Tag: Mags Gaulden

It’s Been A Year This Fall.

This fall was a freakishly weird and long year. Well, it all started in July, July the 22nd, to be exact.

The Seat

I was preparing my van to visit a friend who has cats—wonderful, furry babies who adore me and show me all the love they can. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep in their space, so I sleep in my van. It’s a setup with two fold-down seats and two others that need to be removed with some help.

I got a wild, impulsive hair and thought, I have removed the seat tons of times by myself, safely, using the old, roll the seat out onto a garden cart and roll it into the carport for storage.

The seat rolled over the garden cart onto the ground. In some detached-from-reality thought process (I have suffered back issues since I stole my brothers’ bike and rode it head-on into an oncoming motor vehicle in 1967), I lifted the seat to put it on the garden cart. The three sharp pops and the surge of pain radiating from my back told me I’d just done something incredibly foolish—something wrong.

At the first ER, who shall not be named, they saw something astronomical in my vital signs, said it was from the pain, said that they were not the place to go for imaging, take some Naproxen, and get off my feet for a few. No follow-up, nothing further.

After a trip to a walk-in clinic and two more visits to a different ER, I was diagnosed with a fractured vertebra. The fracture looked ‘different’ and required follow-up with a specialist. My vital signs were still off the charts, and I got a referral for my vitals, too.

A Hurricane and A Devastating Loss

The Hurricane
Helene struck my home city of Greenville, SC, and the mountains that were my playground with a vengeance. On top of the damage was the phone call from my Mom – “If we had been in bed you would be an orphan”. The damage to my parents’ home was catastrophic. If my mom had not moved her and my dad out of their bedroom and down the hall to the living room, they both would have been killed instantly.

The fact that their dream home – a design my father had been skillfully refining until this last remarkable structure he got to live in – was sheared in two and unlivable, was a horror on its own. The fact they now had to find somewhere to live was overwhelming. The fact that when the tree was removed my mom fell and broke her arm, was yet another obstacle to moving forward.

All this and more sent me to my home city, declared a disaster area, to help my parents (disclaimer – mom would not let me drive down before she broke her arm because of my back and because she is not a wilting old lady with a twig on her house – think Zena Warrior Princess Mom).

Tree Damage


The Loss
When the tree fell on the house, my father was lying on the sofa next to the hallway (an open living area with a bookshelf separating the hall from the living room). A cloud of construction debris billowed down the hallway, covering everything in a thick layer of sheetrock dust, fiberglass insulation, oak dust, and other fine particulates, as if from an explosion.

24 days later my father succumbed to an infection in his lungs caused by that cloud of debris. Two days before he passed he was sitting up telling me he liked the TV shows about the World Series but thought they spent too much time looking at statistics.

I can not describe the loss of my father who was our (me and my siblings) hero. Once, years and years ago my mom said to me, “Your father loves you to distraction”. He did and I am here, alive, reasonably sane, and where I am today because of that love.

A Need of Time

After returning from Greenville (driven home by my partner of 25 years), I took a full week away from the world. I stayed at a friend’s cottage, giving myself the space to reflect and be still with everything that had happened—and everything still unfolding in my life.

Sunny and stormy lake view

But I can’t take a week in the woods to be still with my health. The issues revealed when I broke my back are big. They are hard. They will take so much time and energy.

The Clinic doctor I have been seeing said I should retire. What would that look like for me? I don’t know until the next appointment or two or three or…

I have emails to answer. What do the answers to those emails look like? I have commitments scheduled well into next year. What do those look like?

Once I get some answers about my health I can move forward.

Why In-Person Is Better

I spent my life before that thing, that should not be named, ravaged the world with its horrible deaths, sickness, and political upheaval, traveling the world and speaking in person to the genealogy community. In 2019 alone, I put nearly 70k miles on planes, trains, and automobiles. It was wonderful to be present, in person, and huggable.

Nearly four years later and the changes wrought by that thing that shall not be named are looking like they might not be transient, but permanent. We came back from the 20th-century flu, sure, but because of technology things are very different in the 21st Century. Technology has afforded us the ability to be connected virtually. That is great and it has served us well. With the physical world shut down, we could continue to connect. Albeit in a less human form.

I have ventured out and back into physical, in-person, talks and conferences. I plan to continue to do so and I hope you will join me.

Reasons Why I Prefer Attending In-Person Events

This weekend I attended the South Carolina Genealogical Society’s Summer Workshop in Columbia, SC. While the organizers are very pleased with how well the event was attended, I am exceptionally pleased with who all attended!

Cousins!

Being a Carolinian at my core, speaking at a conference in the Carolinas is wonderful because of all the cousins I get to see and meet. Yes indeedy. I don’t have enough fingers to count the cousins who came up to me to tell me about our connections! Like my brand new Gaulding/Templeton cousin, Billie Lawson, Jr.

One conference and among the cousins a double cousin! This kind of discovery is huge for me and huge for him as we worked on Sunday afternoon looking for both the genetic connection and the paper connection as well.

Research Finds

I have a 4th great grandfather whose death has always been a question mark. I was able to discover a few years ago that he died in Camden on March 21, 1865, but had never known what it was that caused his death or which of the cemeteries in Camden was his burial spot.

On Friday morning I spoke with William Felder, who was manning the Camden Venders table, about my question – Where was Whiley Buried? On Saturday afternoon he met me with an entry in a book. Wiley died of Pneumonia and is buried in an unmarked grave along with other Soldiers in the Quaker Cemetery in Camden.

But wait, there’s more!

My wonderful friend and colleague, Cheryl Hudson Passey (Carolina Girl Genealogy) was going through Camden on her way home and now I have photos!

Networking

I will admit I spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out with many times over cousin Katherine Borges. But when Katherine ignored me to sell DNA kits for FTDNA, I was more than happy to hang out with author and speaker Dianna Elder’s (Family Locket Genealogists) wonderful husband Mark. Oh, I had fun hanging out with Dianna too! 🙂

Networking also meant meeting Diane Culbertson of the DAR and she told me of the wonderful work she and others are doing for the Liberty Trail. “The Liberty Trail—developed through a partnership between the American Battlefield Trust and the South Carolina Battleground Trust—connects battlefields across South Carolina and tells the captivating and inspiring stories of this transformative chapter of American history.” You can learn more about this great work on their website at The Liberty Trail.

Being Home Where Ever You Are

Being present, in person at a conference or talk takes you home, no matter where you are. You just can’t have that virtually. ‘Nough said.

Lennox and Addington Museum – DNA 201

DNA 201 – Matching, autosomal, Y, mitochondrial and X

Tips and tools to help you connect with your matches and your EKCA’s (Earliest Known Common Ancestor). Matching is easy! I have a match who is listed as a fourth cousin AND they share my surname. I am done. Not so fast. Is your surname a common surname? Does the match have a good paper trail (traditional genealogy) back to a common ancestor? There are many more things to do to make sure that match is the right match. We look at how to work your matches and what tools might be available to help you make that connection.

Roots Tech 2020

Mags will be at Roots Tech this year. Mainly hanging out at the WikiTree booth – #1311.  Mags will also be helping with the mitYDNA.org booth – #1842.

Interesting Booth Talks Schedule

Wednesday:
9:30 AM – Ballroom B, Quickly finding common ancestors through DNA (Rob Warthen) – Regular session
6pm – WikiTree – Sarah Rojas (WikiTree Basics)
6:30 – FTDNA – Y-DNA & Advanced Y-DNA (Gale French)

Thursday:
10:40 – WikiTree – The Basics (Sarah Rojas)
10:35 – FTDNA – DNA Databases (Mags Gaulden)
11:00 – Speaker Area – Meet the Tool Makers (Rob Warthen, Jonny Perl)
12:05 – WikiTree – The Single Global Family Tree (Mags Gaulden)
1:00 – WikiTree – The Honor Code (Julie Ricketts)
2:20 – Roots Tech Demo Stage – What’s new with WikiTree (Mags Gaulden)
2:35 – FTDNA – Y-DNA & Advanced Y-DNA (Gale French)
2:40 – WikiTree – G2G (Kitty Smith)
4:05 – FTDNA – Common Ancestors using Collins Leeds Method (Rob Warthen)
4:10 – WikiTree – DNA Features (Peter Roberts)
5:40 – WikiTree – Our Community (Katie Goodwin)

Friday:
10:40 – WikiTree – The Basics (Sarah Rojas)
12:05 –  WikiTree – The Single Global Family Tree (Mags Gaulden)
1:00 – WikiTree  – The Honor Code (Julie Ricketts)
2:40 – WikiTree – Adding Your First Leaf (and where to go from there) (Kitty Smith)
3:45 –  WikiTree – Incorporating 52 Ancestors Stories Into WikiTree (Roberta Estes)
5:40 –  WikiTree – Name Studies (Mags Gaulden)

Saturday:
11:00 – 4:05 – FTDNA – Common Ancestors using Collins Leeds Method (Rob Warthen)

An African Canadian Family History Mystery – UGA DNA

A scientist in Ottawa, wants to know what his real last name is. The family lore? The great grandfather, Samuel, was adopted by an African-Canadian gentleman, Abraham. The adoptee, Samuel, was the son of Abraham’s wife’s sister. Family photographs of Samuel’s children reveal Anglo-Canadian boys. Taking all the information from a family Genealogy done previously and adding aspects of traditional, forensic and genetic genealogy we will extend the story, finding the truth to this family’s rich history. Along the way we will discover their real identity, and their story, beyond Samuel Gorge and into the dark history early African families in Ontario.

I’ll be webinaring (new verb) one of my best-loved talks, An African Canadian Family History Mystery on the 26th of this month. Not that I am bragging or that the presentation is all that good (it is), but it’s the conversations it starts that make it so powerful.

It’s the story of a family who in this day and age had heard rumors of something “different” in their ancestry. It was an adoption dating back to the early 1800’s. The wife of the couple was reported to be the aunt of the lad, and he was adopted because his father was “not nice” to him. This is a story in and of itself, but add in that the adoptive father was an African Canadian man, the boy took his name and the rumors of blood cousins who might be African Canadian as well?

Today this story still makes a difference in how this family tell their story. so much so, one descendant asked me a simple question. Is my name really what it is? This spurred months of research and a whole hornet’s nest of family lore vs. the truth. A Truth that is still being uncovered by family DNA testers today.

Join me for this one gang, it’s an incredible story!

Timezone is MST – 6-7pm MST (8-9pm EST)

The Good of DNA and genealogy.

The good of DNA and genealogy. DNA and Genealogy set me up for a very interesting , humbling and fulfilling weekend in Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton Ontario and Union Station Platform 9 3/4

As a fan of Hamilton, Ontario, where I have had the pleasure of speaking, twice, in a month, or so I am happy to say, I now know how to get there. I’ll be back in Hamilton in June at the Ontario Ancestors (OGS) 2020 Conference. I am very much looking forward to it and I have solved a HUGE transportation issue.

Taking the train to Toronto, one must change at Union Station to the Go Transit Bus system. It’s a bit awkward in union station, but I have nailed it. Go to the York Concourse, and take the elevator, very near the entrance from the great hall, up to level 3, to the GO Train platform. Take a left out of the elevator then walk to the very end of the platform.

Push yourself and your luggage cart through the wall, taking care to not hurt your owl. Wait…

At the end of the platform you can take the stairs or go around the corner to the left and take the elevator down to the bus platform. Got it? Good, so far, so now your travel to Hamilton from Union Station Toronto will be less stressful (no there are no trains to Hamilton).

BUT…there’s more! Once you get into Hamilton you can take your bus all the way down to the Bus Station, about a half km walk, to the hotel across from the convention centre entrance (The Sheraton Hamilton Central). Or you can get off on Main St. in front of the cool Hamilton sign, near King St. West, walk across the street, down and around the corner to the entrance of the convention centre/hotel. Google Maps, Pshaw.

Leaving is so hard to do! Not really. The bus stop to get back to Toronto’s Union Station is right outside the entrance to the Honest Lawyer (it’s a bar/adult arcade not a real honest lawyer) across from the entrance to the convention centre and next to the hotel. Or if you are into health in June, in Canada, then walk yourself back the half km to the bus station.

Thank you, and shout out, to the Hamilton Public Library for throwing such a great Genealogy Fair. What a great turnout! What a great space! What friendly volunteers/event staff. Loved being so well cared for, throughout!

Ontario Ancestors! Thank you for sponsoring my contribution to the day. I can’t imagine having more fun at work than I do, you made my weekend.

My lecture? The audience was full, attentive, and engaged. We had fun learning about DNA!

Here are some Photo’s.

Big Thing #1

The two biggest things that happened during the day? As soon as I arrived, I was helped with my booth/table setup by my neighbors, the Hamilton Branch of the UEL, thanks Martha and Pat. No, that isn’t a big thing, to you. Martha is the big thing (sorry Pat). I didn’t remember her name on the first go. She and Pat immediately created nametags for themselves. Upon reading Martha’s name? I really shouldn’t give her privacy away, but suffice it to say that her nametag included one of my surnames. One that I have not researched (I don’t have time to work on my own family!!!) Now I have started a name/place study to figure out how we are connected. Bad Martha!

Big Thing #2


The other big thing? This is a really big thing. It’s about how the power of DNA can give us a sense of self, of identity.

A Lady who has attended my lectures in the past came by my booth before lunch. She was with a “friend” and they started confusing the heck out of me trying to get me to help them with the last nudge their research needed to tell them who their Earliest Known Shared Ancestor is.

I finally had to get them to spoon feed me the names dates and places so I could start drawing out a chart I create for all of my clients (for me). It is based on the Maguire Method of looking at diagraming shared matches. The chart let’s me see how close family members are related and their level of relatedness. I referenced Blaine Bettinger’s Shared cM tool at DNA Painter, to help with the cousin/familial relationships and added those relationships to my McGuire Method chart.

After getting all the data down in a rough sketch we all three (more me than them) could easily visualize the familial connections and immediately we saw something was wrong in the family story. These were first cousins, these two ladies, but the amount of shared cM’s pointed to something dark and sinister about the birth of one of the lady’s Mothers.

This mother had been adopted. The other lady, who was a part of the first lady’s birth family, had accessed a family journal entry from a cousin, which stated that an aunt had gone away to Michigan and became pregnant while she was there. Once she was home and nine months later? A baby girl was born. The baby girl was shuffled off to live with an Aunt out west and all was good and a happy ending for the baby was guaranteed.

But the numbers were off. We talked of endogamy and could endogamy have anything to do with how things were lining up? It certainly looked like it, especially after looking at the high number of high cM matches that turned up in the match list.

The ladies, cousins, were throwing out three different father names from my sketch. How could this fella be, or this fella? It was all wrong and nothing really pointed to any of the men. Then, I ran David Pike’s ‘Runs of Homozygosity (ROH)’ utility at GEDmatch (click on “Are Your Parents Related” in the right hand column of your GEDmatch home page) on the adoptee’s kit at GEDmatch.

“Since you inherit half of your DNA from each of your parents, it stands to reason that large blocks of SNPs where both alleles are the same would be an indication that your parents each inherited that block from the same ancestor. These are called ‘Runs of Homozygosity’ (ROH). There are other utilities available that look for ROH for other purposes, but this analysis is specifically aimed at determining how closely related your parents might be.” – David Pike’s ‘Runs of Homozygosity (ROH)’ utility GEDmatch.

Running the analysis took a second, which seemed like and hour…

David’s utility pointed us to the right man. Still a member of the family, but not a possible 1st cousin to the mother. The ladies were a bit worried that, that would be the case. It was still not a nice story for them, though. It appears that they share a common grandfather. That this man had had an affair with his wife’s sister, a baby was born, though not shipped off to the far away sister, but put up for adoption close by. It certainly isn’t the happy ending from the journal. But a happy ending none the less. Two cousins discovered together, who they were; one morning at their local library’s genealogy fair.

Oh, the power of DNA and the tools our community has put together for us to use, free of charge to make these kinds of discoveries. This is the kind of story I like to see about DNA databases and the genealogy community.

 

Hamilton Genealogy Fair

Hamilton Public Library’s 2nd Annual Genealogy Fair

Presented by the Local History & Archives Department and the Ontario Genealogical Society.

Learn more about your family history at the 2019 Hamilton Genealogy Fair. Presented by the Local History & Archives Department at the Hamilton Public Library and the Ontario Genealogical Society.

 

Date: Saturday, November 16, 2019
Time: 10am-4pm

Program
Saturday, November 16, 2019

Speakers & Programs (all on 4th Floor):

10am-4pm – Genealogy Kids Zone Drop-In, Program Room
10am-12pm & 3pm-4pm – Ancestry Library Edition Drop-In, Computer Lab

10:15am-11:15am – The importance of Traditional Storytelling to Family
History with Penny Warner

12pm – 1pm  Lunch

12pm-1:30pm – Digitize Your Memories, Photo Studio

1pm-2pm – Discover Your Family History using Local History & Archives’
Unique Collections with Kaye Prince-Hollenberg

2pm-4pm – Green Screen Fun, Photo Studio

2:30pm-3:30pm – DNA 101: The very basics please! with Mags Gaulden

Looking forward to this fun day at the Hamilton Public Library!

FGS 2019 Conference Takeaways

I spent the last 6 days in sweltering, melting, sauna like, Washington DC in the comfort of the luxurious Omni Shorham at the FGS Conference 2019. Here are my takeaways…

The Venue

The Luxurious Omni Shoreham, was spectacular in architeture, hospitality and location at Woodley park. The proximity to Woodley Park was a must have since the hotels restaurants and bars (under new management?) seemed woefully unprepared for this flock of genealogists.

Since I spent the majority of my time in the exhibit hall talking about mitoYDNA, WikiTree, DNAGedcom and Genetic.Family, I can only speak first hand about how well the exhibit hall worked. Second hand I can say that everyone I talked to who attended sessions mentioned they learned a great deal and were being spurred on by the sessions to dig deeper and work smarter on thier genealogy.

The Exhibit Hall itself presented challenges for the organizers, yet those challenges did not translate to anything but a great experience for our booth. Our biggest challenge was very poor lighting which was over come by the generosity of the exhibitors close to us – Thank you Mary Kay from Our Fun Tree and Angie and Louise from The National Institute For Genealogical Studies.

mitoYDNA booth
Rob and Mags attempting to illuminate the booth.

Randy Whited worked tirelessly to make sure the exhibitors had what they needed and was in the hall, I think, for the entire conference. Thank You to Randy for being very present.

The volunteers and conference organizers were also very presnt. Thank you to the FGS board, Pat Richley-Erickson, Steve Fulton, Jen Baldwin and the rest for  your hard work to make things work for all attendees.

Support for mitoYDNA.org

Rob at the Booth
Rob talking Genetic.Family to booth visitors.

Rob Warthen and DNAGedcom hosted mitoYDNA at the DNAGedcom booth and at the conference. Which is a pretty big deal. Really a big deal to have that kind of support for a brand new, non-profit (run totally on contributions and support from the genealogy community) organization. Thank You!

mitoYDNA took the opportunity afforded us to introduce the Genealogy Community to this new, free, accessible YDNA and mtDNA database. It was our first public appearance since swinging open our doors for uploads, matching and analysis.

Mags and Rob
Rob and Mags being shown how to get integration with Family Search rolling.

We had great conversations about privacy and our philosphy of making this database availabe to everyone while still being able to provide privacy to our users as well. We talked about how Y and mtDNA can be used to smash brickwalls. We talked about how acedemic researchers can use the data to show how we are all connected.

We geeked out with people who came to us with ideas for tools and analysis for the database. I am talking serious Geeking going on at all hours.

FGS Conference 2019 was a great first public appearance for mitoYDNA and the support and good words we got from so many was incredible!

WikiTree In The House (or I am home where ever I am)

The very first person I saw upon arriving at the conference was WikiTreer Star Kline! We both screamed each other’s names when we saw each other and hugged it out – it was our first time seeing each other in the real world (as opposed to the virtual world of WikiTree). What a great welcome!

WikiTreers stopped to say hello everywhere. Even in the ladies room! Some made multiple trips by the booth to ask questions or just to be “WikiTree” at the conference.

mitoYDNA presentation
Mags talking mitoYDNA at the FTDNA booth venue.

FTDNA graciously asked me to do a booth session/talk and WikiTreer’s came out in force to see my WikiTree infused presentation on mitoYDNA.

As I was getting into my uber to leave for home, WikiTreer Glenn York came over to see me off (and to tell me we are double cousins!). WikiTree is always home where ever I go!

Some Statistics

Here are some interesting numbers from FGS 2019:

mitoYDNA had 25 to 30 new site visitors each day of the conference.

We added approximately 240+/- kits to the mitoYDNA Database.

I talked to every single society who were exhibitors at the conference and to quite a few who were not official exhibitors, which was the goal of mitoYDNA being at the conference. Societies who have promised to mention the mitoYDNA is open and avialable? 100+/-

There is no hard number for the number of WikiTreer’s who are re-engergied about working our great big ole shared tree at Wikitree, nor are there numbers on new WikiTreers, but there certainly are (I know this because I had people coming by to ask me questions about their first profile work).

People who were sent to the FTDNA booth for Y and mtDNA upgrades? 10 – 12 (million, he he).

People who were sent to YSEQ for Y and mtDNA tests? No numbers on that but a few at least.

South Carolina Peeps in attendance? I think half the conference were my fellow Carolinians! Loved getting to meet new friends and to see old friends from “down home” – especially the contingent from SCGS who were like light for this Carolinian-Canadian moth. Can’t wait to see you again next July for the 2020 SCGS 48th Annual Summer Workshop, July 10-11.

Granma’s Genes Hugs given away? Way too many to count!

 

Merrickville and District Historical Society AGM

Mags will be presenting, The Power of DNA, to the Merrickville and District Historical Society Annual General Meeting. She will discuss the nuts and bolts of how DNA and genealogy can move family histories forward. The DNA of one of Merrickville’s founders may make a special appearance during the talk.

Please contact the Merrickville and District Historical Society for more on the Annual General Meeting.