Madison County Genealogical Society

Minutes of the Meeting – May 10, 2018

The May 2018 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, May 10, at 7:00 pm.

President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.

GIFT MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

Do you have a family member that is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.

The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00

Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected], about a gift membership.

May Meeting

 

On May 10, 2018, Joy Whitson Upton presented a program titled Genealogy and DNA.

 

Joy Whitson Upton, a genealogist and librarian, has taught DNA and genealogy courses at John A. Logan College since 2012 and has presented workshops on the rapidly developing topic, throughout the state, under the auspices of the Illinois State Organization, NSDAR. It was stated, “Upton’s students marvel at her ability to make a complex subject understandable and to help researchers whatever their level of knowledge.”

 

Wondering whether to send in a DNA sample for analysis? Looking for long lost relatives? Checking out the immigration story of your 4^th great grandfather? Joy Whitson Upton, librarian and genealogist, discussed the various DNA research services available, what kind of results can be expected, and how these can be applied to finding your relatives.

 

I would like to give you something personal about the Madison County Genealogy Society – Jeannette Dothager and I have both lived in this area for 41 years and the first issue of the Stalker was typed on my kitchen table by me. Every word was dictated by Bob Johnston and my cousin designed the cover. So I do have a relationship with all of you.

 

Before we get started, I want to tell you about something that happened to me. One of my great great grandfathers was Steven King. I looked for him for 25 years. I put out on Rootsweb.com, “Does anyone have any information on Steven King of Richland County, Illinois?” and gave his birth and death dates. That is all I put out there. A man in Washington, D.C., emailed me and said, “Yes, I have some additional information; and would you like a photo of him?” I said, “Oh, yes, and can I use it in my family tree?” He said, “Yes.” And when he sent it, he also sent a photo of Steven’s mother. She was born in 1794. He was descended from Steven’s second wife, and I am descended from the first wife. Keep this in mind – second wife’s descendents got the photo albums, the Bible, and all the other stuff, okay? That is a valuable lesson.

 

Current DNA covers the last five hundred years. All your other DNA (Ancient DNA) goes back 130,000 years. Before tonight is over, you will understand you are mainly from all those dead ones.

 

I want to reassure you that when you submit a DNA test to 23 and Me, you are a number thereafter – only the business office is concerned about your name. You are a number on that test tube and it stays that way except for you to know. 23 and Me is single owned. ftDNA is single owned. Ancestry is a corporation, a business, that has been bought by China at one point, by Germany at another point, and I do not know who owns them now. I have used all three.

 

You can take a test at one company and, for a small fee, you can transfer that test to ftDNA and they will use their chip to analyze it. That is the difference in the three companies; that chip they designed and what SNPs they use for analysis. It is nothing like the military. We were at a national DAR conference and an admiral that was speaking said that if they had half of a little fingernail, they could identify the remains of our veterans. The police use other chips to analyze the DNA before they can find out who you are.

 

Every company gives you a database of your DNA relatives, an ethnicity report, and let me assure you, there is no such thing as English, Irish, Welsh, or German DNA. We are talking about ancient tribes for this ethnicity report. It is a selling technique to use the other terms. Think about when Germany came into existence — 1871, because that is when “German DNA” would appear.

 

Ancestry offers the largest family tree database by far. Family Tree does surname DNA project pages. What you do is click on Join a Project, type in a surname, and everybody that has DNA with that surname shows up. 23 and Me has a health section. One of the reasons I did DNA was because my diseases were not like my mother’s family. 23 and Me sent me an email about three years after they did my DNA and told me to take it to my doctor. I was a fast metabolizer of two of my medications. You get out of these programs what you share.

 

At 23 and Me, you do surveys. Here is the latest one; I do not understand what disease it relates to. Do you have dimples? Do you have dimples when you smile? Do you have hair anywhere on your back? Is it on your shoulders or is it lower? What that relates to, I do not know. They have discovered where Parkinson’s Disease starts and they have shared that in scientific journals and are looking for methods to block it being given to the next generation and also finding a medication and cure for it.

 

The International Society of Genetic Genealogy is very new and it is totally international. The test at 23 and Me has always come out on top. It is a little more expensive, but you get more personal information for your money.

 

When you get your test results, what do you do? When I got my results and it said I had 38% Iberian and 37% Italian, I thought I had wasted my money. The Iberians are from Spain. That is where the Celts came from. The Celts are in Ireland, and Scotland. So that is where I get the Iberian. The Italian (Roman) soldiers were in Great Britain for three hundred years and you know they were not celibate. Human nature has never changed.

 

Here is what you do. Fill out a pedigree chart for four generations. If you get all these names, you will probably have about 8,000 instant ancestors if you use all four columns. The secret is to take these couples to the far right and using census records or documented trees trace their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and their great great grandchildren to the current time. Because, I cannot stress this enough, who is emailing you and saying we are cousins? It is somebody that is living now. It is not anybody four generations away.

 

Each company gives you a basic 2,000 instant cousins – your closest 2,000 cousins. Each person of these 2,000 you get, you do not know which side of the family they are from.

 

Now comes my warning – do not do a DNA test unless you can handle surprises in your family. I am very serious about this. A student of mine, a college professor, just six weeks ago, came up to me and said, “I have to talk to you privately.” I asked, “What is the matter?” She said, “A man is my closest relative and I do not know who he is.” I said, “Why not email him? See if he knows who you are.”

 

It turns out her father was a physician who got married to his first wife in 1899, and had a daughter in 1901. Both that wife and daughter died in a flu epidemic in the 20s. He got married again in the 1940s and had her. She said, “How can I prove how we are related?” Basically what it turned out to be – the man knew his maternal line back but he did not know his father. The college professor knew her father. So using census places, dates, and locations, they located the connection. Let us say this nicely – her father visited a home while he was in college, six months before he got married the first time, and he never knew he had this baby boy by the other woman.

 

Autosomal DNA is everybody on this chart and their descendents. Mitochondrial DNA is passed only by females. About thirteen different mitochondrial DNA structures have been identified in the entire world. So we are all closer than you might think. Males pass on yDNA. You may find male family members who have yDNA that does not match anyone else in the family group. Whenever there is a war, there are always gifts left behind by the 19-21 year old military members. They probably never knew they left gifts behind. These people are connected through DNA.

 

centiMorgans (cM) Think of a ruler and the inches are centiMorgans. The spaces between the centiMorgans are called SNPs. Always before when they used DNA for medical research, they used prisons, mental asylums, etc. Now they have this international database; and that is why they are making so many breakthroughs in diseases. But you do not know how many centiMorgans it takes to get the disease. If you get a report that says you have 15 of this, you do not know, it may take 1,000. So do not panic.

 

Haplogroup – Haplogroup is the ancient DNA group from which you descend.

 

MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) – The number of centiMorgans you share with someone identifies the level of the relationship. Someone created all these free tools (on the handouts for tonight). You can go in and type in the number of centiMorgans that you share, for example 186. You type that in and it will tell you exactly where on that printed chart just who the possibilities are.

 

In Common With – Say for instance, here is where I am, here is where the other person is, the part that we match, like the overlap, that is In Common With group. You may have one person there, you may have 50. The trouble is, you do not know if it is from Mom’s or Dad’s side.

 

xDNA uses markers. One such marker is dys393. That is an identified place on a chromosome and there should be 13 repeats of TATT.

 

We each have 23 pairs of chromosomes – 23 from Mom and 23 from Dad. Autosomal DNA includes the xDNA. The X is what a woman has; she gets two of them. A man cannot do anything with an X. A woman gets one X from her mother and one from her father’s grandmother. A man has one X, he gets it from his mother.

 

You want any male relative you have to do a DNA test, especially if their X will help you. No two siblings have the same DNA, except for identical twins.

 

If you connect surnames to the DNA, you will be able to see the relationships. What you have to do with the close cousins you get, is build their tree if you cannot find it. You have to build their records to find how they are related to you.

 

Mitochondrial DNA is found outside of where the 23 chromosome pairs are located and only women can pass it down to every child they have, but it stops with the man.

 

yDNA comes from the father. The DAR accepts DNA as proof by the yDNA 37 marker test. You have to have the patriot come through all men to the female applicant. You have to find someone that is of that all male lineage to do a DNA test for you. Your application has to be all men and you have to have a man do the yDNA test for you and if these two match on 37 markers, you can use it. Two years ago, in the whole nation there were only four people who had done that.

 

GEDMATCH

Once you have your DNA results, copy it to a flash drive. Your DNA will never change. Store it in another place, other than your one computer. Put it somewhere safe. GEDMATCH works with all DNA companies. It was started by two programmers interested in genealogy. They started developing tools and they did not think they ought to charge for it. This is a totally free website. They got in the population specialists and they started doing the free tools for your ethnicity. Then they got into the ancient DNA. They have one free program after another. Currently, they are only allowing you your first 2,000 closest relatives. Their database is international. I have relatives in Australia, Sweden; it boggles my mind. But do not be surprised if they email you and say, “I am a descendent from England, in such and such time, do you recognize my name?” I get the greatest response when I give them my grandparents’ surnames; not parents, grandparents – those four surnames. I ask if they will give me their grandparents’ four surnames, so we can try to figure out how we are related. Naturally, you do not do all 2,000 of them. This company is going to open their massive database for a new program. But I do not know when; it will be either sometime this year or early next year. And you can possibly have 20,000 DNA relatives.

 

If you do DNA and you want to see if we are connected, my kit number is M111042 (M stands for 23 and Me).

 

When you register with GEDMATCH, they give you a kit number. From there, you put in your kit number and up will come 2,000 relatives. The One To One Compare, that is where you put in one of the 2,000 kit numbers listed and you will see how you are related in more detail. The next one, X One To One, my X shows up in my one to many, why would I do this? Not everybody that is related on your X relates any other way with you, so you get 2,000 more.

 

Every month, you need to go in and check at GEDMATCH, because any of them that are green have knocked somebody off the bottom of your list because they are closer and I generally get about 25-30 new people. But that also means I lose 25-30 people. When I first started GEDMATCH, we were in generation 9 for my bottom connection. I am now 4.9, so that means 2,000 relatives within 5 generations. Any time there is a decimal point in the number, that indicates that there is a half sibling situation. You have to keep track of them and the program I use is another freeby, Genome Mate Pro. Genome Mate Pro is a program that takes all this information from these different companies and GEDMATCH and it will triangulate the people for you. You stand a better chance of finding your connection with someone if you have this triangulation with four people. Because you all have separate surnames, but there is going to be one that matches at least two of you, hopefully.

 

One  of my students was upset because his mother was having a child by her second husband. I told him, “You are not the first person. Think of colonial times – women died in childbirth, men got instantly married so they would have a caretaker for the baby. Men died either from an accident, an animal, Indian attack, or other things on the frontier, so she instantly needed a provider, so she got married. So there were always his kids, her kids, and our kids. So quit your bellyaching.” Anytime you see half that means you are only related by one ancestor.

 

Children of your great aunt or uncle are your second cousins if you are descendants from the same great grandparents.

 

There is a free program called DNA Painter. In it, you type in the cM that you share with a person, and it tells you what the possibilities are of your relationship.

 

Tier 1 Utilities – you can purchase this for $10 a month at GEDMATCH. It gives you a matching segments search, which is totally different. You can match segments with people. But the thing with segments is you do not know whether it is from Mom or Dad.

 

They have something called My Evil Twin. Remember we get 23 pairs of chromosomes from Mom and 23 pairs from Dad and we can use only 23 pairs. There are 23 pairs that are not used — that is my evil twin. All you have to do is put your kit number in and they will do it for you.

 

The Admixture Heritage on GEDMATCH generates a pie chart that shows the percentages of your heritage of 36 tribes (ancient DNA). There is no human DNA that does not trace back to Africa.

 

There is another free program, DNA Land, developed in New York. You only get 50 relatives, but you get all of their relatives. You click on it and not only does it show you the current cM you share with this person, but all of the ancient DNA you share with this person. After I saw that and I saw this screen, I was going to class and I thought, ‘I am full of dead stuff!’

 

This presentation was very well received and provoked many questions and comments.

 

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