Another Search Angel Success

 My wife and I attended her high school class reunion last summer. I met a number of her old classmates I hadn't met before. She had been chatting with an old friend of hers while I went up to get something to nibble on. When I returned, I heard my wife say to her friend, "My husband can find him for you." It ends up that this friend of my wife's never knew who her father was. Her mother passed away years ago and would never tell her. When I heard the story, I was happy to give it a try. Nothing beats the feeling you get when you're able to use your skills and really make a difference in someone's life.

Another Search Angel Success Story

Wow! It's been a long time since I last posted. My excuses are many. Too busy. No new research happening. No new discoveries. No new tools that excite me. Most of all, no ideas or inspiration for new posts. Finally, today, I received an incredible email. I have to share the story.

My First Experience as a Search Angel

Since my genealogical research is at a brick walls that don't appear to have any cracks, I've become frustrated at not having any success at finding anything. I thought that if I took a look at someone else's problem, I might be able to relieve that frustration. I thought that if I tried my hand at tracking down the birth parents of an adoptee, it would be an amazing feeling. What I discovered is that the biggest challenge at becoming someone's Search Angel is being able to start the research. Typically when I encounter someone posting a request on any genealogical or DNA testing groups on Facebook, someone has already responded to them. One time when I was the first to respond, they didn't trust the process that I'd need to see their DNA test results. I understand this suspicion and appreciate it. You should always have suspicion when someone is requesting access to your private information. The problem is that they won't be able to help you without that information. Finally, on Thursday, May 14, I reached out to someone looking for a Search Angel and began the search.

Comparing DNA Pile-Up Matches to Other Matches

I've been trying to make sense of the pile-up regions and matches in my Family Tree DNA test results. I'm not making any progress in figuring out how I'm related to any of them so I thought I'd try to illustrate the problem in the hopes of getting ideas from readers and to be able to work with or ignore them in the most efficient way. Listed below are my top twenty-two DNA matches on Family Tree DNA, along with the total number of matches I have in common with them and the number of matches that are calculated as 5th cousins and closer. I've highlighted the matches I'm now labeling "pile-up matches".

What is Passed on Through DNA?

I'd appreciate your input. Do I resemble my great-grandfather? My wife and I just had professional portraits taken. Most of my life, I've always figured I resembled my father's side of the family more than my mother's side. My dad's First Communion picture was always hanging on our wall at home and just about everyone thought it was me. I know that with my hair, body structure, facial expressions and other items, I look quite a bit like my dad.

Theory About My yDNA Origins

I had a yDNA 37 marker test done with Family Tree DNA back in 2013 hoping to find a connection to my Miller family in Germany. Unfortunately, I only ended up with one match and that was a very distant match with a completely different surname from Spain. My yDNA haplogroup turned out to be J-M172, having nothing to do with any German haplogroup where my yDNA line is from. Family Tree DNA says of the origins of this haplogroup:

"...northern Middle East, west of the Zagros Mountains in Iran, to the Mediterranean Sea. It later spread throughout central Asia and south into India. J-M172 is tightly associated with the expansion of agriculture, which began about 10,000 years ago. As with other populations with Mediterranean ancestry, this lineage is found at substantial frequencies within Jewish populations.  J2 is also one of the main Haplogroups found among Arab populations."

DNA Web Site of My Dreams (*does not yet exist)

I am a tech geek but my normal environment is system configuration and security. I can install and configure systems, make a given system work and can suggest configuration changes that will help secure it. I am not a developer. When it comes to writing code, I can do html (web) and basic scripting. I cannot develop a full program or web page. While I can't write a program, I do understand what goes into it and can estimate the difficulty of implementing a given feature. Hearing about the updates to various DNA testing company tools, it made me think, "This is a good update. This should help. But why can't they do...." and I started listing off various things that I would think should be relatively easy to accomplish. Then I thought, why not put it in a blog post and maybe a developer at one of these testing companies might read it and start working on some of these wish list features. I will include a few features that already exist but they don't exist on every service so I'm going to include them. So here we go!

Family Tree DNA Updates Policy Regarding Law Enforcement

I received an email from Family Tree DNA today regarding how they are allowing law enforcement to use their DNA matching services. While I haven't dug into the details, my first reaction is that this seems to be a good option for those who do not wish to allow law enforcement to use their DNA to help track down criminals. Law enforcement users must register using a separate process that signifies they are law enforcement. Users can opt-out of allowing these specially created accounts from appearing as matches. Granted, this will not prevent agencies from creating normal user accounts, hiding the fact that they are law enforcement but, assuming the agencies act appropriately, this should relieve the concerns of many people.

Autoclustering - Large Groups

In my previous post, I talked about the new tool, Autoclusting by Genetic-Affairs. I still believe this is the most powerful tool that's come out to help in analyzing your DNA results in long time. This makes it so much easier to see the in-common matches and figure out how they all might be connected. That first post was after I had generated my initial autoclusters but before I really looked into the results. My initial thought was that I inherited some DNA from an endogomous population that my paternal first cousin did not. Discussing it in various DNA discussion groups on Facebook, the question came up of a potential NPE ("non-paternal event" or "not parent expected"). If this was going to be the case, it would have had to have been an affair that would have come as a shock to many family members so I wanted to be 100% certain before speaking of it to anyone.

Auto-Clustering of DNA Matches

In the Facebook genetic DNA groups, I've seen one subject discussed pretty frequently over the past couple of weeks that I hadn't heard of before. That is auto-clustering of DNA matches. This looks like a spreadsheet of your DNA matches, color coded and clustered into common match groups. The way it works is that for any given colored cluster, each of them should be descended from one common ancestral couple. This seems like a way to better compare in-common matches. Here is how you do it.

DNA and Ethnic Origins

Many people are taking genealogical DNA tests these days. While that sounds great, the sad part is that many, and I would say most, aren't interested in connecting with their distant cousins to help find their genealogical information. Instead, as a result of the advertising Ancestry DNA puts out, they are only interested in their ethnicity. In my opinion, this ethnicity estimate is about the least valuable piece of information you get from your DNA test. Here is a demonstration of this.

Deceiving DNA Test Results

A new DNA match appeared for me the other day. I recognized the name as someone I already had in my database. He is my fourth cousin on my mother's side. He's also descended from my great-great-great-grandparents, Johan Herm Theodore Menke and Maria Catharina Schirren, from Schwagstorf, Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany. Family Tree DNA estimated him to be my 2nd to 4th cousin, so the estimate lines up. I started looking at some of our common matches and since he's more closely related to my mother, I brought up their common matches. That's when I noticed. Family Tree DNA estimates that my mother and this fourth cousin of mine are 5th to distant cousins. How can this be? Unless he's related to me on my father's side, which would be a complete surprise, this doesn't make any sense.

Distant DNA Matches

I explained in a previous post that it's actually pretty unlikely that your DNA results will show a match with a given relative as close as fourth cousins. On the other end of the spectrum is that even though it's unlikely, you could match a small number of very distant relations. Here's an example I've come across recently.

I was looking for my recent DNA matches and I found someone that Family Tree DNA suggested was a fourth to distant cousin. This means we match a very small amount of DNA. Looking at his list of surnames, I saw a few that looked very familiar to me. They were surnames found among my great-grandfather, Aloys Panther's ancestors in and around Moesbach, Ortenaukreis, Baden, Germany.

Was My Unknown Great-Great-Grandfather a Philanderer?

Looking at my Family Tree DNA matches, trying to track down some Irish cousins and ancestors, I'm coming to the conclusion that the unknown father of my great-grandfather may have been a 19th century Lethario.

Why do I think that? When I look for matches that do not match my mother, of course, they must be on my father's side. Then I look for people with Irish ancestors that don't match my Kelly cousins. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that they are related to this great-great-grandfather, but it does narrow it down. They could be related on my Doran line or they could be related on my Kelly line but just don't match my Kelly cousins. However, these are the only matches that have common matches like this.

Cracks Beginning to Appear in the Fanny Dunzinger Brick Wall

Using the Family Tree DNA results of a second cousin of mine, I have sniffed out a clue that could lead us to the maiden name of Fanny, the wife of Andreas/Andrew Dunzinger. In previous posts, I discussed the 1855 New York State Census showing the family of Andrew Dunzinger and his wife Fanny. Here is the image again:

Genealogy Conferences

I recently attended two genealogy conferences. Other than the local LDS family history day, I've never attended a conference before. So, what did I think and what are my thoughts about conferences in general?

If you had asked me prior to these conferences, I would have told you, "I'd like to get to some conferences but I just haven't had the time or opportunity." Now that I've gone, which I'm glad I did, my general thoughts about conferences are, "If you really want to meet any of the speakers, or if you have a definite interest in the exact subject of one or more of the sessions, or if you know others in the genealogical community and you'd like to interact with them, then it's worthwhile."

DNA Testing and Distant Cousins

The story about my great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Dunzinger Panther is that she was born in 1854 in New York City and after the death of her parents when she was two years old, her grandparents brought her to live with family in Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa. I found her in the 1855 New York State Census as one of two children of Andrew and Fanny Dunzinger along with her sister Mary A. Dunzinger. It says she was born in 1854.

She's found in the 1870 US Federal Census living as a servant in Burlington in the Charles and Walburga Wagner household. I found her in the 1905 Iowa State Census where it states that she had been in Iowa for all except two years of her life.

Andrew Dunzinger is found prior to immigration to America, in Wemding, Bavaria, as is the Wagner family. So logic follows that this would mean that the family she was brought to live with would have been the Wagners.

Surnames - Why Your Ancestors' Names Were Not What You Think They Should Be

I got to thinking about surnames and how many of the surnames of my ancestors did not follow the rule of children taking their father's last name and daughters changing theirs to their husband's last name when they get married. Because they didn't follow this rule, both of my grandmothers had last names other than what they would have been had their ancestors strictly followed this rule. Here is a list of the surnames that did not follow this rule and an explanation of how this happened.

It wasn't changed at Ellis Island - My great-grandfather, Carl Müller, and his brothers and sisters were all born with the surname of Müller. Previous family histories said that it was changed to Miller at Ellis Island or that he gave them the wrong name because he was hiding from the German military. While he may or may not have been hiding from the military, we know that his name change was not because of this and it certainly wasn't changed at Ellis Island.

X-DNA Inheritance and What It Tells You

I felt I wasn't getting a lot of genealogical value from my DNA test. I was speaking with a distant cousin of mine and she reminded me to take a look at my xDNA matches. Taking a closer look at this does tell me quite a bit more about my matches and could help narrow down how some are related to me.

What is xDNA? xDNA is the other half of the chromosome pair that includes the yDNA that males receive from their father. Mothers always pass along half of their xDNA to all of their offspring. If their child is male, all of his xDNA came from his mother and all of his yDNA came from his father. If their child is female, the daughter will receive half of her xDNA from their mother and the other half from her father.

Family Tree DNA and GEDMatch

I've used Family Tree DNA for all genetic testing I've had done or recommended. I also upload my data to GEDMatch to expand my search for genetic cousins. Now, it appears the two organizations are in a spat. It's become a he-said/she-said argument but neither has publicly stated what the problem is. All we know for certain is that Family Tree DNA says that data uploaded to GEDMatch compromises the privacy of Family Tree DNA customers. GEDMatch says that Family Tree DNA has threatened legal action. Family Tree DNA has said (sort of) that they didn't threaten legal action. GEDMatch says that Family Tree DNA demanded that uploads of FTDNA kits to GEDMatch be suspended. Family Tree DNA says that they were surprised that GEDMatch suspended the uploads unilaterally. However, in the same and other statements, Family Tree DNA says they requested that uploads be suspended. Based on the fact that Family Tree DNA has issued conflicting statements, I'm believing what GEDMatch is telling us.