Help Me Help You

It's becoming a common plague in forums, Facebook pages, and emails to receive a request for help from someone unwilling or unable to give you the basic information to make the search easier. If you visit the Ancestry.com Facebook page, you may have noticed the posts of a surname and nothing else. Or maybe you've seen the one asking for a specific person, but no indication if they are a recent or long past relative or where they lived. I've had folks email me for help that ask me to find "anything" about their relative. When I give them what I can find in a simple search, I get "yeah, I already found that." People, I'm not a mind reader! Every well-formed request follows the "Who, What, Where, When" format. Today I'm gonna break it down for you so you can formulate a better request.

Who
Who are you looking for? It seems so easy a question, but people get it wrong all the time! You cannot just type in a surname and hope someone will give you all the information ever found on that surname (especially for names like Smith or Jones or Nguyen). Questions about specific people will go over better for two reasons. First, no one wants to help someone just looking for "anything". Genealogy is a hobby of research. Asking nonspecific questions has the taint of "do the work for me", and that's not how research works. Second, not everyone with the same surname is related. It would be a disservice to just spew out all the names and facts for everyone with that name. You may only be related to a small fraction of those people and would be too overwhelmed by the information to make sense of it all.

Be as specific as possible. If I want more information about John Kemper, I'm going to make sure to tell you if I'm looking for Junior or Senior. I'll add if I have a middle name or initial. Anything I can think of to narrow it down. In my tree there are over twenty John Kempers. If I asked someone for information on "John Kemper", how would they know if I meant one of these twenty, or one of the hundred others I've not connected to my tree yet?

What
I am going to tell you something very personal that I try not to tell people that have the potential to become friends or clients: I call you every name under the sun when you ask me for "anything" I can find on your ancestor. What the hell does that mean? What are you hoping to see? Like I said earlier, it sounds like you don't really want to do the work and want me to hand you your family's history. Which is fine if you're willing to pay me. I mean, if I'm going to waste my time on a fishing expedition for free, it's going to be on my tree. What bothers me more is that I don't know what expectation you have. I offered free research to one woman to find "anything" on her relative. It was early in my effort to become a paid genealogist and I thought I would give her my time if she'd give me a written recommendation. I was looking to build a reputation. It was like pulling teeth trying to find out what she was looking for. I found birth records, death records, news articles, censuses, military records.....even made contact with a living cousin who had a photo of him! In the end she wasn't satisfied with the results. What was she looking for? "I heard he owned a store downtown and I wanted to know if there was anything about it anywhere." Um, okay. I could've talked to a few folks about that specifically if you had just told me. I went to work with some local help and found advertisements, a photo of the outside of the store, and a book made by the historical society that mentioned her relative and his store as integral to the beginnings of the town. Finally happy, she was willing to write me a shining recommendation that I could use to encourage new clients. She wasn't so happy when she asked if I'd help her with another relative and I told her it'd cost. Sorry, but I wasn't touching that family again without some incentive.

There are thousands of people willing to do the work for free. Some do it because they need experience so they can build their skills. Others do it because they love history and the thrill of the chase. You do get what you pay for, however. And I don't mean in just monetary terms. Yes, a professional genealogist with degrees and focused training commands a large sum for their time. Yes, they are worth it. But there are also many volunteers (myself often included), who know the value of their time and are willing to forego money to help someone in need. Do not disrespect the volunteer simply because they don't charge you for the effort! If I ask for information on my great grandmother Bonnie Goff/Gaulf, it will help me and my helper if I tell them what I want to find. I already know about her married life, I need to know about her parents. So my request should be for someone to find me her parents or birth certificate. It'll keep folks from sending me information I already have which wastes their time (and mine). If I don't tell people what I've found, I'll appear rude when I have to tell them I already found that. I'll appear even more ridiculous when I don't clarify at that time what I really want. Seriously, if you make the mistake of not saying what you want the first time, don't compound it by giving nothing in your response other than "yeah, I found that already." People will remember your name and will stop helping you.

Where
So now I'm telling people that I'm looking for Flossie Lorraine Martin. I have her first marriage to a Gruggett. I have her second marriage to a Householder. I'm more interested in her parents and possible siblings. I've given you my who and what. Now what about my where? Where actually means two things when making a request:

First, where was your ancestor? Flossie died in Missouri. I found her in the censuses with her second husband and it indicated her birthplace was Tennessee. Her death certificate says she was born in Reelfoot. Knowing this will help you and anyone who helps you know where to look for your relative. There is no centralised repository for documents in the US. Most of the world can't say that they house their records in one place for the entire history of their country! So if I don't give locations, I'm making the job harder for no reason. I'm also sending folks on a bit of a wild goose chase if the locations I'm looking into keep their records locally and not online. By giving the locations I know (or that documents say), people can help me narrow down my possible matches. It's much more helpful to ask for help finding a person in a specific region or city of Lithuania rather than the whole country (which has also changed shape and my ancestor may have all their records in Russia or Poland if that town is not currently considered Lithuanian!). If I don't know where, I need to do more work in the areas I know to look for clues to narrow down the search in the next country. Asking someone for help finding a needle in a haystack is best when the haystack is as small as possible.

The second thing any request should include is where you have looked. If I've already looked for and found Flossie's death record on Missouri's online database, I can save folks some time and avoid the "yeah, I know that" rude response. If I've searched Ancestry.com (or any website with several collections), it helps to say whether I've used the general search or if I've looked at specific collections. No general search on any website pulls up all the available collections. And I seriously doubt anyone makes it through every record pulled up in a general search without becoming bored, too. If you've looked in specific collections, tell your helpers what those collections were. (If you don't know what collections you looked into, first get a research log. Then start reading more than just the name on a page! There is so much information you are missing when you don't explore a collection.) By excluding those collections, your assistants can look in new places and help to bring new avenues of research to the top.

When
When my friend Loretta asked folks for names that seemed unique for her post "It's Not Unusual", she was looking for odd names that are much more common than one would think. She was given quite a few, but I was quite proud to recommend one of my own relatives: Washington District of Columbia. I'm sure I gave a few chuckles to those in the conversation on that oddity. I'm also sure that the smirk on Loretta's face quickly went away when she found more than one fellow sporting that moniker! If I wanted to know more about my D.C., I was going to need to tell people when he lived to narrow it down. Just because a name seems strange to you, doesn't mean it wasn't all the rage when your ancestors were looking for baby names.

This is even more true for those God-awful common names like John, James, William, Mary, Elizabeth..... the surname doesn't really matter, because people would recycle these names in the same family. Often in the same generation! By providing dates, we can separate one from another. My Kemper line originates from John Kemper b. 1692, immigrated 1714, d. 1670. He had a son, John Peter b. 1717 and John II b.  1722. Sometimes, in fact often, John Peter and John II are only listed as John. Knowing where they were and when they were there helps me figure out which of these three men I'm looking at. Knowing "when" also helps on a local, national or world level. I know that land records are actually for John II, because his father was alive but not naturalised. At the time they received their land, Virginia had requirements that the elder John did not meet. His son was old enough to qualify and so the land was his. Knowing a relative moved to Australia in the 1850's recently helped a friend of mine. She was unable to understand why her relative had left his family and moved to the other side of the world until she took into account the Australian Gold Rush! "Eureka" would be an appropriate response, I believe.

Keep It Simple
If you hired someone to look up your family information, would you be happy with someone who said, "I looked everywhere and I couldn't find anything."? Or would you prefer, "I found your great grandparents and their children in the U.S. Census for 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 online via Ancestry.com. I located your great great grandfather's pension request for service in the Civil War and your grandfather's WWII draft record online via Fold3. I took that information and ordered their complete files from the National Archives. I also found some birth announcements for your grandfather's siblings in the Chicago Tribune and had copies made for your records. However, I was unable to locate a birth record for your great grandmother, because she was born 5 years prior to the state required records to be kept."?

If you want the second response, you need to ask for it. Researchers need specifics in order to best help you. Following "Who, What, Where, When", I can ask for help with my elusive great great grandfather Jonas Levingskas by telling people in my request some basic information I already have and what I want:

• Hello, I'm looking for my great great grandfather Juozas/Jonas Levingskas. I have looked on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and Scotlands People. I found a death notice for his daughter Margaret Mitkus giving his name and address in Mossend, Scotland. I found a death record for Jonas stating his parents were Tomosus Levingskas and Yafilia Karezuskia. He died 26 December 1950 and the certificate indicates he was born in 1871 in Lithuania. It also indicates he changed his name to John Smith or was at least being called John Smith. I am looking for information on his immigration from Lithuania. A ships record or naturalisation record perhaps? Where should I look next?

I give enough of what I already have, where I've already tried to look and what I'm really interested in finding that someone should be able to help me. I know I can't start asking for his birth information from Lithuania, because I don't know where to start. If I had his immigration information, it may have the place where he boarded the ship or his residence or his birthplace. I won't know until I find it and I can't skip over that step. If I started a search for Levingskas in Lithuania, the number of Juozas' I'd find is insane. And while I'm hoping to find more information to go backwards, I've given enough for any descendants from the sons who stayed in Scotland to recognise their relative and connect with me on what they know.

Also note that I keep the message simple and small. I get to the meat of my matter. As much as I enjoy helping others, I have to admit that I often skip over a post that has more than two paragraphs before they get to their point. And if it's just a load of names and dates, I'm even less likely to take an interest. If I have to spend 20 minutes figuring out what you know so I can start my search, you've already lost me. While I will sometimes take an interest in a general "Can you help me with this person" post, I shouldn't have to pull teeth to help. And you may notice that I ask where I should look. I would never turn down someone else's work, but I show that I'm willing to learn a new trick and research this myself. I am not looking for my history handed to me on a silver platter. I don't knock anyone who can't research because of time or skill, but I don't coddle laziness.

Show me that you're willing to put in an equal amount of effort, and I'll teach you to fish.
-Ana

Racing To the Wrong Conclusion

Check out the story behind these
cool twins HERE

We've all seen that post: "I have this photo of a relative that looks like [insert race]." The poster and comments following start pointing out features. Suddenly everyone is an anthropologist! Hair texture, eye colour, cheekbones, foreheads, nose shapes..... Everyone seems to ignore a simple fact: there is no characteristic that belongs to one race. Moreover, there aren't different races genetically. Race is a human construct to divide and define, and it does a very poor job!

Let's Play a Game

I found this really fun game on PBS's website. There are 4 categories of race (White, Black, Native American, Hispanic/Latino) and you take 16 people and place them in the race category that you most think they look like. I did really well on Asians....... but not so much on anyone else (I didn't get a single White one right). After you play the game, go ahead and check out the other links, especially the timeline on race. Can you imagine a time when race wasn't a category to put people into? Well, there was a time just like that.

Of course, humans love labelling things, especially other people. The problem with generic labels is that it never really fits what you're trying to label. Most race categories we think of today were made to better define humans for a census (i.e. "Hispanic"). Caucasian really means people from the Caucasus mountain region, but has morphed to mean "White" in common use. There are three basic class distinctions for forensic anthropology: Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid. Because of negative connotations for the last two, many people have automatic stereotypes as to what these classifications mean based on skin colour (which is not at all part of the consideration). And because they are so general, many people don't fit one or the other which has led to some experts dividing them even more (i.e. Mongoloid has been divided from Australoid to mark the very distinct differences in Australia's Aborigines; Negroid has been divided into Congoid and Capoid for West Africa and South Africa respectively). In reality, no matter how you divide it, humans don't have any populations that are isolated enough to create a truly different genetic makeup. I could say that a Caucasian/European/Caucasoid has a long narrow face, cheekbones that don't protrude, and a narrow nose with a high bridge; a Negroid/African has a wide nose, rounded forehead, and protruding lower portion of the face; a Mongoloid has a moon shaped face, prominent cheekbones, and "shovel shaped" teeth. I could say these things. But the problems are myriad with these generalisations.

The picture below was made by taking several photos of different women from the same country or region and making a composite average. I'll refer to this photo while we discuss the problems with generalising (note that this composite doesn't take into account mixed races).


Couldn't find who originally posted this, but found a good blog while I was at it!

First, the problem with averages. In order to make any average of anything, even the average of five numbers, there has to be some below the average and some above. Go ahead and find the average African American woman in the photo above. Pretty average, even reminds me of a few actresses. But to make that photo, someone had to have a larger face, smaller nose, larger eyes and have those corrected to the mathematical average. Second, do you see any Native Americans? According to the 3 categories discussed above, Native Americans fall into the Mongoloid group. The stereotype we've seen on television would make me lean towards the Samoan more than the Peruvian. But what about the Indian, Mexican, Puerto Rican or Burmese photos? I have full blood friends and kin I'd place closer to those faces. Which brings us to problem number three: skin color. I'm sure you scanned the faces for darker skin for the Native Americans. If I asked you to pick out the Whites, you'd look for the light skin.... what if I asked you to pick out the Caucasoids? Go ahead and try that: look for narrow noses, cheekbones that aren't prominent, long faces...did you pick out the Ethiopian? No? You should do. How about the Afghan and Iranian? And is the South Indian a Caucasoid and the Indian a Mongoloid? Problem number four: the characteristics that anthropologists use to identify the general categories are best applied to a skull. How can I tell whether the Filipino has the more oval eye sockets of the Mongoloid or the round ones of the Caucasoid? Does the picture of the Central African show the square sockets of the Negroid? Is she a Congoid or Capoid?

Special Fun With the Census!

The US census currently divides humans into the races of White, Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander. It wasn't always that way. From 1790-1810 asked for Whites and Slaves. 1830 asked for White, Black, or Mulatto. The 1870 census was the first time East Asians were listed (all as Chinese) as well as American Indians. 1890 got crazy with it: White, Black, Quadroon (1/4 African ancestry), Octoroon (1/8 African ancestry), Chinese, Japanese and Indian. 1910 added an "other race" category for anyone that didn't fit anywhere else to write in their affiliation. The 1920 census finally recognised that Koreans, Filipinos and Hindus (Indians) were separate from Chinese or Japanese people but still Asians.

1930 saw a few wild changes. They removed Mulatto and decided that anyone with any African ancestry or mixed Black/Native Americans with no official tribal affiliation were to be listed along with full blood Blacks as "Negro". A mixed White/Native American was to be Indian if they had a tribal affiliation, White if they were accepted in White society. "Mexican" became a category if a person or their parents were born in Mexico. In 1940, Mexicans went back to being categorised as White. In 1950, Hindu and Korean were removed. 1960, Indian was changed to American Indian and Hawaiian, part-Hawaiian, Aleut, and Eskimo were added. The "other" category was also removed. 1970 changed "Negro" to "Negro or Black" and added Korean and "other" back in. 1980 added in Indian, (East) Guamanian, Vietnamese and Samoan.

Add into this the recent confusion of adding "Hispanic" in 2000. The Census Bureau defines "Hispanic or Latino" as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race." So on the census, every person answers whether they have Hispanic ancestry or not regardless of what category (White, Black, Asian, Indian) they would place their race. So the woman in the above photo from Mexico would be Hispanic and White or American Indian depending on her family history and if she has tribal affiliation. With that said, I know a man from Spain who could say he's Hispanic by that definition (having a Spanish culture), but mistakenly regards it as a race of peoples from Central and South America that are Native Americans mixed with other races. And what about my niece? Her father is from Puerto Rico, her mother Indiana...... Does her father's influence give her enough cultural knowledge to be Hispanic? Or would she say she isn't Hispanic as she is growing up in a more Midwest American culture? Well, there's talk of allowing people to check both "Hispanic" and "Not Hispanic" on a census....... then what's the point of asking the question??? Which brings me too....

General Genetic Confusion

 

From the Human Race Machine this is one woman's face in 6 skin shades

 If I were to say someone had thick lips, hooded eyes (the fold of the upper lid hides the lower lid), a broad nose, and brown eyes... what do you think their skin color is? The characteristics I listed are all dominant genes. When your parents made you, dad gave you one half, mom the other. So, say, dad gave you the gene for thick lips and mom thin lips..... you'll have thick lips. If you marry someone who has thin lips, there is a possibility that your child will have thin lips as you carry the gene for it, but if your child gets the thick lip gene then they'll have thick lips. Skin and eye color aren't dominant/recessive. Both are physical manifestations of the amount of melanin in our system (as is hair color!). They are actually controlled by more than one gene pair (skin has 7), so they can be in a range of shades. Brown eyes are considered dominant as originally all humans had brown eyes. It only takes one gene (OCA2) to be mutated to shut off a portion of melanin production to make blue eyes. (For a cool relationship fact: Blue eyed folk may all have the same ancestor!) In point of fact, dark hair, skin and eyes are all dominant. Since there are several genes involved, any one or more mutation can lead to a change in the color. As the photo of the twins at the top shows, skin doesn't equal ethnicity/race.

Now, my good friend Loretta's blog "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" covered some interesting responses to Ancestry.com's posts regarding it's new autosomal DNA test. What it proves is that many people don't understand what genes are about. I'll have to make a post (or ten) just on genealogy and genetics, but today I'm going to give you a rough outline to explain ethnicity markers and why your identified race/ethnicity isn't what you'll always see in your DNA. So a bit of the basics on DNA: your DNA is made up of 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. One pair is well known as it determines your sex: you'll be a female if you are XX, male if you are XY. The rest of the 22 pairs determines most everything else about you (there are some specific mutations found on the sex chromosomes for some characteristics, but again, this is a broad stroke today).

Chromosomes are made up of genes. Genes are strings of molecules that are basically instructions for our cells on how to do whatever it is they do. An allele is what we call different forms of genes. For example, the gene for number of fingers has two alleles: the dominant 6-fingered option and the recessive 5-fingered one. If I wanted to trace the history of the recessive mutation, I would look for the earliest concentrated occurrence of that allele. Since there is no gene shouting "I AM WEST AFRICAN!", scientists need to look for alleles that are commonly found in West Africans. If an allele is almost exclusive to, say, Indonesians, then that mutation can be used to map migration of the Indonesians to neighboring islands. I just read a great book "Guns, Germs and Steel" which, while a little repetitive on the conclusions, explains how genetics, language, food production, etc. can be traced from a concentrated "start point" to other areas by conquering civilisations. If you want a really detailed explanation, though, I would recommend the read.



Please read Ancestry.com's blog post HERE for their explanation



So about DNA tests: When you take a Y-DNA test, you must be a male. Women don't have Y chromosomes. Since women don't have Y Chromosomes, a Y-DNA test will tell a man about his father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc......in a straight line of descendancy. The X Chromosome is found in both men and women, so to do a test exclusive to women, scientists came up with mt-DNA testing. That test is for the DNA in your mitochondria. Mitochondria is a small organelle found in cells. It has it's own DNA with it's own mutations. Women pass mitochondria down to both their female and male children, so a man or a woman can take the test. The test will tell you about your mom, grandmother, great grandmother...... both these tests give you a very clear idea of your family migration as far as the mutations to genes on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.... but ethnicity isn't among them. To test for ethnicity, you must take an autosomal test. That tests the other 22 pairs of chromosomes. It looks for specific alleles that are found in specific areas and have clear migratory patterns to prove a point of origin. It's less accurate than the other tests and does NOT tell you whether it's your  mother's or father's side that gives you a particular allele. And there isn't a time on these mutations, so your tree may go back 7 generations, but the DNA is going back 10 or 20..... so just because your grandmother was Spanish, doesn't mean your DNA won't say you're Turkish. None of the alleles that have been identified to be used in an autosomal test are for a physical appearance trait. You can "look like" an Italian, and share the alleles associated with a South Indian. And since your parents' DNA doesn't divide evenly to give you their half, you may lose an allele that is specific to one group or another. So your 4th great grandfather may in fact be Native American, but it's so far back in the DNA and has been recombined and divided so many times that you don't have a marker that says you're Native American.

It's all about human migration. People conquering the inhabitants of neighboring areas, being conquered, travelling and intermarrying for millenia..... that's why German ancestry is so hard to pin down and West African is not! Germany is the cross roads of a large land mass called Eurasia (the largest one Earth). Romans tried and failed to conquer it; Germans tried and succeeded in conquering most of the British Isles; Scandinavians tried and succeeded several conquests of most of the areas of Europe including the British Isles and Germany. West Africa was able to conquer most of South Africa, leaving only pockets of native populations there. Most African Americans will find West African links, because most slaves were collected from the West African coast. West Africans took the mutations specific to their area and bred them into their conquests. We can see a clear migratory pattern. Germany.... not so much. As more people sign up for the autosomal test, we'll get more data and a clearer picture of what mutation started where. Even still, it is not an accurate system. It's the genetic equivalent of "looks like".

To Confuse Us Further

Most people having problems understanding their DNA results, or asking what a relative "looks like", are actually just making one big problem: defining words incorrectly. Here's what Dictionary.com says about nationality, race and ethnicity.

• Nationality- the status of belonging to a particular nation, whether by birth or naturalization: the nationality of an immigrant.
• Race- a group of persons related by common descent or heredity..... an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups....a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, whose members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans. (This is what is meant by the Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid classifications by anthropologists)
• Ethnicity- relating to or characteristic of a human group having racial, religious, linguistic, and certain other traits in common.

So when we ask what someone looks like, or do the autosomal test, most of us are expecting an answer of Nationality. Grandpa was from Norway, so we're hoping to hear Norwegian. When someone says that their relatives looks like a Native American, they are using an arbitrary race stereotype (dark hair, high cheekbones, dark skin). When someone finds out that their relative who was documented as from England carries Scandinavian DNA, they call the test bunk. They don't look Scandinavian! Well, what does a Scandinavian look like? The alleles are specific to an ethnicity and they're confusing it with race (both England and Scandinavia are considered to average as Caucasoid) or just nationality.

Show a person a picture of a baby and an unrelated man and tell them that the man is the child's father, and most will start to see "obvious" physical traits to prove it. (I read this in a psychology magazine, but couldn't find it again to give you the exact percentage. I know it was somewhere around 80%) If you are looking for proof of a particular ethnicity, you'll probably see it, even if it isn't there. I'm not saying everyone is wrong when they think their relative looks like a particular group.... I'm saying that unless you're an expert, you're most likely wrong. I did a two part article on how to determine the age of a photo based on photograph technique and the clothing of the subject. Even at my best, I can get a range rather than an exact date. If I tried to determine what someone "looked like", I wouldn't be any more accurate. Even an expert would be uncomfortable with an absolute ethnicity. They'd say that feature suggested this and this one suggested that.... but no, they won't look at your photo of great aunt Ruth and tell you she definitely had slave ancestors and just "passed for white".

I'd rather decide if one photo of my great grandfather "looks like" the unlabelled earlier photo and leave it at that.

-Ana