#FamilyHistoryMonth Archives

Are We Cousins? How to determine your degree of cousinship with a DNA Match

There are tons of relationship charts floating around the web and they each serve a useful purpose... but ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a simple formula for understanding and naming your fundamental relationship to another person. This isn't intended for direct line relationships, Parent-Child, Grandparent-Grandchild or even some collateral line relationships such as Aunt-Niece, Uncle-Great Nephew, etc. It works, but those relationships are already nicely named.* This formula is for all types of collateral line cousins; DNA matches you don't quite know how to name. You may need to draw a family tree to diagram your relationship with another person. With that in hand, the ISOGG Wiki formula will tell you your degree of cousinship. A family tree diagram showing my relationship to a recent DNA match. We're both related to my great-great-grandfather. He's my great-grandmother's sister's son. ISOGG's formula for How to Determine Your Degree of Cousi…

How to Import Your Free FamilySearch Family Tree at Ancestral Quest & Create a GEDCOM File

Ancestral Quest partners with FamilySearch and provides one way to export a copy of your free FamilySearch Family Tree. If you have a family tree at FamilySearch you can't download a GEDCOM file of your tree directly from FamilySearch but you have three options for creating a GEDCOM file so you'll have full control of your tree and which ancestors & descendants you want to have included. This blog gives instructions for your first option, How to Import Your Free FamilySearch Family Tree at Ancestral Quest and How to Create a GEDCOM file at Ancestral Quest. I wanted a GEDCOM file with ancestors through my 5th great-grandparents and all their descendants. My GEDCOM file has roughly 34,000 names and took me 12 hours to import & create. I did my imports in batches because I was afraid thousands of names all in one fell swoop would crash the program. Adjust these instructions as needed for your tree and personal circumstances. …

MyHeritage DNA Thanksgiving Sale Going on Now

Now through November 23rd, MyHeritage DNA is having a Thanksgiving Sale on their DNA kits. Kits are 40% off--$59 instead of $99--and if you buy 3 or more kits, shipping is free! These would be a great gift for family members. We wish we'd thought to test our older family members before they died. I've taken a MyHeritage DNA test and included with the test is: two swabs vs. spit, you swab inside your mouth and place the swabs in vials to be tested vs. spitting into a container (my apologies if this is TMI but filling up a vial with spit might set off your gag reflex) an ethnicity estimate, broken down into as many as 42 ethnicity groups, with links to share to social media or print for your records (I was surprised to have an estimate that included Finnish ethnicity) DNA Matches from MyHeritage - these show the percentage of shared DNA, shared segments, largest segment, and estimated relationship to that person (I have 189 to review,…