Days 1 and 2 of the FGS Conference

I've had full days of learning here at the FGS conference, attending sessions in every time slot.  Even as a kid I loved school, so I guess it's no surprise that I enjoy coming to conferences like this and adding to my genealogy knowledge.

Thursday morning started with the exhibitor hall opening at 10:00 a.m., ahead of the first presentations.  I merrily zoomed around and collected free journals, books, and chocolate from vendors.  In fact, I gathered so many goodies that I had to go back to the car to drop everything off, so I wouldn't strain my back with all that weight!

As for the educational aspect, session topics included an overview of Indiana genealogy (types of records available, when they began, where to find them), letters and claims from emancipated slaves and how helpful they can be when searching for family information, updates from the Records Preservation and Access Committee (have you signed up for the announcement lists yet?), and a workshop on reuniting Jewish Holocaust survivors and the availability of Jewish resources on the Internet (offered in part to help publicize the new Northeast Indiana Jewish Genealogical Society).  The most informative talk I attended was on researching U.S. and Canadian World War I veterans, given by David Allen Lambert of NEHGS.  He discussed several record types that were new to me and gave me new ideas on ways to research the World War I vets in my family.

I think I learned from more of the sessions I went to on Friday.  I began the day with civil registration in Poland.  Although I've definitely attended other talks dealing with the subject, Daniel Jones' explanation of the timelines, jurisdictions, and changes were a little clearer to me.  Legal Genealogist Judy Russell spoke on early Indiana laws and included some general points I don't recall having heard before:  session laws versus compilations/codes, public versus private laws, and additional broad categories to search (legislative records, petitions, committee reports, minutes, debate transcripts, judicial records, circuit/supreme/appelate court records, and territorial/statehood executive/gubernatorial records).  Plus she told us how to find the advanced search page for Google Books, which they apparently have tried hard to bury (and she suggested we all bookmark it)!

Next up was Tony Burroughs' discussion of black employment after the Civil War.    This is a subject I've not seen enough coverage of, so it was all welcome information.  He talked quite a bit about farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers (and the differences between them), which is what most of my family research involves.  And as is usual with his talks, he included a great list of references for further study.  The last session of my day was by Ari Wilkins, on the subject of Quakers (the Society of Friends) and black Americans, particularly before and leading up to the Civil War.  This is a fascinating history, and it was easy to see how some of the Friends' work in freeing slaves (purchasing them and then transferring them to free states, where they were manumitted) laid the groundwork for what became the Underground Railroad, with which the Friends were also involved.

Friday ended with a great event sponsored by MyHeritage.  They booked some time at Crazy Pinz, a local bowling alley/entertainment center, for their employees and some MyHeritage Friends who responded to an invitation.  We were treated to a "luau buffet" (pulled pork sandwiches, fried rice, macaroni salad, etc.) and four bowling lanes in a private area.  Several of us hadn't bowled in many, many years (um, at least 40 for me), but it was a really fun time.  We all got custom-enbroidered bowling shirts, plus we learned that Daniel Horowitz is a pretty good bowler.  I even managed to bowl one strike in my second game!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Are Your Genealogy Goals for 2017?

It's the beginning of a new year, so for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy Seaver has us thinking about what we want to accomplish during the year:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible music):

1) What goals do you have for your genealogy research, education, and writing during 2017?  

2) Tell us about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+ in response to this post.

These are my goals:

Personal Research

• Find the son my aunt gave up for adoption in 1945, find his descendants, or at least find out what happened to him.  My aunt is 91 years old, and we're running out of time to let her know.

• Determine who the biological father of my grandfather was.  I think I'm close, but I need to find some living descendants and see if they're willing to take DNA tests to confirm my hypothesis.

• Catch up on entering all the information I found in 2016 into my family tree database, including citations.

• Make sure I have uploaded the DNA results of all the family members who have tested to all possible databases.  Spend more time with the DNA databases looking for matches and contacting close matches to share information.  Work more with chromosome mapping; try the Lazarus tool on FTDNA.

• Share all the photos I've been scanning with family members from the appropriate lines and ask for help with identification of as-yet unlabeled photos.

• Look for a group that is planning to pool money for research in the Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine archive and join up, with the aim of finding documents on my Gorodetsky, Kardish, and Schneiderman relatives from Kamianets Podilskyi.

• Stay in better touch with cousins with whom I have already made contact.

• Figure out how to do some sort of research in Punjab remotely, so I can make progress on my stepsons' grandfather's family lines.

• Get back to working on Irish research, so I can make progress on my stepsons' grandmother's family, my half-sister's mother's family, and my friend's O'Gara family from County Roscommon and County Sligo.

• Any time I take a trip, check to see what research I might be able to do in the area while I'm there.

Education

• Go to the Ventura County Genealogical Society's family history event for Black History Month.  I am the featured speaker, teaching two classes in the afternoon, plus I have volunteered to help with general genealogy questions in the morning.

• Attend the Forensic Genealogy Institute in San Antonio, Texas in March.  I'm registered for three days of classes with Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist!  (Be still, my heart!)

• Attend the annual Sacramento African American Family History Seminar in March, where I will be teaching about Freedmen's Bureau records and also taking the opportunity to attend other classes.

• Attend Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank in June.  I'm teaching one class, but that gives me three days to go to a lot of other classes and learn more cool genealogy stuff.

• Attend (probably) the IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Orlando, Florida in July.  (No, you are not the only one wondering why anyone would schedule a conference in Florida in July.)  I plan to attend, but it depends on whether I have a talk accepted and therefore can justify the expense of flying cross-country.  It appears I no longer have any relatives living close by Orlando, so I might have to (shudder!) pay for a hotel room.

• Attend the Northwest Genealogy Conference in August in Arlington, Washington, if I have a talk accepted.

• Attend the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference over Labor Day weekend, this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I won a free registration, or I wouldn't be able to go.

• Watch Webinars from Florida State Genealogical Society, Illinois State Genealogical Society, Legacy Family Tree, Minnesota Genealogical Society, North Carolina Genealogical Society, Southern California Genealogical Society, and Wisconsin State Genealogical Society, and whatever other ones I hear about.  I average about two per week.

• Attend local genealogy presentations, primarily at the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California, California Genealogical Society, East Bay Genealogical Society, San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, and Oakland FamilySearch Library.

• Make presentations at local genealogical societies and FamilySearch Centers and Libraries.  So far I'm scheduled for 16 talks, but I usually average about two dozen each year.

Writing

• Stick to my average of about three to four posts per week on my blog.  (I'm not anywhere near as prolific as Randy.  I don't know how he does it.)  I regularly post for Wordless Wednesday, Treasure Chest Thursday, and Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, plus additions to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page and opportunities to help with genealogy-oriented projects.  Beyond that, I write about family stories, research discoveries, the journals I edit, and things I find interesting in the world of genealogy.

• I want to update and expand my article on the research I did on my Cuban cousins.

• I have a translation project and two transcription projects I'm working on that I need to devote more time to.

• Write some book reviews that I'm behind on.

• Finish creating a name index for a book about Niceville and Valparaiso, Florida.

All of this should keep me off the streets and out of trouble!

Do More DNA Results Lead to Irish Ancestry?

I had two extra AncestrayDNA kits lying around.  One was left over because my aunt was unable to provide enough spit to make the test work, and I ended up getting her a Family Tree DNA test instead.  The second was unused because the person for whom I had originally intended it passed away before I was able to send it.  So I had been trying to figure out to whom to send them instead.

I remembered a recent post by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, when she discussed the significant differences in ethnicity estimates between her DNA results and those of her siblings.  Since I've been curious about the possibility of actually having Irish ancestry (12%, as shown by my AncestrayDNA results) since I proved (through Y-DNA testing) that my grandfather was a Sellers by informal adoption, I decided to send the tests to my two full siblings.  I wanted to see if either or both of them would have Ireland appear in their ethnicity estimates.  That might lend more credibility to the possibility that my grandfather's biological father was at least part Irish, and maybe help me in my search to find him.

Now, I do realize, as Judy reminds everyone regularly, that the ethnicity estimates are really nothing more than "cocktail party conversation" (or "smoke and mirrors", as I call them), because the underlying statistics are simply not reliable and have significant margins of error.  I also know, however, that if you have double digit results, it's likely that there is at least some amount of that ethnicity in your make-up.

So I checked with my brother and sister to make sure they were willing to do the tests, registered the kits on my account, and then sent the packages off.  I waited patiently for the "processing" messages to arrive from Ancestry.com, and then again for the results.

And now they've both arrived.

AncestryDNA ethnic results for Janice M. Sellers

AncestryDNA ethnic results for my brother

AncestryDNA ethnic results for my sister

The results aren't as wildly varied as those of Judy and her siblings, particularly for the major contributors, but there are definitely differences.  We all show up as about half Jewish, just as we should, but we vary from 45% to 48% to 52%.  We all show large amounts of Europe West, ranging from 26% to 34% to 40%.

And we all show Ireland.  My brother and I show 12%, while my sister has only 2%.  A result of 2% could easily be erased by the margins of error present in these tests, but two results of 12% make me think I'm on the right trail in looking for a man with Irish origins as my great-grandfather.

Of course, now that I have these DNA results, I also plan to work with the real data, the chromosomal information, to see what else I can learn about our ancestry and to try to connect with cousins.  But I figure having one theory borne out by additional testing is a good start.

And why didn't I also test my half-sister, who shares the same father with my brother, my sister, and me?  Because her mother was all Irish all day long, and that would throw off any ability to identify Irish on my father's side of the family.  But maybe I should get her to take a test to see if she really does show up as half-Irish . . . .

Oh yeah, and I realized this is my 1,000th blog post.  Not bad for someone who still hates to write!

Copyright Confusion

It seems that misunderstanding of the difference between attribution and permission is still common among genealogists. While preparing the current issue of the CSGA Newsletter, I encountered two societies that didn’t appear to understand that permission is required to reprint anyone else’s copyrighted material.

The first society had included an article in its newsletter that I thought had useful information for the CSGA membership, so I wrote and asked for permission to reprint it. During the course of the discussion, the other editor realized the article was not original to the society and no attribution had been given to its author (much less had permission been requested to reprint it). An erratum is planned to correct the lack of attribution, but I doubt permission (albeit belated) will be requested, or an apology offered, for reprinting the article as it was.

The second society asked if I could reprint an article about the society that had been published by a newspaper. Permission had not been granted or even requested from the publisher. The person who made the request did not appear to realize that this permission needed to be sought. When I explained that I would not reprint the article without the permission, a request was sent to the publisher. That publisher requires nonprofits to pay $150 for permission to reprint an article. Needless to say, neither CSGA nor the society in question was prepared to pay that amount, and the article will not appear in the newsletter.

Unfortunately, neither of these situations is uncommon in genealogy today. Many people believe that “if it’s on the Internet it’s free”, and they can reuse those items at will. Others believe that as long as correct attribution is given, everything is fine. Neither of these beliefs is correct. Anyone who has written something has copyright to it, giving the author the exclusive right to determine if someone else may reprint that material. While most genealogists do not pursue anything against persons or organizations that have reused their materials (even though they can and sometimes should), commercial entities, such as the newspaper that published the article about the society in my second example above, often do. When genealogical editors and individuals republish copyrighted material without permission, they open themselves and their societies to possible legal action.

Coincidentally, at the fall CSGA Seminar, scheduled for October 29, 2016 in San Mateo and hosted by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society, one of the talks will be on copyright issues in genealogy. If you are unsure what you should be doing when you want to reuse someone else’s copyrighted material, or if you believe everything on the Internet is free to use, I recommend you come to the seminar. Details about the time and location of the seminar, which is free and open to the public, are available on the CSGA blog.

An excellent source of copyright information that is readily available night and day, and that is often geared specifically to genealogists, is the Legal Genealogist blog.  Judy Russell writes a lot about copyright and wants everyone to know what they should be doing to share information but protect authors' rights.

DNA and Legal Records and Jewish Records, Oh My!

Days 2 and 3 of the Northwest Genealogy Conference continued to be interesting and educational.  On Friday the featured speaker was CeCe Moore, and the theme for the day was therefore DNA, of course.  The session I attended was "Autosomal DNA and Chromosome Mapping:  Discovering Your Ancestors in You" (as I already have a good handle on the basics and ethnicity estimates, and really didn't want to hear about Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and his program).  While I recently attended a one-day seminar by Dr. Tim Janzen on this topic, I have to say that Moore explained it a little more clearly, and now I almost feel prepared to try using these techniques on my own family research.  She was very open about warning everyone that this is time-consuming stuff, however, so I have to figure out a way to fit it into my schedule (ha!).

I also went to Elissa Scalise Powell's third offering at the conference, "Baker's Dozen Steps to Writing Research Reports."  She has created a great template that looks like it will make writing reports much easier.  I'm definitely going to implement ideas from this session in my regular work.

Saturday's featured guest was Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, and most of the day's sessions were related to legal records and courthouse research.  I managed to get up early enough to make it to the first presentation of the day, "That First Trip to the Courthouse", by Judy.  Yes, I have done a lot of courthouse research already, but she's just so entertaining that it was worthwhile to listen to.  Some of the points she made really resonated with my own experience, such as "Don't be afraid to ask."  Once I couldn't find a record in the computer index that I really, really thought should be there, so I asked if any other index was available.  The clerk took me across the hall to the original docket books, from which the computerized index had been created.  The case I wanted was listed in the book!  I don't know why it was missing from the computer database, but I found what I needed.

As a follow-up to "Don't be afraid to ask", Judy had in her handout, "Almost every courthouse has someone who really knows the old records.  It's worth trying to find that person and find a convenient time to chat."  When I was trying to determine in which courts and prisons or jails a particular man might have records, the clerk told me that this one guy upstairs in the D.A.'s office knew all about how the courts were set up "in the old days."  You know that I immediately went up there to see if that man was available.  Lucky me, he was!, and he had a few spare minutes.  He explained how the old municipal (city) court and jail used to function and what probably happened to their old records.  I still didn't find the records (the consensus was that they had probably been destroyed decades before), but I had a much better understanding of the process the man I was researching had gone through in the judicial system.

After Judy's morning session I taught my class, "Looking for Non-Jews in Jewish Records."  This talk originated as a keynote at a local family history day.  The main point is that those of us researching Jewish family history can be obsessive (very obsessive) about finding any and all records and resources that might be helpful and then often sharing the information online.  Though the sites on which the information is shared are usually focused on Jewish research, the resources themselves often aren't.  So if, for example, someone who isn't Jewish has ancestors who were in Belarus, the Belarus Special Interest Group's page on JewishGen has links to lots of great information that can help that person.  About twenty-five people came to my class, which went very well.  Several people stopped me later to say that they learned a lot, which is always great to hear.

The next session was Judy's second class of the day, "Where There Is — Or Isn't — a Will."  I learned a few new things here, such as the fact that a "holographic" will (one handwritten in its entirety by the person making it) is called "olographic" in areas that use civil law (as opposed to English common law), such as Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Québec.  In Florida you might find a "curator" listed as one of the people involved.  He was a temporary caretaker of property after someone's death, before an administrator was appointed.  The example that Judy discussed was when a man who sold perishable foods died; the curator stepped in to make sure that the food was handled properly and saved during the time it took the court to find and appoint an administrator.  I found it interesting to learn that, while minors are not considered competent to bequeath real estate, they can leave personal property:  boys at 14 and girls at 17.

The afternoon began with Judy's last presentation of the conference, "Order in the Court:  Using Court Records in Genealogical Research."  This was a different kind of class.  She gave a brief overview of courts but then switched gears and suggested that researchers take the time to simply read through cases that occurred in the same time and place as where their ancestors lived, even if those ancestors themselves had not been involved in the cases.  The information in the write-ups of cases can give you a lot of details about what life was like at that time and place.  She read from several cases.  The most detailed example was an 1844 Virginia appellate case relating to a murder, in which we learned about the types of houses people lived in, family living arrangements in those houses, when people normally went to bed, the styles of shoes men wore, and what types of guns were commonly used, among many other things.  While it's always recommended to read about the history of an area, this was the first time I've heard a recommendation to read the court cases of an area to learn more background information.

The final session of the day really surprised me.  The title, "Field Dependency:  A Way to Evaluate Genealogical Sources", and the handout sounded very academic and stuffy, but Jean Wilcox Hibben turned it into a lively talk about looking at records and thinking about for what purpose a record was created, who gave the information, ways in which the information could have been misunderstood, reasons for which someone might have lied or made a mistake, and generally just looking at each record critically and analyzing it.  It was a great way to end a conference at which I learned a good amount of new things and made several new genealogy friends.  I had a wonderful time in Arlington and hope the conference continues to grow and improve in the years to come.

FGS and RootsTech: Thursday and Friday

On Thursday, the RootsTech part of the joint conference with FGS began.  This meant that the exhibitor hall opened!  I was ready and waiting at the entrance for the 10:00 a.m. opening because I wanted to go straight to the E-Z Photo Scan booth.  There had been lots of announcements prior to the conference about their free scanning opportunity, with the company having a goal of 100,000 photographs preserved the course of the conference.  The purpose of the promotion was to show off the capabilities of the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System (I think I was using the PS50).  I have to say, I was extremely impressed.  Arnold Hutagalung, one of the company reps at the booth, was very helpful.  He showed me how to get started, and it was pretty smooth sailing.  I scanned almost 350 photos in half an hour!  That's all it took!  It took a little while longer to copy the files to my flash drive, and I was done.  I can't afford one of these, but I was told that a big focus of the company's marketing is FamilySearch Centers and Libraries.  I'm hoping we'll get one in Oakland.

After I retrieved my flash drive, I ran off to the far reaches of the Salt Palace for more FGS learnin'.  The outstanding session of the day was Craig Scott's talk on Civil War medical records.  When I wrote about my great-great-grandfather Cornelius Godshalk Sellers, I mentioned that he had been in the hospital twice, and I'm very interested in finding more records related to those incidents.  Craig started off his talk by warning everyone that if they would be uncomfortable seeing information about STD's, they shouldn't go anywhere near Civil War medical records.  Apparently STD's were the leading cause of men needing to go to the hospital during the war.  Craig mentioned that even George Armstrong Custer (then only a lieutenant) was treated for gonorrhea!  Craig explained things such as the levels of care men might have received, which records might mention medical information, the top two medical reasons for which men received pensions (diarrhea and dysentery), and several of the National Archives Record Groups in which records might be found.  I felt inspired, but now I need to go to Washington to do research!

The other great talk of the day was by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, who spoke about federal court records and how they can be useful in family history research.  (This was scheduled as a RootsTech session, though the only discernible "tech" connection I could find was the seven URL's she listed in her resource list.)  This was the first time I have heard Judy in person, and it was fun.  She discussed which types of cases could be heard in federal courts (and which couldn't), where records are held (almost nothing is online), and who might appear in records.  Beyond the expected plaintiffs, defendants, and judges, maybe you have a relative who was a court officer, investigator, attorney, witness, juror, bondsman, or someone in Customs, the Treasury, or the FBI?  Judy also talked about how you could follow people or an issue through a case and showed some interesting examples.  One man was prosecuted for running a still, and the file had lovely photographs of the still, from several different angles no less.  An inheritance dispute between some family members (which went through the federal court because it involved people in one state and land in a second state) included photographs from childhood to old age of the deceased man who had bequeathed the land, and fantastic family information about who was related to whom and questions of the paternity of a putative grandchild.  The cases she chose to showcase issues were on polygamy in the Utah Territory, and the famous Dred Scott case.  The decisions in those cases had lasting effects and are obviously relevant to families affected by them.

The best talk I attended on Friday was also by Judy, this one on justices of the peace.  After pointing out that, while originally the position was held almost exclusively by men of high social standing, not-so-prominent men could be JP's, Judy gave several examples of historical JP's, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.  A couple of unexpected justices were Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones (no, not about the genealogist), and the famed Judge Roy Bean.  We heard about the first known black American JP, Macon Bolling Allen, who was appointed in 1848 in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and the first female American justice, Esther Hobart Morris, appointed in 1870 in Sweetwater County, Wyoming.  Judy covered the varying responsibilities of JP's, what kinds of records might exist, and tips on finding the records.  Again, most of these are not online.

The other session I found particularly useful on Friday was a computer lab on finding and using online newspapers.  Yes, I know, I am the genealogy newspaper queen of the Bay Area :), but there is always more to learn.  The focus of the class was on telling attendees about large free online newspaper collections.  (They included the Wikipedia newspaper archive page I contribute to regularly.)  A short slide presentation showed the basic process of how newspapers are digitized.  Then everyone was instructed to go to the Indiana Digital Historic Newspaper Program site, create an account, and sign in.  After that we were told to do a basic search. None of that is too exciting, right?  The useful part was when the presenters explained in detail how the system to correct mistakes in the OCR worked.  This correction system is valid in almost all Veridian newspaper databases, so I tried it with the California Digital Newspaper Collection, which I use as an example in several of my newspaper talks, so I know of some specific mistakes there.  It was interesting to see the search results change after making a correction.  The search engine no longer finds the incorrect word, but when you search for the corrected text, the results still display the incorrect OCR reading.  I'm going to be adding this to my talks.

Other cool things on Friday were scanning another batch of photos at E-Z Photo Scan (thanks again, Arnold!), meeting Eric and Karen Stroschein of the Northwest Genealogy Conference (where I am scheduled to be a speaker), doing a group photo of California Genealogical Society members here at the conference, helping at the Association of Professional Genealogists booth during lunch, getting my photo taken with Randy Seaver (because I won my RootsTech registration through his contest), and talking with Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Thomas MacEntee, and Dear Myrtle.  The only real downer was the people at the GenealogyWallCharts.com booth.  They paid to have a promotional card inserted in the registration packets, saying that there would be free blank charts and free black and white charts available.  It seems that they didn't plan adequately for the number of attendees, whether ones asking for the promised charts or printing out color charts at the booth, and the booth people got grumpy and snappish and told me there weren't going to be any more free charts.  Sorry, guys, not a good impression to make on a (former) potential customer.

The other negative was that FGS' position as red-headed stepchild meant that less attention was given to that end of the conference hall.  Not only did the containers of ice water run out and were not refilled, even the attention to maintaining the women's room was minimal, and trash overflows were common.

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My other comments about the conference are here for Tuesday and Wednesday, and here for Saturday and my overall impressions.

"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.