Category: Genetic Genealogy

DNA – Who to test?

Why, every single cousin if you are a real Gene/Genea-Geek. If you are not a Gene/Genea-Geek and you are just getting started the answer is as simple as:

What do you want to know?

To find information about your Mothers direct maternal line, you would test a male or female family member who is descended from any of your mothers, mothers – going back as far as your would like to go. They would get a Mitochondrial (mtDNA) test. This is a very deep test which can follow a line back for a very long time, it “is passed down by the mother unchanged, to all her children, both male and female.”(ISOGG – Mitochondrial DNA Tests)

For your fathers line, you can test your brother, your father, and any male cousins who share your LNAB surname. They can take a yDNA test. This is another very deep test which can follow a line back a great distance. “The Y chromosome, like the patrilineal surname, passes down virtually unchanged from father to son.” (ISOGG – yDNA Chromosome DNA Tests)

For other relatively close cousins, that are not in your direct maternal or paternal line, you can test anyone who matches you through your genealogical research. They can take an Autosomal (auDNA/atDNA) test. This is not a deep ancestor test and “can be used to confirm relationships with a high level of accuracy for parent/child relationships and all relationships up to the second cousin level. For all relationships other than parent/child relationships additional contextual and genealogical information is required to confirm the nature of the relationship.”(ISOGG –Accuracy of tests)

If you are interested in knowing your ethnic genetic make-up then you would only test yourself. This would give you your specific Haplo Group, “a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patrilineal or matrilineal line.”(ISOGG – Haplogroup)

Where to test? You want to have your DNA and the others (the people you want to test) DNA in the biggest DNA Gene Pool(s) as possible. From a recent class on DNA on Triangulation with Kitty Munson Cooper she suggested starting your testing with Ancestry for atDNA, then transferring your results over to FamilyTree DNA and upgrading to other tests for mtDNA or yDNA from there. This way you have your DNA in two big gene pools right off the bat (this as of march 2016).

Now run out and find all the cousins in your genealogical paperwork and talk them into doing a DNA test!

McElmoyle One Name Study

There are very few McElmoyle’s in the world in comparison with other peoples of Ireland. My specific interest arises from the McElmoyle/McElmoil family that settled in York County, South Carolina, specifically Daniel McElmoyle, b. 1796, Ireland, d. February 10, 1867, in York County, SC. Possibly married to 1) Mary Chambers, was married 2) Mary J. Pardue.

From my grandmother’s notes he had a brother, James McElmoyle, who also immigrated to North America and settled in Port Lambton, Ontario. I think this James was b. June 24, 1801, Ireland, d. September 25, 1880, Mooretown, Lambton, ON. He married Catherine M. Cowen.

The fact that there are James and Daniel’s in every McElmoyle family and in every generation does not help, but that is the way of Genealogy right?

There’s lot’s of variations listed on the McElmoyle One Name Study Page:

McElmoyle Spelling Variants:

Mac Giolla Mhaoil
Mac Giolla Mhichil
MacElmeel
MacIlmoyle
McElmoyle
McElmoyl
McElmoil
McIlmail
McIlmale
McIlmoil

I want to get to the bottom of these two McElmoyle brothers origins as well as the rest of the McElmoyles in the world. Be great to prove that we are all related. To that end, I started a McElmoyle One Name Study on WikiTree and a McElmoyle DNA Project on Familty Tree DNA.

Here’s hoping this information tickles information out of some of my McElmoyles cousins!

What is the story?

Those new to me, Mags @GrandmsGenes.com, may not know that I am an avid WikiTreer. I use WikiTree as my research and presentation mechanism. I post my research as it happens, with theories and comments about the research from my work as well as from others researching the same lines. So it will often figure prominently in my posts.

I have spent the last week or so decompressing from my trip to Roots Tech 2016. I won’t bore you with how cool it was to see the WikiTree Volunteers who manned the WikiTree booth, how exciting it was to meet so many WikiTreers in attendance or how fun it was to sit down at a computer with people who wanted to join WikiTree and signed them up right there on the spot. OR with how cool it was to hang-out with Wikitree’s Forest Elf, Eowyn Langholf or WikiTreer-In-Chief Chris Whitten. Or meeting other bloggers and like minded peeps – no #shamefulnamedropping, but oh, it was so much fun.

High five at Roots Tech2016
Mags (me), Kirsty Gray of the Surname Society and Julie Ricketts high five, Photo by Michelle Hartley

But what I will do is share with you what I have read from the many, many Bloggers who attended. Generally their specific take-away from the conference was that the story of our ancestors is increasing in importance. No, not that our Ancestors have a story that we should find out about, but more that our ancestors have a story that we should write about or tell,  in whatever form we chose.

WikiTree gives us a form for this. We can write about our ancestors stories in the G2G forum when we ask questions. We can post photographs with descriptions of what our ancestors were doing in those photographs to G2G or to their profiles. We can also post their story to their profile page (here is mine if you want to read some of my story). I know, I know…your already know that. But do you do it? Post their story to their profiles? Do you post their stories in your presentations? Do your clients get a story along with all the research?

I have and I haven’t. I have posted a few of my Ancestors stories. But mostly, I work on adding sources (including the actual data if I can get it) to the Biographies, but I don’t often flesh-out the story as well. I have been thinking about this since before Roots Tech or reading the blog posts from other bloggers. I have been thinking that I should work some on writing the story of all those facts and sources I have been posting/presenting.

I guess this could go along with What’s Your WikiTree Add Style? Slow and deliberate or addtheseprofilesfast then come back round to fill in the information. I am the deliberate adder. Though, I think maybe I should add a bit more of the, come back round to fill in the information to my add style. This way maybe I can work on telling the story too. Well, isn’t that a part of what the Biography is for? Telling the story?

So the trend identified by so many of the Roots Tech Attendees is that more Genealogists are moving towards telling the story of the Ancestors we are researching as well as all the traditional, charts and trees.

So I ask, what is the story in your research?

DNA confirmation Citations

You can say you have proved a connection via paperwork and sources and most all of us know how to post a citation for that proof. But what do you do when you finally prove your paper trail (or lack thereof) of sources? How do you post a DNA confirmation citation?

I got a kick in the bum (completely unintentionally) from one of my heros, DNA expert extraordinaire, Peter Roberts.  I was doing the things I do on Wikitree (where I post all of my ongoing – it never ends does it? – research) and noticed Peter working with a profile and DNA triangulation.  As a part of what he had done we had a short email exchange about DNA confirmation and why it’s important to cite the DNA confirmation in the child’s information.

The kick in the bum made me go back and figure out how to add my DNA citations!

So for example, my grandmother’s DNA has been proven using a method called triangulation (basically I have found two other people who match my DNA, through testing, our segments match location on the same chromosome and our genealogical research sync’s-up as well). I am using atDNA (autosomal) with 4th cousins.  But how on earth do I cite this? I went to the DNA Confirmation Help Page on WikiTree and looked it up!

The citation ended up looking like this:

  1. ↑ Maternal relationship is confirmed by a triangulated group consisting of M. Gaulden GEDmatch #,  Bubbette Blue GEDmatch # and Bubba Jones GEDmatch # sharing a 26.7 cM segment on chromosome 9 from 103,348,186 to 123,946,544

Roots Tech 2016 or Bust

My Travel
I am a day away from my day long, continent spanning trip to reach the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. I leave at quarter to 10am EST and arrive at quarter to 10pm MST. So technically it will look like 12 hours, but in reality, it will be more.

On the way I get to meet a childhood friend in LA for lunch, and on the way home I get to play in Vegas with a WikiTree colleague. No, I didn’t plan it that way but when I realized I would be in LA for a good chunk of time and in Vegas for an even bigger chunk of time? Well things just fell into place. Then, because I am flying West Jet home from Vegas, I will be able to watch, for free, from the back of the seat in front of me, the Super Bowl. Go Bron..Pan..oh how do you choose? Peyton Manning’s probable final game/Super Bowl appearance, or, roll Panthers after one incredible season?

The Conference
I will be at the WikiTree booth, sporting my burnt orange with pride, giving out as many hugs as I can, while taking selfies with anyone who will take one with me AND posing for pictures with some of my favorite WikiTreers in WikiTree’s photo booth!

I will try to sneak in some classes in betwixt and between talking to every single person attending Roots Tech, about how incredible WikiTree has been for my Genealogical journey.

I will also tell anyone who will listen about how excited I am to have teamed-up with Marc Snelling to start Grandmas Genes and how much fun I am already having working on blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking as Grandmas Genes…I am becoming a social media Maven.

See you at Roots Tech!

Why DNA?

Oh, there are so many reasons why DNA.

DNA is the thread that makes up the fabric of who we are. It is also the tint in our Iris, the gray (what, you aren’t grey yet?) of our hair, the knock of our knees, the recipe of our self. It is also the road map of our ancestry.

I have, according to Doodle my Grandmother, my grandfather Gaulden’s hair and eyes. I can see in the mirror that I have my mothers smile. All of my siblings and I have the same basic build, in varying degrees, of our grandfather TC. One sibling has curly brown hair and resembles, again according to Doodle, Doodle’s mother Allie Compton. The other sibling is some kind of incredible replica of TC. I know that I see my sibling in the face and expressions of my niece. I also see the same niece in the face of second cousin. All our family traits, everything is inherited and that inheritance is decided by our DNA.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the carrier of our genetic (origins, the study of heredity) information. It is “a chemical consisting of a sequence of hundreds of millions of nucleotides found in the nuclei of cells containing the genetic information about an individual. It is shaped like a double-stranded helix, which consists of two paired DNA molecules and resembles a ladder that has been twisted. The “rungs” of the ladder are made of base pairs, or nucleotides with complementary hydrogen bonding patterns.”[1]

So in the simplest form DNA is hundreds of millions of very small things found in a cell – each cell in our bodies. How these tiny things are are set-up is how our body knows how to be. This is the basic thing to know.

We inherit parts of us from our mothers and our fathers. We also inherit parts of us from our grandparents and their parents and their parents and…HOW we inherit it is much harder to explain.

If we all inherited things only from each of our parents then we would all look just like our parents and each of our siblings. But as I discussed above, I don’t look just like my brother or my sister. I don’t look just like my father or my mother. I don’t look just like any of my grandparents. I look just like a random combination of all of, or parts of, different ancestors from the beginning of my family line(s).

So, I can ask my family questions and find out about my family history. I can be told I have my grandfathers eyes…wow I must have inherited them from him…but who did he inherit them from? Well, no one is alive today to tell me that. No one is alive to tell me who his father was from first hand experience either. I can go to the Library, County Archives, State or Provincial Archives and the National Archives and find the paper trail. The paper trail may or may not tell me anything further back than what the papers cover, but how can I find out about the rest of the story.

Technically a DNA test won’t tell me who I got my eyes from, but it can tell me that I have blue eyes based on what my DNA test says. A DNA test can also tell me that my mother is my mother (despite how many times my sister told me I was adopted), that my grandmother is my grandmother and that her great, great, grandmother is really her 2xgreatgrandmother. To connect the DNA with the paper trail, to prove that trail, is basically the found holy grail of our family history.

That is why DNA.

Related Posts

Who to Test?
Where to Test?
Understanding your Ethnic Results

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1.↑ http://isogg.org/wiki/Genetics_Glossary

 

 

Just Start

Oh to Start. Well that is what it all comes down to right? Nothing gets done unless you just start. Marc and I are doing just that.

We have known each other for a couple of years. He and I live in the same neighborhood. His sister is in my life “circle’s”. You know, those people you probably interact with at least weekly, but they aren’t really a “friend”. A neighbor who shares a fence, the fella at the butchershop you end up having long discussions with occasionally while shopping, the manager at your favorite store who patiently listened to a special request, made it happen and you always go out of your way to say hello.

So one afternoon when our paths crossed, Marc says to me, I hear you are into “Genealogy”. Oh, the conversation that followed. So now we…

…Just Start.