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.

Fall Genealogy Classes at Tri County Update 21 Aug 2013

Sorry this is later than normal getting out but this summer has been . . . well it has been.

Here are the classes and dates as currently scheduled for the Fall Genealogy classes at Tri County Community College in Peachtree, NC.

Genealogy – Beginning/Intermediate Course: 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 the advanced genealogy courses we offer at TCCC.
September 10 - October 23 on Tuesday/Wednesday nights, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $60


Genealogy /Advanced – Google and Your Family Tree Research: When it comes to tracing your family tree online, you need the right tools to get the job done. This course will teach you how to discover all the powers of Google and how to use it in your family research. It will help you stuff your genealogy toolbox with free state-of the-art Internet tools that are built to search, translate, message and span the globe for your family history. This is a must course for the advanced genealogist that will help you explore the depth of power contained within each major part of the Google Internet service. Prerequisite: Beginner/Intermediate course.
August 29 -  October 31 (8 weeks) on Thursday nights, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $40


Genealogy /Advanced – Google Earth for Genealogy: Google Earth has the power to geographically document your ancestors lives. It is one of the most exciting online genealogical tools available, and best of all, it’s free. In this course you will learn how to download and use Google Earth and use Google Maps. We will also cover how to plot ancestor homesteads, pinpoint property, create family history tours and a whole lot more. Prerequisite: Beginner/Intermediate and the Google and Your
Family Tree Research courses mentioned above.
November 7 -21 (3 weeks) on Thursday nights, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. $20

And the changes at Ancestry just keep on coming!

My record of teaching an Internet and Genealogy course, finishing it, and have the various websites that I taught in that class make changes is still 100%. Yep, those funny folks in the Product Development Team at Ancestry.com are at it again.

So now you guys who took my class last Spring remember the night we talked about old search and new search at Ancestry. Well the old search is going the way of the Dodo bird. Yep, the famed old search engine will be history in the next six months. The good news is at least they have done away with the result pages that had those gold colored stars. Those stars were suppose to rate the results you received based on the search criteria you put into the new search engine.

I'm sorry Ancestry, but that was the dumbest damn thing I have ever seen you do in the nearly 13 years I have been with you as a paying customer.

So the search engine below that has been around literally forever will be history soon.

So will the results page that was associated with this search engine (below).

The new search engine now looks like this.

On the results page you will have two different views of the search results depending on which tab you select in the upper right hand corner. Here is a view when the record tab is selected.

And here is the new search results page when the category tab is selected.

This second results page is more like the old search engine results page and for that I will applaud the Product Team at Ancestry. The other thing that I mentioned above is you got rid of those juvenile star results pages.

If you want to switch between the two search engines follow my instructions below.

First look at the toolbar at the top of the Ancestry page. Click on the search button.

You will then get a second screen that dumps you off your Ancestry home page and puts you at the current search engine you are using. Look at the upper right hand corner and there is a link that lets you select between the two different search engines (see below).

 

 

In my screen capture above clicking on the Go to Old Search engine in the upper right hand corner will take you to the old search engine.

 

Bottom line the old engine will be history soon so time to get use to the new engine. Here is the email I received from Ancestry about this situation this afternoon.

 

 

Tell us what you think

          Dear Larry,

Ancestry.com is continuing our efforts to improve the search experience across Ancestry.com and will be making changes to our search functionality in the upcoming months. Some features will be added and some will be discontinued. As part of the 2% of our subscribers that use the old search function on the site, we know that you are passionate about the search experience on Ancestry.com and we are reaching out to you to get input on potential improvements. We hope you will take the opportunity to share your insights and feedback on our plans.

To identify which areas of the experience we should focus on this year, we have drawn on customer input, usage data, usage patterns and our old search function for inspiration. From all of that, we are looking at making your time on Ancestry.com more productive by improving these areas of the search experience in 2013:

• More relevant search results with the best results at the top
• Easier refining and control of your search results
• Keeping a better history of the work you have done
• Publishing more new content and more corrections to existing content
• Performance improvements to return results faster

As we begin to make these improvements, we will no longer maintain two separate search systems for the site. Maintaining two systems limits the resources we can use to make improvements and increases the complexity of every improvement we try to make. Additionally, continuing to maintain the two systems limits our ability to direct more investment into other areas like adding more record collections and correcting existing collections.

Based on that, as a part of the work this year we will be bringing together the two search experiences into a single search experience on Ancestry.com. We hope to bring forward the best features of both the old and new search systems into the consolidated experience to facilitate the transition for our users and to improve the overall search experience. We expect to discontinue the old search function as a separate experience within the next 6 months.

As a user of the old search feature, we wanted to give you advance notice and let you influence the changes we are making in search. Please take this survey to share your feedback and ideas on key features to improve.

Best regards,
The Ancestry.com Product Team

So there you have it folks. Hey Ancestry now that we are focused and you have made improvements how about a DNA Chromosome Browser and improved ethnic DNA admixtures. Maybe a Xmas present, hint, hint!

Here we go again Ancestry is tweeking their search engine!

Dear Ancestry Product Development Team.,

I got your most wonderful and heartwarming email today informing me that your programmers as restless again and going to make some major changes to your main search engine - Again! I'm now informaed that I only 2 percent of the total users of Ancestry who continue to use the old search engine you decided needed changing several years ago to the piece of junk you now have called a "new search" engine.

Oh how cute and warm and fuzzy that new search engine is. It gives me stars to let me know the relevance of the results of my search. And oh look at this. On the right hand side of the page I have "filters."

Be careful when using tombstone information in lew of vital records.

I'm sure most of my readers are aware that tombstones can contain erroneous information from time-to-time. Personally I prefer a vital record (aka death certificate) if it is available as a primary record for someone's death event. But in many cases as we go back in time that will not be possible. But you should use tombstone information with a grain of salt. Case in point below is the tombstone of Joe Rob Redus.

Joe Rob Redus was the son of John Clement Redus Sr. and Hazel Ann Slater. According to the tombstone picture posted to his Find-A-Grave memorial # 28257374. He was born 14 Apr 1929 in Medina County, Texas and according to his tombstone died 12 July 1929. But that is not the entire story. The Texas death certificate tells us something different.

The death certificate  above shows that Joe Rob died at 10:15 pm 10 Jul 1929 and was buried the next day 11 Jul 1929. Bottom line the death certificate should be the primary document used in any lineage and the tombstone should be documented with the exceptions noted above.

AncestryDNA Surname Search Tool Brief Appearance Explained

As first reported on Monday (May 20) on this blog, Ancestry has been tinkering around with a new search tool for their autosomal DNA customers. CeCe Moore has posted up on her blog the rest of the story about why this function has been popping in and out of our DNA results.

"I asked Stephen Baloglu, Ancestry.com's Director of Product Marketing, for clarification in regard to exactly what has been going on with this feature the last couple of days, as well as the time frame for a full roll-out. He explained, "We had been doing some isolated early release testing of the new ability to search matches by surname and birth location. It's very exciting, but the development is not complete. We put it in the wild for a small, random portion of AncestryDNA customers to get a sense of how it is working. We expect to roll out the feature in late June/early July to all DNA customers along with a few modifications to what has already been seen."

You can read her full account of this story on the Your Genetic Genealogist blog at
http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2013/05/sneak-preview-of-ancestrydnas-new.html

On a somewhat related note we still have NOT seen or heard any additional word from FTDNA re: upload of the AncestryDNA raw results to their site. To many of us this is not a surprise. The only entity in this world that moves slower is the U.S. Government (oh hell, bet I will get audited for that comment).

As soon as I hear something more definitive, I will pass it along here on the FRB blog.

A New Ancestry Autosomal Tool Being Added as I Type

While working on my AncestryDNA just seconds ago something new popped on my screen -- the long anticipated surname search feature. Normally when these sort of features are added, Ancestry will disable the function until it is added. In this case they didn't. I can't tell you anything about it right now as nothing seems to be working yet so stay tuned and I will post more when I see it.

Below is a screen capture of what I saw