What's Your Number 2014

So this time last year I started the year out with finding out what/who I do know, with What's Your Number.  Taking the number of possible people in your family tree and comparing that to the actually number you have discovered.

I didn't do that much discovery this year.  I spent almost all my time renaming and cleaning up all my files Keeping Your Leaves in Order... File Naming.  Bad part is I only got through my paternal tree, 600 some files, it was a lot more than I imagined to would be. What time I didn't spend in file organizing I spent in DNA.

2014 wasn't a lose though, I did find 19 new family members and hope to make many new finds with the updates made on AncestryDNA.  I will say cleaning up my files really was a confidence booster. organizing my paper trail of family members and having proof not just a name and date.

All in all it was a 2% increase, which is always a win.  It's only a couple of days into the new year and I already have some prospects to research that will increase my numbers even more for next year.  I have my maternal side to file clean up but the number of files on that side aren't as big so hopefully it won't take me a year.

Leave me a comment below and let me know your numbers and happy hunting in 2015.

What's Your Number

I am feeding this off another blog Genea-Musings who posted this post called What's Your Number.  The premise behind this is to look at the numbers and gauge where you are at discovering your ancestors.

Here is the formula, first there is you, then two parents and they each had two parents, so as you go up to the next generation your number doubles.  Going off Genea-Musings post, I went back 10 generations which when you add it all together means you are searching for 1,023 people including yourself.  Then figuring who you have discovered over the ten generations you divide them from the number of possible people and that lets your know the percentage of family members you have discovered.

So below are my numbers, I was kind of shocked, not that I thought I was reaching the end but how little I have actually discovered.  I usually stop researching a branch once I've figure out who the immigrant to the United States is, mainly because there its tons to discover on this side of the pond and I haven't started paying for an international subscription to Ancestry.com.  I will have to post later if I ever do the math of the number of discovering the American families and don't count it against me if I stopped researching.

This sure seems like a lot of people and to think that ten generations is only about 300 years.  I guess I have plenty more searching to work on, it's at least good knowing where you stand, right!!!   Will have to keep this post going each year and see how the numbers grow.

The Missions of Merl Stitt WWII

The Missions of Merl Stitt during WWII

This is the complied recreation of the missions my Great Grandfather flew during WWII as the Ball Turret Gunner on the B-17 Flying Fortress. Let me start out with this, this is my interpretation of research I have done over the last two plus years of his records, his squadron, and the targets he was assigned. While I have done my best it is by no way 100% accurate and things can always be changed or added as new discoveries surface.

To view the this project you have to have Google Earth, you can download it at www.earth.google.com To help you with Google Earth in case this is your first time, below is a short YouTube video to help you navigate around the globe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_K0Wp1rSU I also have some instruction in the project that should pop up as soon as you open the Merl WWII.KMZ file.

I am sorry I couldn’t make it a little more user friendly but with the amount of information and the limits of my Google Earth knowledge this was the best way for you to experience it. I really hope you enjoy this insight of his time over Europe as much as I did creating it.

In Your Memory Great Grandfather,

Eric Stitt

PS I would really appreciate all feedback on what you thought and how it worked for you.  If there is any problems please contact me and I will try to walk you through it.

This is just an image from Google Earth.  File is at the end of the second paragraph.

DNA in My Family Genealogy

So I have always been told there is two types of genealogy/family history research.  There is the common type where you have proof, ie census records, death certificate, marriage licence.  Then there is the type that you have no source documents and they call that mythology.  Just recently there is a new type of research that has finally become cost efficient for the genealogy community to partake in, genetic research.  This is the real scientific proof of your ancestors and we all carry it around with us in our DNA.  While this new type of research can tell you the where, its still up to you to know the who and when.

My first attempt with this was with Family Tree DNA.  I paid some money and got the mid-level 37 marker Y-chromosome DNA test.  I'm not going to get into the science behind the test, but the Y-DNA test is used to figure out your male ancestry.  It was a simple cheek swab and off in the mail it went, almost 6 months later I started getting results.  First my 12 markers then 25 and 37 a few weeks later.  While the results didn't conclude that I have an exact match with the Stitt ancestral line, and I didn't get any matches to my 25 or 37 markers, I did get 37 matches with my 12 marker.  What that means: If you find that you are an exact (12 for 12) match to another individual. This tells you that there is about a 50% chance that the two of you share a common ancestor within 7 generations, and a 95% chance that the common ancestor is within 23 generations.  .

This test also tells me my Haplogroup which is where your family is from based on your dna's molecular evolution.  My results came back as  R1b1a2 (R-M269) which is Western Europe

My second test was actually an offer from AncestryDNA to participate in their Beta test when they first acquired the DNA labs.  This totally come out of the blue but who would pass up a DNA test for the price of shipping.  The test in this kit was a vile of saliva  several months later, I am sure the long wait was the huge number of people they asked to start this program and that its all still beta testing as they figure out how they want to run this new branch of the company.  So to explain this test, where the Family Tree DNA was just 37 markers and only did the direct paternal lineage, this AncestryDNA test is more of a Family Finder test where they look at 700,000+ markers on all branches of your tree.  Spring of last year AncestryDNA started posting the beginning results of my test.

The first results they posted was my Genetic Ethnicity, this was at first quite a shock, I have alway researched the family coming from the British Isles   So with results of Central European, Scandinavian, and Uncertain was not what I expected.

That wasn't the end of it, some time later they started posting results of cousin matches, people who you are related two based on the science.  These were all broken down to by generations ie 1st-3rd cousins 4th-6th cousins and so on with this note: 'Distant cousin' matches (5th cousins or greater) have a lower degree of certainty compared to 3rd and 4th cousins. Even though there is a 50% (or less) chance that you are related, these matches are still good leads. Each of these cousins you can click on and if the cousin has posted their tree with public permissions you would see their tree and a list of matching surnames between you and their tree.  As the months have gone by I have tried to find matches with these trees but it is a tough job.  While they give you a list of matching surnames, like they noted earlier is just a lead, and some of the time these surnames are from both sides of my family tree and as far as I have been able to research my paternal and maternal sides did not cross until me.  Months and months go by and I get more of these cousins, and I should mention I don't have any that are closer than 4th-6th cousins, which means they are cousins with a common ancestor going to about the civil war or later, but more results are always coming in and I sit with 3500 matches now.  Again I want to mention that they are still Beta testing, how to run this new program.  One of the new features that came out is Hints "the shaky leaf".  These are matches where they have looked at your tree and the cousin's tree and found the common ancestor.  When you click on these you get to see a relationship chart showing how you too are related, this takes all the guesswork out of the list of matching surnames.  Out of a total 3500 genetic cousins 9 have the shaky leaf hint of how we are related. Below is how those are hints are related to me.  The superscript is the number of generation for that surname, the subscript is the birth year of that common ancestor. 

I haven't started contacting these cousins as I am trying to clean up and making sure my mythology has some source documents behind it.  I have been contacted by some of those 3500 other matches but I haven't had any success making new discoveries within those 3500.  

I will leave you with that for now.  I am sure I will blog in the future as I make new connections and discoveries.  Hope you all enjoyed and if you decide to adventure into the DNA side of genealogy feel free to ask me questions and check with me I may know of some current discounts. 

Quaker's and I'm not talking Oats

I wanted to talk about what I learned this week. This is a starter blog on the topic of Quaker's and Religion in my Family Tree.  After getting a new Hint in my Ancestry DNA I got to looking at an older branch of the Stitt line.  The line was the Mills which joined the Stitt line back in the late 1800's. Something I had not really looked at in my family research before was their religious beliefs.  

The interesting thing wasn't the two families coming together it was how they eventually ran into each other.   From what I have researched so far was that the Stitt's came from PA to KY to OH and eventually to IA.  The Mills side came from PA to NC to TN to IA over the same approximate time frame.  Both of the families often traveled in groups when they made their big moves.  The Mills were Quakers and had a prominent impact in TN Quaker history.  Before I continue on and in case you are new to what Quakers are here was a useful piece for me.

Quakers are often confused with the Amish or with Shakers, two independent groups with whom there is no direct historical or theological connection. Despite a shared concern for peace and a historic emphasis on simplicity, Quakers are a unique body of Christians, formally called the Society of Friends.
Friends do not withdraw from the world into private celibate communities, as did the Shakers to the point of extinction. Nor do Quakers isolate themselves from the modern world, indicating their uniqueness by the wearing of unusual clothing and by rejecting technology as do the Amish. Instead, Quakers are a diverse group of Christian believers who seek to maintain a personal relationship with God while remaining active participants in the world around them.

Like I said earlier it looks like most of the family moves where with religiously like minded friends "no pun intended."  And after about a century of moving around they all showed up in IA.

I am going to leave you with that for now, however another thing I learned about the Quakers is they took good notes at their meetings keeping things like vital statistics (births, deaths, marriages, changes in membership.)  There are multiple volumes of meeting minutes from all the states involved  that I plan on checking out.  So look for future blogs with Quakers in the title and I will share new discoveries as I find them.

In The Beginning, Why I'm Even Doing This? Part II

So last time I was telling you how I got started into genealogy because of a forgotten cemetery in my neighborhood.  Over the last 4 years I am made an attempt to find and document where the last resting place is for all my family.

Below is just a small shot of what I have mapped out so far.  Each place marker is a GPS marker of where the tombstone is, with some margin of error.  I couldn't get my Google Earth Embeder to work but I will keep working on it and maybe in a future post you can see an interactive map to explore.  If anyone would like a copy of my Google Earth file, post here or email me and I will send it to you.  I have links to each FindAGrave memorial in the placemarkers.  The cool thing about that is while you might not be up for a road trip to a cemetery, you can still visit the memorial via the web.

These are just the people and cemeteries I have personally visited.  There are about 40 other cemeteries that I haven't visited that are outside of a day's drive.  Its neat seeing all of the cemeteries that I need to visit as most of them start on the east coast and end in MO.  When you look at the whole thing you can see the migration path that the family took to get here. 

I will put something out closer to Memorial Day but if there are any family members who would like a map or if you see someone who I have missed, let me know.  Please feel free to send me your pictures, it lets me see how the stones are aging.