Monday Genea-Pourri - 2 July 2018

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

1)   Attended the Chula Vista Genealogical Society annual picnic on Wednesday, which included a celebration of life for our Board member, Wanda Brock, who died in January.  Wanda's church group also was there, and I talked to several of their members.  One of them, Joe, mentioned he had Italian ancestry in Monopoli, and I wrote Hey Randy: Where in the World is Monopoli and Are There Genealogy Records? about my efforts to help him.

2)  Received an email from Ray who found my Ancestry Member Tree, who noted that he and my grandsons shared Italian surnames in Varese Ligure in La Spezia province, Italy.  He provided a marriage record that provided the parents of the boys' 4th great-grandmother.  I searched a bit for more records in FamilySearch without much success.  I found Varese Ligure on the map and have a better understanding of the geography in Liguria.  I also added more siblings for the boys' 2nd great-grandmother.  

3)  Transcribed another Henry White deed from Killingly, Connecticut, which I collected at the Family History Library in late February, and used it for Amanuensis Monday this week.

4)  An elderly friend at church called me to help him understand his AncestryDNA test.  He was told by his mother that she had Native-American ancestry through her grandmother, but the test showed none.  I explained that sometimes DNA segments do not get passed down to 3rd or 4th great-grandchildren because of the randomness of the admixtures from mother and father.  I talked to him at church on Sunday and got enough information to build a tree on Ancestry, but the available records provide no information about his great-grandmother's parents in the mid-1800s.  Oh well.  

5)  There was no Mondays With Myrt webinar today.  Instead, I watched the Virtual Genealogical Society webinar with Thomas MacEntee on "Future Trends in the Genealogy Industry," one of the benefits of joining VGS.  It's really hard to predict the future!

6)  Made more progress on my genealogy project - I am researching the ancestry of a local personality, and will present what I find at the CVGS Family History Day in September.  I found several more English ancestral families and added them to the database.  I TreeShared twice and worked through one session of adding Ancestry Hints to the RootsMagic tree, which has grown to 414 persons with 1102 citations.   I still need to go to the FamilySearch Library to find more English and German records for the presentation.

7) There were several sessions working in RootsMagic to update FamilySearch Family Tree profiles for Seaver families and other database families, with occasional additions to the RootsMagic profiles. I have matched 24,431 of my persons with FSFT.  I now have 50,301 persons in my RootsMagic file, and 94,760 source citations.   I TreeShared twice during the last week, and resolved Ancestry Hints once.  I've fallen behind on the Ancestry Record Hints with 67,006 waiting to be resolved, but I'm working on them.

8)  Have 292 Shared Ancestors on my AncestryDNA list (I had 291 last week), 917 4th cousins or closer (up from 913 last week), and 851 pages (over 42,500 matches with at least 5 cM) (was 843 pages last week) of  matches.  I have 13 matches that are third cousins or closer, and 102 matches with 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 102 last week).  My highest match has 779 cM (11.5%), and is one of my first cousins.  I have 20 DNA Circles (was 20 last week).  My ethnicity estimate has not been modified yet.

9)  Have 4,062 DNA Matches on MyHeritage (up from 4,035 last week) with at least 8 cM (0.12%), with 23 matches with more than 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 23 last week).  I have three close relatives, including a first cousin once removed, and two first cousins twice removed.  The highest DNA match is 512 cM (7.1%).

10)  Have 976 DNA Relatives on 23andMe (I had 980 last week) who share at least 0.10% with me.  The two closest relatives are third cousins.  Of these, only 3 share 1.0% or more, and 45 share 0.50% or more (was 45 last week), with the highest match being 1.54%. My highest match is an adoptee.  I struggle to find out anything about most of these testers.

11)  Have 2,685 autosomal DNA Matches on FamilyTreeDNA (up from 2,679 last week) 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 1,449 who share at least 0.50% (34 cM) or more (was 1,449 last  week) with me.

12) Wrote 20 Genea-Musings blog posts last week, of which two were press releases.  The most popular post last week was "Ancestry.com Family History Wiki Lands on RootsWeb.com" with over 2,060 views.  

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