DNA Testing. Why I did it and what I did with it. Part Two - Cousin Matching

This past week I've spent some time with the the cousin matching at the three sites, AncestryDNA, FTDNA and MyHeritage.  I concentrated only on 2nd - 3rd cousins matched with a total CM of 130 or greater.  These are considered to be fairly strong matches with fairly recent common ancestors.

I've now sent messages or exchanged emails with all of those people.  There are only 13 people with this close of a match.  My sister and a first cousin have tested as well and show up as expected.  Of the 13 people contacted I have heard back from 6 of them.  One I have actually met.  However, none of them have been able to help with my family history research.

I don't regret all of the testing and it was an interesting experience but I believe my interest really lies in the research area not so much the DNA.  However, it is out there now and perhaps someone in the future will contact me.

The only thing that has truly helped is the Varner surname project on FTDNA.  I have taken a Y-67 test on FTDNA and joined the surname project.  Based on my ydna it was confirmed that my paternal Varner family line is indeed part of the larger Varner family line that has immigrated from Germany.

DNA Testing. Why I did it and what I did with it. Part One - ethnicity

A couple of years ago I decided to get my DNA tested.  There were several reasons for this but chiefly among them were:

• Looking for cousin matches to further my family history research
• Learning my ethnicity
• Verify the assumptions that I have made in my family tree

So l did the following testing.

• AncestryDNA;  Autosomal only.
• Family Tree DNA; Autosomal, Y-DNA and MT-DNA.
• MyHeritage; uploaded AncestryDNA autosomal test only.
• Gedmatch Genesis; uploaded AncestryDNA autosomal test only.

My ethnicity results varied some by company, but not much.  Grouping's of countries are a little different but the actual breakdowns is fairly consistent. 

The results are;

Ancestry
England, Wales & Northwestern Europe  73%
Ireland & Scotland  17%
Germanic Europe  6%
Norway  2%
Sweden  2% 

Family Tree DNA
 British Isles 83%
 East Europe 5%
 Southeast Europe 5%
 Middle Eastern 3%


MyHeritage
North and West Europe  95.2%
             English  81.8%
             North and West European  13.4%
South Europe  4.8%
             Greek  2.8%
             Italian  2.0%

In my next post I will review the cousin matching effort.

Back from a long hiatus

I thought I would try to get back to blogging again this year.  I didn't realize that I took all of 2018 off.  Like most other things blogging is a habit.  When you skip a few weeks it's hard to get started again.  Not only did I take time off from blogging but I also stopped working on my family history as well.  Hopefully now that it is the dead of winter I can get back to both.

I discovered #genchat on Twitter this past year and have spent quite a lot time on Twitter keeping up with it.  Fun group of people that chat about all things genealogy.  If you have time on Friday evenings and you are on Twitter I highly recommend it.  I joined Twitter just for this.

This winter I was contacted by a first cousin (once removed) that I have never met.  He found me on Facebook.  There are good things that come from social media.

Today I started adding a few photos to my RootsMagic database.  I need to rethink my overall plan.  I have on line trees on Ancestry, FamilySearch Family Tree and MyHeritage.  I use all three sites for their historical record contents. 

I also have my DNA on Ancestry, Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage as well as GEDMATCH.  I don't really do much with the dna matches.  I have only had a couple of people contact me that we matched but we were not able to determine the nearest common relative we had.  But I was able to confirm my match to the Varner family line in Germany.  I was able to do this with a y-dna test at FamilyTree DNA and then joining the Varner surname project.

New Year new game plan -.Considering a genealogy "do over"

Took a break for the holidays but I'm ready to start working on my genealogy again.  I had almost decided to go with the Thomas MacEntee's "Genealogy Do Over" program.  Basically the plan is to set aside all existing research documentation and the existing family tree file and start completely fresh.  Re-enter all the data and sources from scratch in an effort to do a better job of source documentation and assure a more complete and accurate family tree.

I thought long and hard about it and decided that is not something I was willing to commit to.  So I've decided to take a modified and much less drastic approach.  I will go through my existing RootsMagic file and update all existing source citations to make sure they are using the correct template and are filled out completely.  I will also verify that it is a valid and provable source.  If questionable I will be sure and code it as such and search for valid confirmation prior to moving on to the next one.

Once all of the sources, along with their citations, have been reviewed I will begin working on the webhints.  My plan is to first do Ancestry, then Family Search and finally My Heritage.  I would expect this review to last well into 2019.

While doing this project I will still be available to share any information that I have with any other Varner family researchers.  As always you can either leave a comment here on the blog or send me an email.

Curtis Rarick family

Curtis Rarick is a first cousin, once removed.  He is the son of Levi Rarick and Amanda Varner.  I have just finished working all of the tree hints on my Ancestry member tree for Curtis's branch in my family tree.

Curtis was born in 1878 in the Miami Country, Ohio area.  In 1901 in Newton County, Indiana he married Vannice Pearl Rench.  They had three sons.  Waymond, Herrald and Dane.  Waymond and Dane survived and each of them had sons.  Herrald only lived eight days.

I have decided to leave the Rarick branch of the family for awhile and work some more on the direct Varner line.

Cousins meeting and John F & Julia J Breshears family

I have been pleasantly sidetracked the last couple of weeks.  Due to a new DNA match on Ancestry I have been corresponding with a newly found second cousin.  We are related through the William Carroll Green Breshears line.

This past Saturday we were able to meet.  Julia, my second cousin and her parents (her mother is my first cousin once removed) met with my sister and myself and we visited the cemeteries in the Breshears valley of Missouri.  We were also able to meet up with some other Breshears cousins (from the state of Oregon) while we were there.  They were vacationing with other relatives here in Missouri.  It was a beautiful day for our outing and we were able to visit for some time.

In preparation for the outing I have been working on the John F and Julia J Button Breshears family this past week.  This was the line that cousin Julia came from.  I tried to put as much information together for her in the time that was available.  I have updated my Ancestry working tree and matched with Family Search.  Much work on this family is still needed in Family Search.

This weeks spot light is on the Amanda Varner Rarick & Levi Rarick family

This past week I have begun working on Daniel Grant Varner's (Sr) children.  I'm currently working on the the family of Amanda Varner Rarick & Levi Rarick.  Their children were Curtis, Pearl, Raymond, Ralph and Mina.

I have found some first cousins 1x removed, second and third cousins.  Added seventeen new people to the family tree so far.

The Ancestry web hints are proving invaluable and the Rootsmagic "Tree Share" is working great.  As I'm going through them I am also adding to or updating the Family Search people and matching them to Rootsmagic.  I will turn on the Familysearch and My Heritage web hints after I've made it through all the Ancestry hints.

I hope to make it through the rest of this branch this week.

Restarting direct line descendant research and Rootsmagic TreeShare

I have finished my work on the John Washington Varner line for now.  It is not nearly complete but I will turn it over to cousin Kim for further documentation.

I am ready to spend a little time on a mini genealogy redo project.  Working my Varner line I will start at the end of the line and begin cleaning up my source documentation on direct line descendants.  At the same time I will work through all of the webhints I have in RootsMagic.  These will be from Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage.  At this time I have turned off the webhints for FindMyPast.  In addition to webhints I also plan to check on Fold3 for any military records.  I have found that the webhints fairly well cover, census records, SSDI, social security applications, most vital records and Find A Grave.

Now that RootsMagic has the new Treeshare option for Ancestry it is fairly easy to keep my Ancestry tree up to date and make better use of their shaky leaves.  That along with the integration with FamilySearch makes catching the low hanging fruit so much easier.

John Washington Varner - new branch added to family tree

I've finally completed adding another branch to the tree.  It was for John Washington Varner.  He is my 2nd cousin once removed.

I've updated my RootsMagic database and worked on a few people in FamilySearch.  Have not yet shared the family to my Ancestry tree.  Ran into a real mess with the FamilySearch Family Tree.  There were several duplicates for each person.  It took many hours of merging and relinking to clean everything up.

I haven't yet decided what to do with Ancestry.  I can use the treeshare feature or I can continue to build and source my tree only on RootsMagic and then eventually load a new tree to Ancestry.  The intent of the tree on Ancestry is to make use of their web hint feature but I am finding them a little overwhelming.  Since I loaded a new RootsMagic tree to Ancestry, I'm receiving hints for everything, even though I have the record attached to the tree.  I have turned off the hints for other member trees but I still have over 3100 hints.

I'm thinking of taking one family unit at a time and working through the various hints for each member of the family.  This will mean possibly visiting the same source documents multiple times but I think it will prove to be a more efficient process.  This should keep me from chasing down the rabbit holes and losing focus.

Peter L Varner on FamilySearch Family Tree

I have spent the last few days trying to fix the Peter L Varner family on the FamilySearch Family Tree.  Peter was married three times. Peter and his first wife Rebecca Righter had seven children.  Peter and his second wife Hannah Razer had two children.  Peter and his third wife Louise Lair had two children.

There were three records to be merged for Peter, two for Rebecca and two for Louise.  Some of the children had duplicates as well.  Many were assigned to the wrong parents.  Overall it was a complete disaster.

I spent an entire afternoon just trying to put together everything that was already in FamilySearch. The next day after reviewing everything again and determining what was there I then set about trying  to merge all of the children's records first.  Then I merged the duplicate parents.  Once I was down to a single record for each person I could then change the parental linkages to match the children to the correct set of parents.

Because of the complexity of the cleanup process I worked only in FamilySearch, it was simply too confusing to try to work it through RootsMagic.  I still have to go back and rematch my RootsMagic person to the merged FamilySearch person.  Once that is done I can begin sharing the data and sources between the two.

This was an interesting project but I don't think I want to tackle another family for awhile.  I need to get back to working on the source documentation.

A genealogy mystery - Louisa A Bell Kreider (1856-1911)

I have spent several days trying to work out the mystery of Louisa Bell Kreider.  Louisa A Bell Kreider (1856-1911), according to her death certificate her parents were James Bell and Sarah Ann Varner.  I'm not able to verify this biological relationship with any other source documents.  The issues are:

•  Louisa is 14 years older than her nearest age sibling.  
• Her mother (Sarah Ann Varner) was shown in the 1860 census in her parents home living under her maiden name.  Her age was 20, she would have been 16 at Louisa's birth.  
• Her father (James D Bell) was shown in the 1860 census in his parents home.  His age was 22, he would have been 18 at Lousia's birth.
• James D Bell was a Union soldier in 1862.

In summary there is not enough evidence to support that Louisa is the biological daughter of James and Sarah Ann Bell.  Obviously much more investigation is needed here.

New branch added to family tree - Joseph Varner Bell & Ellen Meloy Bell

For the last few days I have been working on adding the Joseph Varner Bell family to my tree.  Joseph is the son of James Bell and Sarah Ann Varner.  He is my second cousin once removed.  Sarah is the daughter of my great granduncle John Peter Varner, the brother of my great grandfather Daniel Grant Varner.

I am still working on finding original documentation on the family.  I have much work left to do and many other people to add to the tree.  So far I have been able to find census records and find a grave records for most.  I have spent several days trying to work out the mystery of Louisa Bell Kreider, which is the subject of another post.

Work on this line was prompted by an email I received from a reader of this blog.  Thanks, Kim.  I have much work left to do and many other people still to add to the tree.

Page added to blog for family photos

I have added a page to this blog to add various family photos that I have that I think is interesting.  There is a new link on the left hand side of the page under the "About Me" section.  Just click on the link and you will be taken to the page of photos.

New cousin contact from Stuffel Werner of Pennsylvania line

I received an email a couple of days ago from a cousin that found me because of this blog.  This was my first contact because of the blog.  It has renewed my interest in writing here.

Kim has provided some needed insight and most of all the desire to resume my research efforts on the Pennsylvania Varner lines.  I have not documented or researched the majority of my Varner line except for my direct ancestors,  I believe it is now time to go back and fill in all the branches of the tree.

New first cousins (once removed) contacted

I have to give kudos to Facebook.  Thanks to social networking I have recently "met" and been in communication with two first cousins from the Varner side of the family.  These are daughters of two of my deceased first cousins from California.  These cousins lived in the Los Angeles area most of their lives so we were not close having only met a very few times on those extremely rare times our families got together.

Both of these ladies now live in the pacific northwest.  One I just had a very pleasant phone call with a few days ago.  Neither are very interested in family history but they were able to provide me with some valuable recent family information.

It is my hope to continue the contact and hopefully learn some more from them.

Summer vacation and mission trip

Again this year we went on the Canadian mission trip with our church.  We decided to combine that trip with our annual vacation.  So we drove through the pacific northwest to go into Canada and then come back to the Calgary area.

While vacationing on the west coast we were able to spend an afternoon with one of my first cousins (once removed).  My cousin and his wife are both well advanced in age and he is in poor health.  So it was very good to be able to visit with them possibly for the last time.

Chuck was born and raised in the area where I still live.  He had left the area before I was born but he and his family returned to quite often to visit my father and his other cousins in the area.  Because of the age difference we did not know each other very well.  However, I was able to provide him a good time reminiscing on his youth and growing up with my father and uncles.

We will probably do another pacific northwest trip next year but the chances are very good that he will no longer be with us.

DNA testing and cousin connections

I have taken the atDNA test from Ancestry and the ydna and mtdna tests at FTDNA.  Loaded my atdna test results to FTDNA, MyHeritage and Gedmatch.  From this I have had hundreds of matches. Very slowly working through some of the closer ones.

Within the last few days I have actually been in contact with a couple of cousins.  One, a second cousin once removed on the Varner side.  The other was a cousin from the William Carroll Green Breshears line.  Unfortunately her Breshears relative died as a younger adult and she did not have much information on the Breshears line and nothing on the Green Breshears connection.

I'm feeling optimistic that we may be able to collaborate on the Varner line but will probably have no help on the Breshears line.

Still looking for birth parents for WILLIAM CARROLL GREEN BRESHEARS - DNA tests taken

We have taken DNA tests in hopes of finding additional cousins that may help us unravel the mystery  of our GGGranfathers birth parents.  My sister, Janet and I have both tested with AncestryDNA.  We have numerous cousin matches.  I have been in contact with some of the second - third cousins and we are trying to find our common ancestors now.  So far no luck in breaking through our William Carroll Green brick wall.

 Don's AncestryDNA ethnicity results
Janet's AncestryDNA ethnicity results

In addition to Ancestry, I have loaded mine to FTDNA and gedmatch.  I also took a Y-DNA37 test at FTDNA for the Varner surname project.  My dna matches closely to some of those on the Varner surname project so that part of the family tree I'm fairly confident on.  Also lot's of Breshears matches on Ancestry.

I really need to do a lot of studying on this dna matching process.  Fairly complicated and very involved.  I'm sure I am missing lot's of things that are staring me in the face simply because I don't know how to compare my results with others.  Matching distant ancestors on our trees is extremely difficult.

Drowning in DNA and Record Match results ~ I have been working on the family history

I really have been working on the family history the last several weeks.  I probably took on too much at one time though.  I have been deluged with record hints and emails.  It was an interesting series of events.

First I had my DNA tested at Ancestry.com.  I spent a lot of time working my cousin matches and emailing potential cousins.  Most never responded but a few did.  We are not really having much luck identifying out common ancestors.

I then uploaded my Ancestry DNA results to Family Tree DNA and Gedmatch.com.  FTDNA has shown many cousin matches and I've been emailing several people.  So far we are still at the stage of trying to identify the common ancestors.  None have yet been identified.  Gedmatch.com has been a disappointment.  The system is severely overloaded,  They were simply not equipped to handle the number of people that have uploaded their DNA.  I have not worked with Gedmatch.com hardly at all.  At this point I cannot even attached my dna kit number to my gedcom file I uploaded.

I need to educate myself on dna.  I need to learn how to decipher my results and how to use the tools provided on each site to match with others.  I have watched a few YouTube videos but I need to do more.

Then I upgraded my RootsMagic program to version 7.  This update provided record matching from Family Search and MyHeritage.  I was following the record hints that were coming up for MyHeritage and found some good stuff.  Because of this I decided to get a membership (both a data and a site membership).  So I uploaded my gedcom and created the Varner Family Website.  I have over 1150 Smart (family matches) and 900 record matches.

So that's what I've been up to.  I will soon be posting some of the results of these endeavors.

Vansant Road Cemetery (formerly Clinton Memory Garden) work finally completed

The last month I've been concentrating on completing the database work for the Vansant Road Cemetery (formerly Clinton Memory Gardens).  I've not only created the databases and updated all of the records but with the help of another board member, Bob McCartney,  we were able to photograph the entire cemetery and verify burial locations.

Once that was done I worked on the Find A Grave memorials for this cemetery.  As much as possible all memorials were updated with grave location, dates (based on tombstones) and family links.  As expected several duplication's were found as well as memorials created for people that were not buried in the cemetery. Corrections were requested and most appear to have been accepted.  There were two Find A Grave volunteer's who were instrumental in helping me with this projects.  Thanks to LaDon Brennan and Linda Everhart.

Because of this project no family history work or indexing has been done.  My hope is to get back to that this coming weekend.