Episode 201

  with Lisa Louise Cooke    In this episode, I chat with Angela Walton-Raji, expert in U.S. and African-American research, about tips for interviewing relatives and taking your African-American family tree back to the era of slavery. Other highlights of this episode include: A RootsTech 2017 recap, with info on archived streaming sessions; Great news from Findmypast about its new Catholic Heritage Archive; A ground-breaking study from AncestryDNA that identifies specific migration patterns among genetically-related clusters of people; Follow-up mail from Lisa’s Episode 200 celebration; An expert Q&A on finding relatives who don’t appear in the census where you expect them to; A teaser clip from the upcoming Genealogy Gems Book Club interview with Annie Barrows, author of The Truth According to Us. ROOTSTECH 2017 RECAP Genealogy Gems booth streaming sessions are on the . "Like" our page, and then scroll down to Videos and click See all (shown here). You’ll find: Lisa Louise Cooke: Google search methodology for genealogy, using Google Earth for genealogy and creating memorable, easy family history videos; Diahan Southard: Understanding your DNA ethnic pie chart; Amie Tennant: Digital journaling and scrapbooking; Sunny Morton: Jogging your memories and “Genealogy Jackpot” (on researching her ancestors’ survival of the Great Johnstown flood of 1889.   POPULAR ROOTSTECH STREAMING LECTURE “THE BIG 4” NOW ONLINE and catch a summary of its main points Catch our future free Genealogy Gems streaming sessions on Facebook! "Like" and follow the .   GENEALOGY GEMS APP BONUS MATERIAL If you listen through ) and ), your bonus material for this episode is a short video clip showing a time-lapse perspective on RootsTech 2017 from the exhibitor hall.   NEWS: FINDMYPAST CATHOLIC HERITAGE ARCHIVE : Archdiocese of Boston and New England Historic Genealogical Society plans to bring 10 million+ parish records online MAILBOX: Robin mentioned she’s learned so much from Lisa on these topics: , , , , How to organize electronic files (see the free ) software for writing family history  Start creating fabulous, irresistible videos about your family history with Animoto.com. You don’t need special video-editing skills: just drag and drop your photos and videos, pick a layout and music, add a little text and voila! You’ve got an awesome video! Try this out for yourself at . Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at . INTERVIEW: ANGELA WALTON-RAJI Angela Walton-Raji instructs the . Purchase it with this link and use coupon code GEMS17 for 10% off, valid through 12/31/17. Angela’s oral history questions: What to ask your elders Did they happen to know anyone who had been born a slave when they were a child? Who was the oldest person that you remember when you were a child? And did that person ever talk about anyone who may have been enslaved? What do you know about where the family was from? (Were we always from Georgia, or, were we always from Pennsylvania, or was there a time when we came from another place? (Read more about the she mentioned.) Why did we move? Who remembers that journey? Were people involved in the Civil Rights movement, in the , with the , or other important events in their lifetime? What kinds of things did they see? Who in the family participated in the military (in World War II, I, the Spanish-American War)? African-American military units through the mid-20th century were still referred to as Buffalo soldiers. (She mentioned the , a unit of all-black World War II paratroopers. is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. : it’s free to get started.     Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search WebHints on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. Soon RootsMagic will also be able to search records and even sync your tree with Ancestry.com, too.         EXPERT TIP ON FINDING ANCESTORS “MISSING” IN CENSUSES Kate Eakman takes on a Gems listener question from someone who has already done a lot of work trying to locate a relative in the 1940 U.S. census provides expert genealogy research service that works with your research goals, budget and schedule. The Legacy Tree Discovery package offers 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations: a great choice if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code GEMS100 to save $100 off your purchase of research services (expires 4/30/17).   DIAHAN SOUTHARD: STUDY BREAKTHROUGH There is no doubt that this is an exciting time to be a genealogist. Here at Genealogy Gems, we are announcing new record collections online every month, advances in genealogy databases and their ability to retrieve the information we are looking for, and of course, DNA testing. There really has been no time in history where such a wealth of information about our past has been so readily available to so many. In another ground-breaking development in the DNA world has been a recent publication in a scientific journal by the scientific team at . It is titled, “Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveals post-colonial population structure of North America.” Or, in more understandable terms, “Your DNA can tell us where you came from in America in the last 500 years.” Wow, right? So how did they do this? Well, the power really is in the numbers. In this particular paper they used 770,000 people, but now that they are approaching having testing 4 million people, you can bet the same principles will be applied to a larger data set and we will see even more as a result. But even though it takes a large data set to accomplish this, it really all still comes down to the relationship of two people. To start, Ancestry determines how just two people are genetically related. Then they find how those two are related to a third, again, looking only at pairs of people. This goes on and on and on until everyone in the group as been compared. Then we use a graph to plot those relationships, with those more closely related clustering around each other.  Then the real key, the point where we see the marriage of genetics and genealogy: they add in the family history information for each of these individuals in the cluster. What they found was astounding. They have displayed the data in Figure 3 in the paper: Distribution of ancestral birth locations in North America. Summary map from Nature Communications; click to see article with full explanation of map data. Image used with permission of Ancestry.com. It is a map of the United States with colored dots scattered across the landscape. The location of the dots corresponds to the genealogy of those tested, while the color of the dots relates to their genetic clustering. Those who clustered closest together are the same color. The result is a nearly perfect rainbow, with each color holding its respective spot on the map, with very little overlap between groups. (There are actually two maps in the paper, just to make things easier to see.) We might be tempted when looking at the maps to think, oh, well, of course there is a large population of European Jews in New York, everyone knows that, no breakthrough there. But it IS!! This isn’t their family history, or their accent or their culture that is telling us this, it is their genetics! As if that wasn’t exciting enough, further on in the paper they describe how we can trace migration patterns of different groups over just a few generations. In the paper they specifically mention French Canadians and Cajuns/Acadians, but this same principle can theoretically be applied to dozens of other groups. For example, let’s say you have an ancestor in Texas about 4 generations ago, but you aren’t sure where she came from. If technology like what is published in this paper ever reaches your testing company, your DNA could tell you that you fit into the Lower South group, meaning that your ancestor likely hails from, well, the South!  This is just a glimpse into what the advances in genetics are bringing to your genealogy toolbox. So hang on to your hats, and keep tuned in here at Genealogy Gems for all of the latest updates.   GENEALOGY GEMS BOOK CLUB   by internationally best-selling author Annie Barrows It’s the summer of 1938, and wealthy young socialite Miss Layla Beck is now on the dole as a WPA worker, assigned to write a history of the small town of Macedonia, West Virginia. As she starts asking questions about the town’s past, she is drawn into the secrets of the family she’s staying with—and drawn to a certain handsome member of that family. She and two of those family members take turns narrating the story from different points of view, exploring the theme that historical truth, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Annie Barrows is also the co-author of . This novel takes place after World War II in a London recovering from the Blitz and an island recovering from German occupation. At the heart of Guernsey is an unlikely love story and the inspiring tale of a community that took care of each other in their darkest days with humor, compassion and good books. and how you can listen to Lisa’s upcoming exclusive conversation with author Annie Barrows about .   PRODUCTION CREDITS Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Editor Amie Tennant, Content Contributor         Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide, Content Contributor Lacey Cooke, Service Manager Vienna Thomas, Associate Producer Hannah Fullerton: Production Assistance     FREE NEWSLETTER: Enter your email & get my Google Research e-bookas a thank you gift! to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter, with tips, inspiration and money-saving deals.