Tag Archives: dna

Between The Leaves: It’s in our DNA

Check out our latest Between The Leaves. We invited Anna Swayne, DNA expert from Ancestry to talk with with us.

Have you spit yet?

My Top Ten Follow Fridays

I thought I’d do a few top ten lists this final week of 2012.  Here are the top ten stories that you clicked on from my Follow Friday listings and other posts:

Blown With DNA from the Legal Genealogist

  1. Blown Away With DNA from the Legal Genealogist
  2. uencounterme – A Way to Plot Cluster Genealogy Research from Geneabloggers.com
  3. Workday Wednesday The Dispatcher from Gail Grunst Genealogy
  4. 10 Awesome Onenote Tips You Should be Using All the Time from makeusof
  5. Family Lore and Indian Princesses from Evidence Explained
  6. Five Tips for Safely Reading and Photographing Tombstones from Karen Miller Bennett
  7. Brickwall Case of Oscar F Brown from Ancestral Breezes (be sure to read all parts!)
  8. Tech Tuesday: Using Pinterest for Your Family History Photographs from Tall Tales of a Family
  9. Wedding Wednesday: Robbing the Cradle from Kathryn Smith Lockhard
  10. A True Love Story? from A Southern Sleuth

All are worth another read.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Let’s Talk DNA

You get out of the habit, and it’s easy to stay out of the habit of not posting.  Let’s see if I can work on better habits. 🙂

I received my DNA results back from Ancestry.com (full disclosure, I am an employee).

I was expecting Scottish and German.  Here is what I have:

Every line I’ve been able to track, both paternal and maternal go back to the 1700’s and I’ve yet to find a document that gives me proof of jumping the Atlantic.  But given names and other genealogies I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure that there are a ton of Scottish or Ulster Scots in my tree.  So that 69% British Isle feels right.

And yes, I’ve got what many have referred to as the “Scandinavian Surprise.” But the Scandinavians many centuries ago spent a good deal of time wandering the British Isles and shall we say, left some of themselves behind.

I have a lot of of what I believe to be German names in my tree.  Feazell, Baxter, Snavely (which may be Swiss).  I suspect they are the Eastern European. I would have guessed more than 17%, but guessing and being are two different things.

Not a lot of “What the heck?” in there.

I’ve also been able to match through trees of mine and others possible connections to my Mary Gillespie branch. I believe that her father was Willis Gillespie but it is all indirect evidence and sort of weak at that.  If that connection is true, then I have Smith’s from Amherst in my line, and I found two trees where that is the only overlap.  Now I know that doesn’t prove anything.  But it is a clue.  And I’ll take a clue I didn’t have any day of the week.  It does make me want to hunt harder for that evidence or at least work harder to put it together.

But that is all in the background at the moment.  CG work calls.

Follow Friday — Uencounter.me, Family Stories and Motivation

This is two weeks worth of Follow Friday, since I missed last weeks.  Lots of good reading in here!

A couple of posts about uencounter.me:

The mapping stories always make me think we need to try to represent our families without trees to break through walls.

Family Stories:

Motivation:

And a few more posts to get you thinking:

Follow Friday — 1940 is Done! and Blown Away with DNA

Here is what I’ve been reading this week.  It’s been a great week for genealogy blogs!

From Ancestry.com

A beautiful pictorial journey through Virginia: Surprises Around Every Corner by Belle Grove Plantation Bed and Breakfast:

And:

And last, but not least, what I thought was the most touching story of the week from the Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell: Blown Away with DNA

Follow Friday: Government Boondoggles, Mexican Ancestors, and DNA

What I’ve been reading on the web this week: