334 emails

I am now getting down to the emails that will entail more work than just filing. I decided to join WikiTree and having time to work on my tree there has been pretty well nil. I would like to get to it but it will definitely not be before the new year. I had a rather scathing letter asking why I only have two people up with my maiden surname (my father and myself) and do not have enough names for them to check against their DNA matches. I did write and assure the individual that if he matches me then my email will show up and he can write to me about the match with myself or any of my siblings. Those emails tend to get answered somewhat quicker as I am busy re-phasing my grandparents and surprisingly there are not that many changes. But each new match that can be proven with regard to shared ancestry makes the phasing ever the more interesting.

Genealogy is not really my passion. Organization is and the desire to establish my family lines in a rigorous fashion for the descendants of my parents and grandparents. We (my siblings and I) are my grandparents only grandchildren. Going back to the great grandparents this is not the case on my father's side, I have a number of second cousins although that number is fairly small and a number of them are half second cousins. On my mother's father's side, I have only half second cousins and there are only two of them. On my mother's mother's side, I am still trying to locate the grandchildren of one of my grandmother's sisters and the other one who had three sons has just one granddaughter still living with descendants. The rest of her siblings did not have children. So the number of second cousins is small but the number of third cousins takes a rather dramatic leap. Although my paternal grandfather had eleven siblings only one child, the eldest daughter, had a large number of grandchildren/great grandchildren. The rest had two to three children at most and many of them had no children at all.

What ever happened to being friendly in genealogy one might say? Although I must admit quite a few of these emails are from distant cousins thanking me for my blog which has assisted them in their trek backwards. Some have queries that I cannot answer without doing a lot of research that I have no intention of doing.

Others are asking about the five projects that I administer at FT DNA. For three of these projects I do a newsletter three times a year so mostly I do not get a lot of queries on those studies which is rather handy to be honest. I probably can not answer any questions about their family lines anyway and the research is ongoing with respect to all of these haplogroups. H11 though has proven to be quite fascinating and as the project continues to grow one can see resting spots for various subclades of H11. However, FT DNA has changed access so actually determining location is not quite as easy as it was but privacy is important for sure. I never identify anyone in my reporting by name or kit number; it isn't necessary to do so and I do not report other than in those newsletters any particular mutations.

For my two one name studies I actually get very few emails as people tend to write to me directly. Most requests come for the Blake surname and usually it is in disagreement with what I am saying. I do provide the links back to my blog where the relevant details including location and transcription of original records and leave it at that. I am not going to be able to convince everyone with a family history that they descend from the family of Lord Robert Blake that in actual fact they may not descend from that particular Blake line.

Back to emails!