Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN!
Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2024.
Recently, I discovered an envelope of small photographs saved when my mother died in 2002 - it was hiding in plain sight in the Genea-Cave!
Included in the photo cache was this oldie-but-goodie - Randy and brother Scott in the patio at the ping-pong table in about 1965:
By the 1950s at our house on 30th Street, there was not much room for we three boys to play any sport. The exception was the brick patio (perhaps 12 feet wife by 20 feet long) which had a basketball hoop and net and a ping pong table. This area was bounded on the west by a circular planter box, on the south by a concrete brick wall hidden by shrubs (with the apartment houses beyond the wall on the south side of the block), on the east by a garden and then the sidewalk on Fern Street, and on the north by the two story apartment house at 2114-2116 Fern Street. The background
in the photo above is looking south.
My mother and father were pretty good at ping pong, and Stan and I became fairly adept also as teenagers. The four of us were pretty competitive by the time I was 22 in 1965. My brother Scott was only 10 years old in 1965, but was really quick and learned the game pretty fast and by the time he was 16 was probably the best in the family. We rarely hit the ping pong ball over the wall and had to go retrieve it.
Many a pleasant summer evening was spent on the patio barbecuing and playing ping pong as a family.
We also used the patio for whiffle ball. For whiffle ball, we hit from the northwest corner of the patio, and the goal was to hit it over the south wall or into the street on the west. Only me, my brothers, and our friends played whiffle ball. When we got too good at hitting the softball sized whiffle ball, we went to the golf ball sized whiffle ball. I usually batted right-handed so that I didn't hit the ball over the south wall.
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.
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.
The MyHeritage LIVE 2018 Conference was this past weekend, 2 to 4 November 2018, in Oslo, Norway. There were 401 in-person attendees from 28 countries and over 60,000 persons watched some of the Livestreamed videos of the sessions.
The conference web page is at https://live2018.myheritage.com/ There are links on the page to the speakers and the conference schedule.
The conference web page has the Day 2 (Sunday, 4 November) all-day videos on their web site - there are Genealogy and DNA tracks available. These videos are FREE to watch, and are both about 7 hours long.
The MyHeritage Facebook Videos page has videos for all of the sessions. They are separated into morning and afternoon sessions for both days - there are eight of them. These are FREE to watch!
I will update this post for the next two weeks and add videos and blog posts that are published. If you write a blog post, or post a video, about this conference, please leave a comment on this blog post.
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.
The treasure today is the 1863 Civil War Draft Registration record for D. J. Carringer in Louisa County, Iowa:
The D.J. Carringer family entry is halfway down the page:
The extracted information for the D.J. Carringer family is:
* Residence: Louisa County [Iowa]
* Name: D.J. Carringer
* Age on 1st July 1863: 34
* White or Colored: White
* Profession, Occupation or Trade: Farmer
* Married or Unmarried: Married
* Place of birth: Penna
* Former Military Service: [blank]
* Remarks: [blank]
The source citation for this entry is:
"U.S. Civil War Draft Registration Records, 1863-1865," digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 October 2018), Iowa > 1st District > Vol. 1 of 3, page 77 (image 79 of 283), D.J. Carringer entry.
Everything on this record for D.J. Carringer appears to be correct. I noted that his first cousin, Anthony Spangler Carringer is just below him on the record page, age 26 and a blacksmith.
David Jackson (D.J.) and Rebecca (Spangler) Carringer are my 2nd great-grandparents through their son Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946), my great-grandfather, who married Abbie Ardell (Della) Smith (1864-1944) in 1887 in Wano, Kansas.
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Here are some of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week:
1) Attended the Chula Vista Genealogical Society monthly program at the Chula Vista Library on Wednesday. The speaker was new CVGS member Judith Helton, who spoke about "Hidden in Plain View." This was about quilts used by escaping slaves to guide them on the Underground Railroad. 2) Presented "Using FamilySearch Digital Microfilm to Find Genealogical Records" at the CVGS Saturday Workshop on 3 November at Bonita-Sunnyside Library. Provided a four page handouts with guidelines for finding probate, land, church, vital, and other records in the unindexed Historical Records and FamilySearch Catalog. After the talk, tried to help attendees with their specific problems. 3) Continued looking at the AncestryDNA Matches with Unlinked Trees, and started a DNA Skeleton Tree for these persons that might help find common ancestors. Had success with five of ten of the 4th cousins tried so far. Researched the lines and added them to the common ancestors to my RootsMagic tree. Added my own skeleton tree to support How Accurate Is an Ancestry Quick and Dirty Tree?
4) Transcribed another deed for Amanuensis Monday - 1816 Deed of Robert Jefts to Zachariah Hildreth Jr. in Townsend, Mass. I downloaded several more of these deeds but I need to download more of them. 5) Gave the Denmark records I found last week to my 103-year-old friend Maggie at church on Sunday. She had tears in her eyes seeing the birth record of her father and the names of her paternal grandparents for the first time. 6) Watched four of the eight videos from the MyHeritage LIVE 2018 conference in Oslo, Norway. Enjoyed the keynote talk by Gilad Japhet, and watched one video of the genealogy track and two DNA track videos. I speed-watched through these on Facebook on the MyHeritage Users Group page.
7) Participated in today's Mondays with Myrt webinar. I briefly discussed my CVGS Workshop experience. Other topics inclued the Canada Expeditionary Force records (great!), the MyHeritage Live 2018 conference videos, the upcoming Who Do You Think You Are? series on TLC, Pat Kuhn's 1870 census record problem on FamilySearch, and tutorials for FamilySDearch Family Tree videos. 8) 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 26,944 of my persons with FSFT. I continue to use Web Hints from Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast and FamilySearch to add content and sources to my RootsMagic profiles. I now have 51,111 persons in my RootsMagic file, and 97,287 source citations. I TreeShared twice during the last week, and resolved about 800 Ancestry Hints. I've fallen behind on the Ancestry Record Hints with 82,398 waiting to be resolved, but I work on them occasionally.
9) Have 309 Shared Ancestors on my AncestryDNA list (I had 309 last week), 1016 4th cousins or closer (I had 1014 last week), and 917 pages (over 45,800 matches with at least 6 cM) (was 911 pages last week) of matches. I have 23 DNA Circles (was 23 last week). I have 16 matches that are third cousins or closer (was 16 last week), and 104 matches with 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 103 last week). My highest match has 779 cM (11.5%), and is one of my first cousins. Added more notes to my DNA matches.
10) Have 4,949 DNA Matches on MyHeritage (up from 4,876 last week) with at least 8 cM (0.12%), with 32 matches with more than 34 cM (0.5%) or more (was 31 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%).
11) Have 1,004 DNA Relatives on 23andMe (I had 1002 last week) who share at least 0.10% (7 cM) with me. The two closest relatives are third cousins. Of these, only 3 share 1.0% or more, and 51 share 0.50% or more (was 50 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.
12) Have 2,839 autosomal DNA Matches on FamilyTreeDNA (up from 2,837 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 1,527 who share at least 0.50% (34 cM) or more (was 1,525 last week) with me. 13) Wrote 19 Genea-Musings blog posts last week, of which one was a press release. The most popular post last week wasGenealogy News Bytes - 2 November 2018with over 194 views.
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.
In the video, Blaine explains that this type of tree should be used only to provide Hints that might lead to a Common Ancestor with one of your AncestryDNA Matches. Please watch the entire video for instructions on how to do this, and for the caveats and warnings that Blaine explains.
In order to see how this works, I used Unlinked Trees of ten of my DNA Matches that are 4th cousins or closer. The process found common ancestors in four of the quick and dirty trees, and no common ancestors in the other six quick and dirty trees. You do need to start the tree with a dead person with a name and, hopefully, birth and death years and places. And perhaps their spouse. And then Ancestry will usually suggest "Potential Father" and "Potential Mother" for you for the persons you enter into the tree.
I decided to make just one Quick And Dirty Tree and named it "DNA Skeleton Tree" so that I minimized how many Quick and Dirty Trees I use. I made the tree Private and not Searchable. The plan is to enter any number of DNA matches and their ancestry into this tree.
To add a new unconnected line, I can add a new unlinked name of my DNA Match to the existing tree and then go from there back in time finding ancestors.
But then I wondered: "How Accurate is an Ancestry Quick and Dirty Tree using this method?" To find out, I thought "I will start a Quick and Dirty Tree with my own information and see what happens."
I entered myself in my "DNA Skeleton Tree" and I got no "Potential Ancestor" Hints - I think it was because I am still alive. So I entered my father's and mother's names and birth and death information too. That worked - it generated "Potential Father" and "Potential Mother" Hints for both of them:
I clicked on the "Potential Father" button for my father, and saw:
It found Fredrick W. Seaver (1876-1942) along with his spouse and children, and asked me "Do you think this is the father of Frederick Walton Seaver in your tree?" The buttons are "Yes" "No" or "Maybe." I chose "Yes" even though the name wasn't spelled correctly and the death place was incorrect.
Within 15 minutes I was able to take this Skeleton tree back to my paternal 4th great-grandparents (not all are shown on the image below).
Of the 8 2nd great-grandparents shown above for my Seaver line, only one of them is incorrect. The mother of Juliet White should be Amy Frances Oatley (1826-1864), the first wife of Henry A. White. The 2nd wife of Henry A. White, A Taft Winslow White, is shown on the chart above, and the system did not show potential parents for her. My guess is that if I edit the profile for the mother of Juliet White and add the correct mother, that the system will provide potential parents for her.
As far as I could tell, all of the 14 3rd great-grandparents on the chart above had the correct names.
However, in the 4th great-grandfathers, there were several erroneous names. One was a typo - "Nathaniel Gates" for "Nathan Gates" but the years and parents were correct.
However, as shown on the screen above, the parents of my 3rd great-grandfather John Richman (1788-1867) of Hilperton, Wiltshire are shown as William Richmond and Hannah Kettle of Yorkshire, which is, I believe, totally incorrect. The same with the parents of John's wife, Ann Marshman.
How did that information get into this Hint system? The simple answer is, I fear, that Ancestry has concocted a Big Tree (we've talked about this before - back when the We're Related mobile app was introduced) that has conclusion information in it gleaned from Ancestry Member Trees (or perhaps not?).
In an effort to see if the trees with the wrong parents for John Richman showed up in the Hints for John Richman, I clicked on his name in my Skeleton tree and saw his Facts page:
There are 21 Hints for John, so I clicked on the "Hints" link and saw:
The "Ancestry Member Trees" Hint said there were 10 trees that they compiled information from to help create the profile. So I clicked on the "Ancestry Member Trees" Hint and reviewed the 10 entries:
A funny thing happened. None of the 10 Ancestry Member Trees on the list had William Richmond and Hannah Kettle as the parents of John Richman. Two of the 10 trees listed parents who resided in Hilperton, Wiltshire in the 1788 time frame.
One of the Hints on the Hint list was a birth record for a John Richman baptized in 1786 in Yorkshire with the parents William Richman and Hannah Kettle. Another Hint was for a John Richman baptized in 1774 in Somerset.
So to summarize the findings so far, I found one error in the 2nd great-grandparents, none in the 3rd greats (other than the unknown parents of the wrong 2nd great-grandmother) and at least four errors in the 4th great-grandparents.
I will do my mother's side of the family next and see if the errors I found in the "We're Related" mobile app are duplicated in this quick and dirty tree process. My guess is that they will be.
Because I am including my tree in this DNA Skeleton tree for a number of my AncestryDNA Matches, I can find their relationship to me fairly easily IF I add one of my ancestors to their tree.
Of the ten trees I've tried to make so far from Unlinked Trees of my AncestryDNA Matches using this process, all of them had less than ten named persons in the tree, and some just had one named person in the tree. For three of them, I was unable to find any records for the named person(s). For three others, I was able to go back to some of the 4th great-grandparents and beyond, but found no common ancestors even though the matches were supposed to be 4th cousins. Perhaps I didn't go back far enough, or perhaps some of the "Potential Parents" were wrong, just like in my own Skeleton tree.
My opinion at this point in time is that the methodology is "quick" and "dirty" (big surprise) and that a user of this method needs to be really careful in how s/he uses it. Errors are probably inevitable back in the 2nd to 4th great-grandparents because of the way Ancestry has put together their unseen but omnipresent "Big Tree." They really should let researchers provide records and proof arguments to correct the misleading and obviously wrong entries in their "Big Tree."
I'm wondering how successful other researchers have been using this Quick and Dirty Tree process to find common ancestors of their DNA Matches. Please tell me in Comments or in email.
This week's document for Amanuensis Monday is the 1816 deed of Robert and Mary Jefts of Townsend, Massachusetts to Zachariah Hildreth Junior of Townsend in the Middlesex County, Massachusetts Land Records:
[Volume 220, pages 96-97]
The transcription of this deed is:
[Volume 220, page 97, starts at top of right-hand page]
[In right hand margin]
Robert Jefts to Zach Hildreth Jr
[body of deed]
Know all men by these presents that I Robert Jefts of Townsend in the County of Middlesex and Common- wealth of Massachusetts Yeoman in consideration of eight Dollars paid by Zachariah Hildreth Junr of the same Townsend aforesaid Yeoman the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge do hereby give grant sell and convey unto the said Zachariah Hildreth Junr his heirs and assigns forever a certain piece of land situate in the southerly part of Townsend aforesaid and adjoining the river on the southerly side of the same and bounded as follows to wit: beginning at a stake and stones in the line between said Hildreth & said Jefts eighteen rods & fifteen links from said Jefts northeasterly corner of the land he purchased of said Hildreth thence north about eighty degs east by said Jefts land seventeen rods to a stake & stones by the river aforesaid thence southeasterly by the river to a white pine tree mar- ked in the line of the school lot so called thence north- westerly by said Hildreths land to the bounds first mentioned containing about one acre & one hundred & twenty seven rods. To have and to hold the aforegranted premises to the said Zachariah Hil- dreth his heirs and assigns to his and their use and behoof forever. And I do covenant with the said Zachariah Hildreth his heirs and assigns that I am lawfully seized in fee of the aforegranted premises that they are free of all incumbrances that I have good right to sell and convey the same to the said Zachariah Hildreth And that I will war- rant and defend the same premises to the said Zach- ariah Hildreth his heirs and assigns forever against the lawful claims and demands of all persons. In witness whereof I the said Robert Jefts with Mary N my wife she releasing her right of dower or thirds have hereunto set our hands and seals this sixth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixteenRobert Jefts and seal Mary N. Jefts and seal. signed sealed and delivered in presence of us Stephen Scales Abner S????? Mid- dlesex Ss May 6th 1816. Then the above named Rob- ert Jefts acknowledged the above instrument to be his free act and deed before me Josiah Richardson Just of Peace Middlesex Ss Cambridge Decr 18th 1816 Received and entered by Samuel Bartlett Regr. The source citation for this recorded deed is: "Massachusetts, Land Records, 1620-1986," digital images, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 4 November 2018), Middlesex County, "Deeds, 1816-1818, Vols. 218-220," Volume 220, page 97 (image 580 of 799), Deed of Robert Jefts to Zachariah Hildreth Jr., executed 6 May 1816, recorded 18 December 1816. This is the third deed where Zachariah Hildreth Junior bought land in Townsend, Massachusetts from someone other than his father, Zachariah Hildreth Sr. With this deed, he bought one acre parcel of land in Townsend bordering the river for $8 from Robert Jefts and his wife Mary N.
Zachariah Hildreth Jr. (1783-1857) is my third great-grandfather, who married Hannah Sawtell (1789-1857) in 1810. I am descended through their son, Edward Hildreth (1831-1899) who married Sophia Newton (1834-1923). =========================================
NOTE: Genea-blogger John Newmark (who writes the excellent TransylvanianDutch blog) started a Monday blog theme years ago called "Amanuensis Monday." John offers this definition for "amanuensis:"
"A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another."
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.
Dozens of genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.
My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for daily blog prompts or meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts. Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week:
The following record collections were listed on theRecently Added and Updated Collections list on Ancestry.com during the period from 28 October to 3 November 2018:
The record collections added or updated since last week include: No record collections were added or updated last week. The list is the same as the list for the last four weeks. The last new record collection was added on 28 September. The complete Ancestry.com Card Catalog is at http://search.ancestry.com/search/CardCatalog.aspx.
By my count, there were 0 NEW collections ADDED this past week, per the list above. There are now 32,668 collections available as of 3 November, an increase of 0 from last week.
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Disclosure: I have had a fully paid Ancestry.com subscription since 2000. Ancestry.com has provided material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and has hosted events and meals that I have attended in Salt Lake City, in past years.
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.
