Legacy SIG (Special Interest Group) to Meet at Moss Library in Hayseville

Just a reminder that the Legacy Sig will meet tomorrow morning at 9:30 am at the Moss Library in Hayesville.

Bobby will be giving us our first look a Legacy 8, a new version of Legacy, and get a fresh start for any newbies that might be in attendance.  This is a free forum and the public is invited. Bring your laptop loaded with Legacy 8 or have a downloaded copy ready to install. If you are unable to do this, you may take notes for when you are ready to download and install. If you know of anybody who might be interested but does not monitor this mailing list, pass this message along. You may also find this information at:
bgj-murphyhayesvillelegacysig.blogspot.com

I look forward to seeing everyone in the morning.

Starting in January we will resume the monthly Legacy SIG meetings at Moss Library in Hayesville. These meetings will be held at 9:30am on the third Saturday of the month. January's meeting will be Saturday the 18th. These meetings are free and the public is invited. Legacy 8, a new version, has been released and our focus will be on the changes introduced in this new version.

Your Ancestor’s Name Was What?

 

Ancestors changed names much more freely than we do nowadays, which can make it difficult to trace them through time and record collections. Ancestry genealogy expert Anne Gillespie Mitchell tackles this tough problem and shares tips to help you in the name game. Read all about it by clicking here.

Update: Spring Genealogy Classes Set at Tri County Community College

It is that time of year again. The Spring genealogy classes at TCCC are about to begin. If you hadn't signed up yet, now is the time to get on that phone (828-837-6810), ring up Lisa Long and get on that class list before all the seats get taken.

I have four classes available this semester, enough to keep you all busy (and me as well). Our courses meet for 2.5 hours per session and are very inexpensive compared to other local and Internet genealogy education sources. Here is what is being offered this semester.

Genealogy: DNA – The New Tool in Genealogy Research
March 4 – March 18 Tuesday Nights (3 weeks) 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $15
Science can help you with your genealogy research but you will have to take a test first. This course will cover the new and expanding field of genetic genealogy basics and is designed for DNA Newbies. Some of the topics to be covered include an introduction to DNA testing and technical terms, how DNA testing will help your research, what are your ethnic origins and how to interpret the results, the different types of DNA tests available and their applications, and DNA testing and interpreting resources. If you want to demystify genetic genealogy and use it in your family history research then this course is for you.

Genealogy – Hidden Genealogy Sources
January 23 – April 17 Thursday Nights (12 weeks) Class will not meet March 6. 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $60
Discover facts about your ancestors in unexpected places--some right under your nose! Hidden Sources is a genealogy course to help you find family history in unlikely places. This course will help the genealogist discover a diversity of unexpected and productive resources capable of filling in the gaps of family charts and providing missing information on genealogical relationships. Family history researchers are accustomed to searching among vital records, censuses, and other commonly used sources, but there are a number of more obscure sources that can lead researchers to crucial information. This advanced course tackles these other sources and it will help you know how they can help you in your family research. This course will give you an overview of more than 100 sources, including: Adoption Records, Holocaust Records, Coroner’s Inquests, Licenses, Orphan Asylum Records, Slavery Records, Court Records, Patent Records, Diaries and Journals, and many more.
This is now open to all researchers and there are no prerequisites to take this class although experience in researching is helpful.

Genealogy – Beginning/Intermediate Genealogy (A Tuesday Day Class)
January 21 – April 8 Tuesday Day (12 weeks) 8:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. $60
This course covers the basics of genealogy research by exploring a variety of record sources used in the pursuit of ancestor hunting. Sources such as vital records, census, church records, court, military, land property, probate, and tax records will be discussed in detail. We will also cover the newest genealogy tool in that can open up your family history research – DNA testing. If you want to learn how to do genealogy research the right way, this is the course for you. This course is a requirement to take any of my advanced genealogy courses offered at TCCC.

Genealogy Classes: Genealogy- Advanced - Discovering Your Female Ancestors
January 21 – February 25 Tuesday Nights (6 weeks) 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $30
“Discovering Your Female Ancestors” introduces students to special strategies and uncommon resources needed to research female lines in their family genealogies. Students will learn about genealogical sources created by and about women, and methods they can use to learn the maiden name and parents of our female ancestors. This is an advanced genealogy course and completion of the Beginner/Intermediate Genealogy course is mandatory to take this class.

To each of you I look forward to seeing and/or meeting you in class in a couple of weeks.

How Others See Us - Genetic Genealogists

Couldn't resist this. I do believe this is pretty accurate unfortunately. Have a chuckle on me today. Click on image to see full size.

Genealogy Funny

Baffling 400,000-Year-Old Clue to Human Origins

An artist's interpretation of the hominins that lived near the Sima de los Huesos cave in Spain. I do believe that one on the right looks like one of my uncles on my dad's side of the family!

Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries.

In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years.
      

The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans. Until now, Denisovans were known only from DNA retrieved from 80,000-year-old remains in Siberia, 4,000 miles east of where the new DNA was found.

 

You can read the rest of this New York Times story at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

 

 

 

 

A Colonial Goldmine

One leaf from a 1775 journal kept by Harvard scientist and professor John Winthrop (1714-1779) in that year’s Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanac. The list notes the battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19) and Bunker Hill (June 17) and Harvard’s one-year refuge at Concord (June 21).

Historians and archivists know a secret that most of us do not: that vast stores of primary documents about North America’s Colonial era lie untouched and unseen in repositories throughout the United States and Canada.

But according to an article in the online Harvard Gazette, two digital projects aim to bring vast numbers of early documents, many unexamined, to light.

You can read the entire story online at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/11/a-colonial-goldmine/.

FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service

23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main product because it’s being sold without “marketing clearance or approval.”

23andMe is led by Anne Wojcicki, who co-founded the company in 2006 and recently separated from her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Google has invested millions of dollars in the company in recent years.

The 23andMe $99 Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service, or PGS, tells users whether they carry a disease, are at risk of a disease and would respond to a drug. Most of the uses fall into the category of a medical device and require Food and Drug Administration approval, the agency told the Mountain View, California-based company in a Nov. 22 letter made public yesterday.

Alberto Gutierrez, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a letter to the company made public on Monday that 23andMe had failed to address concerns raised on multiple occasions since the agency began working with it on compliance in July 2009.

“FDA is concerned about the public health consequences of inaccurate results from the PGS device,” the agency said today. “The main purpose of compliance with FDA’s regulatory requirements is to ensure that the tests work.”

“Assessments for drug responses carry the risks that patients relying on such tests may begin to self-manage their treatments through dose changes or even abandon certain therapies depending on the outcome of the assessment,” Gutierrez wrote.

The FDA said that while 23andMe had initiated new marketing campaigns that show how it plans to expand the uses of PGS, it had failed to provide information that the FDA requested multiple times. The FDA said it has had “more than 14 face-to-face and teleconference meetings, hundreds of email exchanges, and dozens of written communications” with 23andMe to discuss how to get the company to comply with its recommendations.

“However, even after these many interactions with 23andMe, we still do not have any assurance that the firm has analytically or clinically validated the PGS for its intended uses, which have expanded from the uses that the firm identified in its submissions,” Gutierrez wrote.

23andMe is one of many companies to offer at-home genetic testing; in September it reported that its database had reached 400,000 people. Scientists have raised questions about the accuracy of the tests, and in May 2011 a Dutch study claimed the tests were inaccurate and offered little to no benefit to consumers.

Blog Editor Note: I have had several emails regarding this story and it has nothing to do with the genetic genealogy test we take to study our family history. This is about the personalized health DNA test that 23andMe (and only 23andMe) has been advertising recently for $99. Scientist claim that these personalized health tests that screen thousands of genes for versions that influence disease are inaccurate and offer little, if any, benefit to consumers. This part of the DNA story has been out there for several years now. As I see things now not to worry about the genetic testing that we have taken as genealogists. This has NOTHING to do with that unless you did your genetic test at 23andMe and that would only be impacted if the company shuts down.

There is a very interesting Forbes article with background on all this online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/11/25/23andstupid-is-23andme-self-destructing/

Finally, here is an update posted yesterday on the 23andMe blog:

An Update Regarding The FDA’s Letter to 23andMe
         Published by Anne Wojcicki, co-owner of 23and Me.

23andMe was started in 2007 with the belief that consumers have the right to get access to their genetic information and that information can help them live healthier lives.

It is absolutely critical that our consumers get high quality genetic data that they can trust.   We have worked extensively with our lab partner to make sure that the results we return are accurate.  We stand behind the data that we return to customers — but we recognize that the FDA needs to be convinced of the quality of our data as well.
In 2008 we began our dialogue with the FDA. The relationship with the FDA remains critically important to 23andMe.

In July 2012 23andMe submitted its first application for FDA clearance and followed on with another submission at the end of August. We received feedback on those submissions and acknowledge that we are behind schedule with our responses.
This is new territory for both for 23andMe and the FDA. This makes the regulatory process with the FDA important because the work we are doing with the agency will help lay the groundwork for what other companies in this new industry do in the future. It will also provide important reassurance to the public that the process and science behind the service meet the rigorous standards required by those entrusted with the public’s safety.

I am committed to making sure that 23andMe is a trusted consumer product. I believe that genetic information can lead to better decisions and healthier lives — a goal that all of us share.

We will provide updates as they become available.

A Genealogy Dream in the Making: OCR Software That Reads Old Handwriting

Diane Haddad on the Genealogy Insider blog is reporting that "Mocavo announced this week that it's making progress on optical character recognition (OCR) software that will read cursive handwriting, which could revolutionize how digitized records are put online."

On the Mocavo blog, company founder Cliff Shaw described the process, which first involved developing OCR software that could  "perfectly separate handwriting from typewritten text."

Now, Shaw says, the company is getting closer to the "Holy Grail" of being able to accurately read handwritten text. "With limited vocabularies (potential answers), we’re achieving 90-95% accuracy," he writes.

They still have work to do to achieve the ability to read handwriting of a wide range of styles, and to overcome problems with faded or ink-spotted documents I mentioned above. Read about the software and see examples on the Mocavo blog.

Imagine having  software package that can index a hand written document such as this without human intervention. That would truly be the holy grail of software.

This is cute and in some respects true

Click on picture to enlarge.

Courtesy of the Family Tree magazine Facebook page.

Do You Have a Native American Ancestor from North Carolina?

If you have a Native American ancestor from North Carolina, search through the Ancestry newly added North Carolina, Native American Census Selected Tribes, 1894-1913, database.

These census books enumerated Cherokee Indians living in communities o...n the Cherokee or Qualla Reservations in western North Carolina, including Big Cove, Yellow Hill, Birdtown, Natahala, Soco, and Wolf Town in Cherokee, Jackson, Swain, and Graham counties.

Start searching here >> http://ancstry.me/1gKMV7C <<

Have You Used the FamilySearch Free Lookup Service?

My genealogy students all know what my favorite word is "FREE!"

Right now I can heard them all say "FREE" in unison all the way over here in the Btown Gap.

Well nuff of that. I thought I was the master of free, but my old ham buddy Dick Eastman of EOGN fame has me beat. There I said it. So Dick don't get a big head on this. What am I talking about? Here is something very interesting from Dick Eastman's newsletter at http://www.eogn.com/. If you like free, you will definitely like this.

This must be the best-kept secret in genealogy! Well, it isn't really a secret as it is documented on several web pages on FamilySearch.org. However, in my travels, I have never met anyone who has used this valuable service. In fact, most of the genealogists I have talked with have never heard of FamilySearch's free lookup service. This surprises me because (1.) it is a chance to easily obtain valuable genealogy information from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and (2.) because it is available free of charge.


FamilySearch provides a free lookup service for genealogy books and microfilms that are available at the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City. The free service does ask you to supply specific information. The folks in Salt Lake City are not prepared to answer questions of, "Please send me all the information you have about my great-grandfather (insert name here)."  However, if you can specify a book and page number, or a specific image on a reel of microfilm, the personnel at the Family History Library will gladly look at that page or image and (in most cases) scan the entire page and email it to you for free.

What's not to like about this service?
You do need to do a bit of homework before using this service. At a minimum, you must provide:

1. The name of the individual as it appears in the book.
2. The book title
3. The page number(s)

Next, check the Family History Library Catalog at https://familysearch.org/catalog-search to see if that book is available in the Family History Library's collection. If so, make a note of the Call Number.

Once you have the required information, fill out the online Photoduplication Request form at https://lds.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9tdS7lqbTCW30kR.

Assuming you supplied enough information for the Family History Library employee to find the book, you will receive the reply and (usually) a scanned image of the page within a few days.

So how do you find the page number of a book that contains information about your ancestor? I suspect there are several ways but I would always start with Google Books at http://books.google.com. You can find tens of thousands of genealogy books there along with a few million other books covering a wide variety of topics. I would search for the name of the person I seek to see if anything about him or her has been published in a book.

Comment: As a genealogist, you really should be familiar with Google Books as it is another free and valuable service. If you are not yet familiar with Google Books, this is a good time to learn!

Keep in mind that Google Books scans ALL the pages of all the books it digitizes. That includes books both in and out of copyright. For books that are obviously out of copyright (normally anything prior to 1923 for U.S. publications), Google Books will display the entire page to you. For books out of copyright, you won't need to use the FamilySearch Free Lookup Service as the same image is already available to you on Google Books.

However, for books printed in the past 90 years, Google cannot legally display entire pages to you without the author and/or publisher's permission. Instead, Google displays only a snippet from that page. Typically, you only see a paragraph or two, showing the words immediately before and after the name you specified. If that snippet happens to contain all the information you need, consider yourself lucky. However, my experience has been that the snippet is only a "teaser" and does not display everything I need.

What do you do if you want to see the entire page, or several pages from the book? The answer is to use FamilySearch’s free lookup service. Assuming the Family History Library does have the book and the information you supplied does point to the appropriate page, an image of the entire page will be sent to you in email. I am no lawyer but I believe U.S. copyright laws allow libraries to look up information for patrons upon request and send limited photocopies or scanned images whereas Google and other providers of information cannot legally supply similar images in large quantities to everyone.

You may never need to use the FamilySearch free lookup service. However, if you do have the need, this is a valuable service that is free. You don't need to fly to Salt Lake City to obtain what you need.

If you wish to use the FamilySearch free lookup service, I would urge you to first read Nathan W. Murphy's description on the FamilySearch Blog of how it all works at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/google-books-free-copies-pages-family-history-library-books/. Nathan even supplies screenshots showing the step-by-step process of using Google Books to find snippets of genealogy information.

UPDATE: By Nathan W. Murphy of the Family History Library: "GOOD NEWS -- you can now use this service up to five times a week. The previous limit had been five times a month."

Prowling the Harshaw Chapel Cemetery in Murphy NC

Gayle and I spent the early afternoon prowling the Harshaw Chapel Cemetery in Murphy. Beautiful Fall day to look for tombstones.

 

 

I love the Fall and all the color that the Lord provides.

 

DAR to accept Y-DNA evidence!

According to a post on the NSDAR President General's Today's DAR blog, beginning January 1, 2014, the NSDAR will accept Y-DNA evidence in support of new member applications and supplemental applications. DNA evidence submitted along with other documentation will be considered along with all of the other source documentation provided to prove heritage. Y-DNA will not be considered as stand-alone proof of lineage because while it can be used as a tool point to a family, it cannot be used as absolute proof for an individual.

See the following webpage for the full statement from the President General's official blog of the DAR. http://youngblog.dar.org/dna-evidence-dar-applications-and-supplementals

As soon as I see more on how this fits in with the rest of their proof structure, I will post additional information on this blog.

It is my opinion that this is a very important step forward in genealogy research. I have stated in the past that "every" genealogist should at least take an autosomal DNA test. You need to consider this test a unique genealogical record that only you can create. It is a record that will last for generations and help future researchers untangle all of your family lines. The more people who test, the more we all will be able to lock down and prove scientifically all our paper trail lines. Like the computer was to genealogy, in the future, so will DNA testing.

So it is great that such a nationally recognized lineage society, such as the NSDAR, recognize the new frontier of DNA testing. Now I hope we won't have to wait long to see autosomal DNA testing as part of the proof structure in lineage genealogy research.

More on this very soon de Larry.

Three Ways to Celebrate National Family History Month

Some of my relatives at the String Prairie, Bastrop County, Texas, Post Office. Love those floppy hats. And check out those dudes on horseback. Must have been one heck of a celebration. If you know the story of this photo, contact me at the email address in the masthead.

October is National Family History Month, a perfect time to discover your roots, learn something new, or gather photos and other memories to create that special project you’ve been meaning to work on. Here are three great ways you can make the most of this month to celebrate and share your family’s story courtesy of Lisa A. Alzo.

See more at: http://www.reelgenie.com/blog/3-ways-celebrate-national-family-history-month/#sthash.rnWQPLBU.dpuf

The Ellis Island Name Change Myth

A bit of controversy arose after the Monday night airing of PBS' Genealogy Roadshow. Joshua Taylor made a comment about immigrant name changes supposedly made at Ellis Island by the personnel on the Ellis. According to Taylor that comment which aired was a mistake. His very interesting comments on this subject can be found on his blog at http://www.djoshuataylor.com/2013/10/01/the-ellis-island-myth/.

Ancestry.com LLC Acquires Find A Grave, Inc.

Editor Note: Well dear readers this was only a matter of time.

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ancestry.com LLC announced today it has acquired Find A Grave, Inc., the leading online cemetery database.

With over 100 million memorials and 75 million photos, Find A Grave has amassed an unparalleled collection of burial information. Over the past 18 years, it has grown to become an invaluable resource for genealogists, history buffs and cemetery preservationists. Find A Grave will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com, and will continue to be managed by its founder, Jim Tipton.

"Find A Grave is an amazing phenomenon supported by a passionate and engaged community of volunteers around the world," said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. "We at Ancestry.com are so excited...honored really...to take on the responsibility of supporting this community. We will maintain Find A Grave as a free website, will retain its existing policies and mode of operation, and look forward to working with Jim Tipton and the entire Find A Grave team to accelerate the development of tools designed to make it even easier for the Find A Grave community to fulfill its original mission to capture every tombstone on Earth."

Ancestry.com plans to bolster the resources dedicated to Find A Grave to launch a new mobile app, improve customer support, introduce an enhanced edit system for submitting updates to memorials, foreign-language support, and other site improvements.

"Ancestry.com has been a long-time supporter of Find A Grave. They have been linking and driving traffic to the site for several years," said Jim Tipton, founder of Find A Grave. "Burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history and I look forward to working with Ancestry.com to help continue our growth and accelerate the pace of improvements."

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com is the world's largest online family history resource with approximately 2.7 million paying subscribers across all its websites. More than 12 billion records have been added to the Ancestry.com sites and users have created more than 50 million family trees containing more than 5 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site www.ancestry.com, the Company operates several Ancestry international websites along with a suite of online family history brands, including Archives.com, Fold3.com and Newspapers.com, all designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

About Find A Grave
Find A Grave is a free resource for finding the final resting places of famous folks, friends and family members. With millions of names, it's an invaluable tool for genealogist and history buffs. Find A Grave memorials are rich with content, including dates, photos and biographies. Visitors can leave 'virtual flowers' on memorials to complete the online cemetery experience. Find A Grave also contains listings for thousands of celebrity graves, making it the premier, online destination for tombstone visitors.

A Century of North Carolina City Directories Now Online

Courtesy of the UNC Library News and Events Blog at http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/news/

Wilmington, N.C., directory, 1940

Before Google or Siri, before the telephone book or even the telephone, humble city directories helped salesmen, businesses, and newcomers contact clients and neighbors.

Now a century’s worth of North Carolina directories is online (here) as part of the City Directories Collection from the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC). The collection features 939 directories from the years 1860 through 1963. They cover 108 cities in 64 counties.

The NCDHC is a statewide digital library based at the UNC Library and sponsored by the State Library of North Carolina. Through cooperative projects with libraries, museums, historical societies, and cultural institutions, it has digitized more than two million pages of North Carolina history since its founding in 2010.

The directories are a valuable tool for genealogists, historians, city planners, and anyone curious about the state’s past, said Nick Graham, program coordinator for the Center. “City directories don’t sound interesting until you realize how much is in them,” he said.
 

 The simplest directories list residents alphabetically, along with their address and occupation. Some have a reverse-directory feature arranged by address that can help researchers understand how businesses turned over from year to year.

Raleigh, N.C., directory, 1875-76

The most comprehensive directories contain a treasure trove of history, such as local business ads and Jim Crow-era publications that denote the race of each resident. Graham said UNC researchers studied the racial geography of Charlotte in 1911 by creating a map using the directories.

A convenient cross-directory search feature allows users of the collection to find all instances of a single name, business, or industry in the entire collection. Most of the directories come from the stacks of the North Carolina Collection in UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

However, a growing number are from public libraries around the state and from other partners such as the Duke University Library. “Local libraries often have things that UNC does not,” said Graham. He invites libraries and historical societies interested in digitizing their city directories to contact him at ngraham@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-4836.

The State Library of North Carolina supports the NCDHC with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library and Services and Technology Act. UNC contributes the technical and administrative infrastructure and the expertise of staff consultants.

AncestryDNA Ethnicity Update -- They Did Update It Sorta!

Well if you are one of my readers who took an Ancestry Autosomal DNA test, no doubt you probably marveled at the ethnicity that Ancestry reported to you (I didn't realize I that I so  much Scandinavian in me even though over 60% of my lineage is, wait for it, GERMAN. That German part of my lineage must have manifest itself in that 4% uncertain.  When you add that to my Mom's ethnicity, well, as I told the folks at Ancestry, they blew it.

                     My Autosomal Ethnicity                             Mom's Ethnicity
                     British Isles 57%                                         Eastern European 40%
                     Scandinavian 22%                                       Central European 26%
                     Southern European 17%                              Scandinavian 25%
                     Uncertain 4%                                               British Isles 9%

Well this afternoon I saw a bunch of messages on the DNA-Newbie newsgroup that Ancestry has revised their ethnicity calculations.

You can read about click clicking here


Imagine my surprise when I checked my AncestryDNA account and saw that all three of my kits that I manage had that orange button in the upper right hand corner. Yahoo, oh wait that is a search engine!

Well I have looked at all three kits I manage and I can safely say they have put out a much better and accurate product.

Here is my Mom's new ethnic results:

Asia  < 1% 
    Asia Central < 1% .

Europe  96% 
     Great Britain 41% .
     Europe East 28% .
     Europe West 19% .
Trace Regions 8% ..
    Italy/Greece 4% .
    Scandinavia 2% .
    Finnish/Northern Russia 1% .
    Ireland < 1%

West Asia  3% 
 Trace Regions 3% ..
    Caucasus 3%

Much better considering that more than 60% of her paper trail is a German lineage. And here is the new presentation screen:

And now here is my new results:

Asia  < 1% 
 Trace Regions < 1% ..
    Asia Central < 1% .

Europe  99% 
    Europe West 62% .
    Ireland 12% .
    Great Britain 7% .
    Scandinavia 5% .
 Trace Regions 13% ..
    Iberian Peninsula 6% .
    Europe East 5% .
    Italy/Greece 1% .
    European Jewish < 1%

There is also some useful help material available to explain this material on another screen.

 

 

The "sorta" in my blog post title refers to the fact that only a handful of the AncestryDNA testers have seen this new feature and not the entire AncestryDNA Universe. So I guess I'm one of the lucky 6000 selected to preview and survey this new stuff. Thanks Ancestry. I do love chatting with you folks from time to time on things I see needing improvement.

Oh, by the way, could you please now work on a Chromosome Browser package for your Autosomal AncestryDNA package. It really would be a great thing to have and make my life as a genetic genealogist a hell of a lot easier. Please, please develop and implement a chromosome browser. Maybe begging will work instead of a hard line.

I hope to have more on this as it becomes available so stay tuned to the Family Roots and Branches blog.

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to Make a Billion Global Records Available Online

 

 

Groundbreaking Agreement to Deliver Valuable Historical Content Over the Next Five Years

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 5, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ancestry.com and FamilySearch International (online at FamilySearch.org), the two largest providers of family history resources, announced today an agreement that is expected to make approximately 1 billion global historical records available online and more easily accessible to the public for the first time. With this long-term strategic agreement, the two services will work together with the archive community over the next five years to digitize, index and publish these records from the FamilySearch vault.

The access to the global collection of records marks a major investment in international content as Ancestry.com continues to invest in expanding family history interest in its current markets and worldwide. Ancestry.com expects to invest more than $60 million over the next five years in the project alongside thousands of hours of volunteer efforts facilitated by FamilySearch.

"This agreement sets a path for the future for Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to increasingly share international sets of records more collaboratively," said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. "A significant part of our vision for family history is helping provide a rich, engaging experience on a global scale. We are excited about the opportunities it will bring to help benefit the family history community and look forward to collaborating with FamilySearch to identify other opportunities to help people discover and share their family history."

The organizations will also be looking at other ways to share content across the two organizations. Both organizations expect to add to the already digitized records shared across the two websites in addition to new record projects to be completed over the next five years.

"We are excited to work with Ancestry.com on a vision we both share," said Dennis Brimhall, President of FamilySearch. "Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family's history."

This marks a groundbreaking agreement between the two services. But the two organizations aren't strangers to working with each other; hundreds of millions of records have already been shared and are available on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The companies also announced in early 2013 an additional project where they plan to publish 140 million U.S. Wills & Probate images and indexes over the next three years—creating a national database of wills and other probate documents spanning 1800-1930 online for the very first time.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com is the world's largest online family history resource with approximately 2.7 million paying subscribers across all its websites. More than 11 billion records have been added to the Ancestry.com sites and users have created more than 50 million family trees containing more than 5 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site www.ancestry.com, the company operates several Ancestry international websites along with a suite of online family history brands, including Archives.com, Fold3.com and Newspapers.com, all designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

About FamilySearch
FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,800 family history centers in 70 countries, including the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.