Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

DNA Test: A great Mother’s Day gift

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Mother’s Day is coming up here in the U.S. I have a friend who is eagerly anticipating an Ancestry DNA test as a Mother’s Day gift. Her husband and two sons are being tested too. I think that’s a wonderful gift!

My mother, Betty Brown Adams, passed away two years ago, on 17 June 2015. In February of 2015, when I was at RootsTech, I purchased three kits from Family Tree DNA for my parents. I had each parent do an autosomal test (Family Finder) and I had my father do a Y-DNA test as well. (Those choices were based on a terrific RootsTech presentation I’d heard, given by Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide.)

I’m the administrator for my parents’ tests (no computer at my parents’ condo!) and I’m so happy to have the information to play with, though I have a lot of learning to do about making good use of the results. (That’s a whole different post.)

When I had my mother take the test, I had no idea she would only be with us for four more months. (She had Parkinson’s Disease, but her passing was pretty sudden.) I am so grateful that I didn’t wait to ask her to take a test.

If your parents are still alive and haven’t been tested, I urge you to consider ordering the tests for them. My folks had literally no interest in it, but they were happy to do it as a favor to me. Depending on your folks’ level of interest, it could be a wonderfully unique Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day) gift!

Filling in the history in your ancestors’ timelines

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A couple of years ago, at RootsTech, I learned about HistoryLines. I was intrigued and signed up for a subscription. Then I pretty much forgot about it. (I blogged about it back then.)

HistoryLines creates a timeline for your ancestor (after you upload a GEDCOM or fill in data on an ancestor), referencing the historical events and social history of the time in which your ancestor lived.

This week I received a notification that my subscription was going to autorenew. I went to the site, intending to cancel since I never used it. But once I started exploring, I realized that this really is a tool I’d like to use.

This past quarter I focused almost exclusively on my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1845-1938) and his children. When I called up a HistoryLines story for him today I really enjoyed the context it placed his life in. I can see doing this for many of my ancestors, especially those I’ve studied more in depth. (So many of my ancestors seem like just names and dates to me, though I’m trying to change that.)

If you’re intrigued, here’s a promotional video from HistoryLines.

If you try it out, let me know what you think!

Revisiting my ancestor map

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Four years ago (time flies!) I posted about how I created an ancestor map so that I could place pins on the map where my ancestors were born and died. I was proud of my DIY efforts. But I’m sorry to report that it turns out my DIY skills are lacking. Over time, the edges of the map pulled out of the frame so that pretty much all that was keeping the map in the frame were the pins. It made me sad when I looked at it and I stopped adding pins. I didn’t take it down, though, because I kept hoping I’d figure out a way to fix it.

Fast forward several years and I noticed in an organizing client’s home the exact same map in a nice frame. The map was held firmly in place and looked great. I asked her where she got it and whether she had purchased the frame with the map already in it. She had, and she sent me an Amazon link to the map.

I decided to go ahead and replace my sad map with a new and improved version. It cost about $78 but to me it’s worth it because it makes me happy, not sad, when I look at it!

I removed all the pins from the old map and put up the new map in its place, using Command hooks. Then I set to work putting the pins back up. I counted the work toward my 30 minutes of genealogy research that day, and in my research log (yay, me!) I wrote:

“The process was really fun because it was like a quiz. I’d draw a pin with a flag on it with the name of an ancestor and since I wanted to find them in my tree, without searching, I needed to know what line they came from. I also made a game of trying to get to that with the fewest clicks within my tree. Then I tried to guess the locality. And, of course, I had to find the locality on the (not very detailed) map, using Google maps for guidance.”

The process pointed out some holes in my data in my tree—death vs burial places for example; and birth places for which I had only a state. It also pointed to the fact that I’d filled in quite a few holes since I first put together the pin labels, even though the map pins go back no further than my great great grandparents (and not even all of those). I decided to add pins for burial places when they differed from death places, so in addition to replacing the pins that were on the map I added 11 pins.

I love seeing the clusters of pins on my map (in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri and Washington primarily). I’ve color-coded the pins by family line and you can see that the lines converged in Pacific Northwest, where my father and his father (and I) were born and where my mother moved from Missouri at the age of three.

Here are a couple of more detailed photos of my clusters. (For those who notice such things,  I had to use a different font for the labels I added recently because I lost the old font when I upgraded my computer.)

It’s been a fun exercise and I’m looking forward to adding more pins to my map!

How They Do It: Diahan Southard

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I’m so happy to present the fourth installment in my How They Do It series, in which I ask well-known genealogists how they organize their own research. The series runs the first Tuesday of each month, though this week I forgot! (Yes, even professional organizers mess up their schedules sometimes.)

This month I interview Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide. Diahan is an expert in genetic genealogy and is a regular speaker at genealogy conferences. She manages to make the confusing topic of using DNA in genealogy understandable, no small feat, in my opinion. I’ve  had the pleasure of doing a consultation with her about my own autosomal DNA results, which was a very valuable experience! For this interview, we focused on Diahan’s genetic genealogy research.

How They Do It: Diahan Southard

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I have been involved in genetic genealogy since the beginning, so about 17 years.

What’s your favorite part of doing genetic genealogy?

My favorite part about genetic genealogy is the unexpected tangible connection that I feel with my DNA cousins that I have never met.

Do you consider your genealogy research well organized?

I honestly spend more time helping others than I do on my own research at this point, so while I feel like I have some good organization in the DNA realm, I know my traditional research could use some help.

What type of software do you use for organizing your genetic genealogy research?

Each testing company does offer some limited means for keeping track of your matches in the form of notes. When I look at a match, I just make a quick note in that person’s profile about what I did and what I found, especially if I was able to find the common ancestor. This makes it easy for me to remember when I go back weeks later.

Do you have a tree on Ancestry? If so, is it public or private? Why?

I do have a public tree on Ancestry as it gives me access to all of the best genetic genealogy tools at AncestryDNA. With a public tree I get access to the DNA circles and New Ancestor discoveries features, as well as the shaky leaf hints. Having my tree public also allows me to take advantage of other people’s research time, meaning that my tree is out there for them to peruse so that my DNA matches might be able to identify our connection even if I haven’t had a chance to look yet.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genetic genealogy?

The biggest challenge in genetic genealogy is figuring out what to do with all of those fourth cousins! Most of us have so many. The best thing to do is to pull your Best Matches out of the longer list and focus on those. Your best matches have shared surnames, shared locations, or are your best genetic matches.

What’s your biggest piece of advice to beginners in genetic genealogy in terms of keeping track of their research?

If you are just getting started in genetic genealogy, please don’t get overwhelmed by the more experienced people telling you that you HAVE to have this fancy tool or you HAVE to transfer your data to another database. Spend at least a year getting to know the database you were tested in and don’t worry about anything else for now.

What do you think is the most important thing for people to do to stay organized when it comes to family history research?

Stay focused on one goal. Don’t get distracted by other shiny objects.

If you were starting out new in genetic genealogy what would you do differently?

I would test more of my ancestors before they passed away. If you have parents or grandparents, or aunts or uncles still around, go order them a DNA test!!

Do you keep paper or electronic files (or both)?

All my genetic genealogy is electronic.

Do you use Evernote, One Note or any other electronic organizing system for your genealogy? If so, how do you use it?

I do use Evernote to clip particularly helpful articles or charts to help me make sense of my genetic genealogy results. I also use it to save screenshots of DNA circles and New Ancestor discoveries, or important matches.

Do you have anything to add?

While the ins and outs and ups and downs of genetic genealogy can take you down many paths with many twists and turns, keep in mind that it really comes down to a simple concept: if you share DNA, you are family.

Diahan obviously has a lot to teach those of us struggling with knowing what to do with our DNA results! I really love her advice to stayed focused and to spend a year getting to know the database you’ve tested with before branching out to other databases or trying new tools. And, of course, her advice to test your older relatives now, while they’re still with you, is so important.