SUGGESTIONS FOR THE

“NEW” AND YOUNG GENEALOGISTS

There are literally hundreds of books to help someone get started researching their family’s history.  Then there’s Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org that will help you untangle all those roots.  BUT, there are some pit-falls that could easily discourage the inexperienced (and even some more experienced) researchers.

Here are my suggestions.  Read them and think about them BEFORE you start researching, if it’s possible. 

#1 GET ORGANIZED: 

Before you dive in to the documents, make a list of what you already know, what you know but need to “prove,” or document, and what you want to learn next. 

Start with yourself, then list your parents, then grandparents, great grandparents, etc.  Leaving several blank lines between each person OR you can do one page for each person.  On each of these lines write BORN on the 1^st line, CHRISTENED on the next, MARRIED on the next, RESIDED on the next, DIED on the next, CHILDREN on the last and finally NOTES.  For each line enter the date and place of that event.  Then use a code to indicate if this is something you Know, have Proof, Need To Prove (NP) and just Suspect.  Next, if you have proof or documentation, List that proof – 1900 Census, Marriage Cert., Death Cert, etc. 

#2 DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT,  DOCUMENT

DON’T JUST BLINDLY COPY what someone else claims to be true, because it may be wrong.  PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES…I’ve seen times when someone obviously just cut-and-pasted someone else’s work to their tree. (It’s a dead give away when they have the children born BEFORE the parents, or someone lived to the ripe old age of 185).  If you suspect someone in one of your ancestor’s parents, but you aren’t sure, put a note “Possible Ancestor” or “Unproven” either before or after the name.

The same goes for what you find printed in books.  Whenever possible YOU SHOULD TRY TO FIND AN OFFICIAL DOCUMENT supporting the event.  If you rely on transcribed document you are trusting that what the transcriber wrote is an exact copy of the original.  JUST BECAUSE YOU FOND IT IN A BOOK DOESN’T MEAN IT’S TRUE/ACCURATE.  

#3 INTERVIEW YOUR ELDERS. 

If any of you older family members are still living, INTERVIEW THEM about their youth and what they remember about  their  elders.  Start with your parents then your grandparents, aunts and uncles, and finally your great grandparents.

·        First, make a list of what you are going to ask them.

·        Ask them what they remember about their parent and grandparents. 

Have them tell you any stories from their youth, their school days, games they  played and generally what life was like when they were growing up.

Video record and make an audio recording of the interviews.  These will become very valuable to you when you get older.  (I wish I had done this with my parents and the grandparents I knew).

  

#4   THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX  

Don’t get tied to just one or two research sites like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org.  Use sites like the following:

• Find A Grave ( www.findagrave.com )-- Many times contributors link a person to their parents/children AND they often transcribe the person’s obituary.
• Legacy.com , a global network of online obituaries. Obituaries are a wealth of family info.  https://www.legacy.com/
• Google Book’s Advanced Book Search Here you can search for an individual in books long since out of print.  Just put the person of interest’s name, location  and date in the first line.  Select Full view only and Books  and click search.  You can also search for County and regional histories that may not be available to you otherwise.  https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search 
•   Internet Archive.com  is a great place to find little known or long “Lost” references to your ancestors or a place.  Go to https://archive.org/  and enter a name or a place and click GO.  I did this for Bedfordshire Parish Records and they found 44 volumes covering all parishes in Bedfordshire with some entries as early as 1539. In Volume  28, Riseley Parish, page B29  I found my 10X Great Grandmother’s burial in 1603.
•   PHOTOGRAPS are another good source for finding the names of family members.  REMEMBER to write the names of the people in an old fashioned photo.  Write the names and date on the back of the photos IN PENCIL, NEVER, EVER, EVER  write on a photo in ink.   Over time the ink will bleed through and mess up the photo.  Keep a list of photos you’ve found then scan them and store them on the www.  With newer digital photos, store them in a computer file and make the date and person’s name part of the photo’s name.   OH, and don’t forget to make a copy of your photo folder on a thumb drive for that horrible day when your computer crashes.

·        #5 IF YOU GET STUCK, TAKE A BREAK  Stop on the problem branch of your tree and move on to another branch and come back to your problem branch later.  Sometimes after a little “vacation” you can see things more clearly when you return.

•  DON’T GET TIED TO ONE SPELLING  Surname spellings were flexible   and “fluid” as recently as the early 20^th century.  My  surname is Caulley and it derived from CORLEY.    In my research I’ve found 47 different spellings for my family name.  Names were spelled the way the clerk or census taker heard  them.
 
• DON’T GET STUCK ON AGES ON THE CENSUS  I’ve seen a person on one census and by the next census (10 years later) they aged between 5 and 15 years. 
 
• LOOK FOR AN UNUSUAL FIRST NAME among your relatives, then look for that same (or similar) name among the next few generations.  My 5x great grandfather married a woman named Temperance, Tempy for short.  The family loved her.  Two generations later my 3x great grandfather named a daughter Tempy, and HIS son named one of his daughters Tempa.  So, that unusual name told me I was on the right track in my research. 

Lastly, here’s a helpful link sent to me by a teacher who runs an after-school club.  I thank them and her for thinking of me.

http://www.homeadviceguide.com/6-steps-to-your-family-history/

                 AUTOSOMAL DNA TESTS
So, you are intrigued by the TV commercials for DNA testing, and you’ve taken the plunge.  Your results are back but you feel like you know less now than when you first took the test.  Before you can understand your results, you need to know some basics about DNA tesTESTting and you need to know what is realistic. 

FIRST What is an “autosomal DNA test?” 

A human’s  genome consists of twenty-four chromosomes.   Chromosomes come in pairs, two each of chromosomes number 1 through  22 (one ½ of each came from your father and the other ½ from your mother).  The we all have two “sex chromosomes” (X- chromosome #23 & #24  in females and Y – chromosome #24 in males ) plus twenty-two autosomal chromosomes.  Females have two X chromosomes (X X) and males have an X and a Y (XY).  Chromosomes 1-22 are the AUTOSOMES. 

An autosomal DNA test analyzes chromosomes 1-22. 

Now, follow me – As I stated earlier, you “get,” or inherit ROUGHLY ½ your autosomal-DNA from your mother and ½ from your father –BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE.  Your parents get ½ from both of their two parents, which means you get ¼ from each of your 4 grandparents.  This pattern continues with 1/8 from each of your 8 grandparents, 1/16 from each of your great grandparents, 1/32 from your great great grandparents and on-and on.  With each successive generation the portion you inherit from any one particular ancestor is halved.  In other words, we are a mosaic of our ancestors. 

SECOND What does this reveal?

RELATIVES/RELATIONS

Once your results are analyzed, they are compared to the results others who have tested looking for segments (the area on any given chromosomes measured in cM or centiMorgans) that match.  The larger the matching segments, the closer you two are related.   The further back in time your common ancestor lived, the small the piece you inherit from him/her.  Theoretically this could take you back to someone with a common ancestor that lived many hundreds of years ago, but practically this won’t work.  We reach a point where the size of the common segment is so miniscule that we cannot separate a matching segment from “genetic-static” or “genetic noise.”  This point is basically at 5 to 8 generations back, meaning  you two are basically 5^th cousins with a common 4^th-great grandparent.  At this level you two have about 7 cMs out of the roughly 3600 cMs, or  0.0194444%  of the human genome. 

Below is a chart the shows your estimated relationship with another who shares a given amount of cMs. 

An autosomal test is great for telling HOW two individuals are related – BUT  an autosomal test cannot easily tell you WHO your common ancestor was.  The common ancestor could be from any branch of your tree.  The only way an autosomal test can confirm who was your common ancestor is for you to speculate who your common ancestor was then find one of his/her descendants, have THEM do an autosomal test and see if you have any common DNA segments.

Traditionally when you take an autosomal test your results are a list of people with whom you share cM segments and how large those segments are, BUT NOT FROM WHOM THEY DESCEND.

Another little glitch is that a pair of siblings do not necessarily inherit the same DNA from their parents.  You may have inherited parts A,B,C,D,E & F while your sibling may have inherited parts B, C, D, F, G & H. 

THIRD: ETHNIC MAKE-UP

Can an autosomal test ACCURATELY identify your ethnic heritage?

Be honest – most people purchase an autosomal DNA test with the goal of learning “What they are,” (English, Irish, Native American, German, etc).  Unfortunately, this is the weakest feature of ANY autosomal DNA test.  It has been the nature of humans since long before we kept records be nomadic and to intermarry with those they met along the way.  Because of this, none of us are purely from one group / ethnically un-mixed.  SOOOoooo, how do the testing companies come up with your ethnic background?  They make an “educated guess” based on comparing your DNA to the DNA of a set of control-populations. They do their best to form their control groups from a group of Log-term residents whose ancestors traditionally didn’t move.  Unfortunately, they cannot guarantee that the ancestors of those in this control group were not mobile in the last millennium or longer.  That they were not invaded.  That they were not the result of intercultural mixing. 

These control populations are usually very small compared the total population.  Any statistician worth their salt knows that a study based on to too small of a sampling is NOT a valid study. 

I personally have tested with four different companies, and had my downloaded raw results analyzed by several more companies.  Note the disparity between companies.  (Unless and until DNA testing companies can standardize the results from all companies, ETHNICITY ESTIMATIONS SHOULD BE TAKEN ONLY AS A GUESS AND NOT CONSIDERED ACCURATE.