Siblings

Death certificates can provide you with names of parents.  If possible, obtain the death certificates for all children of an ancestor, even though the siblings are not your direct line.  Compare the names of parents on the certificates of all siblings.

Sisters Sarah and Mary Cook died of pneumonia in Whippany 10 days apart in 1885.  Their death certificates are consecutive.  Although they were in their 70s, the informant was able to provide the full names of both parents.  This information is consistent on both death certificates.

Sisters Elizabeth Terry and Sarah Scott died ten years apart in Jersey City in 1886 and 1896.  On the death certificates, the names of their parents are not identical.  The names of the parents on Sarah's death certificate are consistent with other documentation.

Purchased AncestryDNA Kit

I logged onto my email tonight just in time to see the awaited announcement from Ancestry that I could purchase one of their new DNA kits.  The offer was good for only twelve hours.

Email from Ancestry.com received 9 June 2012.
Offer expires 9 June 2012.

I ordered one kit for $99 plus $9.95 shipping.  [On an aside note, I will get a percentage of the price credited to my Upromise account.  Another 27 years and those school loans will be gone!]

I returned to the Offer Page and tried to order another kit, but was denied.

This new offer from AncestryDNA is autosomal testing, meaning that the test captures DNA that you have from all of your ancestral lines.  [The trick is figuring out WHICH ancestral line you have in common with any one of your hundreds of distant genetic cousins.]  This is the testing offered by 23andMe and one of the tests available at FamilyTreeDNA.  This is not the same test that I did at Ancestry a few years ago for my father, his sister, and myself.

I now need to decide who to test.  I wanted to try the new autosomal testing at Ancestry.  I DO NOT want results for various family members scattered across companies.  I will not be able to compare genetic cousins against known, closer family members if I do not concentrate the tests at one company.

I will keep you posted . . .

More Genetic Comparisons

Another useful function of the expanded comparison abilities at 23andMe is comparing people who match both my father and his third cousin.  The most recent common ancestors were born around 1830 in New Jersey, Calvin Cook and Mary Neil.  Calvin's lines were in New Jersey and New York several generations before Calvin, while Mary was likely of recent Irish descent.

In the above graph, P. M., who lives in Ireland, matches David and David's third cousin, as well as T. R, who is also from Ireland.  T. R. matches both David and the third cousin (not shown).  Mary Neil represents David's only Irish branch.  Thus, P. M. and T. R. likely match David through one of Mary Neil's lines.  The question remains:  which of Mary's ancestors was also an ancestor of P. M. and T. R.?