Now that I have access to my Ancestry account again, I've been trying to go through things on a weekly basis like I used to. Ancestry recently redid how it shows its DNA matches, similar to how 23andMe does it, where when you click into a particular match, it will show you how you are related to your shared matches. I did that with some of my newer ( Read more... )

Before my vacation, a client came into work to pick up a project we'd done for him. He had an interesting last name--one that's in my family tree, back through my mother's father's mother's family. Since I was the one that helped him, I asked, by chance did your family come from Nebraska? He said, Nebraska City! I wasn't sure where that was but I ( Read more... )

This has been a weird week off, almost reminiscent of camp 2004. That was the year it was barely in the 60s all week, and I was yelling at the kids--most of whom had just been my students--to go put pants on, and some of the would say, we didn't bring any! You just don't expect it to be that cool in August. That's how Tuesday and today were, ( Read more... )

A while back, I got my dad a 23andMe testing kit, one of the basic ones. It's partly because some of the DNA information is blocked to me unless I have a close male relative connected to me, since I lack a Y chromosome. It took him ages to take the test but he finally did it and submitted it shortly before my parents left for Vegas. His test is now ( Read more... )

Today is my great-grandmother's birthday. She would've been 117. She was part French and part German, and her surname is long and German and not super common ( Read more... )

The other day, I mentioned how it appears I am distantly related to a certain founder of a chocolate company. I recently got confirmation that I'm definitely related to a ballplayer who helped make a lasting impact on the game ( Read more... )

I've been clearing people out of my family tree on Ancestry recently. When I first started my tree there, I was overzealous in adding various family members, particularly of the ones that married into the family. I cannot tell you how many husbands of aunts of husbands of aunts I had in there. You people are not related to me; we have no shared ( Read more... )

On April 1st, the 1950 census records were released. It takes 72 years for that to happen. I have to wait another 10 years to see my parents, as they weren't born yet in 1950, plus in the case of my father's family, they were still in Europe at that point ( Read more... )

Final official day of vacation. I had nothing specific planned, only to hang around the house and try to get more stuff done ( Read more... )

Once I decided to stop being productive today, I decided to check out 23&Me. I don't like it as much as Ancestry; it's not as easy to figure out connections, plus it automatically places people in your tree without you knowing exactly where they fit in. I decided to try and figure out who a mystery person was. I had her name, and my tree showed she ( Read more... )