Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
My triple cousin has done her DNA test at AncestryDNA. Thankfully she is a match–but she does not appear as my “closest” cousin simply because we have three documented relationships. Just because we are related in three ways does not mean that we share three more times the DNA than one would expect. That is […]
DNA offers genealogists the opportunity to solve some genealogical problems that no one ever thought could be solved. With that opportunity comes the possibility that the genealogist may learn something about their supposedly “known ancestors” is not true after all. It’s not unheard of for someone to learn that someone they thought was their grandparent […]
reprinted from 2015 with additions While generally speaking I am not a fan of the “leaves” at Ancestry.com, there are times when I do check to see if there are suggestions for a person on whom I am really stuck. Sometimes the Ancestry.com leaves float and land in a logical place. Other times they don’t. (see where the […]
Years ago when I started my research, I tried to track down as many descendants of various second and third great grandparents. There was no goal of writing a book or any such thing. I was fortunate enough to find reasonably complete genealogies of the descendants of three different sets of third great-grandparents and I […]
reprinted from our old blogsite of 2 May 2015 On the list of things I wished they had indexed in the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940” at Ancestry.com are the witnesses. This 1884 marriage reference makes the case pretty clearly. Being a witness to a marriage is not proof of a biological connection between the […]
This hour-long presentation will present a brief overview of what autosomal DNA results are and are not. These are the tests that are done at AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, and 23andMe. Effective use of your results is easiest to do if pre-planning is done beforehand. This presentation will also help those who have not really delved […]
Occasionally when I write a research tip or suggestion, I receive an irritated email indicating that “it didn’t work for me.” That can be true for one simple reason, not all tips will be applicable to all people during all time periods. Sometimes what works (0r what does not) hinges upon the specifics of the […]
This image comes from the 1910 Census for Northeast Township’s Second Precint, Adams County, Illinois. In three households in a row the lady of the house is named Trientje. I always knew Trientje was a good Ostfriesen name (my great-grandmother was a Trientje), but this really drove the point home. As a note to those […]
