I'm back to doing my Family Tree for awhile.

Ron Knights

I was away from the DAZ world for a few months, and I've been back for a few months. I've hit a bit of an artistic slump and decided to go back to doing Genealogy (Family Tree Work.) I've had some excellent fortune in tracing the history of various branches of the family tree. I've traced one branch back over 350 years. Some families have remained in Vermont for those 350 years, etc. 

Genealogy satisfies me very easily. I use the Ancestry web site for most hints. I did a Google search and found one relative had done extensive research going back to the 1700s. Everything is extensively documented. I use Family Tree Maker to organize and download everything to my computer. I love this work too because I don't need to buy any new hardware in order to do the job.

Sometime next year I may start my own web site in order to easily share my discoveries. I may need to save most of my "disposable" money to prepare a move to a different apartment. My parents are getting older, and can't drive to visit me any more. My brother will very likely need to move to a nursing home.

Kitsumo

Nice. Good luck. I haven't had the time/energy to look into my family tree in depth, but I know I'd better hurry. My mother's the last surving member of her immediate family and she's got Alzheimers. Anyway, I've been looking through old VHS tapes and digitizing some of them. What seems boring to us today will probably be fascinating to our descendants 100 years from now. I already have my grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary video converted to digits. I'm trying to figure out what the best format/storage medium will be best for the long term. I mean Google is a huge company now, but it's also a new company, historically speaking. It could turn out to be the Montgomery Ward of the next century for all we know.

Anyway, best of luck to you in your search.

Ron Knights

Kitsumo, thanks for sharing your own experience. In my case, there is no one in the family to pass anything on to. My Dad is 90, and really not able to interact with me. He lives 30 miles away, and can't drive here any more. I finally managed to give him a printed version of the main Knights family tree. He appreciated that. I took the Ancestry DNA test, and really didn't get any good leads as far as relatives who could exchange useful information.

In my own experience, I've made hundreds of YouTube videos, and saved many of them onto DVDs. DVDs have lasted a long time. I only toss them if they've become outdated by new projects, etc. I have a Mac and use SuperDuper to make total backups of my data hard drives. I use Portable Hard drives to make the backups. All those portable hard drives are in one small case. In case of emergency, I can grab the case, and have all my data. If the computers are destroyed in a fire, I still have the data!

sapat

Hey Ron, 
I don't remember if I've told you this before or not (old age brain).  I've been doing geneaology research on my tree and affiliated lines since about 1999.  We've gotten my direct line back to the 1790's, but it's a dead end before that.  But we have a lot of info on other lines, both direct and affiliated.  I also use Family Treemaker which I've kept all the detailed info I have. It's a great program.  Did you do youtube videos trying to find relatives? 

I had 3 half brothers I was close to, but they're all dead, and I lost my dad in 1968. I lost my mom in 2006.  I'm an only child, so I don't have anyone to pass things on to either except my 2 sons. But they'll never get it because they could care less, not interested, and I'm afraid it would be lost or trashed. So I might get all my research organized and printed, then have it hard bound, or at least ring bound.  I can then donate it to the Clayton Library Center for Genealogic Research in Houston.  It's a big 2 story building that is nothing but books, films, records, etc. for ppl all over the country, and even overseas to an extent.  I used to go there all the time.  I can also mail a copy to Lebanon, Va. where their genealogy records are kept and is open to the public. My mom and I spent a month in May of 2000 doing research there and in other areas. It's something to think about down the line.

Not sure how the dna test would work for me since I'm a female, and like I said, the kids aren't interested.  I've gotten to the point with my research that I'd have to go to the areas in person to do more research. I'd even like to go to the National Archives in Washington, DC. It's a dream....

Ron Knights

sapat, I'm like you, my memory is sometimes lacking. I did some Ancestry-related vides awhile ago, and got no response. I spent decades doing DAZ Studio and Poser tutorials with no response. I got tired of wasting my energy.

If you're interested, you can friend me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter. i'm likely to post many more updates on my Genealogy work on Facebook. It's hard because I'm largely ignored there also. But sometimes I just need to express myself.

nonesuch00

I first started genealogy when I was a boy way back in 1978. I asked one of my Grannies about her ancestors and she told my they were Mennonites and Germans, one of her uncles was 7' and still spoke German, but also part Indian. I believed her but it's been very difficult to find paperwork to prove those things. They were always dirt poor farmers and the Indian bit well there just ain't paperwork going back to the 1600s to prove that sort of thing.

So I've taken lots of DNA tests. I took a Y-DNA test 1st that proved my surname's origins and location actually match up with what the Irish Catholic Church and later Trinity College was claiming that I didn't ever really quite believe. Then I took a mtDNA test that proved my matrilineal line originated in northcentral east Finland. Finally I took a autosomal DNA test which I am confident will be the most useful to future generations. I used then an autosomal test from FTDNA to prove via triagulation one of the ancestral couples that I inherited Powhattan DNA from. However that couple themselves were 150 years removed from having a  Powhattan couple as ancestors but it was proven the male of the couple descended from a male Powhattan via Y-DNA.

I've also helped a brother & sister prove their paternal grandparents where both actually their biological grandparents. They had doubts because as children they had heard some catty rumours that their father was adopted that were meaness and the rumours were proven false with our DNA research. I also helped an adopted man figure out his biological father with DNA. Bother of those were because we uploaded our DNA to GEDMatch and cooperated as do many others. Because all the DNA and GEDCOM trees are public at GEDMatch it is a gold mine for genealogy researchers, medical researchers, and police researchers. They are using that data to help more and more people so if you have DNA data I recommend uploading your DNA data & GEDCOM data to GEDMatch. You should privatize the GEDCOM birthdates, locations, and such of living people (even though there are 1001 internet sites that collect public government records so privitizing GEDCOMs is not a huge help protecting your data from telemarketers and other cold callers).

It's all very time consuming, confusing, and tedious drudgery though to do those things on GEDMatch that I talked about above though so I am going to order an Ancestry.com test tomorrow. Ancestry has tools that make DNA matching easier and more fun. Given my experience I am reasonably confident of being related to everyone in the forums within the past 1000 years except for people from Japan and a few other select places. For them I think about 50,000 years you'd have to go back. That's not to say that 50,000 years ago it was Adam & Eve existing but that certain technology inventions led to exponential population growths in a few select places and those people's migrations and descendants pretty much linked everyone with just a smidgen of DNA in us today. Well maybe in the Adaman Islands, deep in the Amazon, and some places in Polynesia no links although according to GEDMatch I have markers in common with peoples from those areas so it seems technology really caused a boom in population starting about 50,000 years ago. 

I remember if you want a permanent organization to donate your family tree too to donate to the FamilySearch.org. It's one of the only servers of family tree research records and other's trees that has a big organization supporting free access. Of course GEDMatch for both your DNA & GEDCOM is fine & great.

Let me tell you acess at the pay sites if very expensive. When you save images of actual records and actual pictures at those pay sites you want to do that by saving the records 1st to your local harddrive and attaching them to your local tree. Or syncing them with the Ancestry site should work now to save images of records and pictures to your local computer. It used to not do that reliably and so attaching images of records and pictures only kept them on  Ancestry's website so that when you let your Ancestry subscription run out you lost access to the proof for most of your research. A disaster! You'd have to resubscribe and then go through and methodically fix your tree.

By the way, Ancestry.com, Geni.com, and MyHeritage.com (Geni & MyHeritage are actually the same business) have become notorious for GEDCOMs (Family Trees) being more and more incorrect as people link in other's trees that lack recorded evidence of actual familiar links. That's the whole reason why I did DNA testing but 99.99% of those incorrect trees lack citing DNA evidence either. So I recommend using a website called FamousKin.com and use that to make your tree as accurate as possible. The man that does those trees never links in a person without written evidence so if you share kin with people at FamousKin.com is is a boon for helping you make an accurate family tree.

Eventually I'm confident genealogical researchers will have a huge database of "pecuilar to a specific historical couple" DNA segments and family tree researchers will just need to match the uniquely peculiar DNA strand to know they descend from that couple and alleviate the written record problems, mostly but not totally. It's the same principal they (in this case FTDNA)  use to say I'm 78% British Isles (because they pick out and match  DNA strands that to the best of their knowlege are uniquely peculiar to the British Isles (sometimes they are wrong though but as more and more samples are taken from more and more places and their databases grow exponentially those mistakes become less and less frequent).

Have fun.