Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is an interview with Rick Wilson. Rick joined us in Research Like a Pro Study Group 7 and is a skilled researcher and writer. He shares his research to identify the origins of his 6th great grandfather, John Wilson. The Big Y-700 test was helpful in pointing to a specific county within Ireland. Then, Rick used autosomal DNA of a cousin two generations closer to John Wilson to further pinpoint townlands within that county. Transcript Links https://myfamilypattern.wordpress.com/ – Rick’s website Identifying John Wilson’s Irish Origins, Part 1: Y-DNA Analysis – by Rick...
Do you have a parent-child link that you haven’t personally researched but has been a long-standing fact in the family? If so, you may want to use DNA evidence and revisit the documentary research to prove that link. If you’ve tested your autosomal DNA at Ancestry and attached a family tree, Ancestry Thrulines will generate hypothetical placements for your DNA matches. These are great clues but it’s up to you to verify that placement. As part of the Research Like a Pro with DNA 4 Study Group, I’m tackling my paternal Shults line and seeking to verify Martin S. Shults...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is an interview with Debra Hoffman, a professional genealogist specializing in Maryland and Germany and member of our Research Like a Pro with DNA online course. Debra recently took the Proving Your Pedigree institute course at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and shares her takeaways from the course. The purpose of the Proving Your Pedigree intermediate level virtual course was to create a narrative genealogy with DNA evidence confirming traced second great grandparents. Join us as Debra shares what she learned! Transcript Links Debra Hoffman profile in the APG Directory: https://www.apgen.org/users/debra-a-hoffman ...
DNA Day is on April 25. It commemorates the day in 1953 when Watson and Crick published a model of the double-helix structure of DNA in the scientific journal, Nature. Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction images of DNA and research contributed to their discovery. We love to celebrate DNA Day, too! The innovation and advancements in direct-to-consumer DNA tests and tools give us the opportunity to bring our family history research to levels that could only be dreamt of for millenia. Imagine if records existed that easily and quickly identified all of our ancestors back through the centuries. Wouldn’t that be...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about how the Republic of Texas and State of Texas issued land to the thousands of settlers that poured in after independence from Mexico in 1836. We discuss the land application process, headright grants, colony grants, Texas statehood and changes in governance, preemption grants, and military land grants. We also discuss the Texas land survey system and how to find Texas land grant records. Transcript Links National Genealogical Society Conference 2022 – https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/ and conference program 2022 Navigating the Unique Texas Land Grant System: Republic and Statehood Era 1836-1898 – https://familylocket.com/navigating-the-unique-texas-land-grant-system-republic-and-statehood-era-1836-1898/...
Did you participate in Y-DNA testing before the era of FamilyTree DNA and now have no access to your results? If so, let me introduce you to mitoYDNA.org, a free website where you can recreate the kits used in the project. MitoYDNA.org allows uploading or manually adding your Y-DNA or mitochondrial (mt) DNA test results from several testing companies. You can then use the mitoYDNA tools to compare kits and find matches. You’ll likely recognize FamilyTreeDNA as the current big player in mtDNA and Y-DNA testing, but several others are currently testing or performed tests in the past. Among the...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about the era of Mexican rule over Texas and the Mexican colonization policy through the empresario system. We discuss Austin’s colony and the three indexes for finding colonists – the original Register of Families, the Index to Land [Applications] compiled by George W. Glass, and the Villamae Williams translated/typed index which is available on Ancestry.com. We discuss character certificates and DeLeon’s colony as well. Transcript Links National Genealogical Society Conference – https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/ Navigating the Unique Texas Land Grant System: Mexican Era 1821-1836 -https://familylocket.com/navigating-the-unique-texas-land-grant-system-mexican-era-1821-1836/ Texas General Land Office Website (GLO) – https://www.glo.texas.gov/...
In our previous blog posts in this series we have been learning all about how to research our Pennsylvania German ancestors by discovering the paper trail they have left behind. What about DNA? How useful will it be in helping us with these colonial ancestors? Even though (for most test-takers) colonial ancestors will be beyond the typical 5-6 generations that autosomal DNA is useful, using DNA with your colonial German ancestors may be a key to bridging the gap between the ancestors you know and those you would like to discover. Here are the takeaways from Pennsylvania Germans and autosomal...
Have you noticed that some of your family lines have many DNA matches and others very little? My dad is seven-eighths 19th-century German, one-sixteenth Pennsylvania German (18th century) and one-sixteenth colonial American/British. I’ve noticed that my dad has many matches on his Pennsylvania German side. However, there are only a few matches on my dad’s 19th-century German ancestor lines. As much as we want our match list to tell us about our ancestors, we have to remember that our match list also reflects who takes DNA tests. Some populations and some families are well represented and some are not. If...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about the Texas land grant system. This is the first part in a series of Texas land grant episodes based on Diana’s blog post series. We talk about the history of Texas from the Spanish period to the Mexican period and beyond. This particular episode focuses on the Spanish period and the lasting influence they had on Texas’s unique land grant system. Transcript Links Navigating the Unique Texas Land Grant System: Spanish Colonial Era 1703-1821 – https://familylocket.com/navigating-the-unique-texas-land-grant-system-spanish-colonial-era-1703-1821/ Back to the Basics with Land Records: Part 1 – https://familylocket.com/back-to-the-basics-with-land-records-part-1/ Indian Nations of...
