ancestry Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Ramblin' with Roger

November rambling – We are not the enemy

Tips on how to endure the 18+ hour flight

Cease fire Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers

The American civil war didn’t end, and we have a Confederate president

The First Family of Fraud

Fox and Friends: If the Media Doesn’t Want to Be Called ‘The Enemy’They Should Report the Story How He Wants

Amy Biancolli: We are not the enemy

John Oliver: Migrant Family Separation and Drain the Swamp

Why Is It So Hard to Vote in America? Voter turnout lags in the world’s most powerful democracy? and Cost of Voting in the American States

A Legislative Agenda for House Democrats

What Republicans fear most of all

A man who survived a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 was among those killed in the 2018 mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, CA

There’s very little known about the thousands of victims who survive deadly shootings

Tammy Marshall – My Breast Implants Almost Killed Me – The Truth About BII

The US just elected 9 new scientists to Congress

The Ancestor Hunt: Historical Jewish American Newspapers Online

Why are the Spanish living so long?

Ken Levine interviews media consultant, Valerie Geller – Tell the truth, make it matter, never be boring: Learn the keys to successful communication

Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote ‘For Colored Girls,’ Is Dead at 70

Former San Francisco Giants first baseman Willie McCovey’s presence was one of a kind

In Conversation: Alex Trebek The Jeopardy! icon on retirement, his legacy, and why knowledge matters

Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a former Navy SEAL, representative-elect: SNL mocked my appearance; here’s why I didn’t demand an apology

Jimmy Kimmel: Trumpy bear

John Boehner: Washington Needs to Legalize Cannabis – NOW, he says it

The Crazy Contentious History Of Taco Tuesday

Scott McCartney, travel writer for WSJ, taking world’s longest flight — Newark to Singapore; tips on how to endure the 18+ hour flight

The cheapest ways to get to the center of Manhattan from the three airports that serve the Big Apple

Esquire Fiction: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Annual holiday super sale? Or zombie apocalypse?

Video tour from the forties Los Angeles side-by-side with the same route in 2016

It slices, it dices, and it’s older than me

This image has exactly 12 dots, but it’s impossible to see them all at once

Now I Know: The Problem With Anonymous Lottery Winners and The Cat’s Meow, Instrumentalized

Fabulous German words with no English equivalent

MUSIC

Take the A Train – Roy Clark And Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown; Roy Clark, country guitar virtuoso, ‘Hee Haw’ star, dies at 85

Above The Law – The O’Jays

BE A DJ: Kathy Buckley – 10/30/18 (WDST, Woodstock, NY)

Snippets of Hey Red! B/W We’re Not Going Steady – Herb London on Buzz Records; London, Conservative Thought Leader and occasional political candidate in New York State, died at 79. (HT to Dustbury)

Solid Rock is now a cultural part of Australian music history

Alexander Borodin’s String Quartet No 1, performed by the Moscow String Quartet

Recording of a warning chime recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra – In all, Lincoln commissioned six different non-critical warning chimes from the orchestra, covering 25 vehicle functions

Careless Whisper – Train, ft. Kenny G

Happiness is just around the bend – Brian Auger

Anything You Can Do – Voctave

9,999,999 Tears – Dickie Lee

Alice Cooper in a Dodge commercial

Les Green, Pop, ancestry, DNA, anger

It would be Les Green’s 92nd birthday tomorrow

On the same day this month, I read two oddly similar stores. One was in the Boston Globe: “DNA test tells man the bittersweet truth: His father was a Catholic priest.” The other was a piece by Times Union blogger Robert S. Hoffman When your dad is not your father.

And it got me to thinking, again, about the parents of my father, Les Green. Something in the Globe story stuck out: “For decades, James C. Graham was tormented by a simple, but profound question: Why did his father seem to dislike him so much? The South Carolina man confirmed the bittersweet truth: The man who raised him wasn’t his father at all.”

My father seemed to have at least a mild antipathy his stepfather, for the man we all called Pop, McKinley Green. Clearly, he knew Pop wasn’t his biological father, and that might have been the source of his distress. Or maybe it was Pop’s family, who, even after Mac died in 1980, said disparaging things – “bastard son” – about my father within his earshot.

Regardless, I’m still hoping that DNA will someday help me to identify the identity of my biological grandfather. There are at least five people in Ancestry that are noted as my second or third cousins. One is cousin Lisa, a second cousin on my maternal grandmother’s side. And just recently, there’s a guy named Charles with a very distinct surname, clearly a third cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side.

But what of the other three, two of which are closely related to each other as well as to me? One has a genealogy with 125 names and 10 distinct surnames, none of which are familiar. He’s very African, with lineage almost exclusively from Ivory Coast/Ghana, Nigeria, and Mali.

I should address a question from my friend Carol about Ancestry.com: “I’m concerned about the data storage and privacy issues. Have you researched that at all?” Well, yes, they do, though participants can contribute either pseudonymously or with real names. It is the open sharing of information that the best information will arise.

This is a picture of my dad at the ASBDC conference in Savannah, possibly the best time I ever had with him. It would be Les Green’s 92nd birthday tomorrow. I’ll figure this genealogy stuff out eventually.

Father and Son – Cat Stevens

Ancestry DNA: Scandinavian?

I have – somewhere – far more data than is currently presented.

I got the results of my second genealogical DNA recently, this time from Ancestry.

Like the first one, from NatGeo earlier this year, I’m barely half sub-Saharan African. The 23% from the British Isles doesn’t surprise me. The 11% Scandinavian does.

I shared that fact with an ex of mine, who believes she is 100% Scandinavian. Now she’s thinking of doing the DNA test too, hoping, actually, that she’s not.

There are four people in the database who are likely my second or third cousins. One of them actually IS my second cousin, Lisa. There are about a dozen candidates for third or fourth cousins. And a couple hundred fourth to sixth cousins.

One of these is a Walker, which is the given surname of my maternal grandmother. His first name is the same as one of her brothers, who has been long deceased. I have contacted him and a select number of others, hoping for more information.

There’s a way to share the family tree, and I am hoping that the combination of the DNA tests and the various trees of other contributors will lead to greater insight.

Of course, I need to fill in my own family tree more vigorously. I have – somewhere – far more data than is currently presented. Some of it just needs more specificity, such as exact dates of births and deaths.

I also need to go back a couple more generations, particularly on my maternal grandmother’s side, which I have on something called “paper.” Then I need to check old Census records to fill out more of the details. It’s a very interesting process but an amazing time suck.

Several people have wondered what I’ll do when I retire. Travel, probably and write, read, and sort a lot of stuff that’s stored in the attic.

The genealogy project undoubtedly will be a huge piece.

My Ancestral Journey, part 1

The National Geographic had its Genographic (their word) kits on sale and I bought one, registered it, mailed it back, and in about eight weeks got some results.

My ancestors are from:
Western Africa 52%
Northwestern Europe 21%
Eastern Europe 11%
Northeastern Europe 7%
Italy & Southern Europe 3%
South China Sea 2%
Central Africa 2%

My paternal line, in the main, stayed in Africa longer than my maternal line, it appears.

My first reference population, i.e, the obvious comparable, is African-American.

Western Africa 65%
Central Africa 15%
Northwestern Europe 12%
Southern Africa 8%

My second reference population is Bermudan; i.e., “This population is based on samples collected from mixed populations living in Bermuda. The percentages shown here reflect Bermuda’s vast racial diversity, including Africans brought during the slave-trading era (West and central Africa, as well as Southern Africa) and European and Asian colonists and workers (Great Britain and Ireland, Western and Central Europe, and Southern Asia). In addition, some Native Americans were sent as slaves to Bermuda in the 17th century, accounting for the small Native American ancestry. Bermuda had no indigenous inhabitants when Europeans first arrived in the 16th century.”

Western Africa 54%
Northwestern Europe 17%
Central Africa 11%
Southern Africa 9%
North America & Andes 5%
Southwestern Europe 4%

I’m a surprised by the eastern Europeans in my ancestral journey. I grew up in a primarily Slavic part of Binghamton, NY, but don’t know of any intermarriage there. And northeast Europe, which appears to be Finland and the Baltic states, I totally didn’t see coming.

I’m also 0.9% Neanderthal, compared with 1.3% for the average person they tested. “Everyone living outside of Africa today has a small amount of Neanderthal in them, carried as a living relic of these ancient encounters. A team of scientists comparing the full genomes of the two species concluded that most Europeans and Asians have approximately 2 percent Neanderthal DNA. Indigenous sub-Saharan Africans have none, or very little Neanderthal DNA because their ancestors did not migrate through Eurasia.”

Here’s the summary.

I was so interested in the results that I’ve now done the Ancestry.com test, which, I’m gathering, will be even more specific. I’ll get the results in six to eight weeks.

Is it my Irish eyes that are smilin’?

Peace from Roger O’Green.

I haven’t scheduled it, but I think I need to take one of those DNA testing kits. I haven’t investigated how precise they are yet, but there are three things I’m hoping to discover:

1) Was the picture on my maternal grandmother’s wall of one of her ancestors, and therefore one of MY ancestors, English or Irish? I’ve heard both.

If the latter, I’d be one of 33.3 million “who claimed Irish ancestry in 2013. This number was more than seven times the population of Ireland itself (4.6 million).”

2) Were ancestors on my fathers side Dutch or “Pennsylvania Dutch,” which is to say, German? Here again, the lore conflicts.

3) I want to get into one of those registers to try ascertain whether I can find a match that will tell me who the biological father of my father is?

Not sure which product, MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA, or LivingDNA or 23andMe or Ancestry.com’s product or something else is the best for the price and will give me the information I want.

Have you folks used any of these products? How satisfied were you with them? What did you learn that you are willing to to share? Your feedback, if any, will probably have an impact in my decision-making.

I’m also curious about why, if you considered doing one of these tests, why you did not? Cost? You already know? Lack of curiosity?

For me, the results might inform my travel plans when/if I ever retire. This is not merely an academic query, though I would like the Daughter, who has relatives she can trace back to the 14th century on her mother’s side, to have a clearer record on her father’s.

Of course, on this St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll always be a bit Irish. They color the Chicago River with my last name, FCOL. Peace from Roger O’Green.