GeneaVlogger: A New Web Series

For those who have followed this blog closely you may have noticed that things have been quiet for a long time now. While my last post was in September of last year, I have continued my genealogical quest although focusing on some branches other than my Sephardic heritage. Specifically I have been focusing on an Ashkenazi branch of my family which came from Russia to southern New Jersey to be one of the original families at The Alliance Colony in 1882. This research led to me using my videography skills (little known fact about me, I have a minor in Film along with my BA in communications) and brought forth the idea of going from blogging to vlogging.

After a little work creating a basic setup for the idea I am now happy to introduce my new youtube channel - GeneaVlogger. I will be releasing a new Vlog and a new quick tip each week. As much as I enjoy blogging, a video format gives me room to explore a lot more and be more artistic with what I create. I will definitely post more articles here, so don't expect this to be the death of the blog,  but now you have a whole other format to enjoy my research!

Digital Genealogy and Privacy Issues

For anyone in genealogy who has invited relatives to view their tree online it is likely they have run across a few relatives who were less than pleased with family information being published online. I once had a cousin actually threaten to sue me if I didn't take the tree down (referring to geni.com). For genealogists who are constantly reaching out to new found relatives this can be even more prevalent, especially if the family being contacted have had identity theft problems.

This summer at the 35th Annual Conference of the International Association for Jewish Genealogical Societies in Jerusalem, Randy Schoenberg presented his lecture "Privacy Issues with Online Family Trees" in which he discusses why there is little to fear when it comes to digital genealogy. He methodically and logically breaks-down the idea of privacy rights and how they apply to genealogy just as they do in every day life. In his introduction Schoenberg states -

"The right to privacy is a relatively recent legal construction, and one that is still evolving. As genealogists, people whose goal is to learn and write about personal details of other people, we often hear complaints about invasion of privacy. So it is worth exploring the issue in some detail to understand what rights exist at present and what might evolve in the future. Since much of our work is done online, I will also address privacy issues related to online trees on various platforms."

Click here for the published version of the lecture

First Relative Found Through DNA

Just over 2 years ago I ordered the Full Genome Kit from Family Tree DNA. This included a Y-DNA 67 Test, a Full Mt-DNA test, and an Autosmal DNA test (known as Family Finder). My main goal with these DNA tests was to learn about my paternal ancestry, something that I knew little about, as well as locating relatives. When I finally received my results I was stunned at the amount of matches I had in Family Finder and every surname in my Y-DNA matches had completely different surnames, both being quite common results for those with Jewish ancestry.

I found a handful of relatives who I had already found through the paper-trail but it was nice to have DNA confirm what old documents told us. I couldn't find anyone linking into my tree otherwise and throughout the years have contacted different matches in hopes of finding the link. The big hope was to find someone who not only linked into my tree but had more information than I did on the family. I expected the first person I would find to be a 3rd-5th cousin because I've known a lot of about my 1st and 2nd cousins (assuming no one has hidden an illegitimate child).

Finally after 2 years I found a match who had a not so common Jewish surname which was also in my tree. As well they had listed that family being from the UK and Holland, which basically confirmed it for me there because I have yet to find any families in Holland with the same surname. After contacting the relative and explaining what I knew she responded and told me that her sister had focused on researching that side of their family but she knew there was little information of where their side came from. After looking up the names she sent me for their most distant ancestors on that line I was able to find her great-grandfather in my tree. 

After adding her in and doing some quick calculations I realized that she was my 8th cousin exactly. I would have never imagined that the first relative I found through DNA would be so distant in relation. Our most recent shared ancestors were born in 17th century Amsterdam. Although I should also mention her sister had taken a DNA test but we did not match. Either way, it's great to finally have found a relative through the use of DNA and hope that I find more success in the near future.

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Quantifying Genealogy

As I have progressed on my genealogy journey I have constantly wondered of ways to quantify how much I know about my own genealogy. Was there a way I could determine how much of my family history I knew? After looking at random statistics and doing different calculations there were two things I found very interesting in terms of quantifying my genealogy; the number of ancestors I knew about (at least a name, a birth date, or a death date) per generation back and the total number of ancestors I truly had in each generation. I could easily put these together to find out an assumed percentage of how many ancestors I knew about in each generation. I decided to make a post about it although it could be considered rambling by some.

Here is what I have in basic knowledge for up to 8 generations

Parents - 2/2 = 100%
Grandparents - 4/4 = 100%
Great Grandparents - 8/8 = 100%
2nd Great Grandparents - 12/16 = 75%
3rd Great Grandparents - 12/32 = 37.5%
4th Great Grandparents - 8/64 = .125%
5th Great Grandparents - 15/128 = .117%
6th Great Grandparents - 24/256 = .094%
7th Great Grandparents - 41/512 = .08%  
8th Great Grandparents - 65/1024 = .063%

Looking over it this seems pretty straightforward but when you interpret what it means it really puts things into perspective. For example lets take my 8th great grandparents who were all mostly born between 1650-1700, about 365 to 415 years ago, I know about only 65 completely different ancestors living at that time. Yet those 65 almost make up 2/3 of only 1 percent of the ancestors I had alive at the time throughout the whole world. As well it shows just how much information I lack and how much there is for me to try to obtain, so it gives me inspiration to knock down those brick-walls to discover all that information I don't know about the ancestors I come from.

Now if I go back two more generations things get very interesting because this is the first generation where I know I have ancestors show up multiple times.

9th Great Grandparents - 59/2042 = .029%
10th Great Grandparents - 43/4084 = .011%

If you look closely you will realize that instead of 2048 9th-great grandparents I only list 2042. This is because I have 3 sets of 9th great grandparents who I descend from twice. Each subsequent generation back in time will now go from this number until another generation with ancestors who I descend from more than once changes the number again. I find it an interesting concept because it relates to the pedigree collapse theory, that over time you will eventually have more ancestors than people living in the world. So lets say you have a set of 2nd great grandparents you descend from twice you would have 14 sets of 2nd great-grandparents instead of the usual 16, then take that back 5 more generations to 7th great grandparents and you've got 456 ancestors at most instead of 512, a difference of 56 ancestors. Take it back to your 10th great grandparents and you've got at most 3648 ancestors instead of 4096, a difference of 448 ancestors. Then once you consider that each generation you go back there is an even higher likelihood of more common ancestors within your own tree the actual number of ancestors you descend from could be quite less than you truly anticipate.