Organize Your Family History

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Fun with ethnicity estimates

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I had my DNA tested by Ancestry a few years back and I’m just now figuring out how to use it in my genealogy research. I found the ethnicity estimate interesting. And then I found it even more interesting when Ancestry updated its estimates.

My brother, Larry, lives in Australia and when he visited recently he agreed to submit a sample. I was curious about how ours would compare, in terms of ethnicity. I was also curious to see what migration group was provided to him. (I was given North Alabama Settlers.)

When I first asked him, Larry’s response, “Don’t we have the same DNA?” I responded that while our DNA comes the same sources (half from our dad and half from our mom), what we get from each of them is different so our ethnicity results might be different.

The results arrived yesterday and I was tickled to see that there were what looked to me like some fairly large differences. Here’s a screenshot of our two results side by side:

 

As you can see, I have a higher percentage of Irish ancestry showing up in my results (41% vs 34% in Larry’s) and his results show 8% Germanic Europe, where I have none. I have a smidge of Greece and the Balkans and he has a smidge of Sweden. Fun stuff!

Oh, and the migration group provided to Larry was Lower Midwest and Virginia Settlers.

Have you compared ethnicity results with a sibling? I’m curious how different your results were.

Do you use Ancestry Academy?

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Ancestry has always been my go-to resource for genealogy research. I think I’ve had a subscription for more than a decade and, for me, the annual subscription fee (currently $189) is well worth it.

When I first subscribed, I explored the courses at Ancestry Academy but wasn’t willing to pay extra to take the classes. But earlier this year I learned that the Ancestry Academy courses are now included in the subscription.

It took me awhile but today, I finally checked it out. I was really impressed with the variety of topics addressed in these video lessons, as well as the variety of lengths. You can watch a five-minute video or take a one-hour video lesson (or something in between).

I’m curious whether any of my readers have tried it and what you thought! If you have any particular classes you thought were great, I’d love to hear about them!

Using Family Search to find images referenced on Ancestry (screencast)

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Today I was doing some research on Ancestry. (I’ve finished my backlog project and have lifted my ban on searching–more on that in a future post.) I was looking for a death certificate for my grandmother’s sister whom I had just learned through Find A Grave had died at the age of six, in 1922.

A simple Birth/Marriage/Death records search produced a collection called Washington, Select Death Certificates, 1907-1960, but when I clicked on it, it said “No Image Text-only collection.” (A picture of that screen is at the top of this post.) I saw that there was a FHL film number, so I went to Family Search to try to track down the document.

I was successful in finding an image of the death certificate, though I had to jump through a few hoops. After I successfully downloaded and processed it, I decided to do a screencast of the process, in case it help someone here.

Here’s the screencast:

A quick summary is that I searched on the film number in the catalog at Family Search, then when I got another No Image Available message there, I drilled down further to the actual microfilm number mentioned on Ancestry and did another search. That brought up the image. If it hadn’t, I would have gone to the image number (listed in the initial search result at Family Search) in that digitized microfilm. Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re told an image isn’t available!

You can find more information on using Family Search’s card catalog in this post from a year ago: Using the card catalog to find elusive documents on Family Search. And if you’re interested in how I processed that death certificate after I downloaded it, check out the blog post How I process a downloaded document.

Ancestry DNA updates its ethnicity estimates

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On September 12, Ancestry DNA debuted its “enhanced” ethnicity estimates based on a much larger reference sample (16,000 versus 3,000 reference samples) and improved algorithms. Blaine Bettinger, The Genetic Genealogist, has a great blog post explaining it.

Comparing my own older and newer ethnicity estimates, fewer ethnicities are represented. My percentage Irish/Scottish has gone up and my percentage Scandinavian has gone down (and the Scandinavian countries are now mentioned specifically). If I’m reading it correctly, ethnicities that represented 20% of the estimate are now gone. Interestingly enough, the new estimate much more closely resembles the MyHeritage estimate I received when I transferred my DNA data there recently (free of charge).

Here is a summary of my old estimate, taken from Ancestry’s site today:

And here’s the new estimate:

And, just for kicks, here’s my MyHeritage ethnicity estimate:

If you’ve tested your DNA through Ancestry and haven’t checked your ethnicity estimate in the last week, I encourage you to hop over there and check it out! (And, if you haven’t already, you can transfer your raw DNA to MyHeritage here.)

By the way, I found this support page on Ancestry that explains how to make the most of your ethnicity estimate. It was news to me, so I thought I’d share.

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