Serious Genealogy

26/10/2022

xkcd comic today was on point! :)
both for the metal S and for the Rosalind reference.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/rosalind-franklin-a-crucial-contribution-6538012/

"Although I hear they were caught cheating off of Rosalind, who sat at a desk in front of them."

06/10/2022

If you're curious as to why people charge for genealogical research... check out Dana Leeds' webinar outlining her research which stitched together an incredible story! https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/one-man-multiple-names-a-dna-based-case-study/ (free to watch until mid-October)

Sometimes our ancestors seem to have appeared out of nowhere. That was the case with William Emmitt Hunter whose life before his 1910 Oklahoma marriage was...

04/10/2022

On this day in 1582 (yes, you read that right), Europeans switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian The Julian wasn't a complete match to the astronomical year, so the spring equinox had shifted by 10 days; to make up for that, the days October 5-14 were skipped in 1582. So today was October 4, tomorrow the 15th. Makes our daylight savings complaints look kind of lame, right?

19/09/2022

I'm using an index to the obituaries found in the Belvedere (NJ) Apollo today, and the finding aid says:

In many other cases, a last name is given with no first name, but there are designations such as “infant son,” “young daughter,” “male,” “daughter,” “unnamed child,” “murderer,” etc.

I love that murderer is there often enough that there's a protocol. Genealogy is so weird.

06/09/2022

Why is it whenever I'm researching someone who homesteaded, there's a story of "hearty pioneer chases off bear/wild boar/longhorn bull while un-armed." Either this was something that happened on the regular to EVERYONE or somebody's telling some fishing tales. (Or the ones who didn't do it successfully didn't survive to have kids who then shared the stories...)

27/08/2022

Small spelling errors in old handwritten documents make me smile. Like the will that referred to the "diseased" instead of "deceased" or a marriage certificate that claims the ceremony took place in the "presents" of the witnesses.

26/08/2022

Sometimes you read a transcribed name and you wonder how someone could mistake "Wallace" for "Wallelal" (the latter not being a name commonly used in 1930s Michigan, AFAIK). Well, it's because Ancestry has an AI doing most of the transcriptions and apparently they tweaked it even more for the 1950 US Census by creating some very realistic dummy data.

Access to this highly anticipated census collection will be available to search  sooner than any previous census collection   Using new, proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) handw...

29/06/2022

"This week marks one decade since CRISPR made its public debut in an academic paper named, 'A Programmable Dual-RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity.' Which is like if 'Alice in Wonderland' was named 'Girl Takes a Nap'."

CRISPR debuted in an academic paper ten years ago.

01/07/2021

As PRIDE month wraps up, an important thing to remember is that gender-at-birth is not as simple as your high school biology teacher implied. There's a lot of genes that go in to determining what biological s*x traits you show, and that's before you toss in personal, emotional, social and behavioural factors. Gender is designed to be a spectrum, not a binary switch.

S*x is pretty simple: you’re either male or female, right? Nope! Turns out it’s not nearly that straightforward. In fact, it’s pretty darned complicated. That’s why a rec…

14/06/2021

I'm a taster, I checked, but even if I hadn't, I know broccoli tastes bitter (for me)!

Being able to taste bitter foods might give you some protection from covid.

01/02/2021

This is a really good explanation of how DNA works and what questions we can and cannot answer using the current tests. Sometimes a question can be answered simply by getting a distant cousin to test, and sometimes the answer is just, "maybe there'll be a document somewhere that says?"

If you're thinking about doing genetic testing to find answers, tell me about it below, or in an IM! I'm always curious to know what questions motivate people.

Understanding the biologial journey of genetic inheritance can help in the interpretation of DNA evidence for genealogy research.*This article originally appeared in NGS Magazine, and is reprinted with permission.Different DNA inheritance paths can help solve genealogical mysteries. These unique inh...

17/01/2021

In the minds of many, Ancestry is a company that helps you trace your roots. The whole set up of their business revolved around that, until they tried adding health stuff. But I believe their health division suffered because consumers don't think of them as medical. Honestly, even as a genealogical professional, I don't really think of them as a source for medical information.

Genetic-related medical information is still a domain dominated by 23 and Me, who regularly publish new discoveries in scientific journals, and is where I was looking for information on COVID's possible genetic links.

Ancestry.com LLC is ending a 15-month effort to sell customers genetic insights into their health, the latest sign of trouble in the consumer DNA-testing industry.