Genetic Genealogy Archives - Grandma's Genes

Posting To Cousin-Connect on Facebook

I noted a friend posting to our Gaulding Cousins facebook group about how many of “us” there are in the world.

Gaulding

Gaulden

Gauldin

It’s not a lot to be sure – we can absolutely say we are a rare breed.

Every time I have an opportunity I jump into the post to share my connections via DNA testing and my relationship trail. This will, hopefully, entice others of my Gaulding cousins to DNA test and share their well-documented family history (or not – I am not beyond working someone’s history so it is documented if I can).

I thought I would share the steps I took to quickly and succinctly share my information.

Answer The Post

Don’t just bomb a Facebook or other social media feed with your idea. Even if you are adding a link to a blog post of your your own be careful not to wear-out your welcome by over posting or repetitive posting.

In this particular post I had two things I added – first one person answered about one of the derivative names, Gaulden or Gauldin, “those who kept the name…” I commented that Gaulding is the root of our name. That Gaulden and Gauldin were derivatives of Gaulding. This is the first known spelling in this part of the world – it is attributed to John Gaulding, (abt.) 1665 (unknown but assumed to be England)-1740, New Kent County Virginia.

Second, the original poster and I discussed the fact that we are not related to the Golden family (he is a Golden).

DNA

The Golden et al (which includes we Gaulding cousins) FTDNA Group Project includes 223 YDNA tested males. Of these, there are 11 instances of the Gaulding/in/en surname.

Unfortunately the Golden Group Project does not have the earliest known surnames (EKA) shown in the results. If they were we could see that the Gaulding/en/ins would be all grouped together since we share YDNA.

Also, knowing the EKA can give good hints as to the origins of these families. This is not an FTDNA setting but a setting the group administrator can allow or not, depending on how they see the need for privacy for the group members.

I also posted my father’s name on FTDNA to the Facebook discussion so people who do test can see their connection to me. Then I posted his mitoYDNA.org kit ID. mitoYDNA.org is a free and accessible YDNA and mtDNA database where one can compare and match and run tools on results from any and all possible DNA testing companies, past present and future.

There are no other Gauldings on mitoYDNA.org, yet (we are rare) so I ran this with a very wide search parameters. I can tell you that the closest match up is Tsar Nicholas. I know! Cool!

Talk About Family Connections and DNA

I posted about my specific DNA matches and our connections back to John Gaulding of New Kent County, Virginia. About how the two connections who shared their DNA and their family histories with me, briefly, without identifying them – privacy. I also mentioned that I have one match that surely goes back but there is a gap in the paper trail.

I then jumped over to WikiTree and ran a “Relationship To Me” with my fathers ID and John Gaulding, 1665 and posted that to my post.

It’s easy to share information in a family group in Facebook. It’s easy also to incorporate tools available to help those in the group see how these tools work.

Hope more of us rare Gauldings do some more DNA testing!

I Pledge

Over the past while, I have had many who have been involved in some of the very public posts, which have flown through the genetic genealogy community, contact me to air frustrations. I have been having discussions with so many and I want to continue those discussions with anyone who wants to share their views on specific ideas on how we as a community work to lift and build our fledgling profession and community. I am not interested in rehashing old problems. I am interested only in moving forward.

I want to community build and I have an idea I am working on which I hope, and I think, will help with this. If you have input on positive ways to move forward please feel free to post here. This is not a secret. It has grown organically out of the desire told to me by so many, who have shared their hurt, their pain, and their frustration, from all parts and every viewpoint (and those yet discover). There are a lot of “I’s” up to this point but this is about “we”.

It is very simple. As a community, we need to make a pledge to each other that we will, in the very simplest of ways, and this is something I will repeat from one of those discussions I had over the weekend, “pledge to behave in a professional manner and to treat my colleagues in a civil and respectful way.”

Let’s move on and forward. Let’s build together. Let’s be positive. Let’s be professional. Hobbyist, Amateur and professional alike, let’s build up our genetic genealogy community.

I am not asking you to make a pledge here, but you can. We will work to help others in our community to “stop, drop, and roll” when things start to get heated and to give ourselves the time we need to carry on conversations, even about controversial subjects, in a professional manner.

I will tell you now, I pledge.

Distracted by DNA Painter

After working with DNA Painter and GEDmatch matches I discovered that 15% of my DNA matches are actively collaborating in genealogy.

Yesterday Roberta Estes wrote a blog about DNA Painter (she Actually has a series on DNA Painter – see below). Reading her latest sent me into a distracted by DNA Painter Day. Thank you Roberta.

I like DNA Painter and have used it to help my with working out information for my work, but today I decided to paint a bit of my own lines:

I opened GEDmatch and went to my one-to-many matches list. Over on the left hand side of my matches is a column with links to GEDCOM’s uploaded to GEDmatch or a WikiTree 8 Generation pedigree.

I have used these links many times when doing quick look-ups on how a DNA match might be related to me or clients, are there common surnames? or are there common ancestors? It’s a great way to use what other people have shared to see who you are.

I followed the information in the GEDCOM File or WikiTree Pedigree and connected 12 new DNA matches to 5 of my ancestor couples using DNA Painter. Nice!

I made some obversations

Of the first 222 matches on my list 37 had GEDCOM’s or WikiTree links, three of the GEDCOM’s listed actually had no GEDCOM’s. That leaves a total of 34 total shared family files to go along with the DNA.

From this we can estimate that 15% of the people in my lines are sharing their genealogy. It’s a rough estimate for sure. Is this a good rough estimate for the amount of people who are willing to share their genealogy? It is a very low number.

Email Tennis Example

I have been working with a client to help identify her mother’s birth family. It’s a hard one because her mother was born in 1916. It’s a hard one because the information on the original birth certificate appears to be “made-up”. The first clue here was that the delivery doctor’s surname was given as the child’s middle name.

I have sent out many runs of emails to groups who match this lady (there is a second cousin match with no identifying information who has not answered many attempts to contact them via the testing companies messaging system – oh if they would!). Yesterday I sent another run to 10 matches asking if they would share a tree or pedigree with me. One person answered with asking me to give him her parents names.

I gave him the adoptees story and why I don’t have that information. I sent him to the research for this adoptee listed on her WikiTree profile. He said he would do his own research into her parents, if I could only give him that then he could see if she matched anyone in his tree.

We sent several volleys of emails in this vein and his suggestion I upload the DNA to other sites might help me find an aunt or uncle…no, no aunt or uncle would be alive… Frustration would be a good word to use to describe the volley. The last email I sent was very polite and specific about how sharing genealogy with someone, literally, can help that person find out who they are.

The Little Exercise

I walked through 10% of my total matches on GEDmatch to find shared genealogies and found how many were collaborative Genealogists. The percentage I got was 15%. Is this indicative of Genealogy as a whole?

WikiTree boasts 554,626 collaborative Genealogists. What percentage of all Genealogist’s (from Hobbyists to professionals) is this number?

How do we get the word out to all the DNA testers that there is more to their DNA test than just “What geographic region do their ancestors come from”?

Roberta’s DNA Painter Series

And In My Spare Time?

Incredibly honored and pleased to announce that I will be a part of, the Genetic Genealogist for, the Canadian Casualty Identification Team for the Directorate of History and Heritage within the Department of National Defense Canada. The Team will be working to recover, identify and reunite the remains of formerly missing Canadian Service men prior to 1970 with their families for burial.

Here is a link to a Video about this important work:

Video about the CCIT

If you would prefer to read about it here is a link to an article:

DND looking to contract DNA and burial experts to help ID Canada’s missing war dead

Off to Kitchener

I am off to Kitchener in the morning and I have been looking forward to this trip for so many reasons that I thought you might like me to outline a few of them.

The Kitchener Public Library Fair isn’t your regular old run of the mill Library Genealogy thing. This library system serves a densely populated part of Ontario and their Genealogy Fair garners crowds with varying degrees of Genealogy knowledge, from beginner to expert and top-notch speakers from the Genealogy field. I get to be a part of it and that is just so cool!
Sharing my passion, Genetic Genealogy, as the Keynote speaker. The Power of DNA is the message. This message will wrap itself nicely around the DNA theme of this years fair. There will be a small guest appearance by my Grandfather during the presentation too. All the way from the hills and foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. I kid you not.
Riding a train for the first time in my life to Kitchener. Yes. I know. Of course I have ridden the subway in major cities and yes I have ridden the Monorail at Disney, but never a train. My poor spousal unit is getting peppered with all sorts of questions from me, “How will I know which car is car #4?”, What do I do with my luggage?”, “Where are the bathrooms?”, “How do I find lunch?” and “Do they have footrests?” I will be a wide-eyed Harry Potter on his first ride to Hogwarts (thanks to Sheila at KPL for making my travel arrangements!).

Everything always happens at the same time for me!

If traveling by train for the first time in my life and speaking at such a great event weren’t enough? The WikiTree Clean-A-Thon is this weekend. Not only do I get to speak, share my granddad and ride a train, I get to help clean-up Wikitree Profiles and do Video Hangouts with fellow WikiTreers while traveling and when I get home.

Another amazingly busy Weekend in the offing! Come see me, or watch for me hanging my head out the train window like a very happy puppy, tongue flapping, ears blowing back and wearing the biggest grin on earth. You can also see me hanging out with other WikiTreers every four hours starting at midnight on Friday and running through Midnight on Tuesday morning during the Clean-A-Thon (NO! Not at 4am and not during the KPL Genealogy Fair).

New GEDmatch X-chromosome comparison links at WikiTree

From WikiTreer-in-Chief, Chris Whitten comes this great announcement about new GEDmatch X-chromosome comparison links at WikiTree.

“Hi WikiTreers,

We just took another small step forward in our collaboration with GEDmatch.com.

As most of you know, you can click directly to view one-to-one autosomal test comparisons on GEDmatch from WikiTree profile pages and DNA Ancestor Confirmation Aid pages. You can also do Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA comparisons through Ysearch and MitoSearch “[compare]” links on WikiTree.

One thing we haven’t had until now is easy X-chromosome comparison links. X comparisons can be especially powerful for genealogy because there is a more limited inheritance pattern on the X than the autosome and almost everyone who has taken an autosomal DNA test (all 10 or 12 million of us!) has X chromosome test results too. There is a lot of untapped potential for DNA confirmation using X matches.

Here’s an example of how you might use this. Look on your DNA Ancestors page — this is the “DNA” link on the pull-down menu that starts with your WikiTree ID — and scroll to the X Chromosome section. These are the ancestors from whom you inherited your X DNA. Choose one of the distant ones and click the DNA Descendants icon next to their name.

On your ancestor’s DNA Descendants page scroll to the X Chromosome section. These are the descendants — yourself and your cousins — who are likely to match each other on the X. If more than one of you are on GEDmatch you can click the “[compare]” links to see whether you match as you would expect.

Here are a couple examples of DNA Descendants pages where you can see the new GEDmatch comparison links:

Maybe a more informed genetic genealogist will follow up here with advice on doing the actual DNA confirmations, or with other ideas for using this new feature.

Onward and upward,

Chris

P.S. A big thank you to John Olson, Curtis Rogers, and our other friends at GEDmatch for enabling us to create these links. Thank you to Blaine Bettinger for his early and ongoing evangelism for X chromosome usage. (We used Blaine’s charts to create our XDNA ancestor and descendant pages.) And thank you to Mags Gaulden, Kay Wilson and the other DNA Project members for their leadership on these subjects, most especially — especially — thank you to Peter Roberts, who suggested this feature and helped it all come together, as he has with many of our DNA features.”

This is just great Chris (and Peter),

X-DNA is often overlooked, but can be a powerful tool because it’s inheritance is very specific. Click on your DNA link as Chris suggested and look at how this sex chromosome is inherited.

For a female:

From your Dad and his Mother.
From your Mother and her parents

For a Male:

From your Mother and her parents

It’s so specific. The Confirmation Citation is really informative too:

* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 108.0 cM X chromosome match between John Kingman GEDmatch T782948 and his second cousin once removed Kelly Miller GEDmatch A721343. Their MCRA is Charles Cyrus Babst.

Take some time to look at some of those X-Matches WikiTree has posted for you. You might get a pleasant surprise.

My Dad and I from this new feature:

Chr	Start Location	End Location	Centimorgans (cM)	SNPs
X	2,710,157	154,551,755	190.1	16,903

Chr 23

Mags

70k Doc – First Connection

The last Blog Post was all about the 70k Document. It’s a Descendants of John Gaulding compilation document from a DNA connected (who is not connected to my Gauldings yet) cousin who is the keeper of a lifelong Gaulding researchers research. Up to speed? If not please read the, My Dad Has a Y DNA match to two Gauldings.

Making DNA Match Connections

I, personally, have DNA cousins and also people who should be DNA cousins, who are not a match to me, that I have wanted to connect for quite a while. The cousins who we think share a Gaulding MCRA (Most Common Recent Ancester) with me are of course the ones I want to connect first and especially the Y-DNA matches.

BUT, I have this friend and we have known for 3 or four years that we have the Gaulding Surname in our respective limbs of the Big Ole Shared Family Tree that is WikiTree. We have never been able to make that connection until…

You guessed it, the 70k Doc.

I know I should be tracking down those Y-DNA connections so I can confirm my fathers line back forever…

I couldn’t resist Liz and our shared wonder at the fact that we do not match via DNA. Yes, I am absolutely my fathers daughter and he matches two other Gaulding Y-DNA testers. We are Gaulding’s for sure and according to the 70k Doc we share my fifth great grandfather, John Mathew Gaulding.

Why not a match?

Matching a MCRA at our 64, 4th great grandparents is about as far back as you can go with auDNA. Give or take a shake or two. Knowing Liz and I match further back than our 64, 4th Great Grandparents at our fifth makes a non-match a definite possibility.

The other factor might be that we didn’t inherit as much of the same DNA segment from our MCRA or that we didn’t inherit ANY matching segments of DNA from our MCRA. It’s the same as looking at a pair of siblings who have different color hair or eyes. I didn’t inherit the exact same things from our ancestors that my siblings did and it’s obvious when you look at us.

The Excitment of the Hunt

Over the past week or so, Liz and I have shot emails back and forth exploring names that might break down her brickwall. We finally did it a few days ago and couldn’t have done it without the 70k Doc. So this is revelation #1, Brickwall busting #1 and possibly pulled muscle #1 from Liz’s happy dance. Now we just need to verify all the genealogy we are looking at and we are done.

Now back to those two YDNA matches.

TEST Please!

To any male Gaulding, Gaulden, Gauldin, Golding, Goulding descendants, please test! In particular any descendant of John Gaulding of Verginia (any of them) or William Goulding of Bermuda. William names a nephew in his will, another William, who lived in New England. Be great to prove the theory that he was the father of John Gaulding of Virginia, imported by the Ripley Family.

DNA and The Global Family Tree – Poll 1

In June your Grandma will be presenting a 3 hour Workshop at the Ontario Genealogical Associations Conference 2018. The subject of the Workshop is DNA and the Global Family Tree. In preparation for this I’ll be posting some polls to find interesting information from you, to mix into my presentation.

I’ll post polls to Grandmas Genes Facebook Page. Please do share these polls to your pages, blogs, message boards, Twitter, holiday table and consider it a gift to the OGS Conference 2018 Workshop participants.

Thanks!

DNA Confirmations and Citations

You can not have Confirmed with DNA status in your research or on a WikiTree profile without the DNA Confirmed Citation. Period, end of story.

How many DNA confirmed status buttons have you clicked without also including the DNA Confirmation Citation? If you have a citation, is it done following WikiTree’s DNA Confirmation Citation Standards?

This page gives you the nuts and bolts of using Confirmed with DNA indicators on WikiTree relationships and how to cite your source for the confirmation. Here is citation specific help.

The Data Doctors rolled out a new Suggestions report for the DNA Project yesterday:

213: Missing fathers DNA confirmation

313: Missing mothers DNA confirmation

You will notice these popping-up in your Suggestions Report (My WikiTree Drop-down Menu, Top right of every page, scroll to and click on Suggestions) as well.

As of today there are over 17,000 of these suggested corrections. Can you help to make WikiTree more accurate by reading the instructions listed above and working to reduce these suggested corrections?

Examples from the DNA Confirmations Link above:

One To One Family Finder:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 1417.42 cM Family Finder match between [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] and his maternal uncle [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]].

One To One 23andMe:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed with a 23andMe test match between [[Whitten-1|Chris Whitten]] and [[Nally-4|Rebecca (Nally) Syphers]], first cousins once removed. Predicted relationship from 23andMe: “1st to 2nd Cousin based on 6.68% DNA shared across 21 segments.”

One To One Ancestry:
* Paternal relationship is confirmed with an AncestryDNA test match between [[Whitten-1|Chris Whitten]] and [[Bartlett-34|Hollis Bartlett]], second cousins. Predicted relationship reported by AncestryDNA: 2nd Cousins based on sharing 150.3 cM across 9 segments; Confidence: Extremely High.

One To One GEDMatch:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 1417.42 cM match between [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] GEDmatch T412069 and his maternal uncle [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]] GEDmatch T559569.

Autosomal Triangulation:
* Paternal relationship is confirmed by a triangulated group consisting of [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] GEDmatch T412069, [[Sjostrom-39|Kris Sjostrom]] GEDmatch A936004 and [[Collins-5366| Elizabeth Collins]] GEDmatch T688604 sharing a 10.8 cM segment on chromosome 1 from 163621974 to 173712569.

X Chromosome:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 18.89 cM X-DNA Family Finder match from 142421555 to 150560582 between [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]] and his [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1_name=Price-7294&person2_name=Dekle-6 fourth cousin twice removed] [[Price-7294|James Price, Jr.]]

mt DNA:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by an exact HVR1 and HVR2 match between [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:DNATests&u=6727476&id=7 this Family Tree DNA mtDNA test] for [[Weatherford-199|Priscilla Weatherford]] and [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:DNATests&u=7713929&id=7 this Family Tree DNA mtDNA test] of her maternal line cousin [[Zimmerman-1613|Clair Zimmerman]].

Y DNA
* Paternal relationship is confirmed through Y-chromosome DNA testing. [[Roberts-7266|Anonymous Roberts]] and [[Roberts-7085|Peter J. Roberts]] match on 36 out of 37 markers (see YSearch IDs 9WCMS and 97ZDB) thereby confirming their direct paternal lines back to their MRCA [[Roberts-7104|Thomas W. Roberts]].

Just one more way WikiTree is working to become the most accurate Global Family Tree. Period. End of Story.

Do You Triangulate Well?

The WikiTree DNA Project has a brand new spiffy badge just for you.

Triangulator Badge

This badge is awarded to WikiTreers who have mastered the complex concept of DNA triangulation and applied it on WikiTree to mark profiles as “Confirmed with DNA“.

To be eligible, the member needs to have added the appropriate citations for each parent-child relationship for three or more distant cousins who share a segment measuring 7cM or more back to their shared ancestral couple as explained in the triangulation instructions on Help:DNA Confirmation.

In addition, so that the badge committee can confirm the triangulation:

all three tests need to be on GEDmatch, and
all three relationships trails to the common ancestor or common ancestral couple need to be on WikiTree and the profiles need to have public family trees.

Requesting the badge

Are you a triangulator? If so you’re a valuable contributor to our single family tree project and we thank you for it!

To get the Triangulator badge, please answer this G2G post.

Be sure to include:

Your WikiTree ID.
The IDs of profiles in the triangulated group that have been marked as Confirmed with DNA.

Standards used

WikiTree’s standard for triangulation (see Help:DNA_Confirmation) is based on ISOGG auDNA triangulation and the writings of Tim Janzen, Jim Bartlett, and Blaine Bettinger.

WikiTree profile: Space:Triangulators