
20. Let me know if you would like to talk
about what it is like. I haven’t
picked a conference for 2019 myself.
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Lastly, a local interest story. Remember a post just before Pioneer Days when
John H sent us photos of his 3rd great-grandfather Nicholas Sheffer and
the parade down Main Street. Shortly after
that I received an email from a California woman who is also descended from
Nicholas Sheffer. She found that
blogpost through Google and she was looking for the original picture. Now here’s the eerie part. Coincidentally I was looking at the Whatcom
Genealogical Society website and darn if there wasn’t an extensive
transcription of an interview with the same Nicolas Sheffer. This is such surprise because there were only
a few similar documents there.
We’ll see you, Genies, again in person on September 17 or
sooner.
In the meantime, Happy Hunting!
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