John Turner Project - Genetic Genealogy Project for Descendants of John and Patience Turner and Thomas Weathersbee

The research of John and Patience Turner has been a pet project of mine for many years, in large part because their story as a couple, as a slave and as a person of color in the South is so compelling but probably also because I have yet to figure out where they came from before their known stories and so there is an element of a puzzle or mystery there.

Some time ago, I started digging into their genetics via myself and their other descendants.  I found evidence of John Turner's Sub Saharan African ancestry and I'd love to find more.  I'd love to be able to continue their family trees.  Perhaps I could find evidence that John's father was or was not his slave holder, Thomas Weathersbee or maybe evidence of Patience's family.  Pie in the sky, we could maybe even create a pretty comprehensive Lazarus kit for John Turner or Patience Turner!

To further the effort, I created a 'data collective'.  That's a fancy way of saying a spreadsheet of all of the data related to the genetic matches of related descendants (of John Turner and Thomas Weathersbee), accessible by all project participants.    The project is in it's wee bitty stages still but it's already looking promising!  So far, 13 kits and a couple of months in, we have identified two segments from two ancestors that are most likely from John Turner. (update : 21 kits and family lines identified!)

We need more descendants' data to work with though.  If you are descended from John and Patience Turner or Thomas Weathersbee, I would love to include you in the project.  Participation is easy.  You only need a gedmatch kit (free and easily created from your 23andme, ftdna or ancestry.com DNA) and a family tree (even a suspected one is fine) between you and John and Patience Turner.  If you have sources for your research, that is all the better - otherwise, I will research your tree to the extent that I can find evidence in support of your tree.  You send me your information, I send you a link to the spreadsheet and from there, you can do as much or as little as you'd like!

To join the project or to read more about the project, visit the John Turner project website. 

Mind the Fuzzy Gray Areas - Drawing Conclusions in Genetic Genealogy

I was inspired by an email from a cousin this morning to ponder the logic of genetic genealogy a bit.  Genetic genealogy is deceptively easy on some sites.  It's packaged and marketed by the big sites as an auto-magical way to find relatives you didn't know you had.  So, my experience is that folks get very excited by having these relatives show up and then make assumptions about their own heritage that I often find to be guesswork, at best.  The thing is, your relation to to a person and the conclusions you can draw from that connection are not nearly as clear cut as it can sometimes look on whatever website you're using.

I should also preface this by saying, that to the average person, I'm probably the most annoying genetic cousin ever.  When a cousin tells me a conclusion they have drawn, I will, without fail, ask them for enough information so that I can re-discover it on my own and very often tell them that it's not a for sure conclusion - or maybe even wrong.  Sorry, not sorry, cousins!  Here's why.

How To Preserve and Store Family Papers

 My grandmother has been researching my mother's side of our family (Kelly, Hussey, Hursey, Ulrich, Turner, Jordan, Anderson, Gee, Heath) since September of 1956 - almost 60 years, give or take.  She kept notes of all of her research in spiral bound notebooks and on notebook paper.  She has folders of copies of book pages and vital documents. In among her own notes and copies, she has original handwritten letters from her parents and my grandfather's parents of their own personal knowledge and other such gems.  It's an incredible collection of family papers.

  She recently moved and I was gifted with two boxes of this research.  It's like a genealogist's dream - and also represents a slight preservation crisis.  Some of the pages were already fading away and disintegrating.   I felt a terror that only a genealogist geek could feel when I unearthed a yellowed page with a family tree that could no longer be clearly read.

This is my first paper preservation project but I do have a bit of experience storing vital docs for longevity so I had a wee bit of knowledge and boned up quickly on what else I needed to have.  Here's the basics.

How to Find the Admixture of Shared DNA Segments

You find a genetic match and you have a family tree ancestor in common.  Hooray!  It's possible the genes you share could be from that ancestor.  Knowing the admixture of the SNPs you have in common could provide more clues.  For instance, if the ancestor in question was African, if the genes you share came from that ancestor, it should show that in the admixture.  

Tools like ancestry.com, ftdna and 23andme will give you an overall admixture (I am 3% Lithuanian, for instance). That overall admixture is impossible to use as a clue in gene to gene comparison of matches.  You could both share African descent, for instance - and it could be from entirely different ancestors.  Lo, the African continent happens to be pretty vast and offers billions of possible ancestors!   To find the admixture that is relevant to a particular match, you have to get more granular - down to the segments within a gene.  Only gedmatch offers the tools to do that at this time.  

These instructions will help you find out if the DNA you and you and your genetic cousin have in common has a particular admixture. It is roughly the process I used to find Millie Turner and Samuel Hussey in my genetic makeup.Although this will not prove a MRCA, it will provide more clues or evidence.  

The following caveats apply : 

• An admixture tool is only as good as it's sample size and population.  For instance, if the sample didn't include any people of African descent, it will not pick up African admixture.  For this reason, different admixture tools interpret genes differently so you might not get a completely straight forward answer.  My experience is that you will find one or two admixture tools that do a better job than others of approximating your admixture - and that will differ from person to person.
• When you look at the admixture of a specific gene, for yourself, for instance, you are seeing what you got from BOTH parents.  To find out which admixture on a particular gene came from which parent, you would run through these instructions first to compare yourself to one parent or the other.  
• Not sharing the admixture of the ethnicity of the ancestor does NOT mean you do not have that ancestor in common.  It could mean that, through recombination, across generations, you just don't have any genes from that ancestor or not enough for it to accurately show up in admixture analysis.  
• If your genetic makeup has the admixture of the ancestor in common that also does NOT mean you are definitely related to that person.  So, if you have African admixture, that does not prove you are related to the African ancestor in question.  You might have other African ancestors that you don't know about yet.  

How to Convert 8MM Films into DVD, Reorder Clips and Create a New Movie

Once upon a time, my aunt sent me 71 rolls of 8mm film from my mother's family from when they were kids.  It was 20 years of family history - what a treasure! Aaaaand... on a completely inaccessible media type.  Doh!

Being the do it yourselfer that I am, I toyed around with learning how to correctly lubricate, clean and record film to a more accessible media type.  I bought an 8mm film projector on craigslist, bought a splicer and all of the stuff I needed... and here's my magic tip for converting 8mm film to digital format : hire a professional.

Those family films are gold. They are people and events and lives that are 50 or 60 years past.  Many of the people in them have passed or have long forgotten what's there.  Although here are many accessible techniques online for maintaining film, without having had some practice, it is easy to screw up.   Without experience, you won't necessarily know how to counter what you find when you start rolling a film.  What if it cracks?  And although I am a diy pro and feel pretty confident I could figure it out with enough time, I don't want it to be at the expense of 20 years of family history.

So take the $200 it would take to buy all the stuff and stash it in a high interest savings account to hire someone and move on to picking someone out.  When you're looking for a professional, look for someone who will move it to a master tape and then make a DVD for you.  The tape they put it on can always be used to create more DVDs or copies later.  At least until one day, it's also inaccessible.  But for now, it's easier than 8mm.  Check reviews for the person you select.  Make sure their price includes  repairs or cleaning should the film break down in the process.

It's worth noting here, that film conversion is usually quoted by the foot.  When estimating the number of feet of film you have, on the thicker (wider) 8mm film, although it says 25 feet on the box, it's actually 50 feet of filmed images.  So, when pricing out conversion, make sure to do it with how many feet of images there are, not how many feet of film the box says it has.  That got me.  I was expecting to spend $300 and the bill was $600.

$600 isn't something I have lying around.  So, I created a crowd funding project for my family to pitch in.  Within a few months, we had it funded.

The day came and I went and dropped them off and, a couple of weeks later, they were done.  I immediately sat down to watch them.

Sidebar: I saw my grandfather, who I never met when he was alive.  My grandparents  - I saw them young and bright eyed with their first baby and watched them mature over the course of these films.   I saw both sides of great grandparents, some of whom I've never seen photos of at all.  Aunts and uncles I've never seen.  This film is truly a treasure.  I am so grateful that my grandparents were 'those parents', who filmed everything.   I am so grateful to have had the opportunity, the means and the know how to watch them again and that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will hopefully have these in some form.

The new issue was that although some of the film boxes had been labeled or had a post mark date on them and I could sort of put them in the right order for him, most of them were not.  Without playing them, I had no idea what was on some of them.  So although I labeled them and cataloged them before I dropped them off, when they were put onto tape and then DVD, they, of course, were not in the correct order.

I wanted to present my family with something they could watch from beginning to end or something my grand-kids (in 20 years, son) could watch and understand how it was moving through time. So, the next step was to figure out how to edit the video well enough to chop up the film, put it into the correct order and then re-create the DVDs in the correct order - with some additional menus and bells and whistles so that they were easier to watch.

I made lots of mistakes.  It turns out, there is some skill involved in film making.  Who knew?!   I had to redo it 4 times.  This post is the final solution for getting family films from DVD, cutting them up, re-ordering them and burning them to DVD again - without dropping  ton of cash.  It takes relatively advanced computer skills and I don't think I explain it very completely, in large part because I probably don't entirely understand the whys behind a lot of it.