Invisible Histories

Two of my favorite subjects, and soon to be an ongoing series at Invisible Histories.

A friend recently loaned me The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook: The Story of Our Common Past Told Through the Recipes and Reminiscences of Our Immigrant Ancestors. I’ll be working my way through it, posting photos of the food, notes on the process and excerpts from the family stories.

[Thanks, Natalie!]

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Much of my so-called “free time” this week has once again been spent on Family Finder.

My husband and I both participated in FamilyTreeDNA’s beta launch of their new autosomal test and while I’m still communicating with and actively seeking the common ancestors with many of our respective matches, I discovered yesterday that my husband has a confirmed match with a likely 4th cousin (either 3rd or 4th – waiting to hear the exact relationship between the other person who tested and the known common ancestors, which we’ve identified as my husband’s 3rd great-grandparents). Learning about this match has in the process allowed me to add substantially to our family tree.

And seeking the commonalities with matches over the last few days has re-emphasized two critical issues for me when it comes to using autosomal testing with traditional genealogy:

• For those who have the capability, I strongly encourage you to fill out and extend back your family tree as much as you possibly can. By doing so you’re not only making it that much easier to find common ancestors with your matches, you are also providing invaluable help to adoptees, those with adoptions and NPEs in their family lines and/or those who face a situation of sparse, unavailable or destroyed records. What goes along with that is having on hand and posting to your FTDNA account the list of surnames from your tree. If you’re an adoptee, please put that in the surname field so your matches know; otherwise it can be dismaying to have a strong match with somebody and not know if you have any information whatsoever to work with.
• I would also recommend compiling a location list of where your ancestors have been. If nothing else, it gives you shared locations you can focus in on.

While I’ve been studying Family Finder I’ve simultaneously been drafting our new Family Finder page for the Finland DNA Project’s website. It probably won’t be up until sometime next week and will be cobbled together from my own notes, observations/suggestions from project members and posts to DNA-Forums and the ISOGG list. As with so much else in genetic genealogy, it will be a continual work in progress.

Update 5/1:  the person who tested is a 2nd cousin twice removed. The suggested relationship was 3rd Cousin, range 2nd Cousin – 4th Cousin, shared cM 101.03 and and longest shared block 45.11. I am particularly delighted this is on one of my husband’s Kentucky lines because they have been a troublesome bunch to sort out.

Posted in Family Finder, Personal History | | 1 Comment »

Via Megan Smolenyak and Roots Television, video of the Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards 2010. And do spend some time exploring the Roots TV website! Lots to see there for anybody interested in family and immigration history, genealogy, research process, and DNA. The link is in the sidebar on the left of this page.

Posted in Immigration History, TV, Video and Film | | No Comments »

Since last Friday we have had another flurry of Family Finder results come in (including my husband’s) so beyond returning emails and dealing with a few pressing project to-dos, the rest of my day will be spent entirely on attempting to bring some degree of tidiness to this business of understanding and successfully making connections with Family Finder.

Family tree pruning may be in order in some spots; MegaQuickGrow may be necessary in others. And over at our project’s home I will be re-arranging the furniture to make room for a new Family Finder area. The interior designer I hired describes the look as “Spartan” (complete with a haughty sniff and moue of distaste) but hey, genetic genealogy ain’t exactly bringing in the big bucks these days. A cot on the floor and a chart on the wall is about as good as it’s gonna get. Maybe throw in a dusty trunk of surnames that people can sort through. We’ll see how it goes.

Posted in Family Finder, Housekeeping | | No Comments »

A random selection from recent stories in the news and on the blogs.

• ‘Informed Consent’ and the Ethics of DNA Research – New York Times article examining the difficult questions involved in the issue of informed consent and the use of DNA samples for medical research. How much consent is needed, what shape does it take and how far does it go? Once consent is given, is it then ethical to use those samples for other studies – whether medical or not – even if it’s of potential benefit to the group studied?
• In case you missed Friday’s broadcast of “Who Do You Think You Are?” you can watch the full episode on Susan Sarandon and her quest to solve the mystery of her maternal grandmother here.
• A new open access paper is published by Malyarchuk et al. studying the phylogeny of mtDNA haplogroup U5, The Peopling of Europe from the Mitochondrial Haplogroup U5 Perspective. 19% of Finland DNA Project members are U5, the largest sub-clade so far within the project (if all the Hs had sub-clade testing done, H1 would be the second largest sub-clade). [h/t Ilmari]
• Pondering the value in studying Neanderthal DNA? An interview in today’s Archaeology Daily News with biologist Webb Miller proposes some reasons why it’s a good thing to be doing.
• “Forgotten Gateway” is an exhibit running through mid-September in Galveston, Texas highlighting Galveston’s largely forgotten role as another major point of immigration between 1845 and 1924.
• At the Huffington Post, Megan Smolenyak writes about her experience attending this year’s Ellis Island Awards. 2010’s award recipients were Andrea Jung, Dikembe Mutombo, Peter G. Peterson and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Another article (via CBS) on the ceremony is here.
• With that in mind, Life magazine’s poignant and thought-provoking selection of Ellis Island photos (with commentary) from their archives is well worth revisiting.

Posted in Quick Snips | | No Comments »

Update 4/26: this video was created for FTDNA by Finland DNA Project member Cece’s production company.

Posted in DNA Testing, Family Finder, FamilyTreeDNA | | No Comments »

Kiitos, Jari!

Posted in Friday Video | | No Comments »

Today only, in honor of DNA Day 23andMe is offering their Complete Edition test (which covers ancestry, 148 health reports and the capability to download your raw data) at a whopping $400 discount for $99 plus shipping:  ”$99 price valid only on 4/23/10 in honor of DNA Day. Limit 10 per person.” [h/t ISOGG list]

23andMe’s The Spittoon blog has a comprehensive round-up of DNA Day background, links and goings-on here.

And of course, there’s a facebook group for that (meaning, for DNA Day; 23andMe’s facebook page is here).

Posted in 23andMe, Announcements | | No Comments »

Today and tomorrow have been and will be spent studying our project’s first Family Finder results and I’m in the process of drafting a more in-depth report on them to be posted early next week.

But briefly:  Family Finder tests over 500,000 SNPS across your 22 chromosomes and shows matches anywhere from close relationships (immediate family, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins) up through 5th and more distant cousins in FamilyTreeDNA’s database. Looking at the results of just 19 members, I think this test has tremendous potential for the Finland Project. Of those 19, 11 are related to at least one other project member, most of them not having known about that connection before. We are already seeing multiple, previously unknown 3rd and 4th cousin matches as well as 3 more 5th-to-distant cousin (also previously unknown) connections that have now been confirmed through the paper trail.

Since within the next week Family Finder will be made available to the general public, I strongly encourage any project members who might be interested to order it now; FamilyTreeDNA will be giving current customers first priority in test processing. According to the enthusiastic response FTDNA has already seen during the beta launch, public demand will no doubt be high. The retail cost is $289 and you can find the order link in the left side menu of your FTDNA account page.

I would be happy to answer any questions; please email fimtdna@gmail.com or post a question in comments.

Posted in Announcements, Family Finder | | No Comments »

On a Sunday, because I am at the very least a day behind…

In light of the dizzying week we’ve experienced in the Invisible Histories household — among other things, wonderful news that the Smart, Beauteous and Ever-Creative Ms. Katie will within the near future become our daughter-in-law — Kiyoko the Science Lab today demonstrates Velocity:

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