Monday Genea-Pourri - 15 January 2018

Here are some of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week:

1)  The big genealogy event this past week was the San Diego Genealogical Society seminar on Saturday, 13 January, with Blaine Bettinger as the speaker, with about 180 in attendance.  The four presentations included:

*  Introduction to DNA
*  Using Autosomal DNA for 18th and 19th Century Mysteries
*  Using Third-Party Tools to Analyze Your Autosomal DNA
*  Phasing and Mapping Your DNA

It was a beautiful sunny day in San Diego on Mission Bay, and we all learned a lot.  Blaine and several SDGS geneabloggers were photographed in between sessions above (thank you to Yvette Porter Moore for taking this, and J. Paul Hawthorne for sharing it). On Saturday evening, Linda and I joined Blaine and several other SDGS members for dinner at The Fish Market on San Diego Bay.

2)  The Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group meeting was last Wednesday, with me trying to heard 15 researchers.  I had an equipment problem - the HDMI to VGA dongle that connected my new HP Windows 10 laptop to the 10-year old VGA projector produced poor images - they were almost completely black.  I borrowed John's Mac laptop and it connected and worked fine with his dongle.  I complained on Facebook about the problem ,and got several helpful comments.  Russ Worthington had the same problem recently, and he thinks it's because the resolution of the laptop is much greater than the resolution that can be handled by the projector.  

In the first hour of the Research Group, I discussed the need to have a FamilySearch account to use it, the growth of Digital Microfilm, Ancestry Member Tree sources and searches, finding my 1961 graduation photo in the MyHeritage Yearbook collection, the Jabez Snow probate record story, and more.  In the second hour, I asked the attendees about their genealogy-related Christmas gifts and New Year's resolutions.  They also discussed their research challenges and successes over the past two months.

3)  Today's Mondays With Myrt on Zoom.us covered a lot of ground - Martin Luther King Jr. and African-American research, Nicka Smith's BlackProGen YouTube video, the Book of Me blog prompts, and the Ancestry Member Tree sources and searches - where only profiles with an "Ancestry Source" (meaning an attached Ancestry record) are indexed by Ancestry and can be found in a search, whereas profiles with "Other Sources" but no "Ancestry Source" are not found in a search.  Form ore information, see Ancestry Member Trees, Indexing Rules, Cousin Bait, Source Citations and Me.

4)  I had two practice sessions using WebinarJam for the upcoming 19 January eConference - and the desktop computer worked fine.  I sent the presentation in PDF format to Andy Lee so that it can be used in the presentation to minimize my bandwidth problems.  For more information on this, see Family History Fanatics eConference - 19 January 2018 - Early Bird Discount Extended.

5)  I was happy to see the MyHeritageDNA Chromosome Browser - see MyHeritageDNA Now Has a Chromosome Browser.  Unfortunately, I have only one close match on MyHeritageDNA - a first cousin twice removed, but now I have some segments identified for my Seaver and Richmond grandparents.

6)  I have 266 Shared Ancestors on my AncestryDNA list (I had 262 last week), 690 4th cousins or closer (up from 682 last week), 585 pages (over 29,200 matches with at least 5 cM) (was 574 pages last week) of  matches.  I have 14 DNA Circles (no change for weeks). There were no new close matches (3rd cousin or closer).

7)  I have 2,089 DNA Matches on MyHeritage (up from 278 last week) with at least 8 cM (0.1%).  There were no new close matches this week.  Note that MyHeritage significantly increased their number of matches found this week.

8)  I have 1,154 DNA Relatives on 23andMe (down from 1,174 last week) who share at least 0.10% with me.  Of these, only 1 shares 1.0% or more, 35 share 0.50% or more, with the highest being 1.54%.  These matches are the most difficult to find out anything about the testers.

9)  I have 2,256 autosomal DNA Matches on FamilyTreeDNA (up from 2,248) who share 0.25% (18 cM) or more, with the highest match being 1.42% (96 cM).  I have 12 who share at least 1.0% (68 cM) with me, and 1214 who share at least 0.50% (34 cM) or more with me.  I have had better luck finding shared ancestors with a few of these testers. 

10)  There were almost daily sessions working in RootsMagic to update FamilySearch Family Tree profiles for Seaver families and other ancestral families, with occasional additions to the RootsMagic profiles. I have matched 21,746 of my persons with FSFT.  I now have 49,399 persons in my RootsMagic file.   I TreeShare almost every night.  There were also several sessions in Ancestry Hints to add content and source citations for the new RootsMagic profile additions.   I've fallen behind on the Record Hints with 53,734 waiting to be resolved, but I'm working on it.  Every time I add something to RootsMagic and TreeShare, the Hints multiply.  

=============================================

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2018/01/monday-genea-pourri-15-january-2018.html

Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.