52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2021: Week 20 (COUSIN BAIT)
This week I received a newsletter from GedMatch with a link and information about their new website. This is the first newsletter I have ever received from GedMatch. They are planning on sending out monthly newsletters according to this first one.
The newsletter was full of interesting information along with a link to Kitty Cooper's blog about how to use GedMatch.
***Check the LINKS section below if you are interested in reading that.
There was also information about 2 Facebook Pages. The first one is GedMatch's page which I have been following for a long time. The second one was GEDmatch.com User Group which I hadn't yet discovered. It's a private group, and the request to join was approved within minutes.
The first comment I read was from a user who had signed into his GedMatch account after not using it for a long time to discover the family tree he had uploaded years ago was out of date. The answers he received were all about how to delete his gedcom, and upload another. They also outlined how to make the living people private since there was some concern about whether the autotool from GedMatch could be counted on to do that.
I couldn't remember if I ever uploaded our Bramble Bush to my GedMatch account, and decided to check. I discovered I did have a Family Tree in my GedMatch account. In 2016 I uploaded our Bramble Bush that had just less than 500 individuals in it.
Also in 2016 I took an online genealogy course from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. It was during this class that I realized that a reasonable exhaustive search did not entail accepting every green shaky leaf from Ancestry Hints. The family tree that has been available on GedMatch for the past 5 years is one that I deleted from Ancestry due to mistakes. I didn't remember that I had uploaded to GedMatch.
This is a major fail in COUSIN BAITING!
The key to cousin baiting is to ensure that the information publicly available is accurate to ensure distant cousins who may know more than I can find me to share what they know.
In 2017 I began a new Bramble Bush that now has 10,395 people.
My primary reason for starting over was that I was beginning to think that my brick wall was due to mistakes. In November 2015 I had received my Ancestry DNA results, and nothing was as expected. In the spring of 2016 we added my dad's and husband's Ancestry DNA, and things didn't get clearer. It was only in taking the genealogy course that I realized that nothing fit because the pieces I was trying to place belonged in a difference forest than the one I created.
I am fairly confident in the accuracy of our BRAMBLE BUSH FAMILY TREE (2017). There have been times I have had to resort to reasonably exhaustive search, but I struggle with placing people I am not very confident about.
DNA matching has been the key to climbing higher up the tree.
I haven't been using GedMatch too much over the last several years after discovering a few unexpected non-parental events. I joined the Facebook user group to learn more about the tools offered at GedMatch.
I deleted the outdated GedCom family tree, and tried to upload our current Bramble Bush. The maximum number of people accepted is 10,000 so the upload was rejected.
I viewed their youtube video on uploading to figure out what to do. After pondering for a bit I decided it was best to upload the GedCom to Ancestry, and create a new private tree. I planned to delete enough folks be under 10,000. I would also need to anonymize or delete all the living folks to protect privacy.
I began that process, and realized that it was going to take me weeks to complete.
I searched for other ideas, and the suggestion of using software to privatize living folks seemed the easiest.
I downloaded my tree from Ancestry to a GedCom file. Uploaded to Roots Magic, and then downloaded a GedCom choosing the privacy option. I then uploaded to a new private tree on Ancestry. The majority of living folks were listed as private as I had wanted. I still had 395 more people than the maximum allowed for uploading to GedMatch.
I spent the next several hours fixing the few living folks whose names were not changed to private, changing private to initials for the 6 people I have DNA kits for on GedMatch, and deleting about 400 extended relatives of spouses in the lower sections of the tree.
I plan to learn to use the GedMatch tools in the future. To date my primary purpose for GedMatch has been COUSIN BAIT!
With the updated GedCom I am feeling confident any cousins out there will be able to connect with our Bramble Bush.
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| Summer 2020 |
Fishing for cousins!!!
This is why I search -
Cause ...
You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family you know!
***Any errors are my own. Please send me any updates or corrections via the comments at the bottom of this blog post***
Links:
Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge
https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/
Kitty Cooper's Blog, A Really Basic Approach to Using GEDmatch
https://blog.kittycooper.com/2021/02/a-really-basic-approach-to-using-gedmatch/
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