RLP 160: RLP with DNA eCourse Part 3

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 160: Research Like a Pro with DNA e-course Part 3. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (46s):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (50s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (52s):
I’m doing Great. How about you? What have you been doing?

Diana (55s):
Well, I’ve been studying an article in the NGSQ, getting ready for an Institute on writing. The courses taught by Tom Jones, its through IGHR the Georgia Institute, and this is for our class with Angela McGhie. And so we are studying an article and it has some Y-DNA in it. And it’s about a man who was an illegitimate child in the early 1800s, I think born 1811 in Tennessee. Wow. It’s been super interesting and I’ve been kind of jealous of the research because they have all these great Quaker records. And so far we haven’t discovered any Quakers in our ancestry.

Diana (1m 38s):
Maybe we have some way back in our Pennsylvania group, but those records are so good. And I just wish more of my Southern ancestors had Quaker ancestry so we could get some of those records. Oh my goodness. It’s been great.

Nicole (1m 49s):
I want to read that. Maybe we’ll put the link to the article in the show Notes.

Diana (1m 53s):
Yeah, it’s been a good article and it’s interesting because for our class, we are to study it four times. Cause you know, these are complicated articles and for the first time, it’s just to get a general idea of the problem. Second time you’re supposed to and read the footnotes. And then the third time you’re to outline the logic and then the fourth to really look at the evidence. So it’s kind of fun to do it that way and have a real deep dive. And it also it’s recommended to do a diagram because when it’s not your own family, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the relationships and the different generations. So that’s my next step. I’m going to draw it all out on Lucid Charts so I can have all these crazy relationships mapped out when, as I’m studying it.

Diana (2m 33s):
So it’s kind of fun to do a deep dive into someone else’s research.

Nicole (2m 37s):
It is. I love reading those articles, although it is challenging. It’s hard to really get into it, but by the third or fourth read, you’re really into it. So I’m getting ready for my course at IGHR as well. And it’s DNA as genealogical evidence and advanced course with Karen Stanbary and our pre-reading is an article that we’ve read before in the DNA study group. The one from Borland Genetics, Help My Segments Are So Sticky, and it was written in June, 2020. And we talked about that in the study group because it’s so interesting to think about some small segments could have stuck or lasted for hundreds of years and could indicate a, an older, common ancestor. That’s really too far back to find.

Diana (3m 18s):
Yeah, that was kind of eliminating that whole thought about sticky segments because I’ve worked with a little bit of that problem. I know we had, we’re trying to triangulate a segment for my Benjamin Cox project and could not find a common ancestor anywhere in this gal’s ancestry. And I just have a suspicion that was a sticky segment and that were really not related because it was kind of a small segment, you know, I think it was like under 10 centiMorgans and there was just this one, we did her whole tree and could not find anything. So unless there was some mis-attributed parentage in there or an adoption or something, it just wasn’t really viable.

Nicole (3m 55s):
Yeah. It could be false segment or it could have been that it was just sticky and it has lasted for a thousand years. So your common ancestor is so far back, you can.

Diana (4m 5s):
Exactly. And we felt like it wasn’t a false positive because we were using GEDMatch and we had done, you know, just the paternal side.

Nicole (4m 13s):
Oh, we’re using your dad’s phased Kit?

Diana (4m 16s):
Yes. I was using a phased kit. So that kind of takes away some of that possibility of false positives. Yeah. That’s really good. I don’t think, you know, it was just probably sticky.

Nicole (4m 27s):
Well, we didn’t mean to chat so long about what we’ve been working on, but it is exciting to get going in, in an Institute course. It’s a virtual course next week. And as it happens, I’m on Pacific time right now in Arizona. So because it’s a Georgia Institute, the schedule works out perfectly so that I’m only in classes while my kids are at school and we have year round school. So they all just went back. So I’ll be doing classes at the same time as my kids from 7:30 to 2:30. Isn’t that perfect?

Diana (4m 51s):
That is so great. Wow. That means you have to be up and at it and really ready to go. I know I’m thinking 8:30. I’m 8:30 to 3: 30 and that’s good for me too though. It’s always fun to get ready for these institutes by the end of the week, you’re kind of exhausted, but they are fun.

Nicole (5m 6s):
By the time this comes Out, we will have already finished the Institute.

Diana (5m 9s):
Yes. And then we can report with one of our next podcasts. Yeah.

Nicole (5m 14s):
So announcements, the DNA study group begins this fall September 1st. This is our Research Like a Pro with DNA group. And if you were wanting to join, it might be full. At this point. We only have a couple of spots left as of the recording, but you can always email us to join the waiting list because inevitably somebody has to drop out at the last minute. So please let us know if you’re wanting to get on the waiting list. And as always, you can join our newsletter to get updates about new blog posts and new podcast episodes in any sales we have going on.

Diana (5m 45s):
Well, we have our guest Alison Cotter back to talk about her experience with the Research Like a Pro with DNA course. Hi Alison.

Allison Kotter (5m 52s):
Hi Diana. Hi Nicole. Thanks for having me back today.

Diana (5m 55s):
Oh, we’re so excited to talk more about your project. Why don’t you just review a little bit, you know, maybe read us your objective and just get us back into what you’re researching.

Allison Kotter (6m 5s):
Yeah. So this is for my DNA e-course and the objective I wrote was the objective of this research project is to use DNA and genealogical records to determine the biological father of Mary Ella Parker born on the 22nd of August, 1877 in Baldwin county, Alabama. Mary Ella died on the 20th of December, 1950 in Columbus, Muscogee, Georgia. The test taker is three generations from the research subject and autosomal DNA will be applicable. However, third to fourth cousins may not share very much DNA, which could make verifying the exact relationship difficult. The community of this research subject also experienced pedigree collapse.

Allison Kotter (6m 45s):
So there may be multiple MRCAs, most recent common ancestors, with the test taker. Mitochondrial DNA is not useful in this case, as it is not unbroken maternal line and Y-DNA is not useful in this case as it is not a broken paternal line. So yeah, it’s a lot, but I’m trying to find the father of Mary Ella. Right.

Diana (7m 6s):
And I think this is such an interesting case because you thought that there was no problem. The documents showed kind of clearly what was happening, but DNA is starting to show a different story if I’m remembering, right?

Allison Kotter (7m 18s):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly Right. When I did my traditional records timeline and I was like, yeah, William Parker is Mary’s father. And I had decided that a while ago, but a cousin had reached out to me and told me I was wrong. And that Mary was actually a daughter of the first husband of Zillah Beck and that she adopted the Parker name because she was raised by William Parker. And as I’ve been looking at the DNA and just kind of learning about the centiMorgans and comparing to the Shared cM Project, it is looking like I have something wrong because the numbers are not working out the way I would think they should if she was William Parker’s biological daughter.

Diana (8m 1s):
Wow. This is such a good example of using DNA to verify your genealogy, because even something that seems like a simple slam dunk can be wrong. So I love this. This is so fun.

Allison Kotter (8m 14s):
Yeah. It was kind of at first, when I got the message from the cousin, I was like, well, I’m just going to use it to learn DNA and kind of prove my point. And then all of a sudden I was proving their point.

Diana (8m 26s):
Oh, that’s awesome. It’s kind of the fun thing about genealogy, all these twists and turns. Yeah.

Nicole (8m 31s):
So after you made this timeline and analyzed all your sources, the next step in Research Like a Pro with DNA is to make a locality guide. So tell us about that step.

Allison Kotter (8m 42s):
Yeah. So I had done Research Like a Pro, the traditional rec way multiple times. So I was comfortable with locality guides and as I was reading it for DNA, something you said is you might want to make multiple for like your hypothesized next generation and things like that. And so I decided to do that and I am glad I did, but part of it is I get stuck at the locality guide a lot. So I wanted to make sure I was getting good at getting them done efficiently. So I chose to do one for where Mary was born, which was Baldwin county, Alabama one where William Parker was born, Galveston county, Texas. So he’s hypothesized father number one. And then hypothesized father number two, Mr.

Allison Kotter (9m 24s):
Barnes, I think is from Covington county, Alabama, because everything I know about him is from Covington county, Alabama. So I decided to focus on those three locals. Yeah.

Nicole (9m 34s):
It’s tricky sometimes to choose just one. And you don’t know where the answer to your research question will be, you know, which locality will have that record that helps you. So sometimes you’re researching in multiple places and it’s good to have those locality guides. And I like what you said about trying to do an efficient locality guide. Sometimes we get bogged down in trying to gather everything we can about a location and all the record types. So how did you focus and be efficient with those three locations?

Allison Kotter (10m 1s):
So I mainly focused on, I would read the FamilySearch Wiki and I would pull out anything I found really interesting or helpful or any resources that really caught my eye. I also liked to look at the FamilySearch catalog to get a quick glance at what kind of records are available in that county. And then the other thing I think is really important for locality guides or at least has helped me a lot is reading county histories. I think one of the best things about that locality guides has added to my research is putting myself in the time and place as my ancestors so that it can kind of see the way they’re seeing. And it helps me answer questions more efficiently and just helps me know what they were thinking probably .

Nicole (10m 44s):
that’s a great tip. I like that.

Diana (10m 47s):
So when you started with Baldwin county, Alabama, what did you find? It’s funny that you have Baldwin county because I am doing a project right now. That’s been centered in Baldwin too, but about a hundred years earlier. Yeah.

Allison Kotter (11m 0s):
Most of the Southern counties I work in after the civil war were like burned or so a lot of their records don’t even start until like 1870, but they actually had no record loss in Baldwin county, according to the FamilySearch Wiki. And so they had records all the way back to 1809, which I was very excited about, but they did not keep birth records until 1886. And Mary is reported to having been born in 1877. So I didn’t think I was going to be able to find a birth record for Mary based on my locality guide. The other thing I did was I read a county history of Baldwin county and something I found really interesting was it said that the wealthy men would travel between Baldwin county and Galveston county, Texas for business.

Allison Kotter (11m 50s):
And I thought that was really interesting since Mary’s father William, her hypothesized father, was from Galveston county, Texas. So that gave me a connection of maybe how he ended up in Alabama. And then the other thing it said was a big industry was lumber and chopping logs. And that’s what William Parker’s occupation was on the 1880 census. So I thought that was fun to just kind of learn.

Diana (12m 13s):
Yeah. That really opened up a few different ideas for research. Didn’t it. And with Baldwin county being right there on the coast, you know, it makes sense that they would just hop on a steamship and go over to Galveston also on the coast of Texas. I think sometimes we think that they always just went Overland, but no, I think they often traveled by water cause it was a lot easier.

Allison Kotter (12m 37s):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think Galveston county, Texas was a big port and so it was Mobile Alabama. So it makes sense for them to travel between the two. I just hadn’t made that connection.

Diana (12m 47s):
I know. Isn’t it funny how sometimes we don’t put our brains to the problem because now we just travel by car plane, you know, how often do do we think about traveling by ship between cities, but this was a different time. Yeah.

Nicole (13m 3s):
So next you did your locality guide for Galveston county, Texas. So what did you learn about that?

Allison Kotter (13m 9s):
So another big important part of the locality guide is kind of getting a map and especially seeing surrounding counties. And I learned that that helped me a lot in DNA, but so Galveston was surrounded by Harris county, Texas, Brazoria county, Texas, and Chambers county, Texas. And then it was super fun to read about Galveston county. Cause apparently Galveston is just an island that was horrible to live on at this time. It was just saying that there were hurricanes and there was like the Mexican wars. And if that wasn’t killing you, then the snakes were killing you. And I just thought it was a really interesting to read about it. It’s interesting. Cause the family story with William Parker is that he was kind of rough and actually ended up killing someone and ran out to Alabama to get away from Texas.

Allison Kotter (13m 57s):
And it was interesting reading about Galveston county with that story in mind because I was like, oh, this place is kind of lawless. So it makes sense that our law, this ancestor came from here. That does make sense.

Diana (14m 11s):
I’m just laughing because when you were writing about this in the history, it says that Galveston county was a hill island.

Allison Kotter (14m 19s):
Yeah. I had a lot of fun reading.

Diana (14m 22s):
Well, your third location was Covington county back in Alabama. What did you learn about Covington county?

Allison Kotter (14m 29s):
So I’ve been doing a lot of research in Covington county for my fourth generation project. So I already knew a lot. So that was nice. But whenever I am doing a project in an area I’ve already done, I do like to just relook at my locality guide and see if there’s anything I need to add to give myself some context for this story. And so something I learned was after the civil war, a lot of people in Covington county actually moved to the panhandle, Florida for the untapped resources and the different research project. But my hypothesis is that Mr. Barnes died during the civil war and then his family moved to Florida, but there are Barnes in Covington county.

Allison Kotter (15m 10s):
And so I just was trying to remind myself what kind of records were there that I could possibly use to uncover this mystery.

Diana (15m 18s):
Yeah. And Covington is, borders Florida. Is that right?

Allison Kotter (15m 22s):
Yeah. It’s right on the panhandle. Yeah.

Diana (15m 25s):
Yeah. Well you certainly had some interesting counties and they’re each so different. Yeah. So I think it’s so important to really think about your county and learn all you can because it does open up your mind to ideas for research, which is why we put the locality guide before a research plan. So that you’ve really explored some thoughts and ideas about it. So that’s great. Yeah.

Allison Kotter (15m 52s):
It’s definitely helped me a lot in my research as I’ve added it.

Nicole (15m 56s):
So with Research Like a Pro with DNA at this step, we also look at locations where our DNA matches ancestors were from to see if there’s anything that intersects. So what did you find when you started working on that step?

Allison Kotter (16m 11s):
Yeah, so I found that I had two groups of matches. They were either from Alabama and Florida or they were from Texas. So I thought that was extremely interesting since that’s what I did. And a lot of them were those surrounding counties from Galveston, Texas. I think you guys have seen this in your ancestry too, that a lot of people from Alabama actually migrated to Texas and I was running into that as well. So it’s not an automatic answer to my question, but I was definitely noting the matches that were from that part of Texas to kind of explore them for them.

Diana (16m 42s):
Yeah. We have that migration pattern. Well, after you did that, the next step in the DNA process is looking at the ethnicity estimates. So I’m curious to see if that helped you at all. Sometimes it’s helpful sometimes it’s not a really depends so much about your research question.

Allison Kotter (17m 2s):
So something that was helpful for me with the ethnicity was my mother-in-law whose DNA I’m using for the project. She was 30% Norwegian because her mother’s side comes from Norwegian immigrants. Then when I, compared that to all these people I had confirmed were descendants through the Parkers or, you know, Mary Ella’s descendants, they had no Norwegian or like very little. So that was cool to decide. Okay. So then Norwegian is probably only on my mother-in-law’s maternal line. And then also when I was looking at a match and I was noticing their tree was kind of taking a Italian turn or something like that, I could just look at their ethnicity estimates and look at Leslie’s and realize, okay, I can completely ignore the Italian line, I don’t think we have hidden Italian here, and focus on the line that seems to be British Isles.

Allison Kotter (17m 56s):
So that’s kind of how I used it. I think there’s probably more to use it and I’m still learning. I also liked how Ancestry will sort your matches into additional communities. So one of the communities they assorted Leslie’s into was south Alabama and Florida panhandles settlers. And when I clicked on that, it showed all the DNA matches that were also in that community, which was helpful because I was like, okay, this family is from this part. So I could look at those matches and decide if they were going to help me.

Diana (18m 25s):
That can be really helpful as you’re trying to go back to that most recent common ancestor to narrow it down. So that’s great that you were able to just completely take out the Norwegian side and figure out more about your matches because sometimes you just have no clue who these matches are and how they connect. So that’s a great use of ethnicity and the location. Yeah.

Nicole (18m 45s):
I really like that. You use the communities as well. That’s a neat feature of Ancestry DNA, and sometimes there aren’t any communities, but when there are, and they’ve recently added a lot more, it’s really interesting to kind of see who’s in the community from the DNA matches and see if that helps you at all. So good job using that.

Allison Kotter (19m 4s):
Yeah. I, like I said, I’m sure there’s more to learn, but I was just trying to play around and figure out what was available.

Nicole (19m 10s):
Great. So that completed lesson five locality research and ethnicity. So when you went on to lesson six, exploring DNA tools and methodology, how did you feel about that one?

Allison Kotter (19m 23s):
I was so overwhelmed. So I started the e-course in January and I finished it in June and I probably spent two months on this lesson just because I was so afraid of it. I had been afraid of DNA for like years as I had heard about it. And then I started it and this lesson just makes you face DNA head on and all the new learning thing. But once I decided to just do it and writing about it actually helped it for the blog post. So in your reflection journal, if you’re doing the e-course, I would just write what you’re doing as you’re doing it. Cause then I was like, okay, I understand what’s happening. So I didn’t need to be so scared.

Nicole (20m 5s):
That’s good. Yeah. I think that’s helpful to write down kind of the steps you’re taking because sometimes the first two times you try a tool, it doesn’t work quite right. So it helps. It’s helpful to like keep track of you did and then try something different the next time.

Allison Kotter (20m 18s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think helping to writing down like, okay, this is what this is supposed to do for me. Because for example, like segment triangulation, I’d heard about it sounded cool, but I did not know how I would use it or why I would use it. And so I listened to the lesson multiple times. I did reading and then when I actually wrote it down, that might just be my learning style. But then I was like, okay, I think I understand this now.

Nicole (20m 45s):
Yeah. That’s a really good point that listening and reading is helpful, but when you write it, you have to really think about why it could be useful to you. I think a lot of us have that learning style too. So which tools did you try out first?

Allison Kotter (20m 59s):
So I decided to try and do a little bit of each. So I did an auto cluster through Genetic Affairs. I did an auto tree through Genetic Affairs and then I did try some segment triangulation through GEDMatch with my auto cluster. We had done clustering in previous lessons, but I hadn’t used the Genetic Affairs’ auto cluster yet. So it uses your FamilyTreeDNA matches and it clusters them. And so I got a lot of clusters and that’s all in the blog post. You can see the pictures. And as I started going through each cluster, trying to find the most recent common ancestor, I found that I was finding the Deese family from one of my mother-in-law’s other lines in almost every single cluster.

Allison Kotter (21m 44s):
And earlier I had decided that there was probably some pedigree collapse in this family tree. And this was once again saying, yeah, there is definitely endogamy or something going on because the Deeses are showing up in every single one of these clusters. So it was kind of hard to separate from that.

Nicole (22m 3s):
Wow. Yeah. That is really tricky. And with FamilyTreeDNA, I’m guessing when you did this, it was before they excluded small segments too. And so that can also introduce some difficult things that can make your clusters look different. So now that they’re not including those small segments, I wonder what it would look like if you did it again, you’ll have to try that.

Allison Kotter (22m 24s):
Yeah, I would, I was wondering, you guys might know the answer to this, but does FamilyTreeDNA like do more people from other countries use it because I was finding a ton of like Norwegian matches on FamilyTreeDNA, where it was finding like none on Ancestry. So it seemed like more of the American matches were on Ancestry, whereas more of the international matches were on FamilyTreeDNA. But I didn’t know if that was just a coincidence or not.

Nicole (22m 47s):
I haven’t noticed that with FamilyTreeDNA specifically, I have on MyHeritage is they’re kind of known for having more international users, but Ancestry is definitely heavily American. I’m not sure about FamilyTreeDNA. They just have a smaller database and just a different group of people.

Allison Kotter (23m 7s):
Okay. Yeah. I was just noticing differences between my Ancestry matches and my FamilyTreeDNA matches. Yeah. That’s a good thing to notice.

Diana (23m 13s):
And it could also be that there were just some of those families in the Norwegian side that they all decided to test and they chose FamilyTreeDNA. You know, sometimes you just get multiple cousins, there’s a genealogist in the family and they reach out to everybody saying, take this test, take this test and you get a lot of matches. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your exploration at the Genetic Affairs auto tree. So how did that go for you?

Allison Kotter (23m 38s):
As I did the Genetic Affairs auto tree, there was a lot of matches on my mother-in-law’s Norwegian line, which was very exciting. We actually need to do a lot of research there, but that was not my objective of the project, but something I liked about the auto tree was it gave you a list of common ancestors that the other matches had. So it hadn’t connected it to your tree, but it was saying, Hey, these two people shared this common ancestor and that was really cool to help sort people. And then later when I would find out, oh, that common ancestor is a descendant of the backs, I could then sort the matches a little bit better. So I actually used that part of the auto tree quite a bit, as I was sorting through my matches.

Diana (24m 17s):
That’s a great use of that tool. There are so many tools to use. And so I think this portion of the course is really valuable. I think sometimes we get in the habit of just using one tool. We find one that works and we just want to use it over and over. I know I’m kind of guilty of that sometimes, but exploring a lot of different ones is so valuable because you might need to use a different tool for a different project. So that I’m glad you just got out of your comfort zone and try and a lot of these tools.

Allison Kotter (24m 48s):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was the point of the lesson I figured out because at first I was thinking I had to master all of these things and completely understand them, but no, it was just to try them out. And I think once you started trying them out, they became so much less scary and you realized how they could help you. And so I’m glad that the course pushed me to do that.

Diana (25m 10s):
That’s great.

Nicole (25m 10s):
So the last thing you tried was GEDMatch, which I know can be kind of intimidating for people. Tell us about your experience with GEDMatch and segment triangulation.

Allison Kotter (25m 20s):
GEDMatch was definitely something that intimidated me, but I had heard about it so much as such a good tool. So I decided I was going to figure it out. So I did watch some YouTube videos just kind of get used to how to get around. And then I paid for tier one, which was only $10 a month and totally worth it because I was able to use the segment triangulation tool. And it just led me to, okay, these matches. And I’m going to try and explain it, my understanding you guys can correct me if I’m wrong, but these matches that I have confirmed are through William Parker or through Zillah Beck shared this segment with Leslie my mother-in-law.

Allison Kotter (26m 2s):
So that probably means that that segment came from the back line or the Parker line, whichever one. So then I would compare that segment to the other people. She was sharing that segment with who I didn’t know, the common ancestor with and try and build their trees. So I had a lot of fun poking around on GEDMatch and figuring out all the tools on there. And now that I’m more comfortable with it, I think I will use it for a lot of my projects. Cause there’s some really cool tools on there. Fantastic. Yeah. Something I figured out a lot of GEDMatch people don’t have their trees on there and I was like, oh shoot, how am I supposed to do this? But I figured out if I could look and see what company they came from, I could go them on that website that I was on.

Allison Kotter (26m 46s):
So like Ancestry, I could just go find them a lot of times they use the same username and then they would have a tree on Ancestry or at least a little bit of a tree that I could then build.

Nicole (26m 57s):
Yes. What a great tip. That’s exactly what I do as well, because there’s very few GEDCom uploaded to GEDMatch . So you have a lot of people’s DNA. You can see the segment, but then you don’t know how you’re related until you figure out who they are on the other company. And if you have, you know, if you have your mother-in-law’s DNA on all the company sites, then you can really find them pretty easily.

Allison Kotter (27m 18s):
Yeah. It’s definitely been helpful. The only one I don’t have is 23andMe, and I think I want to get that so that we can just have the whole gambit. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole (27m 29s):
That’s interesting. Because 23andMe also often doesn’t have tree information or seldom do people list their surnames and things. So it’s just kind of contacting the person and asking them who is your family? So that’s good to know.

Diana (27m 44s):
Yeah. But 23andMe has some really great tools. And so it’s so worth it. And I found that a lot of adoptees put their DNA on 23andMe, you know, adopt these, put their DNA everywhere, trying to get those matches. But 23andMe does a really great tool where they will let you see how a match also matches other people. And so sometimes you can find a close match and see that they’re matching a first cousin and that first cousin, you can figure out their tree. So it gives you this additional clue about where they fit in. So it’s definitely got its own learning curve, but really worthwhile.

Allison Kotter (28m 23s):
That’s cool. I liked doing that with GEDMatch too is viewing the kits as if they were my own, so I couldn’t manipulate the kits or anything, but they allow you to run like a segment triangulation as long as you have a kit number. And that was really helpful. I found some additional ancestors through that that were not sharing DNA with Leslie, but seemed to be ancestors of the same family. And it just helped me play around with GEDMatchmore, which made me a lot more comfortable with the website. Great.

Diana (28m 52s):
And I love what you said that you watched a few YouTube videos cause there’s some great YouTube videos out there about GEDMatch. And that’s my favorite way to learn is watch a video and then be trying it on my other screen. You know, that’s exactly what I did.

Nicole (29m 6s):
They’re really great. I’ve just such a, try it, try it myself person. And then I sometimes get frustrated. I’m like, oh fine. I’ll watch a video.

Allison Kotter (29m 15s):
It’s funny Nicole, because you make such good videos.

Nicole (29m 17s):
Well, It’s just like I do in a rush, you know, to stop and watch something. My favorite method is to read at set of directions. Like if I can just follow the steps, it’s faster, but no, I love videos too, because sometimes it’s like, oh, now I see what to do. But I like what you said about using GEDMatch to run other kits against each other for segment triangulation, because that’s really an important part of segment. Triangulation is making sure that not only does your mother-in-law match these people on that segment, but do they match each other on that same segment? And when they do, then you have a fully triangulated segment where all three people hopefully descend from the same common ancestor, but you’re still kind of working to prove that, but in your conclusion, and when you write up this, like as a proof argument, when you get there, that’s going to be like a really important part of it.

Nicole (30m 15s):
If you did use segment triangulation as part of your evidence, to be able to show that everybody in the triangulated group match on that segment to each other.

Allison Kotter (30m 24s):
Yeah. And there’s definitely a lot more, I need to learn about it, but I was really grateful for this lesson to get me over my fear of it so that I could just kind of figure out what it was trying to tell me.

Diana (30m 36s):
That’s great. Well, it’s been fun talking to you and seeing how someone who had a lot of fear about you’ve seen DNA’s when able to tackle it. Because I think a lot of our listeners are in the same boat. They had their DNA results. Take a look at on ancestry that really don’t know what to do with it. And it can be scary to learn something new. So thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your experience. We’re excited to talk with you next time about the next steps in your DNA process.

Allison Kotter (31m 5s):
Thank you so much for having me today. All right. We’ll talk to you again next week.

Nicole (31m 11s):
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