Friday, May 31, 2019

Extradition

Does China know that if we had an extradition treaty with them that we would also arrest someone that they asked us to arrest? This isn't us knuckling under to the United States; we are simply following the Rule of Law that has kept us all good friends especially the last 74 years since World War II ended.

Occasionally the political world enters into my thinking and I wonder if some problems could be solved easily.

China maintains extradition treaties with 40 nations.

 Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, France, Laos, Mongolia, Lithuania, Peru, Russia, The Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Romania, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, The United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.


Thursday, May 23, 2019

Living DNA

When I purchased the two kits for Living DNA (one for my older brother and one for myself), I only hoped to achieve a look at our results against a study of British DNA. I was and am very pleased with those results which have not changed in the years since we first tested. I am hopeful that the new initiative that Find My Past is undertaking with tree matching on their site is part of Living DNAs effort to do matching within the DNA projects that they have completed plus what has been uploaded to their site. Breaking into a new field is always difficult and going slow is better than being haphazard. There are lots of matching databases these days and we can only benefit from being patient and waiting to see what can come out of Living DNAs new initiative with regard to matching.

I wish them every success in their venture especially given that all of my known relatives were born, married and died in England with just a few of my ancestors being born and/or marrying/dying in Canada - my father and his parents, my mother (Canadian born), my maternal grandparents (Canadian born), my maternal grandfather's parents and my maternal grandfather's mother's parents. All the rest were born in, lived their entire life in and died in five different areas of England. I have just one Canadian line in terms of being born here (including myself) - my mother, her father and his mother.

I have uploaded the results for two of my other siblings to Living DNA and we are a matching block in their beta tree. I would be quite surprised to have matches at this stage of their matching as we do not have any first cousins, none of my second cousins have tested and any of my third cousins who have tested have not done so at Living DNA to my knowledge.

My husband also tested at Living DNA and does have a match with a known fourth cousin in his beta tree.

Patience will bring interesting results I am convinced of that.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Phasing grandparents updated

In between renovations and gardening, I have updated the phasing of my grandparents using my results and my four siblings plus two dozen cousins in different lines who have tested their autosomal DNA and I have been able to connect us. Of all my matches on Ancestry only a couple have taken their results to FT DNA, My Heritage or Gedmatch. Knowing the chromosomes there would be quite interesting as I have counting myself and my three siblings who have tested there altogether we have 31 distinct Ancestry Hints leading us back to our Most Recent Common Ancestor. Having that material would make my mother's matches most interesting as the matches tend to be on her side.

I started publishing newsletters on my studies, the first commenced at the beginning of 2012 with Blake and I am now into Volume 8 and the next issue (due 1st of July) will be the third for the year. The second commenced 1st of November 2015 with Pincombe-Pinkham and I an mow into Volume 4 with the next issue due the 1st of June and it will be third for this volume. The third commenced 1st of February 2017. I published Issue 2 on the 1st of May. Access is on the FT DNA website as there are DNA studies for both of these surname studies and the final newsletter is for the H11 haplogroup.

As I come closer to 74 years of age, I am very conscious of the passing years with regard to the research which I have done thus far and my plans for the future. I have narrowed down these days. I no longer do any public speaking. It is time consuming and there are younger people desirous of doing so. The world has expanded in DNA very quickly and I am very happy to see that.

I have been a fence sitter with regard to yDNA. There are studies for both of the surnames which I am studying. I generally refrain from making any particular claims with regard to these studies. I firmly believe in the use of yDNA but I hesitate to make claims with regard to the line that a particular group might belong to although we have been successful in both studies with creating an interesting table of results.

Autosomal DNA continues, as it has for the last nearly ten years, to dominate because we all have autosomal DNA to compare with our potential cousins. But the problem still persists of how to display such results without reducing people's privacy and as a result I seldom talk about DNA in the projects which is somewhat regrettable.

In my Blake line we still await a matched yDNA result with a known Blake descendant (or unknown) for that matter. The haplogroup to which we belong is an ancient one to the British Isles so I know that at some point before the early 1300s when I first find mention of a Blake living in the area in which my family lived for hundreds of years with my likely furtherest back Blake being a Robert Bla[y]ke who left his will whilst living at Knights Enham dated 1521. He was quite elderly and his son Richard Blake left his will in 1522 and his children were adults. Unfortunately the will of Robert's wife Maud (Snell) Bla[y]ke appears to be lost as she may have mentioned her grandchildren with more detail (likely 1525). Although I found a reference to this will a number of years ago when I was very new to Genealogy in 2003 I have not been able to locate it again. Was it in a document that I read or was it online somewhere? The memory persists but the actual location is lost to me which I why I blog. But as well I now keep a detailed journal of my daily activities.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

H11 Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2019



H11 Newsletter
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2019
Table of Contents
1.   PhyloTree
2.   FT DNA Project
3.   Project Statistics
4.   Changes in how a project administrator can view your results
5.   H and HV Project, FT DNA

1.   PhyloTree
FT DNA is in the process of updating the mtDNA Haplotree. At the moment there are 16 subclades under H11 on the mtDNA Haplotree. H11 is separated into H11a with 12 subclades and H11b with 1 subclade. In Volume 3 Issue 1 I have tentatively broken down H11 into H11 into 5 subclades, H11a into 40 subclades, and H11b into six subclades. Not all of these divisions will necessarily become established subclades. I may be actually seeing some personal mutations as supporting a subclade because I can not necessarily tell if I have siblings/first cousins testing and it is likely that they would share the exact same mutations. Our numbers are still much too small to definitively declare a particular group of mutations as a subclade. But the presence of more than one member sharing particular sets of mutations is very interesting and, if the person is not known to you, may provide information on your maternal line

2.   FT DNA Project:
There are now 342 members in our project. A total of 290 members have added their maternal ancestors information. However, we still only have 49 gedcoms uploaded.

3.   Project Statistics (yDNA statistics removed):
Combined GEDCOMs Uploaded
    49
DISTINCT mtDNA Haplogroups
    17
Family Finder
   244
Genographic 2.0 Transfers
     20
Maternal Ancestor Information
   290
mtDNA   
    309
mtDNA Full Sequence
    299
mtDNA Plus
    306
mtDNA Subgroups
      22
Total Members
    342
Unreturned Kits
      14
Within the study group we have members in every sub-haplogroup except H11a5. I will not do a breakdown of the various groups in this newsletter. Generally I will do that in Issue 1 of each year. 

4.   Changes in how a project administrator can view your results
FT DNA has upgraded their access to accounts so that the default is Group Access only. If you wish to have your results included in the project then you must grant Limited Access to the Administrator. Minimum access means that I can not see any earliest ancestor information that you may have added to your project.

5.   H and HV Project

The suggestion was made that I refer to the information found on the “mother” page for our H11 project namely The Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroup H and HV Project. For the last several years you must first join the H and HV Project before you can join the H11 Project and so you should find this project in your “joined” projects.  

 

If you go to “About” in the left-hand navigation panel of the main page of the H and HV Project and then select “Goals” there is a lot of interesting information about the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (I am a member).
The Wikipedia section has come a long way since I have looked at it and I will update the H11 with all the discoveries that having so many of us in the project has provided over the next couple of months.

There is information on the Haplogroup H project and in the list below that you will find the link to the H11 project that most of you will have used to join the project. I have been the Administrator for quite a long time (I think 2008 perhaps).

An interesting addition is the H Subclade Discovery Project and will will try to learn more about this new initiative.

Any submissions to this newsletter can be submitted to Elizabeth Kipp (kippeeb@rogers.com).