Genea-Musings

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Seavers in the News -- William Seaver Dies in 1938 in Hartford, Conn.

It's time for another edition of "Seavers in the News" - a weekly feature from the historical newspapers about persons with the surname Seaver that are interesting, useful, mysterious, fun, macabre, or add information to my family tree database.

This week's entry is from the Hartford [Conn.] Courant newspaper dated 10 December 1938:

The transcription of the article is:

"William Seaver

"William Seaver, 77, of 183 Wethersfield Avenue, died Friday at the Hartford Hospital. For 24 years an engineer in the Aetna Casualty & Surety Company, he was a member of the Ruggles Street Baptist Church in Boston, Lafayette Lodge AF&AM and the Aetna Life Men's club. He leaves his wife, Mrs. Annie Ball Seaver; a son, Lieutenant Horace Seaver of Camarillo, Calif.; two grandchildren and one great grandchild. The funeral will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. at the funeral home of Taylor and Modeen, 233 Washington Street. Rev. John H. Jackson, rector-emeritus of St. Andrew's Church, will officiate. A delegation from Lafayette Lodge will conduct a service. The body will be taken to Springfield for cremation Monday."

The source citation for the article is:

"William Seaver," Hartford [Conn.] Courant newspaper, obituary, Saturday, 10 December 1938, page 4, column 2, William Seaver obituary; Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com : accessed 14 February 2019).

I first looked in my RootsMagic family tree database for Annie Ball, but didn't find her. Then I searched for a young Horace Seaver, and easily found him. His parents were William Seaver and Annie Louise Voll, not Ball.

I did not have William Seaver's death date or death place, and didn't have Annie Voll Seaver's death date at this time, but I found it today.

William Seaver (1861-1938) was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the son of John Coolidge and Ann (Crane) Seaver. He married Annie Louise Voll (1864-1960) on 8 October 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts. They had two children:

* Horace Seaver (1887-1945), who married Ethel Van Vliet (1893-1934) in about 1922, and they had one son

* Ella F. Seaver (1890-????). I don't have a spouse or children for Ella, but she may have had a child and grandchild.

William Seaver is my 7th cousin 3 times removed.

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Disclosure: I have a paid subscription to Newspapers.com and have used it extensively to find articles about my ancestral and one-name families.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/seavers-in-news-william-seaver-dies-in.html

Copyright (c) 2019, 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.

Valentine's Day is Special for Linda and Me

Here's a picture of my really special Valentine taken almost 49 years ago on her wedding day:

Yep, it's a 1968 Ford Mustang - we loved that car! It's outside our first apartment in Chula Vista. She's about to jump in it and go get ready for her walk down the aisle.

Linda had all of five weeks to plan and execute a wedding - and she managed it extremely well. I was so happy to see that she had project management skills in addition to all of her other talents.

Back up five weeks and what day is it? Yep - it's Valentine's Day. Here's the story of that day:

Flash back to 14 February 1970 - it's a Saturday night. I'd been dating Linda seriously for about six months and we know that we are "in love." We've had a lot of fun, met each other's families, talked about the future, what we want from a marriage, and know each other pretty well.

We were invited to a Valentine's Day party at Linda's cousin's house in Ocean Beach. I'd met them before, and Sue's husband, Bill, is a funny and raunchy guy - as I thought I was. We go, and meet many of their friends, and I'm introduced as "Linda's good friend, Randy." One of the ladies (Sue's age then - maybe 40ish) corners me and says "How good a friend are you?" giving me a wink and raised eyebrow.

Without a blink, I blurt out "well, I'm proposing to her tonight, but don't tell anybody!" She says "Don't worry, I'll keep your secret" and gave me knowing glances the rest of the night. After we leave the party, she went to Sue and said "Guess what Randy told me" and tells Sue the secret (there's a lesson learned here, eh?).

We didn't go directly home, as I still have to fortify my courage a bit more. We stopped at our favorite bar, King Luis Inn, for a drink and some bar singing (we loved doing this while dating). None of the regulars were there, so I couldn't blurt out the secret to them. I had talked to my Catholic priest friend, Father Jack, who was visiting San Diego, and had suggested that we meet at the bar, so he was there when we get there. When Linda went to the ladies room, I told Father Jack my secret.

Now well fortified and well committed, I carefully drove us to Linda's apartment and we had an appropriate amorous interlude. It was time to exchange Valentine's Day cards and gifts, and I only had a card. She opened my card and inside I had written "Will you be my Valentine ... forever?" She looked at me, now down on my knees, and says "does this mean your proposing to me" and I said "Will you marry me?"

Of course, another appropriate amorous interlude occurred, and I went to my apartment an hour later. We went to the church on Sunday (after about 3 hours sleep!) and talked to the pastor, and asked him if he would marry us on 21 March 1970. He said he would, and we set off on the whirlwind five weeks of preparation and planning, that culminated in a 7-day honeymoon in Acapulco, but that's another story.

So Mr. Romantic did a pretty good job of finding an excellent woman to marry, and after 49 years we're still in love and living amicably together. It hasn't been much of a struggle. Life has been good for us with health, work, children, friends, church, hobbies, vacations, retirement, and grandchildren. We look forward to spending our 49th anniversary quietly in Chula Vista and, hopefully, making more family history in the year ahead! I'm wondering what we will do for our 50th anniversary next year.

We still laugh about, and appreciate, 14 February 1970.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/valentines-day-is-special-for-linda-and.html

Treasure Chest Thursday - 1801 Marriage Record of Amos Underhill and Polly Medcalf in Piermont, N.H.

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - a chance to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1801 marriage record of Amos Underhill and Mary Medcalf in the Piermont, New Hampshire town records:

The marriage record is (left-hand page, 2nd from bottom):

The transcription of this marriage record is:

"March 25^th 1801 M^r. Amos Underhill

& M^rs. Polly Medcalf both of Piermont

were joined in Marriage this day ~

f? me Thomas Russell Justice Peace

March 26^th 1801 Recorded

Att^t. Thomas Russell T. clerk"

The source citation for this record is:

Piermont (N.H.) Town Clerk, Town Records, 1765-1825, Family History Library (Salt Lake City), on FHL US/CAN microfilm 0,015,276 (accessed 28 December 2016), page 374 (image 198 of 544), Amos Underhill and Polly Medcalf marriage record, 1801.

This is a Derivative Source record, with Primary Information and Direct Evidence of their names, and the marriage event. The original town record is in an earlier town record book on page 155, which is, apparently, not available as FHL digital microfilm at this time..

While the record says "Mrs. Polly Medcalf," she was born in about 1780 and was very likely the Mary "Polly" Metcalf (1780-1855), daughter of Burgess and Jerusha (--?--) Metcalf of Piermont, New Hampshire.

Amos Underhill (1772-1865) and Mary "Polly" Metcalf (1780-1855) are my 4th great-grandparents, through their daughter Mary Ann Underhill (1815-1882) who married Samuel Vaux (1816-1880) in 1839 in Aurora, New York.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/treasure-chest-thursday-1801-marriage.html

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.

Valentine's Day Census-whacking

Happy Valentine's Day, Genea-lovers!!! Here are some virtual roses for your desktop:

There are quite a few names associated with Valentine's Day reflecting our traditions and habits. I checked the 1920 census for some of them, and found:

SURNAMES

* Valentine - 17,911 people
* Valentino - 1,287 people
* Lover - 762 people
* Lovejoy - 4,192 people
* Loveland - 3,168 people
* Loveless - 3,524 people
* Sweet - 15,671 people
* Kiss - 1,458 people
* Cupid - 28 people
* Sweetheart - 1 person

GIVEN NAMES

* Valentine - 16,632 people
* Rose - 439,241 people
* Candy - 638 people
* Cupid - 78 people
* Romeo - 3,666 people
* Juliet - 8,008 people

COMBINATION NAMES

* Lovey Valentine - in Newark NJ
* Romeo Valentine - in Norristown PA
* Julie Valentine - in Hempstead NY
* Valentine Love - in Brooklyn NY
* Valentine Hart - in South Williamsport PA
* Valentine Rose - in Detroit MI
* Valentine Kiss - in Dubuque IA
* Valentine Flowers - in Blairsville PA
* Valentine Valentine - in Philadelphia PA
* Honey Lover - in Loves, GA
* Love Lovejoy - in Lawrence KS
* Cupid Luvie - in Liberty County TX
* Cande Hart - in Upshur County TX
* Rose Flowers - 26 of them!
* Rose Rose - 295 of them
* Juliet Romeo - in Brooklyn NY

Enjoy, census lovers!

I need to take my wife out to dinner soon - probably to Marie Callender's because it's close, quick and she can eat there without allergic problems. I got my sweet honey loving valentine roses from Costco - she has them divided up in vases all over the house. My Valentine gave me See's peppermint patties, and I'm a happy guy. Fatter too...

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/valentines-day-census-whacking.html

Copyright (c) 2019, 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, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

A Reader's Take on Ancestry.com Problems - Part IV: The Ancestry Big Tree

In response to Dear Ancestry.com: Are You Fixing These Problems? (posted 17 January 2019), I received 38 comments on the post, and several via email.

One of the email correspondents was a person who has Ancestry and IT experience, and offered knowledge, experience and wisdom for users of Ancestry.com, especially on the trees and the search engines. The comments are detailed and ring true to me based on my experience (and that of others) working on Ancestry.com.

A) In this post, I want to concentrate on the Ancestry Big Tree (I don't know what they call it! -- I commented on it in points 6) and 7) in the Dear Ancestry.com: Are You Fixing These Problems? post). My reader's response was:

The Big Tree

To mangle a quote, "Yes, Virginia. There is a big tree." But no, Virginia, it is NOT based on the One World Tree abomination.

The origins of the Big Tree is a stitch from the member trees. Better algorithms, pre-cleaning processes, and management (both product and development) have made the Big Tree much better than One World Tree. But, as you know, there are many bad trees in the Ancestry ecosystem. When 200 users copy a wrong fact into their tree, that doesn't make the fact correct. There is certainly an element of voting in the assembly of the Big Tree, as well as looking at the number and quality of the sources for profiles added to the Big Tree.

Ancestry also took the Big Tree a step farther than just stitching the member tree data together. They also started stitching families from the record collections. By tracing families through census collections, travel collections, and marriage records, families and individuals could be created and/or validated in the Big Tree, making it more accurate.

Is it perfect? No. It is easy to find errors in any automated process, which is why the big tree is not available as a viewable resource. It can provide some good hints (it powers suggested parent hints). As with any resource, data should be presented as a hint or suggestion, not as the truth. Sadly, too many armchair family historians tree all hints as facts.

B) Randy's Notes and Comments:

A recent news article about human longevity and lifespans was published in November 2018 titled "Researching the Genetics of Human Lifespan" on the Ancestry.com blog, and several articles were published in the news media about it. The article linked to a scientific paper titled "Estimates of the Heritability of Human Longevity Are Substantially Inflated due to Assortative Mating."

The section on "Pedigree aggregation and deduplication" notes that they used 54 million Ancestry Member Trees with 6.4 billion profiles to coalesce the information to over 831 million "unique" profiles, which was reduced to 406 million profiles with parent-child relationships to perform the longevity study. So the Ancestry Big Tree may contain 831 million unique profiles.

My opinion is that this collection of related tree profiles comprises the "Ancestry Big Tree." However, I may be wrong! If so, I'm sure someone will tell me...and I will tell my readers.

As I mentioned in Dear Ancestry.com: Are You Fixing These Problems?, apparently the Ancestry Big Tree is used for:

* the Ancestry We're Related mobile app to connect the user to cousins also in the Big Tree

* the "Possible Ancestors" feature in user's Ancestry Member Trees

* the "Life Story Overview" feature in AncestryDNA Circles

* a summary ancestor profile found using Google search - see https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/william-knapp_7msxr0n7-127-317chd for an example.

Are there other uses for the Ancestry Big Tree?

A potential use for the Ancestry Big Tree is to suggest common ancestors for DNA matches who have a small or incomplete tree.

The resulting "Ancestry Big Tree" has inaccuracies in it, as I pointed out in my reference post. The parent-child relationships may be wrong; the spouse relationships may be wrong; the event dates and places may be wrong; and more, I'm sure. Why are some of them wrong? Because every Ancestry Member Tree has errors, and many tree relationships and events are based on another person's tree.

How accurate is the Ancestry Big Tree? I don't have any idea of the true number. I know that I make relationship mistakes and event mistakes - perhaps on 0.5% to 1% of my tree profiles. Pobody's nerfect, as we all know. In my blog post How Accurate Is an Ancestry Quick and Dirty Tree?, I noted that using the "Possible Ancestors" feature resulted in 5 errors in my 4th great-grandparents or closer - a 4% error rate.

If only 1% of the relationships are wrong because of user error, that is about 8 million parent-child relationships in the Ancestry Big Tree of 831 million unique profiles. That means that one of your (and my) 4th great-grandparents or later might be wrong in the Ancestry Big Tree. If one of your recent x-great-grandparents is wrong, then your ancestry back from that person is wrong. If 4% are wrong, then a significant portion of your ancestry on the Ancestry Big Tree might be wrong.

Of course, not everyone can trace their ancestry back to before the 4th great-grandparents.

C) See earlier posts on this general subject:

* A Reader's Take on Ancestry.com Problems - Part I - Ancestry Member Tree Indexing (posted 23 January 2019)

* A Reader's Take on Ancestry.com Problems - Part II - Ancestry Search Engine Problems (posted 30 January 2019)

* A Reader's Take on Ancestry.com Problems - Part III - Reduced Number of New Record Collections (posted 6 February 2019)

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Disclosure: I have had a paid subscription to Ancestry.com since 2000, and use the site every day. I have received material considerations from Ancestry.com in years past, but that does not affect my objectivity in writing about their products and services.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/a-readers-take-on-ancestrycom-problems_13.html

Copyright (c) 2019, 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, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Randy and his Mom in 1943 -- Post 553 of (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

Several months ago, 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 - a photograph of my mother holding me as a baby:

This photograph was probably taken in late 1943 or early 1944 since I look like an infant in this photograph. My mother was dressed in a belted dress, so this photograph may have been taken at Christmas 1943.

The photograph was taken in the front stairs of the Marshall and Dorothy Chamberlain home at 4601 Terrace Drive in the Kensington neighborhood of San Diego. We visited the Chamberlains as a family every year at Christmas time. The entrance and windows had awnings for decades.

Today's thought: I wonder if my mother was telling me "Smile for the camera - you will want to look good 75 years from now!"

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/randy-and-his-mom-in-1943-post-553-of.html

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Genealogy News Bytes - 12 February 2019

Some of the genealogy news items across my desktop the last four days include:

1) News Articles:

* Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It

*  The US Census Bureau is Hiring Temporary Employees for the 2020 Census

* Announcing MyHeritage LIVE 2019 [Conference in Amsterdam]

*  FREE Marriage Record Access at MyHeritage – Love Is In The Air!

*  Bode Technology Announces Forensic Genealogy Service to Law Enforcement Agencies and Crime Laboratories

2) New or Updated Record Collections:

* Added or Updated Record Collections at FamilySearch.org - Week of 3 to 9 February 2019

*  Added and Updated Ancestry.com Record Collections - Week of 3 to 9 February 2019

*  MyHeritage Announces New Historical Records Added in January 2019

3) Genealogy Education - Webinars:

*  GeneaWebinars Calendar

*  Free Family History Library Classes and Webinars for February 2019

* Upcoming Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 13 February, 11 a.m. PST: (Spanish) Cómo explicar los grados de relación familiar (Spanish), by Gonzalo A. Luengo Orellana

* Upcoming Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 13 February, 6 p.m. PST:  Reconstructing Your Genetic Family Tree, by Blaine Bettinger

* Upcoming Genealogy With a Canadian Twist Webinar - Thursday, 14 February 10 a.m. PST: Researching Your French Canadian Ancestors in Quebec with Luana Darby

* Archived Family Tree Webinar:  Using MyHeritage Tools to Improve Your Family Tree Data, by Daniel Horowitz

4) Genealogy Education - Podcasts:

* Research Like a Pro Podcast:  RLP 31: 3 Tips for Ancestry DNA

* The Genealogy Guys Podcast: #357

* Extreme Genes Podcast/Radio Show:  Episode 270 – The Legal Genealogist On What You Need To Know About Copyright / David Gets Library Naming Honor

*  Fisher’s Top Tips Podcast: #44… Creating Photos From Your Home Movies

5) Genealogy Education - Video:

* Ancestral Findings YouTube:  F-222: The Ten Best Genealogy Websites for Beginners

* DearMYRTLE YouTube:  Monday with Myrt - 11 Feb 2019

* Family History Fanatics YouTube:  MyHeritage DNA Review (2019 Update) - A Segment of DNA

* Kathryn Lake Hogan YouTube:  Episode 23 Weekly Webinar Recap: Researching Black History in Canada

6) Genealogy Bargains:

*  Genealogy Bargains for Tuesday, February 12, 2019

7) DNA Success Stories

* Chicago woman finds 15 half siblings through DNA test

*  Lake Ann man finds birth family after lifelong search

*  In his DNA: How one adoptee’s DNA test helped uncover his birth family

8) Did you miss the last Genealogy News Bytes - 8 February 2019?

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/genealogy-news-bytes-12-february-2019.html

Using GeneticAffairs.com to Create DNA Match AutoClusters - Part 3: Using the Cluster Information

I wrote Using GeneticAffairs.com to Create DNA Match AutoClusters - Part I: Getting the Clusters four weeks ago, describing the login process and getting to the point of creating the Autoclusters for my AncestryDNA matches. In Part 2: The Cluster Graphic last week, I discussed the mechanics of obtaining and analyzing the graphic, and discussed problems I found with the graphic (partially shown below):

The graphic contains information of persons that match me and each other in a cluster. I had 52 clusters - the biggest one had 37 matches (shown above in orange), and the smallest had 2 matches. I didn't show the bottom portion of the .html cluster image - it lists the names, cMs, number of segments, tree size, predicted relationships, and AncestryDNA Notes for each person in each cluster. That is useful information and overcomes the issue with the unreadable names on the left and top.

How can the AutoCluster graphic be used to identify the common ancestor(s) of each cluster and each DNA match? That is really the ultimate reason to use this cluster approach.

Here is what I did:

1) The AutoCluster results includes a .csv file called AutoCluster_Ancestry_your_name_date_time.csv.zip. This file can be downloaded, saved to a file folder, and unzipped. From the unzipped .csv file, a spreadsheet can be created with only the AncestryDNA matches that were estimated to be in a cluster of matches - with two or more persons in a cluster. This file gave me only 398 persons with over 25 cM, in 52 clusters.

2) When I opened the .csv file into a spreadsheet (I use OpenOffice Calc on Windows), I immediately saved it as a spreadsheet file (.ods in OpenOffice). I also named the spreadsheet sheet (using Insert > Sheet) as "Test Data." Here is the top of my "Test Data" sheet with the columns that identify names, and some other columns, reduced in width:

The columns on the screen above are:

A: Identifier (reduced in width for privacy reasons)
B. Name (reduced in width for privacy reasons)
C: Total Shared CM
D: Matches with own profile
E. Cluster No.
F to OM(reduced in width for space reasons): Person names that match with the DNA Match names (the rows). Column F on the sheet is the first DNA Match (also in row 2 of the spreadsheet), and the numbers in column F indicate that that first DNA match also matches those persons in later rows. From Column F, I can see that the DNA Match matches DNA Matches 1 to 15 (rows 2 to 16), Match 17, Match 21, Matches 23-24, etc. That Column F match is my first cousin, who has all of my Seaver and Richmond ancestry from our grandparents.

3) I then created another spreadsheet (Insert > Sheet) sheet and called it "Cluster list." I used Edit > Select All on the "Test Data" sheet, and then clicked on "Edit > Copy" on the "Test Data" sheet and clicked on the "Cluster list" sheet, and clicked "Edit > Paste" to f ill in the sheet. At this point, the "Cluster list" sheet is identical to the "Test Data" sheet.

a) The magic of Spreadsheets is that the user can Sort the information by columns. I selected all of the columns (Edit > Select All) on the "Cluster list" sheet, then clicked on Data > Sort and selected Column E and ascending (for Cluster No.) and Column C and descending (for Total Shared cM) to sort the data in the "Cluster list" sheet.

b) I reorganized the columns to put "Cluster No." in Column A, Shared cM in Column B, Name in Column C.

c) I added columns (Insert > Column) for Column D = Match No., Column E for Known Rel[ationship], and Column F for Common Ancestors.

d) I added the "Match No." by hand - there is probably a way to do this before I moved the columns, but I didn't do that this first time around. I haven't added the numbers for some Clusters. The "Match number" helps me find the match in my AncestryDNA match results (until the match list changes!).

e) I probably should have added an Ancestry Member Tree size column also.

f) The other columns moved to the right on the sheet.

g) Here is the resulting "Cluster list" sheet near the top of the sorted list:

As you can see, all of the clusters are ordered from 1 to 52 in Column A. and all of the persons in a cluster are listed by decreasing shared cM in Column B.

4) I then went to my AncestryDNA Match list (on Ancestry.com) and added the "Known Relationship" information (from the Shared Ancestor list on Ancestry or from my own research) and added the known "Common Ancestor" person(s) information.

As you can see on the screen above for Cluster 7, the known common ancestors are from the Richmond/Richman or Rich families. Even though some of the common ancestors may be White or Oatley, this cluster must be Richman or Rich because there are several matches in the cluster who only have Richman or Rich and don't have White or Oatley. White and/or Oatley matches are probably in other Clusters (and those who have a White or Oatley common ancestor on the list above will match most persons in those clusters also).

Cluster 7 above has the most "Known Relationship" and "Common Ancestor" entries of my 52 clusters.

5) The Known Relationships and Known Common Ancestors for each AutoCluster for my AncestryDNA cluster list indicate that:

* Cluster 1 (37 members) has 2 known common ancestor matches - this is probably a Carringer, Spangler, Feather, or Houx cluster.
* Cluster 2 (27 members) has 1 known common ancestor match - this is probably a Rich or Hill cluster.
* Cluster 3 (21 members) has no known common ancestors matches.
* Cluster 4 (20 members) has no known common ancestors matches.
* Cluster 5 (20 members) has no known common ancestors matches.
* Cluster 6 (19 members) has 2 known common ancestor matches - this is probably a Seaver or Hildreth cluster.
* Cluster 7 (19 members) has 16 known common ancestors - this is probably a Richmond or Rich cluster.
* Cluster 8 (17 members) has no known common ancestors matches.
* Cluster 9 (15 members) has no known common ancestors matches.
* Cluster 10 (13 members) has 2 known common ancestors - this is probably an Oatley or Champlin cluster.

and so forth. There are several smaller clusters that have 5 or 6 known common ancestors.

6) Some clusters have only one or two known relationships and Common Ancestors, and many don't have any, based on the AncestryDNA Shared Ancestors and my own research. I will focus on the largest of these clusters to try to figure out common ancestors by using Quick and Dirty Trees.

7) While reviewing the Cluster list and the AncestryDNA Match list, I noticed that I have several significant DNA matches with over 40 cM that are not included in the Cluster list. To me, that means that those DNA matches don't share DNA with the other matches on the Cluster list (which included matches between 25 cM and 900 cM). Perhaps a Cluster list with a lower minimum cM would add those omitted DNA Matches.

8) I will probably run the AncestryDNA AutoCluster in several months time so as to keep the Cluster analysis up-to-date with my AncestryDNA Match list.

9) I hope that this review of using a spreadsheet to analyze the AutoClusters has been helpful. The first one I've created here has been instructive to me, and I see several ways to improve it. I would appreciate any suggestions on ways to improve it from my readers.

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Disclosure: I have no material connection to Genetic Affairs and am "just a user" of their service.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/using-geneticaffairscom-to-create-dna_12.html

Copyright (c) 2019, 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.

Treasure Chest Tuesday -- 1790 U.S. Census Record of the Burges Metcalf Household in Piermont, N.H.

This week's Tuesday Treasure is the 1790 United States census record of the Burgess Metcalf household in Piermont, Grafton County, New Hampshire:

The Burges Metcalf entry is on the right-hand page, about halfway down the page:

The extracted information from this record for Burges Metcalf is:

* Head of household: Metcalf Burges
* Number of males over age 16: 4 [certainly Burgess Metcalf, and probably sons Ephraim, Samuel, and Burgess]
* Number of males under age 16: 3 [probably sons Cyrus and Joseph, plus one other?]
* Number of females: 7 [certainly wife Jerusha, and probably daughters Sally, Mary and Jerusha, plus 3 others]
* Number of persons in household: 14

The extra persons may be unknown children, sisters, nieces, or nephews of Burgess and Jershua Metcalf, or household workers.

The source citation for this census record is:

1790 United States Federal Census, Grafton County, New Hampshire, population schedule, Piermont, page 67, Burges Metcalf household, digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com); citing National Archives Microfilm Publication M637, Roll 5.

This census record is written semi-alphabetically, so it is impossible to know who the neighbors are.

Burgess (1741-1816) and Jerusha (1750-1817) (--?--) Metcalf are my 5th great-grandparents, through their daughter Mary "Polly" Metcalf (1780-1855) who married Amos Underhill (1772-1865).

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/02/treasure-chest-tuesday-1790-us-census.html

Copyright (c) 2019, 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.

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Thursday, February 14, 2019

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Tuesday, February 12, 2019