AncestryDNA Beginning to Come of Age?

Ancestry.com’s autosomal DNA product is starting to come of age. Until last night I had not been impressed with what I had been able to find through it. I did make one find that was genealogically very significant for me. However, that find was rather tedious and cumbersome. Ancestry's DNA product did play an important part in that discovery by pointing me to a potential cousin. But it was still an old fashioned, grind-it-out process of going through the pedigree tree of suggested match to find a name that looked familiar.  

It also led me down a path that I have been experiencing all to much when I was directed to view another pedigree tree on my newly discovered branch:

This should be only a temporary delay in gaining access. However, in this case I have yet to see the desired tree three months later. This is in spite of several invitations from the owner of that tree and a call to customer service. Kim in customer service told me she found a mistake in the email address in my Ancestry profile. Even after that was identified, I am still not getting an invitation to that tree.There are three trees to which the owners recently have been trying to invite me. Only one of them finally has succeeded when she asked the invitation be sent to a private email address that is not associated with my Ancestry account. You can see why I was underwhelmed by Ancestry's new offering.

Then last night I decided to review my matches using the filter "Not viewed". I only chose to investigate matches who had linked their DNA results with a pedigree chart with a significant number of individuals included. I was soon in for a pleasant surprise. First there was a little spinning icon and then very briefly "Evaluating family tree information" appeared on the screen. I really didn't pay much attention until a box appeared that I had never seen. At the top appeared the familiar little green leaf and the words "Shared Ancestor Hint". The hint was that I shared my 4th great-grandfather Francis Lakey with my DNA match: 

It appears that the hint and that my suggested 4th cousin appears to be actually a 5th cousin-once removed! Wow, that was easy.

I was ready to do that again and a few minutes later lightning did strike twice. In this instance my suggested 4th cousin appears to be a 3rd cousin-once removed.

I tried many other suggested matches linked to extensive pedigree charts but found no obvious matches.

Then I returned to the match I had previously found late last year and now the "Shared Ancestor Hint appeared. In this case the hint was technically correct but it showed the limits of this computer matching software. The DNA results predicted my match was a 4th cousin. The pedigree evaluation software matched us as 5th cousins. The DNA was correct in this case. The pedigree evaluation did not match "Debora LANHAM b. abt 1815 Kentucky" with "Deborah LANHAM ABT 1785 Virginia". This does not look like a technological failure to me. It looks like "pilot error" in the pedigree chart information to me. To mix my metaphors this is a small case of "garbage in garbage out."  

So to summarize we have three predicted 4th cousins who appear actually to be:
a 5th cousin-once removed;
a 3rd cousin-once removed; and 
a 4th cousin.  

Ancestry still has much to learn about customer service. FTDNA and 23andMe notify me when I have new matches or when I receive an internal message from another customer. Ancestry waits for me to login and look for messages or new matches. Ancestry needs to be more proactive in supporting the communications process between customers..

PS:  Just as I was wrapping up this post, I noticed that there is another way to filter DNA matches "Has A Hint". I now have five more matches to investigate and they are predicted to be 5th or more distant cousins.

More later.

AncestrybyDNA is NOT Ancestry.com's DNA Service

Last night my wife forwarded me a Living Social promotion. She has been introduced to several local services and products through Living Social with which we were not previously familiar. Through Living Social we also found a very nifty bed and breakfast, in Danville, Kentucky called The Farm that both of us love. 

The introductory offer she found yesterday was to AncestrybyDNA. This company has been around for a while. However, now that Ancestry.com has developed a beta version of an autosomal DNA test, it appears that AncestrybyDNA is willing to exploit possible consumer confusion between the two products. A few comments on Yelp seem to confirm that this has been the case for some customers.

For a fuller discussion of this service, see CeCe Moore's review in her popular genetic genealogy blog, Your Genetic Genealogist. Whether or not customers are confusing these two companies, I agree with CeCe that even Ancestry.com's new autosomal test is not the gold standard in this market--at least not yet. Let the buyer beware. 

Irish Records FREE on Thursday January 24th

I have been scaling back on blog posts and some other activities since the first of the year to give more concentrated attention to a book project. However, I'll still make short posts for items that appear to be of use to readers.

One such item is the free day coming up this week for a new site for Irish documents. The web site IrishCentral.com announces:

Online "Irish History Day" launched with 21 million birth, marriage and death records released
Dublin-based Findmypast.ie announces inaugural day to celebrate launch of massive genealogy resource

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Online-Irish-History-Day-launched-with-21-million-birth-marriage-and-death-records-released-187578211.html#ixzz2IcG0VRqa Follow us: @IrishCentral on Twitter | IrishCentral on Facebook

Many of you may be familiar with FindMyPast.com. If you are not, think of it as Ancestry.com with a British accent. It is owned by BrightSolid which also owns a number of websites of potential interest to genealogists:

• Friends Reunited

• Genes Reunited

• findmypast.co.uk

• findmypast.com.au

• findmypast.ie

• findmypast.com

• 1911census.co.uk

• 1901censusonline.com

• ancestorsonboard.com

• ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk

• British Newspaper Archive

• censusrecords.com

You may want to check out several of them. But don't forget that Thursday may be the most important day for Irish researchers until March 17th.

Mistaken Pedigree leads to Discovery of Digitized Chicago Church Records

I recently discovered a pedigree chart on Ancestry.com which listed a son for my wife’s great –grandparents that I had not seen before. It caused me to go back and review what I knew about this family. The parents had migrated to Chicago from Germany in the late 19^th century. The children that I knew about were born in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s. Could there have been a son born earlier? After all he was living in a near north neighborhood of Chicago in the adjoining parish to that of his alleged parents.

I went back to the 1900 census and found that the mother claimed she had given birth to 8 children of whom 6 were still living. The record for her household listed 6 children none of whom were the son listed in the pedigree chart. As I reviewed more records, I became more and more convinced that Joseph PAPKE was not the granduncle of my wife.  However, I became increasingly intrigued by the names I was seeing in census, pedigree charts and other documents on Ancestry.

When I had originally researched this part of my wife’s tree, I found Catholic Church parish records were invaluable in reconstructing the history of her mother’s family. I discovered these records on microfilm while researching at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. These records were so valuable for showing christening, confirmation, marriage and death records for all members of families. In addition, information about the origins of the parents and the names of sponsors and godparents was also instructive. I soon ordered the microfilm and renewed it twice so that it became a permanent loan to the Family History Center near my home in California. There it was available to be consulted as my research unfolded. However, a year ago Denise and I moved 2,100 miles east of the Central Coast where the microfilm is housed.

With these newly discovered possible distant family members, I wanted to consult these records again. I am planning to be in Salt Lake City in March to attend RootsTech and to spend a few days in the Family History Library. Looking forward to that trip I consulted the library online catalog to plan which rolls of microfilm I would need to consult. When I did I got a very nice surprise. These parish records have been digitized and can be consulted online! The records are a gold mine that often has much information not included in civil records for the same events. Priests often made interesting marginal comments.  Approximately 300 rolls of microfilm images of Chicago church records are now available. Most of them are Catholic parish records covering events in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. If I had not found the mistaken pedigree, I would not have discovered that these records had been digitized. I plan to use them extensively.

I’ll leave you with one other tip for those of you researching early 20^th century Chicago ancestors. At the turn of the 20^th century Chicago streets and numbers were a ragtag unorganized mess. In 1909 and 1911, most street addresses in Chicago were changed to create the logical grid of addresses the city now enjoys.  In the process street numbers could have been changed by what would appear to be many blocks even if the occupants never moved at all. In some cases even the street names changed. You can access a resource digitized by the Newbury Library which explains these changes and gives a very thorough translation chart from old address to new address or vice versa. This and other Chicago research tools are available at under the “Tools” tab of Chicago Ancestors.org. 

A Present and Two Lumps of Coal to Stuff in Christmas Stockings

For you genetic genealogists I have a present to stuff in your Christmas stockings.

The present:

The present comes in the form of a link to a very comprehensive guide to the U.S. Census in e-book format. It was compiled by Michael Hait, an experienced genealogist, who has previously published a comprehensive guide to state resources---also in e-format. In the lead in on his blog, Planting the Seeds: Genealogy as a profession, Hait claims all content is copyrighted. That would be true for the blog and for his 23 page United States Census Path Finder. However, most of the linked materials are not subject to copyright because they were published by the U.S. Government. This Path Finder is an information rich treasure trove of links that offer a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the U.S. Census. Genealogical researchers of all levels of expertise will find this a useful reference for background and for specific information at time of need.

The lumps of coal:

For the States of New York and Maryland I have lumps of coal for their Christmas stockings. Many of you are familiar with the myth that Santa stuffs a lump of coal into the stockings of those whose behavior make them undeserving of receiving presents. The reason for these awards are their laws which prohibit genetic tests like the one administered by 23andMe which can be considered to offer individuals information about their potential for health conditions. The restrictions are different in the two states; and I will leave the details to Judy Russell in her recent post “NY and MD limits on 23andMe” to her blog The Legal Genealogist.

After you read Judy’s post, be sure to read the comments added Kathy Johnson. Regular readers of my blog will know what my feelings are on the right of individuals to be able to access the information stored in their own bodies.

I would like to be clear that these state restrictions affect all of us in one way or another. It will complicate my effort to test family members in these states. In addition it limits the likelihood that residents of these two states will test and can be possible matches for the rest of us. However, at the moment these restrictions have not been applied to Family Tree DNA, Ancestry and the National Genographic project which go to great lengths to avoid the appearance of offering health related information. 

Happy Holidays to all. May 2013 be a fantastic year of discoveries for all of us in genetic and traditional genealogy.
 

The DNA Dilemma

The current Time Magazine cover story “The DNA Dilemma: A Test That Could Change Your Life” by Bonnie Rochman raises several important questions. Each of us will have to answer them for ourselves. It is well worth reading. I have submitted the following letter to the editor for possible publication:

Bonnie Rochman (“The DNA Dilemma”, Dec 24^th) is correct that “knowledge is power.” Currently, the greatest impediment to unleashing the knowledge within our genomes to improve our medical care is the ignorance or indifference of the medical community about how to harness this potential. A vast educational program is needed. Physicians see themselves as gatekeepers to this information and only value it if they have a fix that can be applied to the problems so identified.

Some patients will choose to know their predispositions and some will not. Some of us have been seeking them out with tests like 23andMe and then taking the results to our physicians. All these options should be open in the land of the free.

Information encoded within our DNA is owned by us—not by the medical establishment. It should be made accessible to those of us who want to be partners in our own health care decisions. It is not something to be doled out paternalistically when the medical profession is ready to offer us a fix for a defect. This information is valuable to us in making other life decisions. This is even more essential in guiding our decisions when current medical practice has no current fix to offer.

Patients and physicians should be partners in discussing how this information should be applied. It is not something from which the medical profession is ethically bound to protect us. By sharing the information and the responsibility for its use, all are empowered.

There are always questions about appropriate use when any new technology is introduced. The technology always develops faster than our ability to foresee or react to its impact on society. For more than a dozen years I taught "Ethics in the Information Age". Although it was focused on the ethical dilemmas library workers and web designers face on the job when dealing with clients and client information, the basic themes apply here. Reduced to the simplest possible terms there are four competing "Rights":

The right to know;

The right to privacy;

The right to own and benefit from intellectual property; and

The right to protect some or all of us in our society.

It's a zero sum game. One of those rights cannot be advanced without another retreating. It is clearly a case where one answer does not fit all people or all situations. Read the article. Discuss it with your family and physician. Comment on this blog and in other forums.

Seismic Shift in Genetic Genealogy

It seems like the entire landscape of genetic genealogy has shifted in the last week. What magnitude on the Richter Scale were the shakes that led to this amount of widespread and almost simultaneous change? Only time will tell as to which of theses events will have the most lasting impact.

First we had 23andMe upgrading their "Ancestry Painting" feature. That feature previously had been interesting enough for it to form the central analysis tool for Bryan Sykes to analyze a couple dozen American genomes and generate his recent travelog DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America. Now their upgrade to "Ancestry Composition" is much more interesting and informative. The company followed that up with a blockbuster announcement of a permanent reduction of their test to $99. 

Wedged in between these two events National Geographic and explorer in residence, Spencer Wells began to release the first results of their Genographic Project, Geno 2.0.

Then Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) unveiled a major upgrade to their website and their database that will cause all of us who have tested there to reassess our results. All the pieces of the revamped website are not fully funcioning yet but the results are extremely interesting: 

Previously only exact full mitochondrial matches were displayed. Now those within a couple of mutations can also be viewed. This is an extension of similar latitude previously shown in displaying results on partial mitochondrial results.

Y-chromosome results have been re-calibrated and this will change with whom some of those tested match and don't match. Even for those who still match the same individuals, the probabilities of how many generations ago that match occurred are likely to have changed.

Within our Dowell DNA Project we have triangulated 111 marker Y-chromosome results of living descendants of three of the sons of my 6th great-grandfather. Through this process we have been able to reconstruct what the 111 marker DNA signature would have been of Philip Dowell, Sr. who died in 1733. The recent changes in the FTDNA database do not change our overall result. However, they reduce the mutations of some of us who participated  in this process. The chart immediately shows our descendancy from Philip:

Before the re-calibration of the database, the living descendants, who are represented by the lowest boxes in each column, had a combined total of 10 mutations from Philip, Sr. Today they are shown as having 8. From left to right: the descendant of Philip, Jr., still has 2 mutations over the generations. The descendant of John dropped from 6 to 5 mutations. The two of the descendants of Peter, Sr., previously were shown as have 1 mutation each and the third was shown as having no mutations. The revised results show two with no mutations and one still having a single mutation over the generations. Are these revisions significant? They don't change the previously predicted DNA signature of Philip, Sr. However, in borderline cases, it could change whether two men were shown as matches or did not ever show up on each others results pages.

Other 111 marker matches with different surnames, who were previously shown as having a genetic distance of 9 or 10, now show up as having a genetic distance of 5. No new men joined this cluster as a result of the changes in reporting.

The events of the last few days make one think, "Everything I knew about genetic genealogy has changed." But then we haven't heard anything from Ancestry lately. I wonder how long it will take them to try to get back in the spotlight?

$99 Autosomal DNA Test from 23andMe

The following press release from 23andMe has the potential to drastically change the economics of the autosomal DNA market. The company is announcing what it says is a permanent price drop of its combined genealogy and health factors test to $99. This is the result of new funding and the launching of an ambitious plan to expand its current database of testers from 150,000 to 1,000,000. At this price many will find the price to be attractive for many family members. Autosomal testing for genealogical purposes is helpful for the last few generations to find close cousins but does not have the power to trace distant paternal and maternal lines that Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA can track. 

The health related information can be equally valuable. My wife and I now are patients of the Vanderbilt University Heath Clinics. Vanderbilt is beginning an ambitious plan to match patient records with DNA information that will PREDICT how those patients will react to drug therapy before the drugs are prescribed. Both of us had tested at 23andMe three years ago and were given the same information at that time as Vanderbilt confirmed this past summer.

It remains to be seen how soon 23andMe will be able to reach its ambitious goal of 1,000,000 tested. However, the economics of the marketplace for direct to consumer DNA testing just changed. I hope the major databases will remain economically viable. Need I suggest that you may want to reevaluate what you were planning to give family members for Christmas?

The full text of the press release is below:

  

23andMe Raises More Than $50 Million in New Financing
Company Sets Growth Goal Of One Million Customers, Reduces Price to $99 from $299

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 11, 2012 – 23andMe, Inc., the leading personal genetics company, today announced it has raised more than $50 million in a Series D financing. Participants in the financing include Yuri Milner, a new investor, as well as existing investors Sergey Brin, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital. This investment will help the company achieve its growth goal of one million customers.

The Power of One Million PeopleExpanding the company’s ability to reach and serve one million individuals supports 23andMe’s goal to revolutionize health and wellness. It also will accelerate 23andMe’s ability to create a powerful platform that enables researchers around the globe to make meaningful discoveries significantly faster than is currently possible. With this expansion, 23andMe, which currently has more than 180,000 customers, will aim to:

• Enable groundbreaking research by creating an exponentially larger collective of actively engaged, genotyped individuals;

• Help accelerate development of new treatments;

• Improve understanding of wellness and disease prevention; and

• Broaden access for people seeking to manage their health and well-being through direct access and greater understanding of their own genetic data.

“A community of one million actively engaged individuals will be transformational for research. A community of this magnitude will improve researchers’ ability to quickly answer questions about genetic function and the role of environmental factors. In addition, it will enable researchers to understand medication efficacy and side effects, in both medications that exist today and medications are that are in development,” Wojcicki added.

Broadening Access: Lowering Price to $99

The Series D investment, combined with rapidly decreasing costs associated with genetic testing technologies, enables 23andMe to reduce the price of its Personal Genome Service to $99, effective immediately. The company will continue to evaluate optimal pricing strategies.
The investment also enables 23andMe to expand the necessary infrastructure to support growth in its research and operational capabilities, including product development, genetic research, software development, recruitment and marketing.

About 23andMe

23andMe, Inc. is the leading personal genetics company dedicated to helping individuals understand their own genetic information through DNA analysis technologies and web-based interactive tools. The company's Personal Genome Service^® enables individuals to gain deeper insights into their ancestry and inherited traits. The vision for 23andMe is to personalize healthcare by making and supporting meaningful discoveries through genetic research. 23andMe, Inc., was founded in 2006, and the company is advised by a group of renowned experts in the fields of human genetics, bioinformatics and computer science. More information is available at www.23andme.com. 

Geno 2.0 v. Ancestry Composition

It is easy for us to get caught up in our own drama and to lose perspective of what the larger picture is really all about. To some extent that is what I did yesterday. My own primary focus on DNA research is to find information that will allow me to extend the history of my own family and the families of extended family members—particularly those of the ancestors of my grandchildren. I am also very interested in learning about the health implications of our genomes and what we can learn about the historic journey of the human race. However, my original interest in DNA research was to find information from within my body and those of my family members that would help me as a genealogist to extend what I have been able to learn from extant oral and documentary information. In this quest I have been somewhat successful. I continue to look to each new DNA tool for new insight that will help me extend these genealogies.

This is the perspective from which I first examined my results from Geno 2.0 yesterday. In so doing was I missing the real point of this exciting new project? I was looking to build backward incrementally from what I already knew from my prior genealogical research. Geno 2.0 begins its story from the other end of the human narrative. Its primary focus is anthropological rather than genealogical. Although these two foci are ultimately complementary, they remain only loosely connected. Both approaches are seeking to connect with the other; but each are building from opposite ends of this long human journey.

In some ways this effort is analogous with the building of the transcontinental railroad across North America in the 1860s. Two efforts, launched from 1,770 miles apart, needed to standardize their gauge (rail width) and come together at a common point. That project was to connect two geographic locations existing in the same time dimension. Our genetic genealogy effort today is to connect different eras of the human journey.

When I first surveyed my results yesterday, I had on my genealogical tinted glasses. My own agenda of extending my own family histories back from North America to Europe colored what I saw or didn't see. I was trying to make an anthropological tool into a genealogical tool. It is not significantly different from trying to use a pair of pliers for a task for which a wrench is better suited. Sometimes this will work and sometimes not. In my post yesterday I tried to compare Geno 2.0 with the new Ancestry Composition tool that 23andMe introduced last week. My colleague CeCe Moore, Your Genetic Genealogist, gently pointed out that these two tools were looking at different times along the migration of my ancestors. Ancestry Composition was helping me look for my family at the dawn of genealogical time or about 500 years ago. On the other hand Geno 2.0 was trying to focus further back. Both tools can be useful but their reported results must be viewed appropriately. With this in mind I’ll begin to review my Geno 2.0 and my Ancestry Composition reports from a different perspective. I’ll share my observations here shortly.