Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
MyHeritage LIVE 2018 presentations free online
Recordings of all 24 classes from the MyHeritage event in Oslo are now available online for free. Delivered by MyHeritage staff and internationally renowned genealogists, the sessions covered genealogy, DNA, and the intersection between the two.
London Boroughs in 1964 (map)
Remains of Anglo-Saxon cemetery discovered in Lincolnshire
No mention in the article of DNA testing!
Retail decline, in maps: England and Wales lose 43m square metres of shop space
“Bricks to clicks” means more consumers are shopping online rather than in store meaning less tax revenue for local authorities.
Help the poor: Stop donating canned goods to food banks.
Last Saturday I walked past a parked bus and into the grocery store to be met by the offer of a paper bag for food donations. I ignored it. Such donations are a problem as they require sorting and may not be the items most in demand. Cash goes much further. Hand over $20, and the food bank will be able to buy $100 worth of most needed food, they’ll save on administrative costs and at income tax time you'll get back up to $6.
Nova Scotia Information and Privacy Commissioner - Naughty List
With gift suggestions.
And finally ...
The following is a company news release.
TheGenealogist is adding to its Court and Criminal Records collection with the release of almost 150,000 entries for prisoners locked up in Newgate prison along with any alias they were known by as well as the names of their victims. Sourced from the HO 26 Newgate Prison Registers held by The National Archives, these documents were created over the years 1791 to 1849.
The Newgate Prison Registers give family history researchers details of ancestors who were imprisoned in the fearsome building that once stood next to the Old Bailey in the City of London. The records reveal the names of prisoners, offences the prisoner had been convicted for, the date of their trial and where they were tried. The records also give the name of the victims and any alias that the criminals may have used before.
Use the Newgate Prison Registers records to:
● Find ancestors guilty of crimes ranging from theft, highway robbery, libel and murder
● Discover the victims of crime
● Uncover some of the aliases used by criminal ancestors
● See descriptions of offenders with details of their height, eye colour and complexion
● Research records covering the period 1791 - 1849
A news release from the Ontario Genealogical Society announces that Steve Fulton, UE, the President of the Society, has been elected to a three year term as a director at large of the Federation of Genealogical Societies.
if you can imagine every DNA test at Ancestry as a star in the night sky. Now imagine the distances between stars is based on shared DNA (the more DNA shared, the closer the stars). Now 'zoom out' to see all the 'stars' in the sky and you will notice there are actually constellations or clusters of stars. With some clever science & genealogy, Ancestry is able to determine these clusters are associated with different parts of the world. These form the AncestryDNA sub-regions. The final part, about how whether the region shows up in your test is basically how close your star is to the cluster.A friend wrote that while she is still 78% Irish/Scottish the genetic community is now Leinster matching her research.
Development of the ability to extract and analyse DNA from ancient materials continues to amaze. The preprint Ancient DNA from chewing gums connects material culture and genetics of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Scandinavia is another example. Note the article is not yet peer reviewed.
Human DNA was recovered from birch bark pitch mastics, chewing gums, from a site in western Sweden. Genome-wide data was from mastics representing three individuals, two females and one male. All were mitochondrial haplogroup U5a2d and two had a possible second degree relationship.
While chewing gum may lose its flavour on the bedpost over night it can conserve DNA for 10,000 years!
Many people have taken an AncestryDNA test to find out about their ethnic ancestry. It's easy to do and understand — and for some the results are surprising.
A couple of clicks away AncestryDNA gives a list of DNA cousins from those who also tested with the company. Unless you know a close relative was tested your best matches, like mine, will likely be 4th - 6th cousins. I have several, one at 53 cM with Confidence: Extremely High but no genealogical information and no response to emails. Six are in the same cousin range with Confidence: Very High but only two of those have information further back than parents and most have none.
That lack of supporting genealogical information shouldn't be surprising as now many more people have taken an AncestryDNA test than have explored their family history in any depth. Spitting in a tube is easier than doing the research in records even if those records are online.
Why are the DNA matches a mystery? Here's a scenario to explore in more detail.
Suppose you know all your 1st cousins their descendants and direct line ancestors. What you haven't done is research down from the 2nd and higher order great-grandparents — all you know in our traditional patrilineal naming system is their surnames which you can search for among your DNA matches. Because the number of people for any relationship down the direct line ancestors varies according to family size I explored three hypothetical scenarios in which all families had either two, three or four children who lived to have the same number of children.
Since you don't know the surname of a 2nd cousin unless the descent from the 2nd great grandparent is a direct male line, you can only recognize some of names of DNA matches, the percentage is in the table.
| IC | 1C1R | 1C2R | 2C | 2C1R | 2C2R | 3C | 3C1R | 3C2R | 4C | 5C | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two Family | 100 | 63 | 63 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Three Family | 100 | 70 | 77 | 13 | 9 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| Four Family | 100 | 75 | 85 | 13 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
How would you feel if you'd planned a trip to LAC to consult a publication only to receive this at the last minute — or after you arrived? Posted on the day it came into effect. No advance notice!
Published collection temporarily unavailable in December - Library and Archives Canada
Since last Monday Maurice Gleeson has posted additional talks from the Genetic Genealogy Ireland session last October in Dublin.
Raising the Dead by Martin McDowell, about using the Lazarus tool on Gedmatch to paint ancestor's chromosomes, has received the most views. It's an advanced feature only useful for those who have test results for many identified relatives.
Next most popular is WATO - the latest tool for your atDNA by Andrew Millard. WATO is an abbreviation of What are the Odds and is designed to help refine when an unknown DNA match might lie in your family tree.
That presentation nicely complements Katherine Borges presentation Introducing DNA Painter mentioned in the previous post. It would be a good one to view beforehand if you could do with a gentler introduction.
When interpreting autosomal DNA statistics, one must be careful to distinguish between the distribution of shared DNA for a given relationship and; the distribution of relationships for given amounts of shared DNA.
Distribution of shared DNA for a known relationship
Data has been collected for the distribution of shared DNA by relationship by the Shared cM Project 3.0. These were crowdsourced by Blaine Bettinger. Most were likely from tests conducted on known relatives, others from a test that found a match which was subsequently identified. The figure is an example of the full distribution for first cousin once removed.
The table below summarizes the centimorgan (cM) results for a wider range of relationships. The more distant the relationship the less shared DNA, and also the fewer the data reported so there is greater sampling error. For relationships more distant than third cousin the Shared cM Project 3.0 obtained insufficient data for a full analysis. Perhaps there was a relationship but the amount shared was too small for it to be recognized. That also shows in the ratio of the average cM to the amount expected which increases for more distant relationships.
| Relatives | 1C | 1C1R | 1C2R | 2C | 2C1R | 2C2R | 3C | 3C1R | 4C | 4C1R |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st percentile | 486 | 131 | 47 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Average (Expected) | 884 (850) | 440 (425) | 232 (213) | 232 (213) | 123 (106) | 75 (52) | 75 (53) | 49 (27) | 36 (13) | 29 (7) |
| 99th percentile | 1761 | 851 | 517 | 517 | 317 | 229 | 229 | 175 | 122 | 118 |
| Percent Probability | 1C | 1C1R | 1C2R | 2C | 2C1R | 2C2R | 3C | 3C1R |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared cM Project | 0 | 2 | 34 | 37 | 19 | 4 | 4 | >0 |
| Two Family | 0 | 1 | 22 | 24 | 31 | 9 | 10 | 3 |
| Three Family | 0 | 1 | 19 | 18 | 34 | 12 | 12 | 5 |
Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
MyHeritage extends deadline for DNA transfers
The deadline for transferring raw autosomal DNA test results is now 15 December, extended from 1 December. While at it consider adding the results to Gedmatch. The more you fish the more likely a catch.
The Trade Cards Of Old London
From Spitalfields Life, a selection of cards you might find, rummaging through a drawer in the eighteenth century.
Climate Solutions: Is It Feasible to Remove Enough CO2 from the Air?
Progress in the technical community in carbon capture technologies. U. S. emissions of means 61 million tons of CO2 are going into reservoirs this year. That's somewhat less than one per cent of US emissions, but growing. It could be an important part of the climate solution.
Economies of ale
Since 2008, nearly a quarter of pubs in the UK have closed – but the turnover of the pub industry is holding up and employment is on the rise. What’s happening?
Backup Nag
Did you do your monthly backup yet?
Private Percy Gordon Turner (402201) of the 1st Battalion, Canadian Infantry (Western Ontario Regiment) was born on 2 August 1891 in East Grinsted, son of Edward Thomas and Minnie (nee Earl) Turner. He is found as a cabinet maker in the 1911 census living with his father and step-mother in South Ealing, Middlesex.
He emigrated to Canada in April 1914 arriving in Halifax on the Tutonic having already secured a job in Hespeler, Ontario.
Enlisting in January 1915 he suffered a gun shot wound to the left arm at Ypres in June 1916 which resulted in paralysis below the wound. Hospitalized in England he was returned to Canada in January 1917.
Death was at St Luke's Hospital in Ottawa of meningitis on an unseasonably cold 2 December 1918.
