Monday, February 19, 2018

Monday Genea-Pourri - 19 February 2018

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

1)  I continued searching for the parents of George Washington Seaver without success.  The lead of the aunt, Lucinda M. (Pease) Fields, went nowhere.  I searched the Wisconsin and California probate records on Ancestry (because they are indexed) and found no mention of George, and this process eliminated some of the potential candidates identified earlier.  I wrote up a timeline for George's life from the available data.  Now I need to document Lida J. (Robie?) (Baker) (Crooker)(Seaver) Brown's life.


2)  I moderated the Chula Vista Genealogical Society's Research Group last Wednesday at the Chula Vista library.  I reduced my resolution on the laptop, and my HDMI to VGA dongle still didn't work well.  Gary's dongle worked fine, so he gave it to me, and said he had another.  Gary's a nice guy!  In the group meeting, I highlighted the RootsTech video streaming, how to access the syllabus articles, the FamilySearch Library visit, my Lanfear DNA connection on MyHeritage, and the George W. Seaver saga.  We went around the table and the attendees discussed their genealogy successes and challenges over the past month.

3)  Every week, I add one or two of my AncestryDNA Shared Ancestors line to my RootsMagic database in hopes of solving some of my long-standing research problems.  This week, it is a Richman cousin (4th or 5th cousin) which provided a potential link to my end-of-line 3rd great-grandfather John Richman (1788-1867); the common ancestors are probably my John's grandparents.  
 
4)  I managed to download the RootsTech 2018 syllabus articles for Thursday and Friday to my computer.  I need to do the Saturday articles also.  I save these individual articles in a single file folder, changing the file name to "FirstName LastName - Presentation Title.pdf" so that they are easily findable.  I will copy that to my laptop and my Dropbox file for access at RootsTech.  I've printed off some of the articles that I know I want to save to read at my leisure.

5)  I added a tree to the new RootsFinder online family tree program, imported from FamilySearch Family Tree.  I've been exploring the layout, navigation, and features of the program.

6)  Today's Mondays with Myrt webinar highlighted:  Larry Naukum's In-Depth Genealogist laminated sheet on New York Research, and access to New York resources; the new RootsFinder online family tree program which has unique features; Ancestry added the ability to add alternate information to the SSDI and other indexed-only collections; Cyndi Ingle's Facebook post about attendees photographing or recording in-person or webinar presentations; RootsTech 2018 video stream and keynote talks; the video will be available on YouTube, and the video and the edited chat log will be available on the DearMYRTLE Community Google+ page.

7)  I have 252 Shared Ancestors on my AncestryDNA list (I had 255 last week), 743 4th cousins or closer (up from 728 last week), 639 pages (over 31,900 matches with at least 5 cM) (was 626 pages last week) of  matches.  I have 10 matches that are third cousins or closer, and 85 matches with 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 84 last week).  My highest match has 779 cM (11.5%), and is one of my first cousins.  I have 14 DNA Circles (no change for weeks). There were no new close matches (3rd cousin or closer).  Very few of the new matches have an Ancestry Member Tree.

8)  I have 2,797 DNA Matches on MyHeritage (up from 2,692 last week) with at least 8 cM (0.1%), with 29 matches with more than 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 19 last week).  The highest match is 184 cM (2.5%).  Most of my close matches have very small trees with no common ancestors shown.

9)  I have 1,120 DNA Relatives on 23andMe (down from 1,125 last week) who share at least 0.10% with me.  Of these, only 1 shares 1.0% or more, and 61 share 0.50% or more (was 36 last week), with the highest match being 1.54%.  I struggle to find out anything about most of these testers.

10)  I have 2,398 autosomal DNA Matches on FamilyTreeDNA (up from 2,383) who share 0.25% (18 cM) or more, with the highest match being 96 cM (1.42%).  I have 12 who share at least 1.0% (68 cM) with me, and 1,294 who share at least 0.50% (34 cM) or more (was 1,283 last week) with me.  I have had better luck finding shared ancestors here with a few of these testers.

11) 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 22,660 of my persons with FSFT.  I now have 49,674 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 57,478 waiting to be resolved, but I'm working on them.  Every time I add something to RootsMagic and TreeShare, the Hints multiply.  



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Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

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