DNA Dot Reform Last night I removed all my AncestryDNA ®  dots.  And then, started over. This was years of work removed, but after watching Diahan Southard's " The 5 Steps to Organizing Your DNA in 2023 ," I had to do it.  After studying Research Like A Pro , I've reformed my research practices, and heading into Research Like a Pro With DNA , I want to do that with DNA too, because it is a  really valuable record source. I realized I had been using the dots only as labels, not as filters which Southard's simple how-to enables. I'm using Ancestry as an example; the techniques will work elsewhere of course. Dot Groups as Filters Once the dots were gone, I created four groups, one for each of my great grandparent couples. Here is the view of the near end of my pedigree. I've blurred all but my great-greats, and boxed each couple to show what Southard proposes: Valorie's great-grandparent couples So my first four groups are: Cowan-McPherson, Schell-Anders...

In 2030 I'll turn 77, so it seems a good time to think ahead! Are you laying plans for the next decade? Please write about your plans in the comments. Barbara's challenge last week is what prompted this blog. Please read her blog if you haven't done so yet! Past I began asking family for information about their family and ancestors in the late Seventies. There were no private computers back then, and I doubt that the word "genealogy" was in my vocabulary. By the Eighties, I was writing letters to relatives and including a stamped, self-addressed envelope (remember those?) and Family Group Sheets. I still have many of those in my first genealogy notebook. A few lovely family members included money along with their answers! By the Nineties, I was online (sort of) and using genealogy lists such as Roots-L . I joined the South King County Genealogy Society sometime in the Nineties; unsure exactly when. The Society was meeting at the United Methodist churc...

If you use Ancestry, and have done a DNA test there, you've heard about the shortcomings and the value of Thrulines. Recently I've been doing a drive to get all my Baysinger DNA matches actually onto my Ancestry tree, and properly tag them as DNA matches, and also tag each of their connections to our most recent common ancestor (MRCA). The match gets a DNA Match  tree tag, each connecting ancestor gets a DNA Connection tag, up to the MRCA(s) which get a Common DNA Ancestor tag. When one does this on enough lines, in the pedigree view of the tree: Valorie Cowan Zimmerman's 6-generaton DNA-proved pedigree See all the DNA symbols? Isn't that cool!? The part that doesn't show here is the work of "building down" some or all of these lines. I'm happy to say that I've finished building down all lines from Elias Henry Baysinger, my two times great-grandfather, at least until the new DNA matches hit the database in January and February! I may have ...