On Becoming a Certified Genealogist

Becoming a Certified Genealogist is an idea that I have been playing with off and on for several years. I have bought some of the books on the subject. Most of them I have flipped through quickly before placing them on my bookshelves to gather dust. But have I read them and studied them thoroughly? The answer is no.

I was talking to my younger daughter about how at least 3 of my 4 kids gave up on the dreams they had as teenagers. One wanted to be a singer and everyone agrees she has a good voice. One wanted to go into acting, and she is a good actress. One had dreams of Baseball, and I believe he has the talent (rather reminds me of a Ricky Henderson type of Ball Player). But for one reason or another they all chose different paths.

Then she asked me what my dream was/is.

When I was young and healthy it was to teach English and Drama in High School. In my 30's I even managed to enroll at the University of Rhode Island in the Secondary Education Program. Then I developed Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). I quickly realized if I couldn' physically handle taking 2 college classes a semester there was no way I would be able handle spending 5 full days a week teaching in a classroom. That ended that dream.

Then I discovered a passion for genealogy. Although I have to say it wasn't really a new passion, I had been interested in my family history since I was a child. I just didn't know much about the how to research until I started learning in 1995. But it took another 2 years and moving back to California when I was able to go with my mom to the Family History Center in Oakland, the National Archive in San Bruno and the California State Library in San Francisco that I really became hooked.

Fast forward through years of learning and researching, of helping others find their family's history, to last night and my daughter's question of "and what has been your dream mom?" My answer was to be a Certified Genealogist.

She said "you have wanted to do that for years mom, you should do it." I told her one of the things that has stopped me is the cost and that once you start you are supposed to finish it in a year, and with my health not always cooperating with my obligations and desires I wasn't sure I could meet the deadline. So then she asked how much would it cost and offered to pay for it for me.

I have to admit that brought tears to my eyes.

So today I went seaching for answers to her question. I looked at the Board of Certification for Genealogist (BCG) website. Preliminary application costs $75, then once it is accepted you have a year to turn everything in with a $300 fee. You can get extensions for an additional year for another $75 fee. That eased some of my fears of what if my health interferes and I couldn't finish it in a year, BUT if the requirements have changed or the fees have gone up you have to use the new requirements and/or pay the new fee amounts. All that is just to become Certified!

Once you are Certified then comes things like annual memberships to BCG ($75/yr), setting money aside every year so I can do the recertification in 5 years ($60/yr), membership to National Genealogical Society ($70/yr), Association of Professional Genealogists ($100/yr). Then there are the subscription site fees Ancestry All Access ($389/yr), Find My Past Premium ($239.50) and Genealogy Bank ($69.95). That is $1002.95 a year. And it doesn't include office supplies like ink, paper, postage, advertising, travel, etc.

I realize I would be able to deduct most if not all off my taxes as business expenses, but just looking at that number is scary. I don't currently get that much a month on disability. If I do this I have to be serious about actual getting clients or I will quickly go under.

But the truth is this really IS something I want to do. So I will get my books off the shelves and start studying so when I do send in the Preliminary Application I will be prepared to give it my best.

Looking forward to the day I can put out my shingle as Linda Newman, C.G.

Think of Doing a DNA Test? Things to Know Before you Take It

I know Ancestry pushes the ethnicity part of DNA testing. What they don't tell you is that the ethnicity part is fairly new science and the database is still limited enough that it probably won't be 100% accurate.

In addition just because 1 great grandparent is from England, 1 from Spain, 1 from Africa, 1 from Germany, 1 from Scandinavia, 1 from Cambodia, 1 from China, and 1 is 100% Native American does not mean you will be 1/8 of each of those ethnicities.

Yes you get 50% of your DNA from your mom and 50% from your dad, but I don't think anyone has ever gotten exactly 25% from each grandparent. It may be a 30/20/15/35 mix or some other combination.

Plus remember just because your Great Grandparents came from a certain region doesn't mean that is where their ancestors were from. Or even if they have lived in the same region for the last 1,000 years most places have had invaders. Sometimes the invaders stayed in the new region, or sometimes they left little souvenirs behind which affects the ethnicity of future generations.

The ethnicity results are fun and interesting, but the real benefit to DNA testing is in the DNA cousin matches. They help verify the paper trail and break down brick walls.

Just be aware you may find out things you weren't aware of. You might find a close relative you weren't aware of, or you might find out someone you thought was a blood relative really isn't related by blood after all.

I don't want to discourage anyone from taking a DNA test, in fact I actively encourage people to do so. I have tested at both 23andMe and at Ancestry, then transferred my DNA to Gedmatch, FamilyTree DNA and My Hertitage. My feeling is the more places my DNA is the more likely I am to connect with all the DNA cousins I can. And the more DNA cousins I connect with the more brick walls that will fall, either for myself or for others.

In addition to my own tests I have paid for 2 family members to test at Ancestry and 5 to test at 23andMe. As you can see I think DNA testing is great. I have verified some of my paper trails, including one that was based on circumstantial evidence at best. And the more people that test the more likely I will be able to verify the rest of the lines. But I think it is important that people make the choice to test based on facts, not because of fancy advertisements.

No Ancestry Subscription? What's a Girl To Do?

I was just reading a post in one of the Facebook groups I belong to. In it a woman was saying for financial reasons she had to take a break from having a subscription to Ancestry and was looking for ideas on things she could do so she wouldn't get bored.

Here is my list of suggestions:

1. Take a fresh look at your documents, sometimes when we first find a document we only look at the obvious bits, but if we go back and look again we can find details we missed the first time through.

2. Go through and write some research plans. I have a sample of one of mine at: 2012 January - Emma Antrim

3. Read some blogs and/or check you tube for genealogy how to videos, there are some excellent ones out there.

4. Check out Pinterest for ideas and forms, I know a lot of people pin things on their Pinterest boards that can be helpful. My genealogy board is at: Linda's Pinterest Genealogy Board

5. Work on your life story, think about how much we would love to have great grandma's life story in her own words. Someday one of your descendants will feel the same way about your life.

6. Talk to the living and ask them about their memories, not just about relatives but about themselves, use a camcorder or digital voice recorder if they will allow it so you get their stories in their own words, in addition it allows you to concentrate on the person rather than in the process of trying to take notes.

There are lots of other things genealogy related you can do while taking a break from your Ancestry subscription. I would love to hear your ideas, leave them in a comment.

Experimenting with Mirror Trees Part 2

I left my DNA attached to my dad's name on my mirror tree for 6-7 days now. I have 3 shared ancestor hints. The first match is with my 1st cousin once removed. I manage their test so since his tree has all the same information my tree has, and it is all listed exactly the same way, that isn't surprising that he shows up as a shared ancestor hint. The second shared ancestor hint is a second cousin that I had in my tree prior to finding him as a dna match on Ancestry. So again, not a surprise we are a shared ancestor hint match. The third SAH match is a 4th cousin once removed that we had already figured out what our match is.

So, tonight I am switching my dna to a new mirror tree and a person on DNA Match list that I am not sure where exactly we match. I suspect from the location of his family and the location of my branches that the common ancestor is probably on my dad's maternal line. This DNA cousin also has some names in his tree that are associated with some of the family in my tree on my paternal grandmother's side. But I cant figure out where exactly the common ancestor is. And that is the whole purpose of a mirror tree, discovering who the common ancestor is.

I switched my DNA just before writing this post, and our local Fair starts on Thursday. Since I am on the Fair Board I imagine I will be too busy to do much genealogy until after the fair is over, but that should give ancestry enough time to find some shared ancestor hints. Although, there is a possibility it won't because of the way this DNA cousin added names to his tree. But that is a post for another time.

Recognition of My Blog from Feedspot

On August 1st of this year I received an e-mail notification from Feedspot that my blog was chosen by their panelist as one of the top 25 Family Tree Blogs. I do not know much about Feedspot, but having my blog recognized is nice. They asked that I display this badge on my page.

Their list can be found at: blog.feedspot.com/family_tree_blogs/

Experimenting with Mirror Trees

My first attempt at using a mirror tree wasn't very successful, but I decided to try again.

With my first attempt I was manually entering the information from my DNA matches tree into a new tree on my account. I titled the new tree DNA Mirror Tree. I made it private and non-searchable like you are supposed to do so other people don't see it and get confused.

I think the biggest problem I had was since I was trying to manually enter the info there just wasn't enough information on it to get any shared ancestor hints.

I learned just recently a much easier way to make a mirror tree. I have made my very first video every showing what I learned. you can see it on YouTube at: youtu.be/l0cQLwpII6A It is 28:21 minutes long.

I had my daughter watch it because she has only helped me a little bit and really has no experience working with trees. She said it was "Very informative!" So hopefully newbies and experienced ancestry users will find it helpful.

So using this new method I have created a new mirror tree and will attach my dna to the person who is my DNA match. Then I will give it a week for Ancestry to search its database for DNA matches that have Shared Ancestor Hints with the mirror tree.

I will report back on if I was successful or not. Course part of the problem may be that I am a predicted 4th cousin with this DNA cousin and I watched a video that said mirror trees work best with predicted 2nd and 3rd cousins.

Searching for Vernon Robinson Lee

I have been searching for Vernon R Lee off and on for awhile now. He is the maternal grandfather of some of my cousins on my Newman side. I have managed to develop a pretty good tree on our shared paternal side, the Newman side, but they know almost nothing about the maternal side of their tree.

My cousin, FN, has tested at 23andMe at my request. And his son, AN, tested on Ancestry at my request. This was to try and narrow down which side of my tree some of my matches fall. Basically I knew if they matched both myself and one of them that meant the match would be on the paternal Newman side of my tree.

Howevery, they both had a significant number of matches that don’t match me, and since I hadn’t done any research on the Lee side of their tree I had no idea how people who contacted me might connect with them. So I started searching.

I did manage to find the marriage record for FN’s maternal grandparents. I discovered that Helen Hartmann and Vernon R Lee were married 04 Jun 1930 in Clark County, Washington. But there was very little information on the certificate that would allow me to go further back in the records, especially on Vernon’s side.

The one hint I did find on the certificate was what town Helen had been living in. I decided to see if maybe I could find her as a child in the census which would allow me to discover who her parents were. Sure enough, I did find her as a child in that town with her parents. And that meant I was able to get a little more on her. Vernon however wasn’t showing up in the census records in Oregon or in Washington, so I was stuck.

Until this week when a DNA match that I had tried to contact previously finally answered. They said that yes, Vernon R Lee was on their tree! This person had a tree with good sources and documentation, so I think I can trust their research. They had Vernon’s family of origin, including his parents, both sets of grandparents and even a couple sets of his great grandparents! AND they including siblings at each level. I feel like I hit the mother lode because of this person’s hard and detailed work.

The problem is I can not find any record of what happened to Vernon coming forward. Like I said I have his marriage certificate, I know Vernon and Helen had 2 daughters, and there is a passenger list that has Vernon listed as single and heading to Hawaii a couple of weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

When and where did Helen and Vernon divorce? Why was he going to Hawaii? What happened to him after he arrived? Did he join the military? If so, why can’t I find a record of that? Did he ever remarry and have more children? When and where did he die? So far ancestry isn’t showing any easy answers.

I am hoping that someone who is a descendant of one of his 8 siblings might know something that will give me a clue to where to look for him. To that end I am sharing the Family Group Sheet with his parents and siblings. If Vernon or his family are in your tree and you have any information on any of them please contact me. I would love to be able to hand my cousins a copy of their family story on the Lee side.

Since I first wrote this a few days ago I have found a death date for Vernon of 1 Nov 1958 in Oregon, and the fact that he was buried in the Greenwood Hills Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. Also in looking closer at the Passenger list I found that the USS Chaumont was a Navy Transport ship that made regular runs from San Francisco, California to Manila via Honolulu. This leads me to think that Vernon was at that time in the Military, and probably the US Navy. Haven't found anything more about his military service. A thank you to Paul for replying to my message on FindAGrave.