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My Certification Journey

Note: I hold a Certified Genealogist credential but this blog post contains my own thoughts and does not reflect the opinions of the Board for Certification of Genealogists. My path to completing my portfolio and earning the Certified Genealogist® credential was a...

Chart Your Ancestors Week!

A funny, weird kind of funny, thing happened yesterday morning. My dear friend Francine made a "playing along" post on her Facebook page. It said: I was born ...My mother was ...Her mother was ...Her father was ...My father was ...His mother was ...His father was...

14th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy – Sunday

Raw notes - I'll try to do a proofread and get pictures in sometime this week. Katherine Borges opened the ISOGG meeting with a welcome and review of the history of ISOGG since it was founded in 2005. In 2018, ISOGG spent a lot of time redesigning the website to make...

From Laois to Kerry – L1402+ Haplogroup

In March 2015, I shared an update for the Seven Septs of Laois. There is a new update and I am once again pleased to have permission to share and document the progress. Perhaps it's a coincidence that last night I was going through a few papers and found the business...

13th International Genetic Genealogy Conference – Sunday

Another great conference in the books! There is a sale going on and you will find the information at the end of this blog post. Until next year! My notes . . . Katherine Borges, Director of ISOGG, welcomed everyone to the ISOGG meeting. Katherine explained why this is...

Tips for Emailing DNA Matches

Each week I get requests from DNA matches that say things like, “Hi! You’re a DNA match to me and I’d love to know how we’re related.” I always look forward to new connections and I’d like to make it easier for us to connect. Here are a few suggestions to help you...

12th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy – Sunday

Katherine Borges opened the ISOGG meeting and gave a brief history of how ISOGG began. ISOGG received two awards this year. One is for the ISOGG wiki, founded by Debbie Kennett, CeCe Moore, and Tom Hutchinson. There is also an ISOGG DNA Project Admins Yahoo group....

A new AncestryDNA tool

Ancestry has rolled out a trial tool to approximately 10% of its customers. I know this makes the other 90% of us impatient but let's hope that good things come to those who wait. This tool seems to be worth waiting for. The aim is to integrate DNA features into...

Why use segments when we have circles?

Circles vs. triangulation has been a hot topic for the past couple of days so I thought I'd throw in my two cents. I rarely use a chromosome browser to solve adoption cases. However, there are definite occasions when a hypothesis needs further investigation and at...

It’s Family Tree DNA and AncestryDNA Sale Time!

DNA Day commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003 and the discovery of DNA's double helix in 1953. To learn more about it, check out the National Human Genome Institute's website. Each year to celebrate DNA Day, the testing companies offer...

Happy Easter!

As the first grandchild, I was the lucky recipient of Harvey, the bunny that my grandfather won at Wolfe's Bakery, one of the yummiest places of my childhood. In this picture, it seems as though I was more interested in the candy or whatever else was going on in the...

At-A-Glance Excel Pedigree Chart

A while back there was a discussion about building compact pedigree charts in Microsoft Excel. These allow us to quickly have an overview for comparison, especially with DNA matches. I took mine a step further and added locations, as well as the statistically expected...

Where were my ancestors born?

Back in 2013 the genealogical community celebrated Halloween with pedigree death charts. This is the kind of thing we do for fun. I played along here. This week our friend J. Paul Hawthorne sparked a renewed interest in sharing of genealogical pedigrees, this time...

Why can’t I copy that? It’s my ancestor!

This question comes up quite a bit in genealogy discussions. "If you find a picture on Find A Grave and you live too far away to take your own picture, is it legal to copy the picture?" As usual, there are statements like, "Why do they post the photo if they don't...

Collecting Cousins

My name is Jennifer and I am a cousin collector. My research plan this morning was to find a living descendant of my maternal grandmother's brother, Tom. Tom had two sons, who my grandmother referred to as "Timmy and Tommy." Within 30 minutes, I had completed my...

A Mom’s Proof Argument

“Mommy, Brother says I’m adopted!” I’ve heard that before, when my oldest son convinced my second son that he was adopted. It seems to be the thing for siblings to do. A decade later, when my second son tried it on his little sister, this mom was prepared. Come over...

11th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy – Sunday

Raw notes - Sale at the end. Katherine welcomed everyone to the ISOGG meeting. She gave some background on ISOGG and how it was founded. She showed photos of ISOGG members at booths or on outings in places such as Burbank, London, Dublin, and Glasgow. Katherine talked...

Happy Birthday, Grandfather

Happy Birthday to the man who taught me to read a newspaper, spell the 500 most commonly misspelled words, and who could beat me at a math problem every time, even though he'd give me a calculator while he did his math with his fingers in the air. Franklin Dolan March...

NERGC Early Bird Deadline is February 28th!

The 13th New England Regional Genealogical Conference Navigating the Past: Sailing into the Future will be held in Providence, Rhode Island on 15-18 April 2015. The conference will include more than 90 lectures by speakers including Judy G. Russell, Lisa Louise Cooke,...