Normanites (Waipu and St Ann's) - News

Barbara's Hints for FamilyFinder:

Genealogical Identification of Matches:  The best way to make genealogical sense of your FamilyFinder matches is to persuade relatives from various branches of your family to also do FamilyFinder.  The best relatives to test are the oldest as they are closer in generations to a most recent common ancestor than you are.   Test as many relatives as you can afford to.  See:  http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2013/04/07/widen-the-net/.  You can then look for matches in common with a particular relative.  Or you can use matches that you learn are related to you in a particular way to identify which branch of your tree other matches most likely also are related to you by looking at the matches in common with that match.  

Next, look at the match and all matches in common with that match on the chromosome browser for any who match you at the same location on the same chromosome.  It is important that they satisfy both criteria.  If you can identify the group of people who satisfy both criteria as say paternal matches, you can then look for matches who match you at the same location on the same chromosome but are not matches in common with the paternal matches; these folks are most likely maternal matches.  The easiest way to do this chromosome comparison is to upload all your chromosome browser data on all your matches to www.gedmatch.com.  You can only do five matches at a time, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it goes fairly quickly.  You will then be able to look at all your matches in one place, chromosome by chromosome.  There is also another utility for obtaining information about your matches: www.dnagedcom.com. 

Relationship Designation/Matches in Common: To designate how someone is related to you, on the page that first opens up under FamilyFinder matches, there are several columns.  The seventh one is titled "Known Relationship" and has a pull down menu.  If you know how someone is related to you, you can choose the appropriate relationship.  However, if you do not know how they are related, but want to be able to look at matches they have in common with you, choose "distant cousin".   When you are ready to look at the matches in common for your matches, change the default setting of "close relationships" in the pull down menu on the first page to "in common with" and an alphabetical list of names of designated relatives will come up.  I found that you cannot go directly from designating names to looking at the matches in common with option; you first need to choose "show all matches". 

Sort Your Matches:  If you want to show your matches for example in an alphabetical list, click on the "name" heading; click again and you will get a reverse alphabetical list.  Most of the headings can be used like like this.  So if you want a list of folks with the most closely related match at the top, click on the heading "relationship range" or "suggested relationship".

Useful Sites:

Comparing raw autosomal data:  http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/FF23utils/pair-comp.php
How much DNA you share with various relatives:  http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics
National Geographic Genetics Overview: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/science-behind/genetics-overview/
New Zealand Vital Records:  https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Home/
Nova Scotia Vital Records:  http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/genealogy.asp
Passenger Lists for ships to New Zealand/Australia:  http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/passengerlists/Sebim.shtml
Scotland Vital Records:  http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
X-chromosome Overview:  http://www.broadinstitute.org/~sfs/nrg_Xchrom.pdf.