Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about setting up a web page to share with potential DNA test takers. Nicole talks about the Daniel Arnold project to find Daniel’s parents. Daniel was born 6 August 1806 and married Lydia Willey. We discuss autosomal DNA coverage, making living people in reports anonymous, and targeted testing of people from independent child lines. We also review the current research and clues pointing to Daniel’s parents.
Transcript
Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 204 recruiting test-takers for an autosomal DNA project. 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 authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.
Nicole (40s):
Let’s go. Hi, welcome to Research Like a Pro. Hi Diana.
Diana (46s):
Hi Nicole. How are you today?
Nicole (48s):
I’m good. I’ve been having fun working with one of our researchers on a French Canadian project for a client. And yesterday she sent me the write-up that she had done, and I reviewed all of her work and then kind of gave her some ideas. And it’s really interesting to dive into a project and just kind of analyze all the details to see what we can do next. And what I think happened with this one is that two men with the same name got confused or merged. So we’re trying to iron that out and separate them.
Diana (1m 18s):
That happens a lot in our research. Doesn’t it?
Nicole (1m 22s):
It does. And for me not having done a lot of research in French and Canadian records, the names seem unique, but there are so many people with the same names in these baptismal records in Quebec and other places in Canada. So the names that seem uncommon to me are actually very common
Diana (1m 44s):
And that happens whatever location we’re in. We think our ancestors, the only one till we get into the county records and find several people with that name, it’s a very easy to do that.
Nicole (1m 54s):
Yeah. So have you still been reading the family tree problem solver?
Diana (1m 58s):
Oh, I have fits so interesting. And lately the chapter I’ve been working on is the one about the fan club, the friends and family associates and neighbors, and the little case study that I read this morning because the author Marsha Hoffman Rising has case studies throughout. It was about a gentleman who shows up seemingly a single man all by himself in this county. And then after she did the research and she used the cluster method, and she looked at him on the census and all the neighbors around him, she did so many interesting techniques in trying to find a family for him. And she did. She totally found that all these people were related. He and his sister had moved into the county with their mother, but the mother had remarried.
Diana (2m 45s):
And so she was going by a different surname. And then some other older siblings who had also married like the women. And so they were going by different surnames. And so just using the surname, wasn’t getting her anywhere and the sister had, and what’s going by different surname. So when she finally got all the family connections figured out, she found this whole group of people this all around this gentlemen, anyway, it was a fun case study.
Nicole (3m 11s):
And it sounds like the book is really good and it would be fun to study that I need to get it. Actually, I have it, but I need to read it.
Diana (3m 18s):
Yeah. I just do a little bit at a time and I think it is super valuable for anyone that is just kind of wondering if they’ve thought of all the different ways to, you know, approach your brick wall. Have you thought of, you know, this way of doing the fan club in any way, she goes through all sorts of different scenarios, but then she also has sections on records. And so the next section is court records. And I’m curious to see what she has to say about court records. I feel like we can always be learning better techniques and methodologies for our research. So that’s why I’m always studying.
Nicole (3m 51s):
Yeah. I’m curious what she’ll say about that. And court records can be so valuable, but often those minutes are not indexed. And so you’re having to read through a lot of pages. My favorite has been, you can find that somebody has done abstracts of the court minutes. And so you can just quickly look through those
Diana (4m 6s):
Me too. In fact, that’s what I used for my last project. I’m doing this project for the DNA study group on my Schultz family. And someone on ancestry had written a little story about the ancestor, you know, how you can put stories up there and, but with no sources at all. And it mentioned that Martin Schultz and his brothers were in the court records of Bibb county, Alabama, early 1820s. So at the family history library, there was an abstract of the court minutes. I was so thrilled and sure enough, I found all the different mentions of the men in those court minutes. So now I can go look for originals in a future project because my time is up on this one, but it was really nice to have that abstract.
Diana (4m 51s):
I just bless the people that did that, you know, all the counties everywhere.
Nicole (4m 56s):
I just think it would be neat to make a, my own abstract of some county court minute book, because not only would you become really familiar with, you know, what you can learn from court minutes, but if that’s a county where your difficult ancestor lived, then you might find something helpful while creating something helpful for others. Right?
Diana (5m 15s):
Well, yeah. And you can actually just read the current minutes of the county, whether you’re doing an abstract or not, because you’ll learn about what kind of things they were doing. Like the records in this early time period were all about building roads, because there were no roads. You know, they were the first settlers in this area so that they were calling juries to appoint commissioners for the roads. And so that’s what a lot of the entries were for that.
Nicole (5m 44s):
That’s funny that you mentioned that because I just found a road order yesterday for the project I’m doing for the DNA study group too. And it was for one of the Arnold descendants who I’m trying to just, you know, track the parent-child links for all of these cousins of Barsheba Tharp, because I’ve been trying to show her mother is Joanna West and just kind of working through all these cousins and stuff, and sure enough, there was a road order and it mentioned the father that I’m trying to link it to. I was one of the people who lived on the road that he was ordered to take care of. So in my mind that was pretty good evidence, right. They lived near each other. So that helped.
Diana (6m 24s):
Yeah. It’s really interesting to think about the early building of the settlement. So our ancestor Martin Schultz was also mentioned in the court records getting a license for a Tavern and the author or the abstractor had at the beginning made a note that Tavern didn’t necessarily mean it was a place, you know, just like we think of it now as a Tavern, but they just use that terminology for like an, in a guest house, a shop, you know, it could be any type of a thing. So it was interesting because I had always thought that he was a farmer and I’m thinking, well, maybe not at that point, he was trying to do something different.
Diana (7m 7s):
Anyway, it was fun.
Nicole (7m 8s):
It is fun.
Diana (7m 10s):
Well for announcements today, we have our next Research Like a Pro study group beginning in the fall, it will be researched like a probe. Number eight. I can’t believe we’re on number eight. It will begin Wednesday, September 7th and meet every week for nine weeks. But the break the week of October 19th for extra research time, registration begins July 20th at 10:00 AM, mountain time and ends August 25th. And if you’re interested in being a peer group leader, the application is on our website pair group leaders get the opportunity to meet with small groups weekly and have the registration fee waived for them.
Diana (7m 54s):
So it’s a fun opportunity to participate as always join our newsletter for coupons. If you want to see what else we have to offer, all right, our listener spotlight is Kenneth Dixon and the title of his review is a wealth of information. Kenneth says, I’ve enjoyed listening to Nicole and Diana shared their knowledge on all things genealogy. While I consider myself an intermediate genealogists, I’ve already learned many new things and hope to learn even more as I work on developing my abilities to that of a professional many thanks to you too. So that’s great. Thank you so much for leaving that. We love all of our reviews. So if you haven’t left one, feel free to go and tell us what you think.
Diana (8m 38s):
Well, what are we talking about today, Nicole?
Nicole (8m 40s):
Okay, well, I’m excited to share some progress that I’ve been making on a client project about Daniel Arnold, basically in the third phase of research for this objective, we decided we needed more DNA test takers in Ancestry’s autosomal DNA testing database in order to achieve better coverage of the target ancestor, Daniel Arnold. So we’re going to talk about that today.
Diana (9m 5s):
Sometimes we just don’t know who our possibles are and we don’t know who be available. So what did you do about that?
Nicole (9m 15s):
We decided to reach out to a lot of cousins in order to do that. We had to, in the first phase of research to see what was available with the two test-takers that we started with. So the client shared his results with me, and then his uncle also was found really quickly and the testing database. And then we were able to get access to those results as well, which was better because he was one generation closer. So the objective of the project is who was the father of Daniel Arnold. Daniel Arnold was born August 6th, 1806 in Saratoga county, New York, and died June 15th, 1881 in Henderson, Jefferson, New York, and married Lydia Willie.
Nicole (9m 56s):
So we have a man born in the early 18 hundreds with unknown parents and in a place and time where there weren’t a lot of records available that showed parent links. And so, like I mentioned, we had two test takers and in the course of the research, we were able to find several DNA matches that descended from Daniel Arnold and a bunch of Danny mantras that descended through the same line as the client, which is through Daniel’s son, Amos, George Arnold. And he moved to Idaho and was part of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, who had a lot of descendants.
Nicole (10m 36s):
And a lot of those descendants lived in Utah. And a lot of people in Utah take DNA tests at ancestry. At least that’s what I’ve noticed. And so a lot of them were in the testing database. So we found a lot of descendants from that son and a few from other children of Daniel Arnold. He had a lot of children and part of the first phase was tracking all of those children to see what they said about where their father was born, because we wanted to make sure we looked in the right place for his father. So there were 13 children and reviewing all of the New York state census records and federal census records gave us some clues on where Daniel Arnold was born.
Nicole (11m 18s):
And it’s interesting because it varied. You know, we had a lot of children who said he was born in New York, some said Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and even one had like a specific place within New York. And then when we looked at Daniel Arnold census records that, you know, he was the head of household, unlikely the person reporting the information. It turns out that he said over and over that he was born in Saratoga county, New York. And that was also one of the earliest census records, the 1855 New York state census, where he was the head of household and probably the informant. So we really use that as like our place to look for father candidates. And when we did, we found a man who lived there named a Massa Arnold, who later moved to the place where Daniel Arnold’s wife was born and the hypothesized location for where Daniel Arnold was married.
Nicole (12m 9s):
So we thought that was a really good clue. And actually that’s how I originally put this all together and was thinking about where would Daniel Arnold had been living when he married his wife, whose family history was well-known Lydia, Willie and her family were known to have lived in Exeter, which was in Sego county, in New York. So when it all came together, Massa, Arnold was probably one of the best candidates. And the DNA pointed to a couple of possible siblings for Daniel Arnold, who also had connections back to Exeter. And then a possible brother was in the land records of Exeter and he died without any children.
Nicole (12m 50s):
And his second wife had to list out the errors. And so the errors were, it looked like they were siblings to this brother. And so the second wife said she couldn’t remember all the names of the siblings because there must have been a lot. But one of the siblings was a lady who we had found through pedigree triangulation, and the Danny matches her name was Clarissa and she married a Mason. And so her last name was Mason and she had a death record. And her death records that her parents’ names were Amos, Arnold and Chloe Woodward, who were found on a marriage record and the marriage record wasn’t for Amos.
Nicole (13m 33s):
It was for a Massa Arnold and Chloe Woodward. So all these pieces of the puzzle were coming together to kind of put a pinpoint on this couple of Massah Arnold and Chloe Woodward. And I was able to trace them asset and the census records and put together a possible family grouping. So that was phase one. And it was exciting to find these possible parents and siblings, but there wasn’t a lot of evidence linking them all together. There was still a little bit, so we needed another phase. And in the second phase, our friend and researcher, Alice Childs, who’s an accredited genealogists. So she’s accredited in the mid Atlantic region and she did some more documentary research to look into any land records that might be helpful.
Nicole (14m 19s):
And we looked into some possible lease records, didn’t find any more clues about a Massa Arnold, but she was able to make a list of possible candidates that we could eliminate. And so she went through and eliminated a bunch of other candidates for Daniel’s father and left just two candidates. So now we’re on phase three and the idea of this phase is to add more DNA test takers who are descendants of Daniel Arnold to get better coverage of Daniel’s DNA. And we’re doing this in Ancestry’s database because that’s where the first two testers were.
Diana (14m 54s):
Wow, this is an amazing project. And I just wanted to comment on how difficult it is to do that early New York research because you’re right. It is a tough location and it’s a tough time anywhere, you know, someone born 1806 and trying to find parents. And I’m just looking at your chart on the family. And it looks like Daniel Arnold also named a child a Masa. So that makes sense that he would maybe have a father named a Masa or a Matha. However you say that because that’s a little bit more unusual name, isn’t it?
Nicole (15m 28s):
Yes. There are incredible naming patterns in this family. So you probably got confused with all the names that I just said. So Daniel, Arnold, he and Lydia really named their first son Titus after Lydia’s father Titus, Billy. And the second sign is named a Massa Arnold. And I think that’s a really huge clue that Daniel Arnold’s father was named a Massa. One of the other sons is named Amos Arnold, which I found as a possible brother to Daniel and the land records of Exeter. It could be that Daniel named one of his sons after his brother Amos. And so you can see there’s just a lot of great naming patterns, a lot of good evidence.
Diana (16m 10s):
Yeah. And they may patterns are strong evidence, especially when they’re unusual names. And when you back it up with a sister, who’s also naming children, the same names, which is why we get people the same name, right. Because everybody’s naming their child after their parents.
Nicole (16m 28s):
That’s true. The biggest break in the case has been this Clarissa, this possible sister to Daniel because she had that death record that said her parents’ names as Amos, Arnold, and Chloe Woodward. And then finding that marriage record for those two Massa Arnold and Chloe Woodward, it was just so helpful. And so in this third phase, Alice has been working on finding more DNA matches who descend from possible mother. So a Massa married, Chloe Woodward and Chloe Woodward had parents and grandparents listed in the family search tree, Joshua Woodward and Sarah Clemens. And so actually we’ve been able to find some DNA matches descending from the Clemens family and the Woodward family.
Nicole (17m 13s):
So now what we need to do is to test this hypothesis further, by getting more test takers, to share their results with us. So we can see if these matches are really all matching Daniel Arnold descendants, or if it was just a random, like distant match who shares a lot of the same type of DNA because they all came from colonial America. You know,
Diana (17m 33s):
So I’m guessing that they don’t share very large segments of DNA. What kind of DNA are we talking about?
Nicole (17m 39s):
Yeah, we’re talking, you know, 15 to 30 cMs, the smaller amounts.
Diana (17m 45s):
So they are large enough to probably not be faults segments that they’re still small. There’s a lot of ancestors as we’re moving back in time that they could be related through. So
Nicole (17m 59s):
Exactly. And here’s what I do. Like if we just find one match, who’s really small, like eight cMs at ancestry, and maybe we find them on three lines. Then to me, that’s like, you know, 50-50 chance. That’s just a false match or related some other way. But if we can find multiple DNA matches to more than one test taker, who is a descendant of the research subject, then I start to feel confident. And especially if we can find that there are shared matches with other known descendants of Daniel Arnold, then we’re starting to build a genetic network. And it’s not just one little tiny DNA match. We have a whole bunch. So that’s why I really like this idea of adding more test takers and having better coverage of Daniel Arnold’s genome in the ancestry database.
Nicole (18m 45s):
Because then, you know, we have more people who inherited different segments of Daniel, and we can find those distant matches who only share a few segments from that line.
Diana (18m 56s):
Right? You always want to try to get the independent lines that the DNA’s coming down through, because right now you have a nice network coming down through Daniel Arnold, son, Amos, George Arnold. But then you’ve got to expand that and get matches coming down from the siblings of Daniel Arnold and start to prove this case.
Nicole (19m 17s):
Right? So let’s take a little break from Daniel Arnold, and just talk about what the definition of coverage is. So in the DNA study group, we often share an article about coverage by Paul Woodbury with our study group members, because it’s such a good explanation of what is autosomal DNA coverage. And he has a lot of great visuals and he has some calculations so formulas that you can use to calculate the coverage of an ancestor, but basically coverage is the idea that descendants of your ancestor only inherited a little bit of their DNA. So if you have a lot of descendants of that ancestor, you inherited a little bit of the DNA.
Nicole (19m 58s):
They all probably inherited some pieces that were different from each other and say, you have like 10 descendants of Daniel Arnold through different lines. And you look for all the matches that are on that. Arnold, mine, they’re all going to have some different matches that the other ones don’t have. So you’re finding more evidence for that line. And, you know, every time the DNA recombines and a new child is born in an immune generation, some of that DNA from those distant ancestors is lost. And so one of your test takers may not have inherited very much DNA from your, your research subject at all. If you’re trying to find the father, your test taker, might’ve inherited DNA from Daniel Arnold’s mother’s side.
Nicole (20m 41s):
And so it won’t help you with finding his father really. And that’s what I found with my research with John Robert dire and marshy with AARP my father-in-law’s DNA. Didn’t tell me very much about John Robert Dyer’s father, but it told me a lot about varsity with AARP’s ancestry. And that’s why I’ve worked so much on that because I found a lot of great things. So the idea that, you know, your genetic family tree doesn’t include every single one of your, you know, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade grandparents, because they drop off after so many recombinations. That’s kind of the idea that DNA coverage helps with.
Diana (21m 15s):
Yeah, that’s excellent. And I love in Paul’s article how he illustrates this by having a photograph of an ancestor, and then he has a little it’s dark, and then he has a little circle highlighting a bit of our faith and saying, well, this is what one test takers DNA could show just this much of her. And so then as you get more and more test takers, more and more of her faces revealed. So it really helps you understand how you’re getting more of the ancestors genome figured out through multiple descendants. So it’s great. You know, coverage is something that we need to always think about for any project, but especially as we are trying to prove these lines further and further back.
Nicole (22m 2s):
Absolutely. And one of the main points of his article is that it’s best to test descendants who come through independent or unique descent lines. And so thinking about like, okay, if I descend through Daniel Arnold’s son Amos, then to get better coverage, I should test somebody who descends through Daniel Arnold’s daughter Familia instead of one of my like siblings, right? So you would get better coverage of your target ancestor by going through unique child lines. And if you want to see a graphic of what this looks like, I’m, I’m sharing the website, the web page that I made to help recruit, test takers into the project. And so you can look at that.
Nicole (22m 43s):
And as a diagram that shows the children of Daniel Arnold, who had descendants because not all of them dead. And it shows how all of the test takers we’ve recruited so far come through Danielson Amos. So we’re really hoping to find some test-takers who come through any of the other children.
Diana (23m 0s):
Yeah, that’s great. And the whole way you’ve set it up with giving access to your research reports, the prior research reports that you and Alice did, and then talking about this phase, showing the diagram of the family and the test takers and the coverage, you know, it’s this great. And then the invitation to join the project. So have you been getting some takers?
Nicole (23m 25s):
Yes, we have. First I’ll tell you about how I set up this webpage and then I’ll tell you the results of asking people to
Diana (23m 33s):
Okay.
Nicole (23m 34s):
Share their results. So what I did is I went, you know, on family locket, we have our blog posts and our podcasts and our online courses, but I can also create like separate pages on family locket that it’s like a blank that I can just add whatever I want to. So I created one, this is the third time I’ve done this for an autosomal DNA project. And one of them was for my own research and another was for another client project. And so I thought this Daniel Arnold case, since we’re doing another phase would be the perfect time to do another webpage to recruit more DNA test takers. And the idea behind the page is to let people know that we are credible researchers to share the previous research and the progress that has been made to share the objective and to show, you know, why we need more test takers to kind of lend credibility to the idea that you’re going to be sharing your results with somebody you don’t know.
Nicole (24m 25s):
And so the idea is to then message people who are already, who’ve already tested at ancestry and say, would you please share with us your results? And here’s a link to learn more about the project that we’re doing and hope that they’ll share. So the first thing I put on the page is just an introduction of hi, I’m Nicole Dyer. And my team is researching this research objective about Daniel Arnold. And then the next section is the research objective. And then the next section is the research reports. So I took the two previous research reports that I wrote and that Alice wrote, and I anonymized a lot of the living people’s information in there because we wanted to show that we’ve been using DNA matches to help us, but I didn’t want to show their names.
Nicole (25m 12s):
So I just made everyone into test-taker one test-taker two. And as I did this, I saved a new version of the report. And then I created a key and a Google doc that just had a table with testing, or one is so-and-so test taker. Two is so-and-so so that I could remember who everyone was. Then I went to my lucid chart diagrams and I made a duplicate of each of those sheets and my lucid chart diagram. So I copied those and kept the originals and then made the new copies private by changing the names to test, take her and then mother for their parent. Then I got those already and uploaded them as PDF files to the page. And then the next section was just called progress made in phase three, because we’ve already found some things in this third phase that are really promising, that are matches, who descend from Chloe Woodward’s parents and their families.
Nicole (26m 5s):
So just showing that, even though we found this means to lead more DNA test takers, to help us confirm these hypothesized connections, because they’re further back and we need just a larger base of test takers to make sure we’re on the right track. So then after that section, I have the DNA test takers section, where I have a diagram showing all the people who have currently tested. And when this started, I only had two people. And then as people have been sharing their DNA with us, I’ve been adding to this and updating it, but that’s been fun. And then the next section is current coverage. And so what I said here is to find relevant matches that will help find the parents of Arnold.
Nicole (26m 45s):
More autosomal DNA test takers are needed to share their DNA test results at ancestry. The more descendants that share through independent child lines, the more coverage will be achieved. And then I sent people to read Paul’s article about covering your bases, introduction to automo DNA coverage. And then I have another diagram showing the coverage calculations that I have, and I got the idea to do this from Paul’s article. And so I decided to use kind of an umbrella coloring scheme, where the darkest people at the bottom are the test-takers and they have a hundred percent coverage of their own genome. And then as you go up to the ancestor, it reduces the coverage by half every time.
Nicole (27m 25s):
And these are just estimates obviously, but each person does only receive 50% of their DNA from their parent. So I’m one of the test takers was a hundred percent and then his mother is 50% coverage. And then her mother is 25% coverage, right? Because that grandparent didn’t take a DNA test. We just have 20, about 25% of her genome covered through her grandson who tested and then going back, we take it in half again. Well, going back that next generation is complicated because I have three children of Amos, Arnold who have to send it to a tested. So I had to like use the formula that Paul Woodbury has in his article, which was pretty complex.
Nicole (28m 7s):
And so I had to play around with it for a while and use a spreadsheet to help me make calculations. And basically everybody has given the letter. So child a and child B and child C, and then you put it in the coverage that you have of those children. So I had one child that I had 50% coverage of because his son had tested. Then I had one child of Amos who had 25% coverage because her grandchild had tested. And then I had one sibling who was Albert Arnold, and we had test takers through three of his children. So Albert Arnold, we have 84% coverage currently. So calculating the coverage of those three children, Henry who had 50% Edith who had 25% and Albert who had 84%, then it was a complicated formula of finding the, in common with each of those, to each other and then subtracting out what was the same.
Nicole (28m 58s):
So using Paul’s wonderful formulas, I was able to eventually figure out that the coverage of AMS was 63%. And then because he’s the only child of Daniel, I just divided his coverage in half to get the Daniel Arnold coverage of 31%. And actually it’s the coverage of him and his wife, Lydia, because we don’t know which DNA came from, which part of the ancestral couple. Right. We just know that we, it came from that couple.
Diana (29m 25s):
Wow. That’s a great explanation of how you did the calculation and the coverage. And the chart really is nice too. I liked the way you did the darker colors and then lighter going up. So interesting. And how great that you came up with 63% for Amos, George Arnold. I mean, that’s not a hundred percent, but it’s better than 5%. So that’s exciting. Yeah. I have to try out Paul’s formulas. They have not yet done that, but it looks fun.
Nicole (29m 56s):
Yeah. So the coverage was really a fun part and it really shows how you can achieve much better coverage by testing your cousins rather than testing your own siblings, because one sibling was added in at the end and it just really didn’t change the coverage of Daniel Arnold really very much at all, just by like half of a percent by adding a cousin through a different child of Daniel will change the coverage by quite a bit.
Diana (30m 22s):
That’s neat.
Nicole (30m 22s):
So then the next part of the webpage was to just join the project. And in order to join the project, I thought I needed some kind of form for them to fill out. So I have a Google form. If you go to forums.google.com, you can make surveys and forms and send them out to your friends and family, anybody, or you can create it with a link, which is what I did. And so people just put in their name and their email address and whether or not they’ve tested at ancestry or somewhere else. And then when people fill that out, I get a notification. Then I also have that instructions to share DNA results at ancestry. It’s an ancestry.com support article. So people can go there and they can have a step-by-step walkthrough of how to give me access, to view their DNA results.
Nicole (31m 5s):
And I just tell people like, here’s my username, and you can give me access as a viewer or a collaborator. That’s all we need. And then at the bottom, of course, they put my contact information. And that is the page that has the information about joining the project.
Diana (31m 22s):
That is such a great idea.
Nicole (31m 24s):
So I told you I was going to let you know the results of how this has gone so far. So after I created the page, we sent it out to a couple of cousins who we had known were interested in this project and shared with them the page and asked them to share their results. And they did right away and they sent it on to other cousins. And then we sent it out through ancestry messages to other DNA matches who were descended from Daniel Arnold. So far, we haven’t had responses from those cousins that we messaged with ancestry, but the other ones that we messaged through email, a lot of them shared right away. And so we went from having two test takers to having six test-takers within a week.
Nicole (32m 6s):
And it was amazing. So we went from Daniel Arnold’s coverage being 15% to being 31%.
Diana (32m 13s):
Well, how exciting.
Nicole (32m 16s):
So the next step is to just message more people who descend through different children of Daniel. If you’re wondering, how do you analyze all the DNA test results of this many people? One thing that I like to do is when I find a DNA match through through lines or in a genetic network graph or something, and I think that they are descended from the hypothesized parents of the research subject, I will just go and check the other test takers. Do they also match this person? And usually in my other research that I’ve done, I’ll find two or three out of, you know, seven or eight test takers will match the person. And if I find a DNA match who shares a small amount and doesn’t match with any other of my test takers, then I’m kind of dubious that that’s a true match.
Nicole (32m 59s):
Or, you know, maybe it’s just a small segment that no one else inherited, but I don’t like to use that as evidence because it’s harder to say that it’s correct. It’s easier to say it’s correct. If you have more matches to your test takers with that person, you know?
Diana (33m 15s):
Yeah. So are you tracking all of this in air table?
Nicole (33m 18s):
So Alice is working on it and yes, she is tracking everything in air table
Diana (33m 22s):
Because this gets complicated and it’s a lot of testing, a lot of people to keep track of. So you have to have some method, right?
Nicole (33m 31s):
Absolutely. And that’s why it was so helpful when I started getting more cousins, sharing their DNA with me, that I had already learned that air table was a good way to keep track of things. So my original air table base was just two tables, right? It was keeping track of one person’s DNA matches and research that I did about the DNA match. And I can put all the correspondence into the first table and then all the research into the second table. And then through a lot of collaborations with other people and listeners and people who follow our blog and my own learning, I realized, you know, this is going to be a great way to keep track of matches with multiple test takers. And it has been,
Diana (34m 11s):
Yeah, it really is. And the ability to group and sort just makes it so you can manage the data so easily.
Nicole (34m 19s):
It’s really true when you get, when you get more data, it makes it more challenging to stay organized. So it is helpful to have a place to put it.
Diana (34m 27s):
Yeah. Great. Thanks for telling us all about the project and sharing, you know, your hard work. It’s amazing. So all of you listening, you can go read the first two reports. You can see how the pages set up and think about if there’s something that you could do for one of your projects, something similar.
Nicole (34m 46s):
Yeah. You know, if you’ve had a brick wall for a long time and you really want to solve it, and you already have recruited several test takers, and this is like your baby project, then I would highly suggest setting up some kind of page, whether it doesn’t have to be a webpage, it could even just be a document that you send to cousins and ask them to share. Of course it is easier if it is on a website because you can have anyone click the link to go view it, but I highly encourage it. I think it’s a great way to share research and to get more people to get involved in your project. So good luck to you. As you try to recruit test takers for autosomal DNA projects, and hopefully you all get better coverage of your favorite ancestor that you’re working on.
Diana (35m 27s):
All right. Have a great week, everyone. Bye bye.
Nicole (35m 31s):
Bye bye. 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 books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.
Links
Covering Your Bases: Introduction to Autosomal DNA Coverage – by Paul Woodbury at https://www.legacytree.com/blog/introduction-autosomal-dna-coverage
Daniel Arnold Research Project to recruit test takers – https://familylocket.com/parents-of-daniel-arnold/
Research Like a Pro Resources
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
Thank you
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