Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Nicole’s research to test the hypothesis that Joanna West was Barsheba Tharp’s mother. She worked on this project for the 4th Research Like a Pro with DNA study group and shares her progress on each step. In this first part, Nicole shares her objective, clustering with Gephi, collaborating with a West researcher, the limitations of using DNA evidence for people who lived in the 1700s, making a timeline, and more.
Transcript
Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 216 Joanna West Case Study Part 1. 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. Let’s go.
Nicole (43s):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.
Diana (45s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you today?
Nicole (47s):
I’m good mom, having a good day. Getting ready to talk about my case study with you.
Diana (52s):
I’m really excited to talk about that. I think it’s always fun to work through a project and discuss all of your methodology and the steps that you took.
Nicole (1m 1s):
What’s up with you.
Diana (1m 2s):
Well, I’m back to working on client projects after taking a week off last week, I was down at Brigham young universities education week teaching two classes. Their education week runs from Tuesday through Friday and you teach every day. One of my classes was on the research process and the other one was using DNA with Genealogy. So I taught four presentations on each of those subjects throughout the week. So it was a lot of work getting ready, you know, just getting all the slides and everything in order. These were topics that we’ve taught before, but you know, it’s a little bit different audience and most of them are a little bit more beginner.
Diana (1m 43s):
So I had to really think about what level I was teaching, especially with the DNA. I was really interested to see that many, many people were there because they just wanted to know how DNA could help with their genealogy. And most of them really had questions about which tests to take. So I thought that was interesting because, you know, we have that figured out pretty well, and I was able to get lots of good advice and help. And so it was really a fun week.
Nicole (2m 13s):
Yeah. Education week at BYU is really fun. And I’m sad that I didn’t get to go with you, but it’s so neat to be able to teach family history, to people who are interested in learning all kinds of topics. And there’s all, all different subjects available at that conference. So it’s not just a family history one, but there always seems to be a lot of people that are interested in the family history track and come over to that one room where they have all the family history classes and kind of stay there all day.
Diana (2m 41s):
That’s right. And pretty much had the same group. You know, every day there were different people that would come in maybe for one or two days, and then not come another day or two, I mean, don’t take roll or anything. So I would just start recognizing the same people. And there are so many classes to choose from that I totally get, if somebody wanted to just come for a couple of the family history classes and then go hit something else.
Nicole (3m 5s):
Yeah. Speaking of DNA, I’ve been working with the DNA test results on ancestry of a new test taker who shared his results with me. Who’s a cousin on my husband’s side and he’s one generation closer than my father-in-law to the research subject. So it’s really exciting. And I’ve been kind of sorting his matches and figuring out all of his different lines so that I can narrow down to the one line that I’m interested in. And it’s exciting to find new relevant matches that are pointing to a hypothesized family for my research subject.
Diana (3m 35s):
Oh yeah. As soon as something new comes in, that’s what you want to do is just start looking down. Right. And we have a client project that has been really quite a conundrum, and it’s trying to find a biological father and just had the white DNA results come in and seeing that it was a match to our targeted test taker. So that was exciting. And we’re excited to dig in and, and see if we can now make progress on this project. So yeah, it’s really hard to keep yourself from just diving in immediately when new DNA comes in,
Nicole (4m 10s):
Right. A new piece of the puzzle.
Diana (4m 12s):
Yes. And it’s interesting how important it is to get more pieces of the DNA puzzle. Just one test taker. Seldom is enough to solve some of these really difficult cases. So adding more evidence is so important.
Nicole (4m 27s):
Yeah. And that’s actually a lot of what we’ll talk about today in my Joanna West Case Study, it just really was important to have a lot of test takers because the research question was so far back in time.
Diana (4m 36s):
Yeah. All through the week, last week, I kind of kept reiterating that point, the importance of coverage and, you know, testing the right people. So good concepts. Well, before we get to talking about your case study, let’s just do some quick announcements talking about our study groups for 2022. We’re excited to be starting research like a pro eight in September and registration is now closed for that. But registration for Research Like a Pro with DNA will begin and a few months. So just keep listening for when that will open. It’s usually about December, and that course will start in February of 2023 and it will run through the spring.
Diana (5m 21s):
So you can be thinking now if you’re ready to commit to really working on a DNA project and we have our newsletter for coupons that you can join. And you might want to think about with the DNA study group, if you’d like to be a peer group leader, and we have the application on our website. So we’re excited to be starting a new study group and tackling one of our own projects.
Nicole (5m 43s):
Yes we are. It’s always fun. So our listener spotlight today is from Kenneth and I talked with him in the chat at roots tech during the virtual exhibit hall. He’s a podcast listener. And I asked if he had any ideas for a topic. So here’s what he said, maybe something on colonial American research or something specific to Georgia, North Carolina or Virginia. I enjoy the case study ones. It helps to hear the strategies and practice. The last few episodes I listened to were about fan club research, which I’m going to attempt for the first time soon. Any strategies similar to that would be great. Also how to, or a case study on using DNA for brick walls from the late 17 hundreds to the early 18 hundreds, to be nice.
Nicole (6m 26s):
I’m having trouble with a few in Alliance and using DNA for people from that time period seems to be more difficult than for recent people. Most of the articles or videos on DNA are more focused on more recent generations. And how true is that? And I thought that was such a good comment to read for this case study, because today we are talking about using DNA for a distant research question in the 17 and 18 hundreds. So we’ll talk about strategies for how to do that today.
Diana (6m 54s):
Well, that is perfect. And I love the idea of talking more about colonial American research, especially with Georgia, North Carolina or Virginia, because we both just took that course. And so we can have some episodes coming up with some of our tips for that as well.
Nicole (7m 11s):
Yeah, absolutely. And have you decided on what you’re doing for the study group yet? Because some of your research is in that time period in Georgia and Virginia,
Diana (7m 21s):
I am still considering working on the Dillard case. And I am thinking of maybe working on George W. Dillard and figuring out his line, going back, maybe trying to find his siblings to see if maybe one of his siblings was the parent of Cynthia Dillard. And he liked to Dillard because I have the matches to Elijah Dillard, but no clues from him about who his father was, but they all kind of lead back to George w Diller just based on locality and time.
Diana (8m 1s):
So I’m considering that I’m also considering my Klein research, which is kind of stuck in Missouri about mid 18 hundreds. So I don’t know, I’m still thinking a bit about what I want to do.
Nicole (8m 13s):
It’s always hard to decide so fun to make progress within the study group on the line that you’ve always wanted to work on. So
Diana (8m 19s):
It really is fun.
Nicole (8m 20s):
It’s a good opportunity. All right, well, let’s get started on the case study. So some background on this, this all comes back to my husband’s line. So I married into the dire family and was helping my husband with some family history research and realize that, you know, that his third great grandfather, John Robert Dyer, that was kind of a brick wall in the, the trees that had parents for him were pretty obviously incorrect. So I started working on that and in the first DNA study group, I found some matches that actually went back to his wife’s side of the family and Barsheba Tharp. So I kind of switched over to start working on that side since I was a little more obvious.
Nicole (9m 3s):
And we didn’t know her parents either in the DNA study groups, I’ve kind of progressed from learning about John Robert dire to his wife, Barsheba Tharp. And in one of the study groups, I was able to find Barsheba Tharp was the daughter of Louis Thorpe who lived in Hawkins county, Tennessee in the early 18 hundreds. But Louis Thorpe had two wives. And I know I’ve talked about this before, and it wasn’t clear based on the DNA matches. There were a lot of DNA matches descending from his second wife, Judy Vernon, with high amounts and the first wife Joanna West, she, we only had matches to one of her other children, Elizabeth, our parrot and the matches were kind of small.
Nicole (9m 44s):
So in my mind it was pretty clear, oh, Judy Vernon must be Barsheba his mother, the matches are stronger. But as I continued to research, just had kind of a lot of red flags and some conflicts with Barsheba his birthdate. And we didn’t know when exactly she was born. The records were all over the place from 18, 13 to 1818. And so if she was born after the marriage to Judy Vernon, which was in 1817, she would have been Judy’s daughter. But if she was born before that marriage, she would have been Joanna West daughter. So my original hypothesis that she was Judy’s daughter, but then it just didn’t really feel right. And I couldn’t find any matches to any Vernon’s.
Nicole (10m 25s):
So then I kind of switched over and to the hypothesis that it must be that Joanna West was the mother of Barsheba Tharp. And as I went down that path, I did start finding matches that came down from that other side, the west side of the family. And so that’s when I decided to really dig into this hypothesis and the Research Like a Pro with DNA number four study group. So the objective that I came to for the study group was this was Joanna West, the biological mother of Barsheba Tharp dire Barsheba was the wife of John Robert dire. And they resided in Hawkins county, Tennessee from 1830 to 1880 Barsheba was born about 18, 13 to 1818 in Hopkins county, Tennessee.
Nicole (11m 11s):
And was the daughter of Louis Thorpe. Lewis was born 1786 in Fauquier county. Virginia Lewis was married twice first to Joanna West in 1805 in Foggia, Virginia, and second to Judy Vernon in 1817 in Hawkins county, Tennessee.
Diana (11m 27s):
That’s a great objective. You did all the right things with giving us some specific names and dates and places. And then also really identifying what you want to find out, which is testing that hypothesis. That Joanna West was the biological mother of Barsheba. So I think that’s so important in DNA where rather than saying who is the mother, which, you know, you’d already done a couple of projects working on that, but now that you’ve got the hypothesis, now this one can go forward either proving or disproving doubt. So I would just want it to make a comment or maybe pose a question that you were getting matches from both of the wives.
Diana (12m 8s):
And so obviously only one of them can be the mother. So those DNA matches are probably inheriting, you know, for the one that isn’t the mother inheriting, the segments that are actually coming from the father,
Nicole (12m 21s):
Right? Yes. Because you know, he was married twice. And so I didn’t know which one was the mother. And so the relationships to the descendants of one of the wives is going to be half fourth cousins. And then two, the other wife would be full fourth cousins. And so I thought the amounts of shared DNA would be able to show that by one being higher and the other being lower. But what I actually think happened is the second wife was younger. Her children were born later and there’s fewer generations. So some of them are like half third cousins once removed and a little bit closer. Also Louis Arpin, his second wife had a lot more children.
Nicole (13m 1s):
And so there’s just a lot more matches and a lot more of an opportunity for those matches to have inherited the same segments that Barsheba his descendants inherited from Louis Thorpe. So even though those matches were higher, it was just because there were more of them and some of them were low and some were high. So it was kind of confusing to figure out. But what eventually helped me come to the hypothesis that Joanna West was the mother was the matches going back further generations to Joanna’s parents and grandparents. And great-grandparents
Diana (13m 38s):
Right. And that’s what you always want to look for going back to the next generation. And that’s how you determine which wife
Nicole (13m 46s):
You’ve
Diana (13m 46s):
Already descended through. That it’s such a simple thing, but yet, unless it’s pointed out or you stumble upon that idea for yourself, you know, you may be missing them
Nicole (13m 56s):
Well. And the obvious idea to do at first was to test the mitochondrial DNA. And so I did that and I had a test taker from Barsheba and then I found another test taker, but they didn’t test. And so I kind of turn toward this other hypothesis that could be an analyzed in the Automile DNA. And while I still want to do the mitochondrial testing, I wanted to make sure that I was using the evidence I already had from all the AutoZone test takers that I have, because it’s already there. It’s still in my plan to do the mitochondrial testing, but this was a project to review what I already had in autosomal testing.
Diana (14m 39s):
Yeah. I think that’s a great methodology.
Nicole (14m 42s):
So I mentioned, you know, Joanna West and her parents and grandparents and stuff I had found out about this research from just what was out there and family trees. And I stumbled upon a researcher named Mike, who I got in contact with, who was descended from Joanna West father, John West. And he had done a ton of research in land and probate records for the west family. We already knew Joanna was the daughter of John West from her marriage record to Louis Thorpe, where John West gave permission. And Mike had figured out that Joanna’s father John West was married twice.
Nicole (15m 22s):
And first he was married to Bathsheba Arnold. And second, he was married to Sally web. And Mike was a descendant through the second rife Sally web. And he had done a lot of research to figure out more about John West. He wanted to know John West parents. So he had traced John West back in time to FOC your county, Virginia, which is also where Louis Thorpe came from. They were associates and had moved to Hawkins county seemingly together. And so Mike had found a lot of evidence connecting John West to his first wife passed Shiva and her parents Humphrey Arnold and Ann Arnold.
Nicole (16m 3s):
And some people entries call her Harriet and Smith. But in the records, I was only able to find that it listed Humphrey Arnold and his wife Anne. So I don’t know where the Harriet Smith part came from, but that’s in the trees. But anyways, Mike had found a bunch of documents, land records, mostly he had done some land planting and found that they live near each other. And that Humphrey Arnold had bequeathed land John West and his wife, Beth Shiva. So he had kind of pieced it all together already. So this was really helpful because I now had this line that I could check against to see if there’s DNA matches coming down from John West and Barsheba, and also coming down from Humphrey Arnold and Anne.
Nicole (16m 45s):
And to see if, you know, those matches were connected to descendants of Barsheba Tharp dire to test the hypothesis.
Diana (16m 53s):
Yeah, that is great. And I love to hear about that collaboration with Mike who had done so much work on the west, and as you were talking, I was thinking about the importance of this documentary research portion of the project, because, you know, you might think that when you go that far back, you just need to rely on DNA. But of course that’s never, never correct. We always have to dig into the documents and make sure things make sense in the documentary evidence. So this is such a good example of that.
Nicole (17m 28s):
Yeah. The documentary evidence really was very clear and it was a helpful guide to have that because sometimes at this time period, there isn’t clear documentary evidence linking the generations. And so it becomes very muddled and you can’t really use the DNA unless you have clear evidence of parent child relationships. So there’s other cases I’ve worked on where I just wasn’t able to make a lot of progress because of that lack of documents.
Diana (17m 58s):
Right. So you’ve got your objective. What is the next step that you did?
Nicole (18m 4s):
Well, that’s kind of what I wanted to work on coming into the study group. And then the first step of the study group week one is about clustering. The DNA matches assessing the matches, doing pedigree analysis and kind of, you know, a step for people who maybe don’t know what they want to work on to figure out some different objectives. So what I decided to work on sincerity kind of knew my focus. I decided to work on making an, a new clustering, a network graph for a different descendant of Barsheba Tharp Dyer. And the one that I chose was through her daughter, Elizabeth Francis Dyer. And I had seen that she had shared a lot of DNA with this side of the family, with Joanna West, other daughter, Elizabeth parrot.
Nicole (18m 48s):
And so I thought maybe she would have a stronger connection to the Joanna West side. So I decided to make an, a network graph using gefi a, an open source program to cluster DNA matches using the downloaded spreadsheets from DNA Jed comb client using that software. I downloaded the matches from ancestry and the shared matches. So I had two spreadsheets, the list of matches and the list of in common with or shared matches, and then import those into the Gephi network graph program. And then you can make a cluster network graph. And when I did that, I was able to pull out just clusters that were relevant to the project.
Nicole (19m 32s):
So I focused on the paternal clusters that were connected to the DIYers and the tarps. And so when I just selected those clusters, then I set the graph to request her. And I laid it out again to pull apart those clusters into smaller groupings and ran the modularity again, which gave me more clusters. Then this helped me to find a group of matches who were descendants of Barsheba Tharp dire. And so those are my base test takers who I’ve proven are relevant descendants of Barsheba.
Nicole (20m 12s):
Then I found a connected group of matches who were descendants of Louis DARPin, Joanna West daughter, Elizabeth art parrot, and then another cluster, a really big one that appeared to be people who all descended from Humphrey, Arnold and Harriet and Smith of funkier county, Virginia. And so they all have that name, those names in their tree. And this was exciting to see, you know, so many matches who seem to be descendants of the hypothesized great-grandparents of Barsheba Tharp Dyer.
Diana (20m 48s):
Wow. That is exciting. And they must’ve had a large family as well, or just had a lot of people test.
Nicole (20m 55s):
Yes. They had a large family, they had a bunch of children and those children had a lot of children.
Diana (21m 1s):
That’s really helpful when you’re working that far back. So these would be matches that I would assume did not share a lot of DNA. These would be smaller matches because they’re so far back from your test taker.
Nicole (21m 15s):
Yeah, you’re right. And I try to focus on those, the charity, no more than 15 Santa Morgans and using a network graph, the lower your threshold is the messier the graph gets. So the threshold I think I was working with was 15 Santa Morgan. So I didn’t have all the matches in there that were smaller than that. And so that helped me to focus on matches that were probably not false matches. Yeah. So I would say they were sharing 15 Santa Morgan’s up to 40 Santa Morgan’s about their
Diana (21m 47s):
Did. A lot of those matches have trees. I’m guessing that they had trees. So that’s how you could easily identify that cluster.
Nicole (21m 54s):
Yeah. And this first week of the study group, I was just focusing on ones that had really big obvious trees. So I think at that time I found like three or four matches in the cluster whose trees were going back to the Humphrey Arnold and Harry Dan Smith couple. And what’s exciting is when you can find three or four from a cluster who go back, you can hypothesize that all the rest of the people in that cluster are probably also descendants that couple or along that line.
Diana (22m 20s):
That’s really great. Well, in another way, I have found matches going to a hypothesis is using through lines and, you know, connecting your tree to a hypothesis. And then seeing if you get some through line matches what you have to also analyze, but that’s another method for finding some matches to people that go far back that have trees.
Nicole (22m 41s):
Absolutely. It’s a good clue. And, and that’s another way to find matches who are smaller than can be on a network graph too. It’s just important to check their shared matches and make sure they’re in the right genetic network and staff,
Diana (22m 54s):
Just one of the advantages I think to gefi because you see those clusters form pretty clearly, and then you can also see connections to other clusters, which you don’t see in through lines. You only get the people in one group, you don’t see how they might be connected other ways as well. So
Nicole (23m 14s):
Right through lines, doesn’t look at shared matches at all. And sometimes, you know, I’ve found a through lines that just has people from all different clusters and just really small matches. They’re all incorrect, but often they are correct. And so you just have to review it just like any other authored source. Right. Okay. With the second week, that purpose of that lesson was to review your objective. If you haven’t created one yet. And see if your research objective is viable, the limitations of it will be and make a lucid chart or a diagram showing the descendants of your research subject.
Nicole (23m 54s):
So with my objective, I did have a pretty big limitation, which was that I was using AutoZone DNA and the objective was pretty distant in time. However, I had identified over 10 test takers who were descendants of Barsheba Tharp Dyer, and I was able to identify relevant AutoZone cell DNA matches in several of those based test takers results. So I was feeling pretty confident that this objective was going to be possible to find, you know, evidence that would help support it. And that would, wouldn’t be a waste of time. Then I traded the matches descending from Barsheba Tharp mother’s side, using lucid charts.
Nicole (24m 37s):
Since I had matches coming from several different ancestral couples that were helping provide evidence that Joanna West was the mother of Barsheba. I used color to show the different lines of descent. So I had all the matches who are descendants of Barsheba is one color. And then all the matches who are descendants of Joanna West, another color, and then match descending from John West or another color. And since he had two wives, I put all the matches for one wife on the left, the matches for the other wife on the right. But I kept them all the same color for that generation. And then going back to Beth Shiva, Arnold’s parents, Humphrey Arnold, and Harriet and Smith.
Nicole (25m 19s):
That’s where I had the most matches. And those were all in red. And so I had a bunch of matches from that line. So being able to see all of these groups by color kind of helped me see where I was missing. Some people I really needed to find more matches from John West and his two wives. And so I, I kind of made that a goal for my research plan cause I had, you know, Humphrey Arnold that generation, but I thought it would add stronger evidence to my case to find several matches from each of these generations.
Diana (25m 54s):
And how could you ever keep all this straight if you didn’t have a drawn out in your lucid chart? Right. It would be so confusing. I was teaching this step last week and during education week and mentioned that you can use a program like lucid chart or diagrams.net, which are both very, very similar, or you can just see a sticky notes on a whiteboard or paper and pencil. You know, we like doing the digital diagrams because we can obviously move them around and change them. I don’t have to redraw things, but often when I have something I’m trying to figure out and I don’t want to open up my computer, I’ll just sit and jot down on paper, the connections and try to figure out something, you know, a little bit more simple.
Diana (26m 40s):
But for these complicated cases, oh my word, you really have to have a good diagram going.
Nicole (26m 48s):
Yeah. And it, I even needed to refer back to my pedigree chart all the time because I have Barsheba Tharp dire. Then the next generation is Joanna West and Louis Thorpe. And then the next generation is John West and mushy by Arnold. And then the next generation is Humphrey Arnold. And, and, and so I had all these generations to keep track of too. So I needed like multiple charts to help me keep everything straight.
Diana (27m 12s):
Yeah. And after you’ve worked with a family for awhile, you do kind of start to get them in their right place, but it can take awhile before you can visualize without looking at the pedigree chart where everybody is, what generation they’re in, especially when you have those names that are similar, like Barsheba, you know, to Barsheba okay.
Nicole (27m 30s):
Which was amazing because that was really, I felt strong evidence for this being the correct family lit, you know, Joanna named her daughter after her mother.
Diana (27m 41s):
Right. Right. We always want to look at naming patterns, especially during this time because they are prevalent.
Nicole (27m 47s):
Exactly. Well, the next week was about gathering everything. You already have into a timeline to organize it, making citations for that and file organization. So this was something that really helped me because I had kind of, you know, done some off and on research. Mike had sent me a lot of research and I really needed to get it organized to see what I had and what was missing so that I could make my research plan. So I worked on making folders, you know, in my file organization with each surname. So I had folders for dire Thorpe, west Arnold and Smith. And I added the people who I was working on within those folders. And then in air table, I worked on making a timeline and I already had a lot of information from my previous work on Barsheba Tharp father, Louis Thorpe.
Nicole (28m 34s):
I had documentation for his marriage to Joanna West. I had joined his father John West. So I added those things to my timeline from my previous work. And then, so I was just kind of copying, pasting things in. And then I added in a lot of the things that Mike had, which were derivative records that he had sent me. And so I was putting in like, okay, there’s a land record and there’s a will, but he hadn’t sent me the originals. So I was just putting in the derivatives because I had already done a lot of work on Louis Thorpe and Joanna West. This timeline was focused more on John West and bashy, but Arnold and then Bashi of his parents, Humphrey Arnold and Anne. So that was mostly what was in the timeline was kind of the details that I had gathered about them.
Nicole (29m 17s):
And so that was a helpful step to really getting organized and seeing what I had.
Diana (29m 23s):
So for your timeline, did you do a completely new timeline or did you just add them to your existing timeline and then use the grouping feature of air table to view just the records for John and Beth Sheba? Or how did you do that?
Nicole (29m 39s):
I started a new one and copied and pasted in a few things that were relevant, but mostly I was just starting a new one with information from Mike about John West and his wife, Bathsheba Arnold, and then Bathsheba’s parents. So I did add in the names of the people so I could group it because there were three generations here that was really helpful to being able to see what I had on each generation.
Diana (30m 7s):
So, because this was a whole new objective, did you just start a whole new air table?
Nicole (30m 12s):
Yep. What I usually do with that is I just start a new one and then I can copy and paste over any relevant things I want to use. The other air table base that I had was focused on Louis Tarpon and the Tharp side. So I didn’t want to use that one.
Diana (30m 28s):
Yeah, that makes sense. And it is really nice that you can just take some of those relevant things from the timeline and just easily copy and paste them into the new air table. But when you do your tables by objectives, it makes sense to start something new.
Nicole (30m 44s):
Also, it helps to think about the evidence you have for this research question, because you already have seen this information and it helped with the different objective, but now how does it apply to this question and what evidence does it provide about Barsheba being the daughter of Joanna West? You know what I mean?
Diana (31m 3s):
Yeah, absolutely. You’re looking at things with a different focus that makes a difference.
Nicole (31m 8s):
Yup. So for week four, this lesson was about analyzing your sources and your DNA matches. So during this assignment, I worked on analyzing a lot of matches and I had added a bunch of matches to my air table base that I hadn’t added in lucid chart yet. So I updated my lucid chart diagram and put all the people in there and really made my diagram good and analyze the amounts of shared DNA with the relationships. And that wasn’t too hard because the relationships are all like fifth cousin and they’re all sharing about 30 Senna Morgans or less. So it was pretty straightforward as far as, okay.
Nicole (31m 50s):
Yep. This is, this fits and could be true. And just got a lot of ideas for my research plan for what I would need to do.
Diana (31m 58s):
Isn’t it nice to just have this be one step at a time to focus on, you know, it just really makes you take your time and just realize you don’t have to do this project all at once. Just do this step and the next week we’re going to do another step. You know, it’s what I love about the study group and having this process down,
Nicole (32m 16s):
Right. And then the next three weeks were about locality and ethnicity and exploring DNA tools. So we five, I looked at the ethnicity of a lot of my base test takers and I noticed that some of them had the early Virginia settlers community, including the descendant that I made the network graph of who was through Barsheba starter Elizabeth Francis Dyer. And so some of them had inherited a lot of segments from this Fauquier county group that settled in your county, Virginia, and other of the test-takers didn’t have that community. And so it just kind of showed how recombination make some ancestors come through stronger and others not at all.
Nicole (32m 58s):
And then in week six, it was to explore genetic network tools. So I played with gefi and worked on a network graph for a different descendant of VRSII with our Dyer playing with the modularity setting. I had watched a video on YouTube about Giphy from David Vance. And he talked about, you know, if you had put the modularity up higher, it gives you less clusters. And if you have the modularity be lower, like one, then you get more clusters. And so I wanted to see if that played out. So I adjusted the modularity to five and then I got nine clusters.
Nicole (33m 38s):
And one of the clusters was like one whole half of the network graph. And it was the whole paternal side. And then the maternal side had been broken down into eight other clusters. And then I tried again to run modularity with the number one, and that gave me 28 clusters. And so I thought that was interesting to see how I can adjust the settings and it kind of work on walking the clusters back and you can see like with, if it just breaks it down into two, then you get a maternal side and a paternal side. And then if you lower the modularity a little at a time, you get clusters for each of the four grandparents’ sides and then lower the modularity down. Even more, you get more smaller clusters groups representing more distant ancestors.
Nicole (34m 22s):
So that was fun. I didn’t find that this test taker had a lot of matches relevant to the project, but I did enjoy playing with Gephi and then week seven was a segment tools. And so I ended up using the auto segment report from genetic affairs on family tree DNA. And I found a relevant person, a match through descended from Joanna West, other daughter, Elizabeth tarp parrot. And so that was really helpful to paint her to my DNA painter profile for my father-in-law and was happy to use this match, define more descendants of Joanna West to include in the project.
Diana (35m 4s):
Let’s go back to, you know, gefi for just a minute, what you explained, what happened when you adjusted the modularity, but I think it might be helpful if you just kind of define modularity.
Nicole (35m 15s):
So when you run modularity, that’s how it gefi uses a, an algorithm to look at how many people are connected to each other and separate them into clusters or groups of people who are communities. And I kind of researched the algorithm that was used, and I don’t remember the name of it, but gefi uses a algorithm for their modularity. And then basically it looks at how many connections, how tightly related are these groups. So you can change the settings for that to look for looser groups. And I think that’s what happens when you adjust the modularity to be higher.
Nicole (35m 56s):
And so it includes more and more people. And then if you put the modularity lower, it’s breaking it down into smaller communities that are more tightly related. And I’m not sure if I’m explaining that. Right, but that’s kind of how I,
Diana (36m 10s):
Yeah. It’s just helpful to know a little bit about how a tool is working.
Nicole (36m 15s):
Yeah. I wish I really understood it more, but it was very mathematical and focusing very like you’d need to background and like, I don’t know, statistics or something,
Diana (36m 28s):
And we’re just grateful that there are people that have built tools like this summer. We don’t have to understand it all to use it. It’s the same way with all the DNA testing companies, you know, we don’t need to understand their algorithms. They don’t really reveal their algorithms. We just are happy that we get some results to work with
Nicole (36m 45s):
Knowing a little bit of how it works, can help you analyze the information you’re seeing, right? Like with my heritage, knowing that these amputation for their DNA matches can help you understand why sometimes there’s errors, because sometimes they’re guessing what snips would be there because they’re taking tests from different companies that tested different snips. So it is helpful to learn as much as we can about how they’re the algorithms work, but at the same time, you’re right. We don’t have to like be experts at it and know everything to be able to use the evidence.
Diana (37m 18s):
Right. So what else are we going to talk about with your project?
Nicole (37m 23s):
Well, for this episode, let’s end with research planning. So week eight of the study group was to create a research plan. And now that I had reviewed, you know, all the information from a timeline, I had explored some different tools to see if they would be helpful. And I was able to kind of put together everything into a plan. And so for my plan, I decided to find the original deeds and wills for John West and Humphrey Arnold. Then I also wanted to work on finding evidence for parent child links for Humphrey Arnold, to all of his children, since they had so many DNA matches to all of his children. I wanted to make sure that those children were accurately placed in his family.
Nicole (38m 6s):
And so I focused on looking in Fauquier county, Virginia marriage bonds, and also published genealogies and trees related to that family to see what evidence they had already found, and then just kind of go forward from there. And then as far as finding more relevant DNA matches, my goal was to use the network graph that I had made for the descendant of Elizabeth Francis Dyer, just working on pedigree triangulation for that cluster. I had identified that had so many matches in it and try to find a lot of matches for Humphrey Arnold’s descendants. And, and also hopefully for John West ascendance to, since I realized I was lacking in that generation.
Nicole (38m 49s):
So that was kind of my research plan. It wasn’t too big. It was just really focused on finding original records from those derivatives and then finding more matches and verifying parent-child links for that first generation of Humphrey Arnold’s children.
Diana (39m 3s):
Right. And I think that that’s a good description of it, that it wasn’t too complicated. You didn’t plan to use a bunch of different DNA tools. You were just working within your network graph and checking the evidence. There, there was so much to work with there. So, you know, with the DNA study group, we just recommend that people choose two or three things for documentary two or three things for DNA, keep it simple and just really work through your plan that keeps it from getting overwhelmed with your research.
Nicole (39m 36s):
Yes. And really what it comes down to with DNA evidence is being able to approve parent-child blinks and finding people who are in the same cluster, going back to your hypothesized parents. So right. Once you can get to that point of finding those matches, and you’re just doing a lot of reviewing trees and then looking for documentary evidence.
Diana (40m 1s):
Right. Well, thanks for watching us through all of the steps that you’ve been taking so far in this project. It’s just fun to break it down and hear how you tackle each one. So I’m excited to talk next time about what you actually found. So I have your conclusion.
Nicole (40m 18s):
Yeah, next time. We’ll go through my findings and the report and talking about the evidence that led me to the conclusion that I came to. So that’ll be fun.
Diana (40m 27s):
All right. Well, everyone have a great week and we will talk to you next time.
Nicole (40m 33s):
Bye everyone.
Diana (40m 34s):
Bye bye.
Nicole (40m 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 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
Find More Ancestors with Autosomal DNA by Increasing Coverage Part 2: Barsheba Tharp’s Mother by Nicole at Family Locket – https://familylocket.com/find-more-ancestors-with-autosomal-dna-by-increasing-coverage-part-2-barsheba-tharps-mother/
RLP 154: Barsheba Tharp DNA Case Study Part 1 – https://familylocket.com/rlp-154-barsheba-tharp-dna-case-study-part-1/
RLP 155: Barsheba Tharp DNA Case Study Part 2 – https://familylocket.com/rlp-155-barsheba-tharp-dna-case-study-part-2/
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
Thanks for listening! We hope that you will share your thoughts about our podcast and help us out by doing the following:
Write a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, we will read it on the podcast and answer any questions that you bring up in your review. Thank you!
Leave a comment in the comment or question in the comment section below.
Share the episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive notifications of new episodes – https://familylocket.com/sign-
Check out this list of genealogy podcasts from Feedspot: Top 20 Genealogy Podcasts – https://blog.feedspot.com/
Leave a Reply
Thanks for the note!