Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting – May 10, 2018
The May 2018 meeting of the Madison County
Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday,
May 10, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
May Meeting
On May 10, 2018, Joy Whitson Upton
presented a program titled Genealogy
and DNA.
Joy Whitson Upton, a genealogist and librarian, has
taught DNA and genealogy courses at John A. Logan College since 2012 and has
presented workshops on the rapidly developing topic, throughout the state,
under the auspices of the Illinois State Organization, NSDAR. It was stated,
“Upton’s students marvel at her ability to make a complex subject
understandable and to help researchers whatever their level of knowledge.”
Wondering whether to send in a DNA sample for
analysis? Looking for long lost relatives? Checking out the immigration story
of your 4th great grandfather? Joy Whitson Upton, librarian and
genealogist, discussed the various DNA research services available, what kind
of results can be expected, and how these can be applied to finding your
relatives.
I would like to give you something personal about the
Madison County Genealogy Society – Jeannette Dothager and I have both
lived in this area for 41 years and the first issue of the Stalker was typed on
my kitchen table by me. Every word was dictated by Bob Johnston and my cousin
designed the cover. So I do have a relationship with all of you.
Before we get started, I want to tell you about something
that happened to me. One of my great great grandfathers was Steven King. I
looked for him for 25 years. I put out on Rootsweb.com, “Does anyone have any
information on Steven King of Richland County, Illinois?” and gave his birth
and death dates. That is all I put out there. A man in Washington, D.C.,
emailed me and said, “Yes, I have some additional information; and would you
like a photo of him?” I said, “Oh, yes, and can I use it in my family tree?” He
said, “Yes.” And when he sent it, he also sent a photo of Steven’s mother. She
was born in 1794. He was descended from Steven’s second wife, and I am
descended from the first wife. Keep this in mind – second wife’s descendents
got the photo albums, the Bible, and all the other stuff, okay? That is a valuable
lesson.
Current DNA covers the last five hundred years. All
your other DNA (Ancient DNA) goes back 130,000 years. Before tonight is over,
you will understand you are mainly from all those dead ones.
I want to reassure you that when you submit a DNA test
to 23 and Me,
you are a number thereafter – only the business office is concerned about your
name. You are a number on that test tube and it stays that way except for you
to know. 23 and Me
is single owned. ftDNA
is single owned. Ancestry
is a corporation, a business, that has been bought by China at one
point, by Germany at another point, and I do not know who owns them now. I have
used all three.
You can take a test at one company and, for a small
fee, you can transfer that test to ftDNA and they will use their chip to analyze it. That is the
difference in the three companies; that chip they designed and what SNPs they
use for analysis. It is nothing like the military. We were at a national DAR
conference and an admiral that was speaking said that if they had half of a
little fingernail, they could identify the remains of our veterans. The police
use other chips to analyze the DNA before they can find out who you are.
Every company gives you a database of your DNA
relatives, an ethnicity report, and let me assure you, there is no such thing
as English, Irish, Welsh, or German DNA. We are talking about ancient tribes
for this ethnicity report. It is a selling technique to use the other terms.
Think about when Germany came into existence — 1871, because that is when
“German DNA” would appear.
Ancestry offers
the largest family tree database by far. Family Tree does surname DNA project pages. What you do is
click on Join
a Project, type in a surname, and everybody that has DNA with that surname
shows up. 23 and Me
has a health section. One of the reasons I did DNA was because my diseases were
not like my mother’s family. 23 and
Me sent me an email about three years after they did my DNA and told me
to take it to my doctor. I was a fast metabolizer of two of my medications. You
get out of these programs what you share.
At 23 and
Me, you do surveys. Here is the latest one; I do not understand what
disease it relates to. Do you have dimples? Do you have dimples when you smile? Do you have
hair anywhere on your back? Is it on your shoulders or is it lower? What
that relates to, I do not know. They have discovered where Parkinson’s Disease
starts and they have shared that in scientific journals and are looking for
methods to block it being given to the next generation and also finding a
medication and cure for it.
The International Society of Genetic Genealogy is very
new and it is totally international. The test at 23 and Me has always come out on top. It is
a little more expensive, but you get more personal information for your money.
When you get your test results, what do you do? When I
got my results and it said I had 38% Iberian and 37% Italian, I thought I had
wasted my money. The Iberians are from Spain. That is where the Celts came
from. The Celts are in Ireland, and Scotland. So that is where I get the
Iberian. The Italian (Roman) soldiers were in Great Britain for three hundred
years and you know they were not celibate. Human nature has never changed.
Here is what you do. Fill out a pedigree chart for
four generations. If you get all these names, you will probably have about
8,000 instant ancestors if you use all four columns. The secret is to take
these couples to the far right and using census records or documented trees
trace their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and their great great
grandchildren to the current time. Because, I cannot stress this enough, who is
emailing you and saying we are cousins? It is somebody that is living now. It
is not anybody four generations away.
Each company gives you a basic 2,000 instant cousins –
your closest 2,000 cousins. Each person of these 2,000 you get, you do not know
which side of the family they are from.
Now comes my warning – do not do a DNA test unless you
can handle surprises in your family. I am very serious about this. A student of
mine, a college professor, just six weeks ago, came up to me and said, “I have
to talk to you privately.” I asked, “What is the matter?” She said, “A man is
my closest relative and I do not know who he is.” I said, “Why not email him?
See if he knows who you are.”
It turns out her father was a physician who got
married to his first wife in 1899, and had a daughter in 1901. Both that wife
and daughter died in a flu epidemic in the 20s. He got married again in the
1940s and had her. She said, “How can I prove how we are related?” Basically
what it turned out to be – the man knew his maternal line back but he did not
know his father. The college professor knew her father. So using census places,
dates, and locations, they located the connection. Let us say this nicely – her
father visited a home while he was in college, six months before he got married
the first time, and he never knew he had this baby boy by the other woman.
Autosomal DNA
is everybody on this chart and their descendents. Mitochondrial DNA is passed
only by females. About thirteen different mitochondrial DNA structures have
been identified in the entire world. So we are all closer than you might think.
Males pass on yDNA. You may find male family members who have yDNA that does
not match anyone else in the family group. Whenever there is a war, there are
always gifts left behind by the 19-21 year old military members. They probably
never knew they left gifts behind. These people are connected through DNA.
centiMorgans (cM) Think of a ruler and the inches are centiMorgans. The spaces between
the centiMorgans are called SNPs. Always before when they used DNA for medical
research, they used prisons, mental asylums, etc. Now they have this
international database; and that is why they are making so many breakthroughs
in diseases. But you do not know how many centiMorgans it takes to get the
disease. If you get a report that says you have 15 of this, you do not know, it
may take 1,000. So do not panic.
Haplogroup –
Haplogroup is the ancient DNA group from which you descend.
MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) – The number of centiMorgans you share with someone
identifies the level of the relationship. Someone created all these free tools
(on the handouts for tonight). You can go in and type in the number of
centiMorgans that you share, for example 186. You type that in and it will tell
you exactly where on that printed chart just who the possibilities are.
In Common With
– Say for instance, here is where I am, here is where the other person is, the
part that we match, like the overlap, that is In Common With group. You may
have one person there, you may have 50. The trouble is, you do not know if it
is from Mom’s or Dad’s side.
xDNA uses
markers. One such marker is dys393. That is an identified place on a chromosome
and there should be 13 repeats of TATT.
We each have 23 pairs of chromosomes – 23 from Mom and 23
from Dad. Autosomal DNA includes the xDNA. The X is what a woman has; she gets
two of them. A man cannot do anything with an X. A woman gets one X from her
mother and one from her father’s grandmother. A man has one X, he gets it from
his mother.
You want any male relative you have to do a DNA test,
especially if their X will help you. No two siblings have the same DNA, except
for identical twins.
If you connect surnames to the DNA, you will be able
to see the relationships. What you have to do with the close cousins you get,
is build their tree if you cannot find it. You have to build their records to
find how they are related to you.
Mitochondrial DNA is found outside of where the 23 chromosome pairs are located and only
women can pass it down to every child they have, but it stops with the man.
yDNA comes
from the father. The DAR accepts DNA as proof by the yDNA 37 marker test. You
have to have the patriot come through all men to the female applicant. You have
to find someone that is of that all male lineage to do a DNA test for you. Your
application has to be all men and you have to have a man do the yDNA test for
you and if these two match on 37 markers, you can use it. Two years ago, in the
whole nation there were only four people who had done that.
GEDMATCH
Once you have your DNA results, copy it to a flash
drive. Your DNA will never change. Store it in another place, other than your
one computer. Put it somewhere safe. GEDMATCH works with all DNA companies. It
was started by two programmers interested in genealogy. They started developing
tools and they did not think they ought to charge for it. This is a totally
free website. They got in the population specialists and they started doing the
free tools for your ethnicity. Then they got into the ancient DNA. They have
one free program after another. Currently, they are only allowing you your
first 2,000 closest relatives. Their database is international. I have
relatives in Australia, Sweden; it boggles my mind. But do not be surprised if
they email you and say, “I am a descendent from England, in such and such time,
do you recognize my name?” I get the greatest response when I give them my
grandparents’ surnames; not parents, grandparents – those four surnames. I ask
if they will give me their grandparents’ four surnames, so we can try to figure
out how we are related. Naturally, you do not do all 2,000 of them. This
company is going to open their massive database for a new program. But I do not
know when; it will be either sometime this year or early next year. And you can
possibly have 20,000 DNA relatives.
If you do DNA and you want to see if we are connected,
my kit number is M111042 (M stands for 23 and Me).
When you register with GEDMATCH, they give you a kit
number. From there, you put in your kit number and up will come 2,000
relatives. The One
To One Compare, that is where you put in one of the 2,000 kit numbers
listed and you will see how you are related in more detail. The next one, X One To One,
my X shows up in my one to many, why would I do this? Not everybody that is
related on your X relates any other way with you, so you get 2,000 more.
Every month, you need to go in and check at GEDMATCH,
because any of them that are green have knocked somebody off the bottom of your
list because they are closer and I generally get about 25-30 new people. But
that also means I lose 25-30 people. When I first started GEDMATCH, we were in
generation 9 for my bottom connection. I am now 4.9, so that means 2,000
relatives within 5 generations. Any time there is a decimal point in the
number, that indicates that there is a half sibling situation. You have to keep
track of them and the program I use is another freeby, Genome Mate Pro. Genome Mate Pro is a program that takes
all this information from these different companies and GEDMATCH and it will
triangulate the people for you. You stand a better chance of finding your
connection with someone if you have this triangulation with four people.
Because you all have separate surnames, but there is going to be one that
matches at least two of you, hopefully.
One of my
students was upset because his mother was having a child by her second husband.
I told him, “You are not the first person. Think of colonial times – women died
in childbirth, men got instantly married so they would have a caretaker for the
baby. Men died either from an accident, an animal, Indian attack, or other
things on the frontier, so she instantly needed a provider, so she got married.
So there were always his kids, her kids, and our kids. So quit your
bellyaching.” Anytime you see half that means you are only related by one
ancestor.
Children of your great aunt or uncle are your second
cousins if you are descendants from the same great grandparents.
There is a free program called DNA Painter. In it, you
type in the cM that you share with a person, and it tells you what the
possibilities are of your relationship.
Tier 1 Utilities – you can purchase this for $10 a month at GEDMATCH. It gives you a
matching segments search, which is totally different. You can match segments
with people. But the thing with segments is you do not know whether it is from
Mom or Dad.
They have something called My Evil Twin. Remember we get 23 pairs
of chromosomes from Mom and 23 pairs from Dad and we can use only 23 pairs.
There are 23 pairs that are not used — that is my evil twin. All you have to do is put
your kit number in and they will do it for you.
The Admixture Heritage on GEDMATCH generates a pie chart that shows the
percentages of your heritage of 36 tribes (ancient DNA). There is no human DNA
that does not trace back to Africa.
There is another free program, DNA Land, developed in New York. You only
get 50 relatives, but you get all of their relatives. You click on it and not
only does it show you the current cM you share with this person, but all of the
ancient DNA you share with this person. After I saw that and I saw this screen,
I was going to class and I thought, ‘I am full of dead stuff!’
This presentation was very well received and
provoked many questions and comments.