When I first started my family history research over twenty years ago I began by compiling the family information in Word files. It soon became too complicated to keep track of all the different family lines in separate files and so I bought a family history program to record all the information. After researching all the available family history programs I settled on Family Historian, which has an excellent reputation and is well-suited for one-name study work. The program has stood me in good stead over the years. I use it to record my own family tree but also all the other Cruwys and C ..read more

I wrote about AncestryDNA's new SideView technology and the new ethnicity inheritance tool earlier this week. My results for my parents weren't yet available when I wrote the post and I thought it would be interesting to do a three-way comparison. Ethnicity estimates Debbie's dad My dad's ancestry within the last few hundred years is all English apart from one maternal great-great- grandfather who is from Scotland. His paternal side is from Devon, Bristol and Gloucestershire. His maternal side is from Essex, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and London. Here is his updated ethnicity estima ..read more

I am fortunate that I have been able to test both of my parents at AncestryDNA which means that I am able to determine whether my matches are on the paternal or maternal sides. For matches sharing over 20 centiMorgans (cM) AncestryDNA automatically label matches as belonging to the father's side or the mother's side if you have tested your parents. This does of course mean that matches sharing lower amounts of DNA are not labelled, though I can still check to see which parent matches my cousins and I can assign the match manually using the relationship assignment tool. Some matches cannot be a ..read more

Time has flown by and for one reason or another I've not had much time for blogging in the last year. I note that my last blog post was published on 19th March 2021. I hope to rectify that in the coming weeks and months. A lot has been happening in the genealogy and genetic genealogy worlds and we can look forward to many exciting developments. I previously used the Feedburner service to send out e-mails to my blog subscribers. Feedburner was acquired by Google in 2007. In 2021 Google announced that they were going to focus on the core Feedburner features and would no longer be supporting ..read more

Time has flown by and for one reason or another I've not had much time for blogging in the last year. I note that my last blog post was published on 19th March 2021. I hope to rectify that in the coming weeks and months. A lot has been happening in the genealogy and genetic genealogy worlds and we can look forward to many exciting developments. I previously used the Feedburner service to send out e-mails to my blog subscribers. Feedburner was acquired by Google in 2007. In 2021 Google announced that they were going to focus on the core Feedburner features and would no longer be supporting e-ma ..read more

 This post is to test the new settings ..read more

 Test message for new MailerLite settings ..read more

Family History Down Under is going online for 2021 so everyone can join the conference regardless of where they live in the world. You can watch all the presentations from the comfort of your own home and the recordings will be available until the end of July. I've recorded two talks for the DNA track. The first talk is entitled "DNA testing and family history: advance your genealogical research" where I provide an introduction to the practical application of DNA testing for family history research. My second talk is "Solving cold cases with genetic genealogy: can we, could we, should w ..read more

News broke today that MyHeritage is to be acquired by the private equity company Francisco Partners. This is likely to result in new investment in the company so that they can expand their market share. Hopefully genealogists will benefit from the investment and we will eventually see the introduction of lots of new features and products. You can read more about the acquisition in this article from Business Wire. There is additional information in this article from TechCrunch. I expect that we will learn more about the plans for MyHeritage at RootsTech Connect. MyHeritage have a number of ..read more

The clock is ticking away and the virtual doors of RootsTech Connect will soon be open. The Expo Hall goes live at midnight UK time on 25th February so I will have the opportunity to have a quick look around before bedtime. Many of the exhibitors might well have special offers for the show or will be announcing new product launches. The main website is due to go live four hours later at 4.00 am UK time. I am a night owl but 4.00 am is a bit late even for me so I will be logging on somewhat later in the morning to have a look around. Depending on where you are in the world you might get a chanc ..read more