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...
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...
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 Nicole (1s):...
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...
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 Nicole (1s):...
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...
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...
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 Nicole (1s): This is...
X-DNA has a unique inheritance pattern, and knowing about it can sometimes help you figure out the ancestors you share with a DNA match. Men inherit a Y chromosome from their father, and an X chromosome from their mother. It is easy to imagine that an X chromosome remains unchanged just like a Y chromosome does when it is passed from father to son, but this is not the case with X-DNA. Here is a...
The last four posts in this series covered some very important record types for researching Pennsylvania German ancestors: initial land purchases from the Penns, subsequent land transactions, probate records, and church records. As I stated earlier, because Pennsylvania Germans were, after all, Pennsylvanians, additional Pennsylvania record types will also be valuable to your research. I will briefly mention a few of those records here, with information specific to researching Pennsylvania Germans. Tax Records Tax records...
