"Cocktail Party Conversation"

Last year I volunteered at an Ancestry Day event in San Francisco and earned a free AncestryDNA kit.  It took several months for me to receive my kit because of some unexplained glitches on the Ancestry site that prevented me from ordering (I personally think it's because I was using an American Express card).  Eventually, one of the nice people at Ancestry who kept suggesting other ways I could try to enter my information figured out it would be a lot faster and easier if she just input the information, and voilà!  My kit was ordered.

Of course, when I received the kit, I meant to send it back right away . . . yeah, that didn't happen.  I think it took me about a month or so before I finally had time to read the instructions, register the kit, come up with enough saliva to fill to the line, and send it off.  I can't say I was waiting with bated breath to see my results, but I was curious as to what Ancestry would come up with.

A week ago, I got a message in my inbox:  "Your AncestryDNA results are in!"  So I dutifully clicked the link and went to Ancestry.com to learn what discoveries would be revealed.

Well, at least some of it is realistic.  Ancestry says I'm 48% European Jewish — check.  My mother was Jewish and solidly Eastern European as far as I know.  Not as much actual documentation as I'd like (with three family lines in Grodno gubernia, that's pretty much impossible), but very reliable otherwise.

I have much better documentation on my father's side of the family, going back several generations.  He is primarily English Quaker and other English on his mother's side, and German Lutheran on his father's.  Some of the English goes back to Belgium, and some of the German to Switzerland.  The paper trail is very strong, with no evidence of nonpaternity events or undocumented adoptions.  So what does Ancestry say the rest of my background is?

Western Europe 34%
Ireland 12%
Scandinavia 2%
English less than 1%
Caucasus less than 1%
Middle East less than 1%
Italy/Greece less than 1%
Africa, American Indian, Asia, Pacific Islander 0%

The 34% Western European makes sense in context of my father's strong German background, plus the Belgian and Swiss connections.  Some Scandinavian is plausible given our English ancestry, since it is well known that Viking raiders made it to Great Britain.  Anything below 1% can safely be ignored, but even the Caucasus and Middle East could be legitimate with my mother being Jewish.

But less than 1% English?  And 12% Irish??!  Trust me, I've always wanted to be Irish, but it just ain't there.  My mother — remember I said she was Eastern European Jewish? — claimed we were part Irish on her side of the family.  Even though there are Irish Jews, that was wishful thinking on her part.  I have everything on the island of Great Britain from my father's side — English, Scottish (though probably border reivers, otherwise known as horse thieves), Welsh, and even Cornish — but absolutely no Irish.  And Ancestry says I'm 12%?  Just where are they thinking it came from?

I'm actually amused by this, however, not concerned in any way, because I keep in mind what Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, says over and over:  These results are nothing but cocktail party conversation, because the algorithms are built on extrapolation of data that are insufficient to give reliable information.  The companies may never have adequate data to give accurate information.  It's all smoke and mirrors, guys.

But maybe I'll raise a glass to myself next year on St. Patrick's Day anyway.

Ancestry Day San Francisco

Ancestry Day San Francisco went well today.  The numbers I heard for registration varied between 900 and 1,000, but counting all the volunteers it had to be least 1,000 attendees total.  Everything seemed to run very smoothly, and the California Genealogical Society had plenty of people around if you needed help.

I did several consultations with attendees who had questions on next steps in their research, I taught one class, and still managed to go to two talks myself, so it was a busy day.  Most of my consultations were on Jewish genealogy, and along with making suggestions for additional research I shared a list of resources for Jewish research in the San Francisco Bay area.  I also tackled questions about German research and a deadbeat husband in Oklahoma.  I think I was able to give everyone good advice on what to do next.

My class went incredibly well.  The ballroom was pretty packed with about 140 people, probably the largest group I've had for my online newspaper talk.  And it was the first time I've used a microphone for the class!  I'm still pretty sure everyone would have been able to hear me (many years of vocal training have taught me how to project my voice very well), but the AV guy convinced me he didn't want to catch any flak, so I gave in.  Several attendees came up at the end to tell me they really enjoyed the talk, including the senior reference librarian from the Oakland Public Library.  That was a particularly special compliment for me, as I respect her opinion very much.

The first class I attended was about Fold3.com, the new, modified verison of Footnote.com since that company was purchased by Ancestry.com.  I picked up quite a bit of useful information.  The most promising was that the acquisitions division is aware of the U.S. Army morning reports in Kansas City and is trying to work out an arrangement with the National Archives to digitize them.  These morning reports aren't exactly a substitute but can help with research where the records are missing due to the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.  These records have not been microfilmed, so currently you must travel to Kansas City to view them.

The speaker told us that the majority of the indexing on Fold3 is done manually, not by OCR scanning, which I think is a good thing.  He also mentioned that the indexing is done overseas, however, but didn't say if any quality control or checking was conducted.  The other interesting tidbit was that I learned what happened to SmallTownPapers on the site.  Apparently the original license was extremely favorable to SmallTownPapers, and they were not willing to renegotiate the terms, so the decision was made to drop the license.  That's a shame, as it was convenient to have that bundled with the Footnote/Fold3 subscription, but it was a logical business decision.  On the other hand, SmallTownPapers is now a free site, but I haven't been able to determine if they're offering the same content they did previously.  If they are offering the same content, and it's free now, then what was the point in Footnote licensing it before?  And if it isn't the same content, what happened to the rest of it?

The second class I took was a mixed bag.  Some of the information I was familiar with, some was new and helpful, but some I knew to be inaccurate.  It's always frustrating when a speaker gives bad information, but it can be more of a problem for beginners, because they tend to have less experience to critically assess that information.  Ah, well, such is life.  I did learn something new, so overall that makes it positive, right?