Telling Our Stories with the Help of DNA

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Courtesy of Pixabay


Let your family story sparkle!


Tell the Story

Why do we do all this family history research? My answer is, to tell the story. If we do good research, the family legends are supported by records we find, and we make the story interesting with maps, newspaper articles, photos and other artifacts, and whatever else we can find. While telling the story, we cite our sources in a way that helps other researchers retrace our steps, whether to a book, records in archives, or online site.


DNA Evidence

But what if there are no legends? And few records, or we're looking for an unknown ancestor? These challenges can often be overcome with the use of DNA testing and matching. It can be challenging to use this data in a way that is interesting and in a way that allows others to follow our footsteps. 

Fortunately, there are some companies working hard to make DNA testing painless, and using the data much easier than it was years ago. There are also wonderful tools helping us illustrate relationships correlated with DNA match data and also the making the scary process of creating citations easy. Yes, easy! See DNA Citation Templates from the FamilyLocket.com website, which I will be using in this blog post. My examples are my mother's McBees, relatives and ancestors of her father, Harvey McBee.


Examples

The first step with a new DNA match is always figuring out who they are and how we're related, so they can be added to the family tree and properly tagged and identified. After clicking to the match page and copying into the notes the size of the match, my first step is always looking at Shared Matches because this will often be the clue I need to figure out who they are. Here's my closest AncestryDNA match, my sister with our shared matches:

"DNA Matches for KB," database report, AncestryDNA (https://ancestry.com/dna : accessed 12 February 2023).


In the citation, KB is my sister. I have blurred all the match names for privacy, which is how I would do it in a report or story sent to my family or my McBee family group on Facebook and Groups.io. Not very scary!

How about a match that shows up in MyHeritage? 


“Review DNA Match for Valorie Zimmerman," database report, MyHeritage (https://www.myheritage.com/dna/match : accessed 12 February 2023),  estimated Half brother, uncle relationship with "Samuel McBee" sharing 26.9% (1,904.3‎ cM) DNA across 49 shared segments (largest segment 175.5‎ cM), DNA managed by [Private], (MRCA: Harvey McBee and Anna Baysinger.

Lots of information above, but I think you are getting the picture. Written like a sentence, the template is Report Creator if different than website, "Report Name for DNA Test Taker Name," database report, DNA Testing Company or Website (URL : accessed date), match or report details. 

One of the best sites to use if you want everyone to be able to run the report for themselves is Gedmatch. Of course it can be a challenge for DNA testers to download their raw data and upload it to Gedmatch. It is our responsibility to communicate with our matches in a friendly way and help them both understand why this can be useful for both of you, and also the risks involved. Here is the result of a useful free Gedmatch report for my McBee uncle and I, showing our shared X match, which would come from his mother, Anna Baysinger:

"X-DNA Comparison, vers. 2.1.0(a),” database report, GEDmatch (https://www.gedmatch.com : downloaded 21 February 2023), kit nos SQ780327C1 (Valorie Zimmerman) and T142682 ("Samuel McBee"), chromosome X, start-stop points 2,700,157-8,485,350 and 142,351,893-154,892,230, 40.3cM.



I could go on, but you have the template now, and examples from FamilyLocket. The key is to capture the image and then create the citation immediately, while the page is still open. From your research log or planning document, all you need do is copy/paste the citation into every document where you use the image or analysis. 

Have fun writing your stories!


Valorie Zimmerman







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