Ancestry.com Improves DNA Services

Ancestry has improved its DNA services by allowing you to see how much DNA you share with a DNA cousin.  To view, go to your list of matches and click on the username, then click on the tiny "i" icon.  This button is very easy to miss.

Below are the top matches for a woman who is adopted.  (I wrote in the amount of shared DNA from the screen shot.)  The "second cousin" and "third cousin" share almost the same amount of DNA with her, so the designations may be misleading.  In the "fourth cousin" category, we have someone who shares 64 cM, which is workable in an adoption case.  The next top match shares only 28 cM over two segments, which really is not useful when we have no family tree.

Seeing the actual amount of shared DNA lets us know which matches will be more helpful as we try to construct this woman's family tree.

The "third cousin" also participates at 23andMe.

Ancestry still needs to reveal WHERE the shared segments are located.  You can view this information at 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.  (See this blog post for examples and why we need this information.)

Brookdale Reformed Churchyard

The Autumn tour of cemeteries continues.

For the first time I visited a graveyard by Brookdale Park in Bloomfield [Essex County, New Jersey, USA], currently bearing the name Brookdale Reformed Churchyard.  The trees were lovely and the stones old.  Several burials dated from the early 1800s.  I am recognizing the same family names as I travel to local cemeteries:  Garrabrant, Post, Sigler, VanGiesen, VanWinkle.

The stone for Leah, wife of John Egbertson (1772-1830), is so faded that I could barely read it.  The year is not legible any more.

A member of the church kindly showed me around and explained some of the work done over the years.  The church was originally called Stone House Plains and was Dutch Reformed.  Some records exist at the Bloomfield Public Library.

I took a close-up of what remains of the etching on Leah's stone to virtually preserve it for the foreseeable future.  Please read Amy Johnson Crow's article, Five Photos You Should Take at the Cemetery.  Digital photos are so easy to take on our phones.  Your pictures of close, near, and far will aid future researchers in reading the stones and locating the stones later.

Researching this cemetery at home, with great delight I found digitized, online copies of records for this cemetery through the Bloomfield Public Library's Special Collections.  Included is a map and a compilation of gravestone inscriptions by Herbert A Fisher, Jr.

Many other records pertaining to Bloomfield are also in this online collection, so if you are researching this area of the world, this is worth a look.  City directories as early as 1870 are here.

Leaves and Stones

More autumn pictures.  These stones are in the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.  I will need to re-visit the cemetery.  This plot was filled with leaves, obscuring some stones.

The center stone in the front row is Susannah Scofield (died 1852), wife of William Bishop (died 1844), originally from Connecticut.  The other four stones are for their children, Charles, George, Darius, Hannah.  Readable images of the individual stones are on Find A Grave.  I wanted to see if these stones were together to solidify a family connection, which indeed they are a family.

My Bishop line hails from Morris County.  The earliest Bishop I've traced is Reuben Bishop, who died in 1856 in Morristown.  He was married to Susan Ayres (1817-1890).

I descend from a son of Reuben Bishop and Susan Ayers, William Bishop (1843-1915).  In the 1850 census, William is listed as Reuben.  Future records give his name as "William" or "William R."

Is there a connection between my William Reuben Bishop from Morris County, New Jersey and the William Bishop who moved from Connecticut to New Jersey?  Still working on it . . .