June 2020 Minutes from Sylvia

FERNDALE GENIES MEETING MINUTES

DATE: June 15, 2020 1:00 PM.

LOCATION: Online, via Zoom

IN ATTENDANCE:  Judith C; Sylvia W; Frank & Margie; Bill R; Rick; Linda B; Peggy; Linda L; Barbara B; Elizabeth D; David R; Susan M; Judy S

CHECK INS

Sylvia has been working on learning to use the DNA chromosome browser feature in several DNA websites to enhance her search for a birth parent. She has also been using DNA Painter’s tool “What Are the Odds?” (WAPO) that predict where you or a target person fit into a tree.

Bill is trying to make a timeline for his family history and going through family photos. Suggestions for timelines, anyone? Legacy Family Tree can build timelines; Roots Magic has “chronology” or “time line” though the format was not popular among our members who have used it; Ancestry has one built-in.

Margie: Margie found the date of her grandmother’s death by contacting the funeral home, which had changed names. They were very helpful and researched for her, giving her the actual date she had been looking for. 

Frank was going through old photos, found relatives in New Jersey whom he wants to contact for information on that side of the family. He’s also looking for information about family living in Manchester, Connecticut in 1958. How to go about this? Suggestions included Ancestry.com Library version – use at home free with your library card. City directories, business directories, state and federal census records. Frank wants to trace the family’s journey from Brooklyn NY to Connecticut.

Rick has been working on finding females in his tree that have no recorded maiden names. Records only show married names. He has been adding over 1000 death records to his family trees which are very useful for the information they provide on names, dates, origins, etc.

Linda B has been working with her basic tree. She has had a triumph this month in adding a whole new layer to her tree. She read family wills one afternoon and found pages and pages of testimony. She is getting old photos together and telling stories through the photos. She is still looking for a birth record for a grandmother in Prussia, and what ship she emigrated to America in. Not knowing the date, the name of the ship, or its departure and destination makes it difficult.

Linda L has been looking for a direct ancestor in the 1800s and is having difficulty with the surname. Suggestions included: was this a first marriage? Either partner may have been married before and the marriage document would reflect that. Widows who remarried mostly used their previous husband’s last name rather than their maiden name on the marriage documents.

Barbara B has been busy sifting through files and cleaning out. Not much time for genealogy this month.

Elizabeth D called a first cousin she has not had much contact with and was delighted to discover that she was also very interested in the family tree. They traded stories of family members and history. She also bought a scanner to scan slides and negatives and is excited that she has learned to use it to digitize her collection.

David reported that his wife mentioned a term he was unfamiliar with: “Irish twins.” These are two children born to the same family but less than a year apart.

Peggy has been using Google Maps to “travel around” to locations in her family history and has been able to “drive” down roads checking out what is there. She found some old run-down property on one road that might have belonged to her family. She intends to contact a local real estate agency to see if they can find out about these buildings. She has found some probate records with pages of useful information.

Judith has been busy with webinars and online research articles. People ask her, “How do you do all of this?” She believes you must focus your searches and research. She chose photo scanning and has been learning about using metadata to label and add information to photos. Bill likes to use it for pictures to describe names, location, event date, etc.  This works on any file or document.  Go to your Windows Explorer (file directory).   Right-click on a photo, select  Properties, then Details, and enter information.

Judith offered this tip on Sanborn Maps which are insurance maps for coverage against fire, etc. They include floor plans and information about the property. Very useful information. 

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are online at the Library of Congress.  This link gives descriptions, key and tips on how to use.   https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/about-this-collection/. 

ProQuest.com offered these quick facts:

Property and land-use maps of everyday life from 1867-1970
Unparalleled map views of 12,000+ U.S. towns and cities
Coverage Dates: 1867-1970
Sources Covered: More than 660,000 large-scale maps of more than 12,000 US towns and cities

Sue says she has not done too much with genealogy. She has a relative who is in the process of DNA testing, and she is waiting for the results. She is also working on albums for her kids.

Judy S is not working on genealogy much right now as she is busy with other projects. She has been researching to locate family in China – siblings - and is finding it difficult identifying a village there. She asked for suggestions on how to research Chinese genealogy. Suggestions included Family Search WIKI and other online sources.

PRESENTATION

Judith and Sylvia then gave a brief presentation on using the DNA Painter tools, and showing how WATO works with a basic, fairly simple tree to predict where a target person fits, and a more complex tree using the new Beta version of WATO. For those interested in learning, some websites include:

https://thednageek.com/improving-the-odds/

https://thednageek.com/a-major-update-to-what-are-the-odds/

https://dnapainter.com/tools/imf

These sites are either short videos or information about how to use DNA Painter and the WATO tools.

FURTHER INFORMATION AND BUSINESS

More discussion on metadate and DNA Painter tools. It was mentioned that there are links at the DNA Painter website to watch training videos and webinars, and to contact the designer, Jonny Perl directly. Sylvia has had contact with him through email and he has readily answered questions. He welcomes feedback.

Judith asked if anyone had watched the new series, “The Genetic Detective” with CeCe Moore. Several had. It is being shown on ABC channel at 10:00 pm on Tuesdays. It can be watched at other times if you have the ABC channel website, or if you save it. There are six episodes in this series, three of which have been shown. Although the focus of the episode is on the history of the case, CeCe’s search using DNA and the eventual outcome, there are some useful pieces of information to be learned. Not every DNA trail leads to the right suspect, it takes a lot of work and figuring out relationships. Relationships such as second marriages, “double cousins” etc., must be considered.

Rick asked what will happen when our monthly groups return to in-person meetings at the Library, given that more than one member is living out of state. Judith says this is something she will look into before we return to the library, but we should be able to find a way to hook up at each meeting via Zoom so that we can continue having out of state members join the meetings virtually. Bill said he would help.

WRAP UP

The meeting concluded at 2:45 P.M.

NEXT MEETING: JULY 20, 2020 at 1:00 PM, via Zoom