Tag: Research process

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How Misinformation Can Be Spread via Ancestry Trees

When I was a new family historian, I made a mistake on my Ancestry tree. My 2x-great grandmother was a woman named Mattie, who married my 2x great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Pike. I knew she later married William T. Adams. My mother knew and had heard about her great-grandfather, Malcolm Argul Pike and knew he had a step-father and half-siblings. Records for Mattie indicated her maiden name was Childress or Childers. The informants on these records would have been her grandson (on Malcolm’s death certificate) or her son Claude Adams (on his Social Security Application). When searching for the marriage of Mattie to A.J. Pike, I found the following record in Tipton County, Tennessee, the birthplace of Malcom Pike.

Marriage License for A.J. Pike and Mattie Fisher, 1878

I was thrilled to have this record because maiden names are typically used in marriage records, and she was almost certainly the informant on her own marriage certificate, so I believed her maiden name was actually Fisher. I added the record to my Ancestry tree and gave her the birth surname of Fisher. I could not find a Mattie Fisher prior to her marriage who fit Mattie’s calculated death date or possible birth states. That should have been a clue.

Less than a year later, when I learned more about thoroughly exhaustive research and how to resolve conflicting evidence, I realized I had never looked for a marriage of Mattie prior to her marriage to A.J. Pike. And that’s when I found this, also in Tipton County:

Marriage license of James Fisher to Mattie Childres in 1877.

I reviewed the timelines of the likely first marriage of Mattie to James Fisher with the marriage to A.J. Pike (they were 9 months apart) and searched for a death record for James. To date, none has been found. To rule out a marriage prior to Mattie before James Fisher, I looked for a married Mattie Childres in the years she would have been old enough to marry and found none. I looked for Mattie Childres in different Childress families in the south and created a long list that I am still working through. I turned up additional conflicting evidence. Another son of Mattie, Ben Adams, said her maiden name was Pike when he applied for a Social Security Card. I looked of birth records for her children (none, they weren’t required in Tennessee at that time and no delayed records have been located). I haven’t been able to find her daughter Luella (Adams) Moss after 1910 or her son Wallace Adams after 1900. I did start to find DNA matches that linked her to the Childres surname and some possible families for her prior to her first marriage, and some matches that fit as descendants of Mattie with no evidence of her in their trees. (It’s possible they descend from Luella. As of this time, none of the Adams men were known to have had families, but that can’t be ruled out.) Mattie became (and still is) my most recent brick wall.

It was appalling to learn how quickly the misinformation I had posted on my Ancestry tree spread. After I discovered my error, I wrote to 14 people on Ancestry who had copied my erroneous information. Only one responded and she was grateful. See below.

Message in Ancestry Messaging System thanking me for letting them know about the correction

At the current time, there are 17 trees on Ancestry that have Mattie with the maiden name of Fisher in their trees. It’s humbling to know that the information is there because of my lack of good research standards.

What do I do to avoid spreading misinformation now?

  • Follow genealogy standards while doing my research. Reasonably exhaustive research and resolution of conflicting information would have prevented this.
  • Avoid sharing information publicly before I am more certain. The difficulty with that approach is that certainty is highly variable when researching mysterious people like Mattie!
  • Share my information on WikiTree. WikiTree acknowledges that profiles are works-in-progress and allows for a more nuanced presentation of information. When I create WikiTree profiles I can use language to describe how sure I am of the research. I can say her maiden name is “likely” Childres or “almost certainly” Childres when I am more sure. I can write a proof argument and attach a PDF to her WikiTree profile if I want to. (See this WikiTree page for my ongoing efforts to disambiguate three men named James Stoker in Kentucky.) I’m still bothered by the stricken out Smith on one of Mattie’s records. Was that just a clerical copying error? Or did Mattie mention the name Smith when she was applying for a marriage license with A.J. Pike? I do have a cluster of Smiths in the Childres genetic network…
  • Keep Ancestry trees private. Unfortunately this does not prevent Ancestry from using the information in a ThruLines hint. And ThruLines sadly tells me that Mattie’s father is someone named J.E. Fisher born in 1820. The error continues to compound!
  • Name my Ancestry tree as a “Working Tree” to let people know it is a work-in-progress. All genealogy is a work-in-progress, but it’s hard to make that clear when trees can be so freely copied without analysis.

And I remember when I am looking at other people’s trees that I need to verify the information myself. And be kind when there are mistakes. After all, I’ve made them, too.

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Gaining a Family Treasure: The Barnett Family Bible (or How to Increase the Chances People Will Contact You about Your Ancestors and How to Find Cousins)

Have you ever had a family treasure almost drop into your lap? Recently it happened to me. And it happened to me because I make sure my name and my family tree are publicly accessible. This is the story of how an 1811 Barnett family Bible came into my possession. It’s also a guide to how you can make yourself findable or find people without paying for a membership at any website. But first, some historical notes about research and sharing genealogy from my experience.

From the late 1970s to the late 1990s, I worked on my family history, saving what I learned in file folders and then Reunion (a software program for Mac users where I diligently associated facts with sources). My family history information was held privately and exchanges of information happened through exchanging letters and photocopies with cousins I met through other cousins. When the internet arrived, I joined listservs and bulletin boards to share information about family history. Distant cousins exchanged disks and electronic files. Then membership sites arrived like Ancestry. Currently, family historians can save their family trees and documents in paid membership sites or share that information where the public can access it without the barrier of cost. Find a Grave, FamilySearch, and WikiTree are three examples. All three offer free membership and two (Find a Grave and WikiTree) can be seen by anyone without a membership. The benefits of sharing in publicly accessible places became clear when I received the following message:

Screenshot of an email

What? A family Bible mentioning my ancestors, who were born in the 1700s? Who was James Barnett? Was this really about my family?

Thankfully the seller on ebay had taken photos of the Bible pages with genealogical information and it was enough to reveal that this Bible contained information about my ancestors, John Barnett and Lucy (Matlock) Barnett. It almost certainly belonged to the descendants of their son, James Barnett. Some of the information about my direct ancestors was recorded after the fact but there were children listed that I had not known about, and James Barnett’s descendants were new to me and likely recorded closer to the times of the events. With the help of a friend (an experienced ebay buyer and seller), I purchased the Bible below the posted price. It is now waiting for me at my friend’s home. She has taken better pictures of it, such as the marriage page below.

Barnett Family Bible, portion of the Marriages page

The only reason I found out about this Bible is because I posted a note on John Barnett’s Find a Grave profile as shown below.

My 5x-great grandfather, John Barnett on Find a Grave

Whenever I complete a WikiTree profile of an ancestor, like John Barnett, I add a sunflower and a link to the WikiTree profile to the Flowers page at Find a Grave. I mention my relationship to the person on the memorial to help cousins find me and to give them the opportunity to find more information about our shared ancestor through the WikiTree link. Without this simple sunflower post, I would not have been contacted about the Barnett Bible.

That brings us to the first opportunity to make you and your family visible: Find a Grave. anyone can look at Find a Grave, and you need a membership to contribute. Membership is free and you can be visible by adding flowers and links like I do. You can also be helpful by connecting family members to each other, suggesting edits, and contributing photos. Note: Find a Grave was purchased by Ancestry in 2013.

In addition to Find a Grave, I’ve also made myself visible on FamilySearch and WikiTree.

On FamilySearch, you can make yourself visible by adding sources (number 1 in image below), posting notes or discussions in the collaborate tab, or sharing memories (3).

John Barnett on FamilySearch

FamilySearch users can be messaged by clicking on their user name, and it may be worthwhile to click on people who have been editing members of your family. They could be volunteers or they could be cousins.

Under collaborate, you can choose to write a note to other researchers or have a discussion about a topic as shown below.

Family Search Collaborate tab

The person who posted the Note above seemed pretty frustrated, so I chose to message them about the Barnett family Bible as an additional source.

The message system at FamilySearch

I also decided to add a PDF of the transcribed Barnett Family Bible to the Memories tab. I will add photographs once I have a chance to take them myself.

John Barnett with the Bible Transcription added as a PDF to the Memories Tab

Now that I’ve done several things to help people find me, I can now search for cousins who descend from John Barnett. Navigate to the “View Tree” tab for any ancestor.

Navigation to the Tree Tab at FamilySearch

In the tree tab you can choose how to view the tree. The descendants view incorporates down arrows to open additional detail, eventually bringing you to living descendants who have memberships at FamilySearch. Instead of having you scroll down an incredibly long page, I’ve put three images side-by-side here to show the path to me. (Usually I would be looking for other descendants, but you get the idea!)

Descendant view on FamilySearch from John Barnett to me

The third option, and my favourite way to be findable or to find people is through WikiTree. In order for these options to work, you need to sign up for WikiTree and connect yourself to the tree. There are three main ways people may find you (or you can find people) on WikiTree: Using the descendants tab, managing ancestor profiles, and DNA Connections. I’ve numbered them in the image below. (In all of the images below, purple hypertext indicates I’ve clicked on a link in the past.) This is the WikiTree profile for John Barnett .

WikiTree profile of John Barnett

The descendants tab adds a descendant view to the profile, and you can find more recent generations using the blue arrow next to a named descendant, almost identical to the descendant view on FamilySearch. I’ve scrolled down a bit to find my branch of the family. Lucy F. (Walker) Key is my 2x great-grandmother and the great-granddaughter of John Barnett. The blue arrow icon next to my grandfather, Lindell Scott Johnson, indicates there are descendants below him. (This arrow will be a dark pink for a female ancestor.) You can also see a green DNA checkmark, indicating there is a DNA tester in this line who has confirmed this relationship. Handy information for your research!

More descendants of John Barnett in the descendant diagram, down to my grandfather, Lindell Scott Johnson

Clicking on the blue arrow icon opens the descendants tab on Lindell’s profile. You will see the green DNA checkmark next to my mother and me.

The descendancy diagram ending with me

The second way people may find you is if you manage a profile. You can click on the connections icon next to the name of the profile manager to see their connection. I’m using the profile of Lindell’s mother, Lillie May (Key) Johnson, for this example.

Profile manager Connections icon

The image that comes up shows the connections with green boxes indicating a biological connection. If I weren’t a direct descendant, the boxes would switch to yellow indicating a connection through marriage.

Connection of the profile manager to the person being profiled on WikiTree

The third way to make sure you are found on WikiTree is to notify WikiTree that you have done DNA testing so that you will show up in the DNA Connections box on a profile. WikiTree is not a DNA website and the only DNA information available is shared by WikiTree genealogists voluntarily.

Many descendants of John Barnett have taken DNA tests and shared information on WikiTree. The DNA Connections box is arranged with those who inherited the most DNA from John Barnett at the top. The first person on the list is my mother.

DNA Connections for John Barnett.

If you are finding cousins, you can click on any name and you will be taken to their profile where you can message them with one click. They will receive an email with your message. If you want to be on this list, you need to let WikiTree know that you have done DNA testing. To do that, go to your profile page and click on the Add Menu at the top.

Use the Add menu to Add DNA test information to your WikiTree profile

That opens your DNA Tests page where you can either edit or remove existing tests or add new tests. Click on “Add New Test.”

DNA Tests Menu at WikiTree

After you click on the button you will fill out the boxes to add your test. There are templates for Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and GEDmatch. Include as much information as you want in the boxes.

Add information for each DNA test you’ve completed

After you’ve clicked the “Add Test” button, your test will be added to your ancestors profiles. It may take a day for it to populate throughout the tree. After your DNA has been added, anyone looking at your ancestor on WikiTree will see your name associated with that ancestor up to 6x great-grandparents for autosomal DNA. YDNA and mtDNA will be populated to all of your direct paternal or maternal ancestors that are associated with that test.

I hope this review of three ways to be findable and find cousins on publicly available websites has been useful to you. And I also hope you were doing the genealogy happy dance with me when the Bible came my way! I wish for you the same good fortune through being “out there in public” with your research.

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2024 – A Good Year to Be a Genetic Genealogist

Every year brings new tools, websites, and approaches for genealogists to try. 2024 was exceptional! Here are four innovations that transformed my work, ranked by their impact:

1. BanyanDNA

Leah Larkin (the DNA Geek) and Margaret Press (of the DNA Doe Project) teamed up with developers and statisticians to create BanyanDNA, a tool many of us didn’t know we needed. This web-based app lets you draw complex family trees and check if the shared cM amounts match your diagram. And you don’t have to limit yourself to one DNA tester. Any pairwise comparison of DNA between any two people on the tree can be included.

BanyanDNA has become essential for me. I can run 1,000–10,000 calculations to simulate recombination randomness, validating my tree or finding the best placement for a mystery person. It even handles intricate relationships, like cousin marriages or double connections.

For example, I mapped a cousin marriage between the children of two of my 3x-great-grandparent couples: Holloway Key and his wife Catherine, and Thomas Adam Walker and his wife Julina Allen who lived in Benton County, Tennessee. In the image above I used red lines to show the descendants of the Key couple and blue lines to show the descendants of the Walker-Allen couple. The pink and purple lines represent where the two Key brothers married two Walker sisters. My mother, Gladys, and two of her siblings are DNA testers and I’ve shown three of their matches who are related to them through both couples. This kind of situation can throw off the expected amount of shared DNA, but BanyanDNA can handle it. Below is a validation run that shows me that there is one match that falls outside the expected range of shared DNA. Often when I see that result, it means I have drawn the tree wrong or mistyped the amount of shared DNA.

Summary:

I use BanyanDNA to:

  • Diagram complex trees
  • Record shared DNA between large numbers of DNA testers
  • Validate my work using statistical simulations
  • Place unknown matches on the tree.

What you need:

  • A good understanding of relationships and family trees
  • Shared DNA amounts (see Enhanced Shared Matching below)
  • A willingness to learn how to use BanyanDNA. There are recorded tutorials here, a BanyanDNA User Facebook group, and office hours for free (publicized on the Facebook group). Leah Larkin offers a webinar tutorial for a small fee.
  • Basic statistical skills to interpret the calculations.
  • Patience! Large trees with many matches take time!

2. Enhanced Shared Matching at Ancestry

MyHeritage has long offered excellent tools for genetic genealogists, like downloadable DNA segments and AutoClusters. This year, Ancestry followed MyHeritage’s lead and introduced Enhanced Shared Matching, which shows the shared DNA between you, your matches, and their mutual connections.

The image above is a privatized look at Enhanced Shared Matching at Ancestry. My DNA match is CP and I know how I am related to her. With Enhanced Shared Matching (available with an additional subscription), I can see not only how much DNA I share with our shared matches, I can now see how much DNA CP shares with them. I sorted this list by how much they share with CP which helps me discover more about her family. For example, the first match, a, shares 603 cMs with CP but only 51 cMs with me. 603 is in the range of a first cousin to CP. Match a has a 9 person tree with only two visible people on the tree whose names are not found in my family tree. But knowing they are possibly a first cousin to CP means I can likely figure out their exact relationship to me.

All of the Enhanced Shared Matching data can be entered into BanyanDNA so I can validate this branch of my family tree.

Summary:

I use Enhanced Shared Matching to:

  • Understand how my matches are related to each other.
  • Place matches without full trees on my tree.
  • Supply data for BanyanDNA calculations.

What you need:

  • A ProTools subscription (currently $10 USD/month)
  • Knowledge of shared DNA amounts
  • Tree-building skills
  • Ability to research DNA matches with incomplete or no trees.

3. Full text search at FamilySearch

FamilySearch, the world’s largest free genealogy resource expanded its capabilities in 2024. Its new Full Text search of historical records (available at FamilySearch Labs) uses AI-driven optical and handwriting recognition to unlock thousands of previously unindexed records, such as land deeds and probate files. For those working on reparative genealogy, the Freedmen’s Bureau Records are part of the collection that can be accessed.

From the FamilySearch Labs home page, click on “Go To Experiment” under the Full Text option. This will take you to a search page.

Use the keyword search to enter your names – that provides you with more opportunity to find your ancestors. I entered Calvin Whitney in Keywords, and Maine from 1800-1870 in the year range to discover the record below:

Calvin Whitney is my 4x great-grandfather. I don’t know a lot about him other than he died in October of 1832 in Thomaston, Lincoln County, Maine. His son, William E. Whitney, left Thomaston in October of 1849 for the California gold rush and later built four lime kilns at the foot of Mt. Diablo in Contra Costa County, California. This deed describes the property that Calvin Whitney purchased from David Watson in November of 1827 and that Whitney had “the liberty of digging & carrying away the lime rock from said land.”

Summary:

I use the FamilySearch Labs Full Text Search to:

  • Find digitized records that are not indexed

What you need:

  • A search strategy using keywords, places, and date ranges.
  • Patience-more records are added regularly

This brings us to the final aspect of my genealogy work that changed in 2024: my use of AI.

4. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and genealogy

AI is revolutionizing genealogy. In late 2023, I joined Steve Little when he first offered the “AI for Genealogists” course through the National Genealogy Society. In the course I learned how to do the basics with AI: summarize, extract, generate, and translate. Much of my use of AI was confined to making fun images in my brand colour scheme for presentations.

Image created by DALL-E and me.

The potential for AI became clear during a reparative genealogy project. I was provided with a Civil War diary of the ancestor of my client. This project documents the people enslaved by the client’s family on Gwynn’s Island, Virginia. I used ChatGPT to transcribe the diary and to create lists of the people and places mentioned in the diary. AI saved me hours, though I still had to check its work. I asked ChatGPT to write a commentary on the contents of the diary based on historical context. It was fascinating! Here’s the conclusion:

Conclusion

The diary of Mary T. Hunley is a compelling window into the experiences of Confederate civilians during the Civil War. While shaped by the author’s biases and Confederate loyalty, it highlights the war’s disruptive nature, the agency of enslaved people, and the fragility of Southern society. It stands as both a testament to personal endurance and a reflection of the deeply ingrained injustices of the antebellum South.

I have a long way to go before I do some of the amazing things genealogists are doing with AI. There’s a great Facebook Group, Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Steve Little blogs and speaks regularly, and there’s a podcast, The Family History AI Show, to help you keep current. Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder at Family Locket also teach, blog, and podcast about using AI in their genealogy work.

Summary

I use AI tools to:

  • Transcribe handwritten documents
  • Summarize lengthy articles or records.
  • Create tables and lists from documents.
  • Create images.
  • Understand historical context.
  • Edit and refine my writing (including for this blog entry!)

What you need:

  • Awareness of privacy and copyright concerns.
  • Knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • Practice, practice, practice.
  • Careful review of AI outputs

Final Thoughts

Genealogy is ever-evolving, and 2024 raised the bar with transformative tools like BanyanDNA, Enhanced Shared Matching, Full Text Search, and AI. Each one has enriched my research and streamlined my workflows. What’s next for genealogists? I can’t wait to find out!

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Reflecting on 2023 and gearing up for 2024

It’s been a busy year in genetic genealogy! I’m getting a head start on reviewing the year as I plan for 2024.

You can still find me as a coach over at Your DNA Guide. Through that opportunity, I’ve connected with many people learning how powerful DNA can be to support their understanding of their family and themselves.

In addition to creating course content and coaching people at Your DNA Guide, I’ve worked with clients who are surfacing their family’s involvement in slavery. It’s an honour and privilege to support efforts to face history. Much of this work is on WikiTree as part of the US Black Heritage Project.

I’ve also enjoyed many great educational opportunities such as the 15th Annual Conference on Genetic Genealogy and the National Genealogical Society’s course on Empowering Genealogists with AI.

I’ve also provided educational opportunities for WikiTree, the Linked Descendants group at Coming to the Table, and the Indiana African American Genealogy Group. I am doing one more presentation this year for the Virtual Genealogical Association.

Next year, I’m looking forward to revamping this website, offering a hands-on course for people getting started with their DNA, and being part of an instructor team at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh for a course coordinated by my teammate at Your DNA Guide, Kelli Bergheimer. I’ll be coaching participants in all of the Your DNA Guide courses and supporting other Academy Offerings. As part of the Your DNA Guide team, I will be attending RootsTech. I’ll be speaking for a couple of genealogy societies and expect to have a chance to work with others as the year unfolds.

Working on my own genealogy has included moving more of my family to WikiTree. This includes the ancestors of my grandchildren, which has given me an opportunity to work with more DNA testers and explore records in new geographic areas! I continue to make slow progress on some of my own DNA puzzles.

Thanks for following me on this journey!

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Research Like a Pro Week 9: Copyright, Proof Arguments, and Publication

Genealogy Standard 62 is about integrity and ownership. It’s a reminder to respect copyright and ownership of other’s intellectual property. The Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell, writes about legal matters and updates on copyright law regularly in her blog. I’ve found her advice useful. I learned about two new resources for copyright: The BYU Copyright Decision Trail and the Fair Use Evaluation Log. For this project, I did not use any images that were covered by copyright. In the past I have had good luck by contacting the copyright holder and would not hesitate to do that again.

I am getting closer to a proof argument for separating the James Stokers, but there is at least one other proof needed – that linking James Stoker born in Kentucky to Edward Stoker, the Revolutionary War Veteran. I need to search land records, probate or local histories that would support parentage for either of the two younger James Stokers. 

This seems potentially publishable eventually. The confusion between the James Stokers is evident on WikiTree, FindAGrave, and Ancestry Trees.