Newsletter - 26th February 2018
Last chance for Findmypast offer ENDS WEDNESDAY
Free cousins ENDS TUESDAY
Why DNA matches aren't always as close as they seem
Save 40% on Who Do You
Think You Are? subscriptions
RootsTech COMING
SOON
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 22nd February)
click here; to find earlier articles use the
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Last chance
for Findmypast offer ENDS WEDNESDAY
You've got until midnight
(London time) on Wednesday to take advantage of the 10% discount on NEW World
& Pro subscriptions and save up to £28 in total. Please see this article
for full details, including how you can get a free LostCousins
subscription.
Tip: please read the instructions in the article
carefully!
Free cousins ENDS TUESDAY
Those of you who have been
taking part in the LostCousins project to connect
cousins around the world have done so well over the weekend that I've decided
to extend the free period for an extra 24 hours. If you haven’t entered all of your relatives from 1881 - and the chances are you
haven't, even if you think you have - now's the time to do it.
Tip: several members found cousins not by entering
additional relatives but by correcting entries they'd made previously. The grey
arrows are there to help you check your entries quickly and easily - even if
you don’t have time to add anyone else, please spare 5 minutes to check the
relatives you've already entered.
Long before civil
registration began, long before parish registers were kept, even before humans
could write, our ancestors were keeping genealogical records They didn't know
it, but in their DNA they carried remnants of their
own ancestors' DNA, just as their descendants would, in turn, inherit theirs.
And yet, ignorant as they were by today's standards, all parents knew instinctively
that their children would inherit some of their own characteristics - they just
didn’t know how it worked.
Gregor Mendel, the
Augustinian friar who is now recognised as founding the science of genetics
with his experiments on pea plants, didn't commence his research until 1856,
yet the DNA that my great-grandmother inherited more than a decade earlier in
1842, and passed on to her own children, has confirmed the identity of her
father - and connected me with several of my own living cousins.
The thing is, we don't
necessarily need to understand how DNA works for it to be useful - so the way
that Ancestry shield their users from the detail, frustrating as it may be for
experts, makes things a lot easier for beginners. After all, when it comes to
DNA, most of us are beginners, even though we may have been researching our
family tree in the conventional way for 40 or 50 years.
They say that a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's never been more
true. Millions of DNA tests have been sold to people who know nothing
about genealogy, yet the vast majority of seasoned
family historians have yet to test themselves, let alone their cousins (which
is when it really pays off). So here are some simple facts for those of you who are
still hesitating:
- Anyone can take a DNA test - the tests that you regularly see mentioned in
my newsletter are all autosomal DNA tests, the sort that can be taken by
both men and women
- It doesn't hurt - Ancestry ask for a sample of saliva, some
other companies ask for a scraping from the inside of your cheek
- You don’t have to be an Ancestry
subscriber to take their test - if you’re not, the main limitation is that you
have to ask to view your cousins' trees, even if
they are public trees, but……
- You might be offered a big discount - many people who buy an Ancestry DNA test are
offered a reduced price subscription if they don’t already have one; what
you save on the subscription goes a long way towards paying for the DNA
test
- You don't have to upload your tree - but I'd recommend that you do, as it will make
it easier for you and easier for your cousins too
- Your tree doesn't have to be public - my own tree at Ancestry is private, but this
hasn't stopped me knocking down several longstanding 'brick walls' and
connecting with numerous new cousins (I found two new cousins just this
weekend)
- You will get thousands of matches
with cousins - in fact you'll
have so many matches with 'genetic cousins' that you won't have time to
look at them all; the biggest problem is figuring out how you're connected
to them, and that's where traditional records-based research is crucially
important, and why…..
- DNA complements conventional
research - it isn't a substitute
for looking up records, and it certainly isn’t a quick fix for somebody
who is too busy or too lazy (they’d be better off hiring a professional
genealogist)
I recommend Ancestry DNA, not
because it's the cheapest test (it isn't), but because they have by far the
biggest database of results. Buying a different test because it's cheaper is a
false economy - I'm sure you don't want to end up like me, having to test all
over again in order to get access to the thousands of
cousins who tested with Ancestry.
Tip: when you test with Ancestry you can transfer your
results to other websites, such as GEDmatch and
FTDNA. But it doesn't work the other way round - if
you test with different company you can't transfer your results to Ancestry.
If you live in the UK or Ireland
you can save 20% on Ancestry DNA tests until Mother's Day (11th March). This
brings the price down from £79 to £63, or from €95 to €76. There's no discount
on shipping charges, of course, but there's a reduction from £20 to £10 for the
second and subsequent test ordered at the same time.
Tip: you don’t have to decide who is going to take the
test at the time of ordering - you can make the decision at any time.
Why DNA
matches aren't always as close as they seem
Note: this article is for those who want to now more
about DNA - it isn’t something everyone needs to understand.
If you read the Masterclass
in the last issue you may have noticed in the table that you're likely to get
more matches with 7th, 8th, 9th or even 10th cousins than with ALL of the
closer cousins combined.
This isn't, of course,
because you're more likely to match with such distant cousins, but a result of
the fact that you have so many more distant cousins that you might match with. The key is the random
element in the inheritance of DNA - whilst you inherit half of your DNA from
each parent, and they got half of theirs from each of their parents, you do NOT
inherit 25% from each grandparent - it could be as little 0% or as much as 50%
(although the extremes are very unlikely).
This amazing chart from
Blaine Bettinger's blog shows how variable the
amounts can be, and how this affects the amount of DNA shared by more distant
relatives:
In each box there are three
figures: the lowest and highest amounts shared between relatives of each order,
together with the average. However the average only
takes into account matches - if there was no detectable shared DNA then that
example was ignored.
What you will notice is that
the average stabilises at around 12 or 13cM even for the most distant
relationships in the chart. The average DNA shared between 8th cousins is just
0.055cM, but the average in the table is over 200 times greater. That's because
unless there's a matching segment of at least 6 to 10cM most companies won't
report a match at all - and this brings up the average, which only includes
matches which were actually detected.
Very interesting, you might
think - but what does it actually mean in practice?
What it tells us is that neither you nor I, nor any of the DNA companies can
reliably predict how closely we are related to our more distant cousins.
Suppose that you and your cousin share a 32cM segment of DNA - you can see from
the chart that this is compatible with being anything from 3rd cousins to 8th
cousins (or more distant), an enormous range, when you consider that you have
only 16 2G grandparents, but 512 7G grandparents. I won't embarrass myself by
telling you how many of my 7G grandparents I can name. All right, I will - it’s
just 23.
You can see why in the
Masterclass I discourage going down the list of matches in order, and instead
suggest strategies that highlight the matches that are most likely to be
resolvable!
Save 40% on Who Do You Think You Are? subscriptions
After the sad demise of Your Family History (formerly Your Family Tree) a
number of members have written in asking me to suggest an alternative. I
started subscribing to Who Do You Think
You Are? magazine from the very first issue, and I've read every issue
since - so I'm very happy to pass on this subscription offer (which is for the
UK only - if I can come up with an attractive offer for readers overseas I will).
To take advantage of the
offer (and support LostCousins) either click the
banner above or use this link.
This captivating book is not strictly a genealogical
mystery, since none of the main characters are genealogists, but at its very
heart is the hero's quest to identify Rosie's father. It was on my Amazon wish-list
for months before I got around to downloading it to my Kindle, but when I
eventually did - wow, what a treat!
The hero is Don Tillman, an
Australian academic - but I had to keep reminding myself that most of the
action was taking place in Australia, because it could easily have been the US. Don isn't an average person - he's not even a average academic, but for all
his faults I found myself willing him to succeed. My wife would probably say
it’s because there's a little of Don Tillman in me; I would argue that it’s
really because there are some similarities between me and the author, Graeme Simsion.
The Rosie Project is really a love story, and there's certainly a little of When Harry Met Sally about it, so it's
ironic that The Rosie Project started
off as a film script - and what a great film it would make, if only you could
see inside Don's head!
I paid £3.99 for the Kindle
version, which I consider money very well-spent - but right now you can get it
for just 99p (I don't know for how long, so just do it!). I'm off to buy the
follow-up, which by all accounts is just as good (I doubt it could be better).
It’s also available as a paperback - published by Penguin - and in hardback.
There were some cheap second-hand copies when I checked, but they may gone by the time you read this.
You can support LostCousins by using the appropriate link below (we get
just under 5% commission on the price, but nothing on the shipping):
Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.com - Amazon.ca - The
Book Depository (free delivery worldwide)
This review was originally published in May 2015, and
I am republishing it in honour of LostCousins member Richard
Epworth who has sadly died of a brain tumour. Next month I'll be speaking about
genetic genealogy at Stansted U3A (it's already sold out - though only because
it’s a small venue, I hasten to add); it was Richard who suggested they invite
me.
Not a genealogical mystery, but a real-life
psychological mystery, Bottleneck: Our
Human interface with Reality by Richard Epworth is a most unusual book,
which convincingly demonstrates that our brain can only take in information
very slowly (ironically the author spent much of his career working with
optical fibres, which transmit incredible amounts of data at approaching the
speed of light).
However, we're very good at
convincing ourselves that we know more than we do, which is why witnesses to
crimes often give plausible, but highly inaccurate, accounts - and why family
stories are often at odds with the documented facts.
Everyone will get something
different out of this book - in my case not only did I end up understanding
myself a little bit better, I also began to realise why my view of the world is
so often at odds with the views of others. The author quotes from hundreds of
sources in order to make his case: from the writings
of Alan Turing and Oliver Sacks to humbler sources, such as song lyrics - and
even the LostCousins newsletter!
It isn't light reading, but
nor is it hard to read - I read it from beginning to end over the course of
three days. Will it change my life? Probably. Not bad for under £2 on Kindle!
You'll find the book and more
reviews here:
Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.com - Amazon.ca
Last time I checked all the
reviews gave the book 5 stars - pretty impressive!
Update: only 20 of the 21 reviews at Amazon UK are now
5 stars, but you won’t find many non-fiction books with a better rating.
Bottleneck is also available in paperback - get one while you still can.
RootsTech starts on Wednesday, and it’s likely there will be
some interesting announcements - please check back in a couple of days to find
out what's going on! If you want to find out what's happening as it happens many
of the presentations can be viewed live here.
Wednesday: Findmypast have announced
the acquisisition of Twile.
This is where any
major updates and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted
an error first reload the newsletter (press Ctrl-F5) then check again before writing to me, in case someone else has
beaten you to it......
I'll be back next month with
more news, more articles, more tips, and more book reviews!
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or
republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only
granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However,
you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for
permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins
instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?