RLP 174: RLPDNA Study Group 3 – Timeline Analysis and Citations

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 174 RLP with DNA Study Group part three, Timeline Analysis and Citations. 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, The 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 (45s):
Let’s go, Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (51s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m great. I went on a walk this morning. It was beautiful. How are you doing?

Diana (58s):
I am doing well. We are well into the study group and our last two lessons have been experimenting with tools and, you know, there are so many tools. It seems like I can’t stay up with all of them because it takes some time learning a new DNA tool and we have these great third parties like genetic affairs and GEDMatch to just keep coming up with new tools and we have to learn how to use them.

Nicole (1m 25s):
Yeah, we’ve been studying that hybrid auto segment tool from genetic affairs. That’s now also at GEDMatch and it’s really cool, but it does take a minute or two to really understand what you’re seeing.

Diana (1m 38s):
And I did use that with my project. I have a figured out pretty much the trick is figuring out a good process for using it, trying to find the relevant clusters, and then how to record that in your air table log or an a table. It just takes some time figuring out how to work with the data. So that’s what I’ve been working on. I also, for the first time use G works, which was great, and that’s through DNA GEDCom and actually was pretty easy to use. And that one, I didn’t need a lot of help and figuring it out because what it does is it gets all the surnames and localities and birth and death information from your match trees.

Diana (2m 22s):
So I was using this from Ancestry, so it was great. It puts it in a spreadsheet that you can then search for specific surnames and localities, and it makes it so much easier than clicking on each individual tree on ancestry and looking for that information. So you were the one that told me about G works and I had heard about it before, but hadn’t had a chance to explore it. So thank you. I really having fun with it.

Nicole (2m 45s):
Yeah, that’s great. You know, I kind of was thinking after we talked that I wonder if I could use just the DNA GEDCom ancestors spreadsheet output that they give you and kind of manipulate it myself, to try to do some of those things the same way that G works does. I haven’t tried that yet, but it is nice G works, does it for you, you can filter and you can search for a certain person, a certain surname, a person, and a place you can do all these different filters. So it kind of helps you really narrow down your searches a lot faster.

Diana (3m 17s):
Yeah, it does. And when you’re working with your DNA and you’re trying to find connections, those surnames that can appear in a descendancy tree are really important to find quickly within your matches. So I’m looking forward to putting that maybe in my research plan to really work with it on my current project, because I think it’ll be a really important, our lessons were just on experimenting with them. So I’m gonna have to do some real thinking about how exactly I want to use that.

Nicole (3m 44s):
Yeah. You know, we’ve talked in the past about how useful it can be when you’ve traced a descendancy tree and forward in time. And you find that one of the daughters married someone with an uncommon name, like Vandever, and then you can search for that name. And the people that come up are probably related on that correct side, because it’s not super common. Yeah,

Diana (4m 6s):
That’s exactly right. That’s what you want. Those uncommon names. Those are great. Well, let’s do some announcements. We’re pretty excited that our Research Like a Pro with DNA book will be released for the print copy in November. We’ve been working hard thus fall with our designer, getting everything looking perfect. So everyone will be able to go on Amazon and purchase that for an early Christmas present for yourself. If you’ve been just waiting and waiting for the book to be released in print, then we have our study groups. Our spring group will begin February 16th with registration in December, and then our fall regular study group will be in September.

Diana (4m 53s):
So 2 to look forward to next year. So you can be thinking if you’d like to join and be thinking of what brick wall you’d like to work on overcoming or what you’d like to learn and becoming a better researcher. So if you’re interested in a peer group leader position and you want to be in charge of a small group and help them and get free registration, then that application center website, and as always join our newsletter for our special deals,

Nicole (5m 22s):
We have a listener spotlight today. This is fun. It’s from a listener named Ruth, and she emailed us and said, “thank you for your podcast series, which I very much enjoy listening to. I’ve just listened to your latest one number 170 about surname searches. And I can suggest one reason why Diana was not finding the surname she was searching for in search results on my heritage, neither my heritage, nor family tree DNA offer an exact search functionality in the search box. Very unhelpfully they returned results, which include the name you’re for in longer names as well. I have particular problems with the surname Hilder.

Nicole (6m 4s):
I think I’ve got several matches, but it turns out they’re just Hilderbrand or even worse Childers.” So that’s a really great thing to know that they’re not exact searches that they include when your surname is inside another surname, those are included. So that’s good to know.

Diana (6m 27s):
Yeah. That is sometimes you have to experiment with these search terms, not only in the DNA websites, but just in any website that you’re trying to get some information from some of those data collections on ancestry or find my past or in our family search any of those big websites, you really have to play around to learn how best to search in them. Yeah. Today we are going to talk some more about my project with the DNA study group. We’re going to talk about timelines and source analysis and citations. I’ll just give a little recap of what I’m working on with this project. This is another iteration of my trying to find Cynthia Dillard Royston’s father.

Diana (7m 12s):
And I am excited because I’m using the DNA results of a cousin. His name is Victor Parker. He is my second cousin twice removed, and he is two generations closer to Cynthia. So he received more of her DNA, which has turning out to be really beneficial because he has matches that I do not have. And some of those matches have pointed out a possible Dillard connection. When I discovered that on the network graph, I was super excited because I now actually have a subject that I can research. As we all know it’s difficult to research women. And I have researched Cynthia as much as I can, at least as much as I think I can.

Diana (7m 56s):
And so now I have this Elijah who was the common ancestor of this Dillard cluster that identified. So I created an objective and I’ll just read that, the objective of this research phase is to test the hypothesized biological sibling connection between Elijah Dillard and Cynthia Dillard Royston. Elijah Dillard was born about 1814 in Georgia and died on six September, 1886 in coffee county, Alabama, Cynthia was born about 1816 in Georgia and died in 1882 in Collin county, Texas sent them married, Thomas Beverly Royston about 1833 in Georgia or Alabama.

Diana (8m 35s):
So I have got my objective. I have my little cluster to research and that feels really good.

Nicole (8m 43s):
Yes. It is exciting that you have this new Elijah Dillard to explore. So the next step of the Research Like a Pro with DNA process is to make a timeline for the ancestor you’re focusing on. So will you create a timeline for this Elijah?

Diana (8m 60s):
Yes, because I already had done a timeline for Cynthia in past research projects, but I knew nothing about Elijah. There were about three or four people in the Dillard cluster that had trees going back to a Josiah Dillard, and then his father was identified as Elijah in a couple of the trees. So I decided that since Elijah was of an age to be Cynthia’s brother, that he would be the focus of my timeline. And I would just be looking to make sure Josiah really was his son, since these people were all coming down through Josiah. And so I use the online trees on ancestry and family search, and luckily those trees revealed enough information that I could do a really good, solid timeline on Elijah.

Diana (9m 50s):
And I had him from basically 1848 with his first land patent all the way up to his death in 1886. So I had census records, some land records, a marriage record. And so that was really good. I felt it gave me a good foundation for his life and the 1880 census actually had Josiah in his household with a son relationship. So that’s always really good when you have that verification that there was actually the right relationship there in those family trees. And it also gave me several Alabama counties to research. So my timeline has a category for location, and I found him in five counties in Alabama, Dale pike, barber Lee, and Macon county.

Diana (10m 39s):
So that’s always fun, isn’t it to discover so many different locations?

Nicole (10m 43s):
Not as good.

Diana (10m 44s):
Yeah. So my air table research log has both timelines. I have one for Cynthia and then one for Elijah. And now as I start the research process, I can go back and forth between the two, see if I can make any connections. And it’s possible, there are no connections to this brother and sister. Maybe they just went their own way and did their own thing. You know, it’d be lovely to find some FAN club people to connect them, but I am prepared for the possibility that that didn’t happen as well.

Nicole (11m 12s):
When you were doing your timeline for Elijah, did you notice any other Dillards at all in the censuses that were neighbors or are these the only two Dillards you’ve seen so far? Elijah and Josiah?

Diana (11m 26s):
They are the only two in all these areas. So I’m just wondering if Cynthia and Elijah were orphaned young and then they each had to make their way in the world that they didn’t stay connected with family because I saw the same thing with Cynthia, no connections at all with any Dillards. And so I’m seeing that with Elijah as well.

Nicole (11m 48s):
That’s a pretty good hypothesis that maybe they were orphaned and their parents died young and they just didn’t keep in touch.

Diana (11m 54s):
Yeah. I’m wondering. There could have been a falling out in the family. They didn’t like each other. They didn’t want to keep in touch. There’s so many things to think about so many possibilities and maybe they did keep in touch. Maybe they wrote letters, but none of those have survived and those stories have survived.

Nicole (12m 10s):
Yeah. I wonder if Cynthia was literate, sometimes the census will tell you if they can read and write. So that’s always interesting to look at.

Diana (12m 18s):
That’s a good point. Good idea.

Nicole (12m 21s):
The next part of the timeline is analyzing the source for original derivative or authored. And then if the information is primary, secondary, or unknown, thinking about what kind of evidence it provides, tell us about that.

Diana (12m 36s):
That was pretty easy. You know, I was using censuses for a good foundation and we’ve done a lot of work with the censuses. So I generally categorize them as an original source. Generally, the information there we realize is unknown because we don’t know who is actually giving the names and the ages. We do know that the residence is primary information. The evidence would be direct because they’re directly answering the question of the relationships, their ages, where they were born. So the census is always pretty easy to analyze. And then the other records, for instance, the land patents kind of the same thing, a land patent is an original source and it’s giving primary information for the place of residence.

Diana (13m 26s):
The thing that was interesting in the land patents was that Elijah was not ever living in the same county they patented the land. So I got the information about where he patented land and then also where he was actually residing. So that was helpful. So that gives me some direct evidence of his residence from those land patents, as well as the location of the land. So source analysis, you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time. And so that’s definitely getting easier. I think some of the trickier sources that we see come up could be a newspaper article. Sometimes those can be tricky to think about how to analyze, but these were all pretty straightforward

Nicole (14m 7s):
After you analyzed the documentary records. Then another step is to look at your DNA, matches the diagram you’ve created for your objective. Add more matches to it, and really look and see if the relationships that you’re mapping out line up with the amount of shared centiMorgans and checking the shared centiMorgans tool on DNA painter,

Diana (14m 30s):
Right? And this was fun because I hadn’t yet mapped out this Dillard cluster. And I had three people who had the trees, as I mentioned, that went back to Josiah and they all come from three different children of Josiah. So I have three independent lines from Josiah and they all go to Elijah. And so mapping all those out. I found that they were either a third cousin once, twice or three times removed from Victor. And they shared between 24 and 29 centiMorgans on one segment. This is solid ancestry. So that’s a decent sized segment, 24 to 29.

Diana (15m 12s):
That’s so much better than say 10. So I was pretty happy with that. And just also points to the importance of having Victor be the tester, because none of these people are on my match list. They would be with me two more steps removed. And I didn’t inherit that piece of DNA from this common ancestors. So it was really important that I had this tester who was two generations closer.

Nicole (15m 38s):
Yeah. That was really important. So that’s interesting that they shared it on one segment too. Yeah, it’s too bad he can’t paint that on DNA painter. I’m curious just to see if there are more matches that share that one segment too. Yeah. The next part was to add source citations for your timeline and then to practice making sort of citations for DNA matches and different DNA tools. So what did you do for that?

Diana (16m 7s):
Well, I had done this report for Victor’s DNA through DNA GEDCom and I decided I would create a citation for that. It was the G works program that we talked about earlier. I just used the title, which is compare all your trees and then said for Dillard, Victor Parker, DNA GEDCom. And it was kind of tricky thinking of what to do for a URL. So I just copied in what the page gave me, because if I’m logged in, then that gets me back to my data for anyone else that won’t probably won’t work, but I wanted it to be useful for me.

Diana (16m 47s):
And then I put the date, I ran the test 12 October, 2021, and then I put some information about what files they were from. So I said used match and tree files from Ancestry DNA matches of October, 2020, because I had downloaded those a year ago. Oh. So I’m finding that these DNA source citations that I do for the tools are really helpful in giving me a place to put exactly when and what I did for running these reports, because you got to record that somewhere and I’m finding the citation actually is a great place to record that. Yeah.

Nicole (17m 24s):
That really is. Even when you make your research log, sometimes you don’t think to put all of the details that you just mentioned there into the log until you have to make the citation. And then you’re like, oh, I need to be specific here and say exactly when I generated this report and when I generated the match file and that kind of thing. So that’s really good. Yeah.

Diana (17m 44s):
There is a lot of detail that goes into these reports and sometimes you’re entering in like your parameters, you know, I want this report to be between 20 centiMorgans and 200 centiMorgans, and then you run it again and you maybe want it between 30 and 70, you know, you can just keep changing your parameters. And where are you tracking that information? You know, the citation in your research like really does give you a good place to track exactly what you’re doing with each report. And then you can explain in your log what the results were here. Like, oh, I got way too many matches for that set of parameters or not enough matches. So I think too often we just kind of click around and play around with those things and don’t record it.

Diana (18m 28s):
And I, I was thinking about this in relation to how we sometimes click around in record sets on Ancestry, you know, not recording it in our research log, just playing and wasting our time. And I thought, I wonder if I’m doing that with DNA a bit. So I’m trying to get better at really recording what I’m doing and making sure I’m getting the results and putting that in my log, absolutely.

Nicole (18m 51s):
In citations or are good way to keep us honest and make sure that we’re keeping track of that. And really think about each of the questions to answer the who, you know, who created this? What, like what type of thing are you looking at when, and you put the date and sometimes there’s more than one day. Like you mentioned, you put the date that you ran the test and the date that you gathered, the Ancestry matches, which wasn’t the same day.

Diana (19m 19s):
Yeah. It makes a difference because a year later you’d have more matches. So I could run this test again to pick up any matches that have entered the database in that year.

Nicole (19m 30s):
Yeah. And then the, where is and the where in. So with that, it really helps you to remember where things are on your computer. Because sometimes we’ve talked about this before, because we need to organize some of our DNA folders on Google drive. But sometimes you save a genetic affairs, auto cluster report somewhere in your file system, and then you can’t find it again. And so if you have it in your log, exactly the file path, even in your citation, maybe that can really expedite the future use of that report.

Diana (20m 5s):
Yeah. That’s a really good idea. I agree, because you download those files and they come with their file names from the different companies. And if you don’t organize that into your computer and organize it in your log or somewhere, you’ll end up doing that again. Cause you won’t have any idea where it is or you can look at that file name and go, what is that? I have a few of those files that I have no idea what they are. Oh, it’s frustrating. But we learned by experience to get more organized.

Nicole (20m 33s):
I like the way E-J Blom has named the genetic affairs reports because he puts in some of the parameters so that you can remember if you didn’t keep a log, what you did, it’ll say like hybrid auto segment report ancestry 20 to 300, and then it will say some of the other parameters. And so the file name is actually really long. And sometimes my computer doesn’t like that and it won’t open it if it’s too long.

Diana (20m 59s):
Oh, that’s funny.

Nicole (21m 1s):
That’s a good time to take the information from the file name into your research log, and then you can change the name of the file to be shorter.

Diana (21m 10s):
Yeah. And that is a good point that maybe it’s time to change the filing.

Nicole (21m 14s):
Yeah. Just like when we download an image from family search and the file name is gobbledygook, we’ve changed that.

Diana (21m 21s):
Yeah. And I think sometimes we’re afraid to change those and we think, oh, we can’t change that. But of course we can,

Nicole (21m 25s):
If you’re worried about it, you can always save a copy of it as a different name.

Diana (21m 29s):
And oh, that’s true.

Nicole (21m 30s):
That’s what I usually do when it’s too long to open and I’m not sure if I want to change it yet, but the key is keeping track of that information from the file name, you know, right. When you make the report in your log and really the purpose of a log is keeping track of everything you do so that you know what you did and where to find it again. So we’ll talk about research logs again when you get there, but it’s great that starting at the beginning of your project, you’d been making your timeline and your air table log and adding all these citations that you’re making your correspondence everything’s in one place. So it’s just nice to have it all the way through.

Diana (22m 4s):
Oh yeah. I am excited. It’s set feels so good to have your DNA work organized as well as your documentary work and one project. I love it. I am excited to continue with this project and see what I can find because already I feel like I’m making good progress and it’s kind of fun to have something to look forward to in your research. Isn’t it.

Nicole (22m 29s):
Well, great. Thanks for listening everyone. And we will talk to you again next week.

Diana (22m 34s):
All right. Bye everyone.

Nicole (22m 36s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next Study Group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com to share your progress and ask questions. Join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our e-course or Study Group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.