Don’t trust chatbots

If you write seriously you’ve probably had occasion to look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, and you’ve probably gone to a thesaurus for the the word that expresses precisely what you want to say.

If you write with a computer word-processing program you may have used its online dictionaries, online thesauruses, and similar aids, and you have possibly allowed your writing to be corrected by helpful extras that detect mis-spellings and grammatical errors. You may have consented to have your prose ‘improved’ by programs that detect weak verbs, excessive use of the passive voice, and so on.

Are you wondering what’s next? Will it ever be possible to instruct a computer to compose meaningful, grammatically correct, and idiomatically proper English on some subject with no further intervention from the human writer?

The answer is yes, sort of, and the development has some implications for genealogists.

Programs designed to write prose are called ‘chatbots‘. One of the more successful is ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool currently being trialled, which, given an initial text prompt, is able to produce prose that continues the prompt.

It is sometimes claimed that chatbots are able to understand human language as it is spoken and written, and on this basis have the ability to compose meaningful prose. This is not so; a chatbot constructs sentences using patterns it has detected in text it has examined, constrained by rules imposed by its developers.

Chatbots seem clever, but their output is unreliable, often misleading, and from time to time egregiously and dangerously false.

A new group on Facebook has been set up to explore the ChatGPT tool from a genealogy perspective [https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogyandai].

To demonstrate the dangers of using chatbots, my daughter had a ChatGPT chatbot write a biography of Christine Anne Young—me—complete with cited sources.

It produced a biography without a single correct fact. The sources were entirely made up.

[The chatbot was given my unmarried name.] My date and place of birth were wrong, and my education and achievements were given incorrectly. Publications said to be mine were falsely credited to me.

‘Champion de Crespigny’ is reasonably easy to research, for very few people have this surname, so I am confident that ChatGPT is not confusing me with someone who has the same name.

ChatGPT cannot be relied on for research. It is a prose-construction writing-aid, which exploits language-pattern recognition. It does not understand facts. It produces authoritative-looking text, but it cannot be trusted. It is certainly not a substitute for real research.

Further reading

• Hughes, Alex. “ChatGPT: Everything You Need to Know About OpenAI’s GPT-3 Tool.” BBC Science Focus Magazine – Science, Nature, Technology, Q&As – BBC Science Focus Magazine, 16 Jan. 2023, https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/gpt-3/
• Bowman, Emma. “A New AI Chatbot Might Do Your Homework for You. But It’s Still Not an A+ Student.” NPR.org, National Public Radio, 19 Dec. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143912956/chatgpt-ai-chatbot-homework-academia

Looking for William Sullivan (1839 – ?)

My husband Greg’s great grandfather Ebenezer Henry Sullivan, known as Henry Sullivan, was born on 7 August 1863 at Gheringhap, a small settlement near Geelong, Victoria.

Henry’s birth was registered by Matilda Hughes, his maternal grandmother. According to the birth certificate, his father was a labourer named William Sullivan, about 24 years old, born in London. His mother was recorded as Matilda Sullivan, maiden surname Hughes (but actually born Darby), aged 18, born in New Zealand. William and Matilda had been married in 1862, the previous year. Matilda had another child, Eleazar Hughes, born in 1861 to a different father, unnamed.

Birth certificate of Ebenezer Henry Sullivan

The 1862 marriage of William Sullivan and Matilda Frances Hughes took place on 6 October 1862 in Herne Hill, a suburb of Geelong, at the residence of the Reverend Mr James Apperley. The marriage certificate records William as 23, labourer, a bachelor, born in London, living at Gheringhap. William’s parents were named as William Sullivan, painter and glazier, and his wife Mary Barry.

1862 marriage certificate of William Sullivan and Matilda Hughes

On 12 June 1865 at Ashby, Geelong, William and Matilda had a daughter, Margaret Maria Sullivan. The informant on the birth certificate was her maternal grandmother Matilda Hughes. The father was named as William Sullivan, farmer, deceased, aged about 25, born in London.

On 20 November 1865 Margaret Maria Sullivan died, five months old. A Coronial inquest was held, where it was revealed that six months after their marriage, a few months before Henry was born, Matilda was deserted by her new husband William. Matilda Sullivan maintained that the father of the baby Margaret Maria was William Sullivan, who had visited her twice since their separation. At the time of the baby’s death Matilda Sullivan worked at Geelong Hospital. Her two younger children were cared for by their grandmother.

The inquest heard medical opinion that the baby had starved to death. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against the grandmother [Matilda Hughes], and the mother [Matilda Sullivan], as being an accessory to it.

In April 1866 Matilda Hughes and her daughter Matilda Sullivan were called upon to surrender to their bail, but they did not answer to their names.

On the 15th May 1866 the ‘Geelong Advertiser‘ reported on court proceedings relating to the abandonment of two year old Henry Sullivan. It was said of his mother, Matilda, that “her husband had left her, and was supposed to have gone to New Zealand, whence no tidings were heard of him, and she had recently left Geelong with some man with whom she had formed an intimacy, and had deserted her children”. The child, Henry Sullivan, was admitted to the orphanage.

I have found no subsequent trace of William and Matilda. Nor have I found any record in London of William Sullivan before he arrived in Australia. I have also not been able to trace his parents William Sullivan, painter and glazier, and his mother Mary Barry.

Moreover, other than as descendants of Henry Sullivan, neither Greg nor any of his Sullivan cousins have any Sullivan relatives among their DNA matches.

When Greg first tested his DNA he had a strong match to Helen F. from New Zealand and also to her great uncle Alan W. Since 2016 I have been in correspondence with Helen who, with me, is attempting to discover how we are related. Helen has a comprehensive family tree. We have since narrowed the relationship to her McNamara Durham line.

Helen recently wrote to tell me that she had noticed some matches descended from a William Durham, son of a Patrick Durham. Patrick Durham, it seems, was the brother of Joanna NcNamara nee Durham, Helen’s 3rd great grandmother.

I have placed the matches in DNAPainter’s ‘What are the odds?’ tool. It appears likely that Greg and his Sullivan cousins are descended from Patrick Durham. We don’t yet have quite enough data to be sure whether they descend from William Durham or one of his cousins.

What are the Odds tree (tool by DNAPainter.com) with shared DNA matches of Greg with descendants of Joanna Durham; at the moment we do not have a great enough number of sufficiently large matches to form a definite conclusion. The cousin connections are a bit too distant.

William Durham was born about 1840 in Finsbury, Middlesex, England, to Patrick Durham and Mary Durham née Barry. When William Durham married Jemima Flower on 9 April 1860, he stated that his father was William Durham, a painter and glazier. (There are several other records where Patrick Durham is recorded as William Durham but is clearly the same man.)

1860 marriage of William Durham to Jemima Flowers

Comparing the signatures of William Durham on the 1860 marriage certificate to William Sullivan on the 1862 marriage certificate. They seem to be similar.

William and Jemima had two children together, one of whom appears to have died in infancy. The other, also called William Durham, left descendants, and some of these share DNA with Greg and his Sullivan cousins and also with Helen and her Durham cousins.

On 19 October 1861 William Durham, his wife and two children, were subject to a poor law removal. The record mentions his parents.

London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; London Poor Law Registers; Reference: BEBG/267/019 retrieved through ancestry.com

Jemima died about a week later and was buried 27 October 1861 at Victoria Park Cemetery, Hackney.

I have found no trace of William Durham after the Poor Law removal. Did he emigrate to Australia and change his name?

Related posts

• Poor little chap
• From the Geelong orphanage to gardener
• Triangulating Matilda’s DNA
• John Narroway Darby

Wikitree: are these two the same man?

• William Sullivan (abt. 1839 – ?)
• William Durham (1840 – ?)

Using Transkribus to decipher the death certificate of Gustav Grust 1839-1901

Since I have German ancestors I am very pleased that so many German birth, death, and marriage certificates are being digitised and made available.

However, well into the twentieth century German printed documents used the so-called ‘blackletter’ typeface, and this is difficult for an inexperienced modern reader of German to understand. The handwriting of the clerks who filled in official forms is often also quite hard to read.

[ I have written previously about the difficulty of reading German family history material. See: https://anneyoungau.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/g-is-for-gustav/ ]

Software has been developed to help readers with these documents. Transkribus, for example, is a platform using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology for automated recognition, transcription, and searching of historical documents. Website: https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/

Transkribus has handwriting recognition for in many languages, not just German. The developers are even experimenting with methods of reading ancient Chinese documents.

This 10 minute video gives an idea of how the software is being used to make archive records more accessible: Transkribus: AI-based recognition of historic handwriting

Karl Gustav Grust (1839 – 1901) was one of my third great uncles. I recently came across his 1901 death certificate, and I wanted to know what was recorded about his parents. I was struggling to understand the handwriting.

Karl Gustav Grust death 15 May 1901 (age 61) in Hamburg, from “Hamburg, Germany, Deaths, 1874-1950” Hamburg State Archives; Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Hamburg, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister, Sterberegister, 1876-1950; Bestand: 332-5; Signatur: 332-5_7944 retrieved through ancestry.com

I decided to try the Transkribus software. If you scroll down the webpage at https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/ you come across this
trial-run facility.

I downloaded the image of the death certificate and uploaded it to the page. I left the model option as “Transkribus German handwriting M1”

I immediately received the following text:

C.
No. 1151.
Bambung am 17. Mai 101.
Vor dem unterzeichneten Standesbeamten erschien heute, der Persönlichkeit
durch Geburts
shanen
der Lehrer Austar
Grust
Hamburg, Bussestrafe 25
der Privatier
Karl Gustav Grust,
61 Jahre 11 Monat lutherischer
Hamburg Bussestraße 23
Men Nuppin, verheirathet
mit Johanna Mean Cäroling gebe
renen Peper, genannt Rathje
Sohn er verstorbenen Eeleute,
Tuchmachers Gustar grust und
Wiemimine geborenen
Hl2G
Banbg, in seiner Wohnung,
fünfzehnten Nai
des Jahres tausend neunhundert l
sechs
N
woen e, und zwar indes Anzeigenden
Gegenwarte
Vorgelesen, genehmigt und unterschrieben
Gustav Grust
der Standesbeamte
Pramer.
ne aeerre
m

The transcription is not perfect but for me it is much better than being bamboozled by the handwriting. What I was particularly looking for was my great-uncle’s father’s occupation. The document confirmed this as ‘Tuchmacher’, cloth maker.

I had a quick try at correcting some of the transcription, which left out many of the proforma headings. I have shown the form details in bold font and corrected handwritten transcription in bold plus italic.

C.
No. 1151.
Hamburg am 17. Mai 101.
vor dem unterzeichneten Standesbeamten erschien heute, der Persönlichkeit
nach ??? Geburts
Shanen ??? ??? kannt, 
der Lehrer Gustav
Grust
wohnhaft in Hamburg, Bussestrase 25
und zeigte an, daß der Privatier
Karl Gustav Grust,
61 Jahre 11 Monat alt, lutherischer Religion,
wohnhaft in Hamburg Bussestraße 23
geboren zu Neu Ruppin, verheirathet
mit Johanna Maria Carolina gebe
renen Peper, genannt Rathje
Sohn der verstorbenen Eheleute,
Tuchmacher Gustav Grust und
Wilhelmine geborenen
Berg
zu Hamburg, in seiner Wohnung,
am fünfzehnten Mai
des Jahres tausend neunhundert ein
??? mittags um sechs Uhr
verstorben bei, woen e, und zwar indes Anzeigenden
Gegenwarte
Vorgelesen, genehmigt und unterschrieben
Gustav Grust
der Standesbeamte
[signature]

This roughly  translates using Google translate:

Hamburg on May 17, 101.
Before the undersigned registrar appeared today, the personality
after ??? birth
??? ??? know
the teacher Gustav
Grust
lives in Hamburg, Bussestrasse 25
and indicated that the privateer
Karl Gustav Grust
61 years 11 months old, Lutheran religion,
lives in Hamburg, Bussestrasse 23
born in Neu Ruppin, married
with Johanna Maria Carolina
Born Peper, called Rathje
son of deceased spouses,
Clothmaker Gustav Grust and
Wilhelmina born
Berg
to Hamburg, in his apartment,
on May fifteenth
of the year one thousand nine hundred one
??? at six o'clock in the afternoon
deceased at, woen e, while indicating
present
Read out, approved and signed
Gustav Grust
the registrar
[signature]

It took some work to make the additional corrections but it was much easier to work with the beginning transcription than to start from scratch. Transkribus is not perfect but thanks to it I now have the gist of the meaning and enough information to continue the family tree.

Related posts:

• G is for Gustav
• Karl Gustav Grust 1802 – 1872

Wikitree: Karl Gustav Grust (1839 – 1901)

DNA: Exploring AncestryDNA Thrulines

ThruLines® is a tool from AncestryDNA that shows you how you might be related to people with whom you share DNA.

A ThruLine is a hypothetical connection based on information from your family tree that supports a link between your tree and the family tree of the person you match (a match is someone who shares some DNA with you).

For a ThruLine to exist both you and your match need to have a family tree linked to your DNA test. AncestryDNA uses the family tree linked to your test to find people who are in your tree and also in the
trees of your matches.

You can find ThruLines from any page on Ancestry®. Click the DNA tab to start. ThruLines are available for ancestors through to 5th great-grandparents.

Here is a screenshot of my husband Greg’s ThruLines.

We know all of Greg’s great great grandparents, but when it comes to earlier generations there are gaps. ThruLines, using a combination of DNA and family trees, has the potential to help identify some of the ancestors whose name we don’t know. These suggestions are identified in green.

Thomas Harvey, born 1739, has been identified as possibly one of Greg’s fifth great grandfathers.

I select Thomas from the grid on ThruLines. While hovering it shows me there are two DNA matches who are also descended from Thomas. I am invited to evaluate the relationship paths.

One of the matches is a second cousin descended from Greg’s great grandmother Edith Caroline Edwards. The other match is identified as possibly a sixth cousin.

If I click on the green ‘Evaluate’ button beside the name of Thomas Harvey, I see two different sorts of trees to review. One tree is created by the DNA match, but it is a private tree with apparently no records. However, clicking on the private tree I can see that there are in fact 13 records attached. So I can evaluate the possible shared ancestry I have written to the match requesting access to the tree.

There are also 3 other trees with Thomas Harvey, with up to 3 records attached. The researchers have no DNA connection but are researching the same ancestors. Selecting one of the other trees I can see the three attached records and I can review these further. I am also invited to add Thomas to my tree on the basis of the research done by the Ancestry member. I prefer to progress more slowly and to evaluate the records to see if Thomas Harvey is indeed the father of Jane.

ThruLines has given me some hints to work on to go further back on the Harvey line and review the records to see if I can link Greg’s 4th great grandmother Jane Harvey to Thomas and Patience Harvey. The difficulty is that Harvey is not an uncommon surname and Jane is a common forename. It is hard to be certain that Jane Harvey is linked to this family. Parish records in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are less useful in making connections between the generations. I do not think there are wills available for this family which would help to link the generations.

ThruLines® is a useful tool for suggesting connections between DNA matches and providing hints about possible relationships. However, as with all such hints and clues, the written records must also be assessed to determine if the relationship suggested by the DNA evidence actually holds

WikiTree link for Jane Harvey: Jane (Harvey) Edwards (abt. 1766 – 1842)

Wikitree – what is it and should I use it?

Front page of Wikitree.com as at 16 September 2022

Recently a user on a Reddit genealogy forum asked, Wikitree-what is it and should I use it?

He received some interesting answers.

One user replied:

WikiTree is a free global tree, where one profile is created per ancestor that users collaborate on. The most popular global trees are FamilySearch, Geni, and WikiTree.

Advantages of working on a global tree are:
. you have other people to share the work with and learn from
. all the best sources and info and are combined into one place
. gives the opportunity to see conflated information you probably wouldn’t notice outside a global tree (for example, two profiles have the same date of birth and parents but aren’t the same person, meaning further research is needed)
. view relationships to other people in the global tree
. other people are more likely to see your research vs. just having it in your own tree

While smaller than the other global trees, WikiTree focuses the most on accuracy and tries to enforce a standard of having at least one source per profile , and only using reliable sources for pre-1700 profiles. It is probably the most “serious” genealogy site of the three. It is not a records repository site like Ancestry or FamilySearch though.

Another user wrote:

I am a big fan of the Wiki collaborative editing concept, but I found the WikiTree UI clunky to use and got discouraged after a few days.

Another pointed out that:

Wikitree is not a records repository. It's aim is to be the most accurate "one world tree" there is, where users are supposed to collaborate on profiles of people, and list sources to support the facts.

While it sometimes falls short of 100% accuracy and profiles without enough good sources, I generally find it a good place to collaborate. There are a lot of experienced genealogists contributing, and it's a bit harder for a newbie to cause too much erroneous damage than it would be on the FamilySearch shared tree. It's also good in that you can write (or edit or contribute too) a biography for your ancestors - describe the facts, anecdotes if any, and research notes if there are complicated interpretations of sources.

I find it a useful place to share my research - I think of it more of a site to "give to" rather than one to "take from" -- my family members and distant cousins can make use of what I've found, and review sources to make sure that I (and others) didn't get any of it wrong. I like to think of genealogy as a perpetual work in progress, and we should all share what we know. It saves a lot of hours not having to blindly replicate some complicated research that someone else has already done.

It also has neat things like seeing how you are connected to famous people. I also like how users can enter DNA info on their profiles (not DNA data itself, but that they took a test and where), and that info is propogated in a useful way through their relations in the tree. It has lots of useful and fun apps for various purposes.

If you're interested in it, one warning -- it's a bit of a learning curve to learn the ins and outs, but there are good help pages and videos. Also it is time-consuming to create good profiles, so it is for the patient and careful type. You have to search to see if a profile exists or not to determine of you should create a new profile or edit an existing one, because one person should only have one profile. And the features won't be useful unless you build out your tree enough to connect in to the rest of the world.

Other people on the Reddit forum complained that the collaborative process sometime allowed incorrect information to be added.

Another user noted that “Adding sources is a lot of work and if you’re not familiar with wiki formatting it is slow.”

A user added a few pointers:

You’ve gotten a lot of good explanations on what wikitree is so here’s a few tips on using it.

1. It’s a great way to share your research with others. A cousin is curious and all you have to do is send a link. No long email with info. It’s all there in a free, easy to understand way.
2. Is that it’s a great way to keep your research online. Since they encourage putting in all your sources, you know have access to it all online and can work on your tree anywhere. Sure you can do that on other sites, but I personally find wikitree to be an easier way to do it. And it’s free.
3. Rootstech. [I think the author means Rootsearch found on the right of the data entry screen] It puts your info in the search boxes. Click the site you want to search and voila. No more jumping back and forth having to put in the info on each site you use.
4. The community is actually active and you can get help and actual support.
5. Join a project. Sometimes we burn out on our own trees. Those brick walls just get us. Maybe there’s a project you can join. A challenge that you can find. Some project generate a list of profile with errors so you can quickly help others.

Things you may not like 
1. It’s meant as a genetic tree, so adoptive parents/children may find that off putting.
2. It’s a lot of work putting in all the data.
3. As with all shared trees you have to trust the other users.

A review of Wikitree published at https://www.dnaweekly.com/reviews/wikitree/ was unfavourable. The reviewer found the interface clunky and unintuitive. She wanted to explore uploading a GEDCOM file, a file which contains genealogical information about individuals such as names, events, and relationships; the records are linked together by metadata. However, she found it best to start building her tree. It is apparent from her efforts that she is not an experienced genealogist, for she entered her maternal grandmother with her married name, not her maiden name. She could not

 “locate any birth, death, or marriage certificates for any of my family members, even though I’d found them on other sites. If you’re after historical records specifically, you’d be better with Ancestry. It has a huge bank of records with an easy-to-use searching tool.”

Of course—and some people miss the point—this is because WikiTree is not a records repository.

The reviewer misunderstood Wikitree and was disappointed.

A response on the Reddit forum about sourcing points to a useful browser extension:

Entering sources is really easy using the WikiTree Sourcer browser extension (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_Sourcer). It came out in October. Easily cite Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, ScotlandsPeople, Find A Grave, UK BMD, with more sites to be added in the future. It even automatically adds a free sharing link for Ancestry sources.

For sources from other sites, most of the WikiTree projects have pages dedicated to source citation templates you can copy and fill in, or source citation examples for specific sites.

I have been using this extension recently and I found it very effective for adding information to profiles. I recommend it. There is a YouTube video which explains how to use it, at WikiTree Sourcer Extension Intro and Overview.

I agree that the interface of WikiTree is clunky but it is effective. It takes a little while to get used to and some knowledge of genealogical conventions such as the use of maiden names for women is required. It is expected that sources are cited according to conventions but as the Help page says: “the important thing is citing the source, not how it’s done.” “Genealogy without sources is mythology!” (According to a 2011 post by Tamura Jones the source of this aphorism is possibly Mary L. Henke.)

Family Tree Magazine has an introduction to Wikitree at https://familytreemagazine.com/websites/wikitree-tutorial/ The presentation notes “This is a collaboration—it’s meant to be accurate. Mistakes will happen, but the group assumes the best intentions of others and pledges to be courteous as they hammer out their differences in research findings.”

In a post of 26 April 2019, the genealogist Kitty Cooper discusses why you should add your research to WikiTree. She starts her post “A heartbreaking moment for any family historian is when you discover that your late genealogist cousin’s wife has shredded all his papers. This actually happened in my family.”  Sadly, this has happened in my family too. However, with Wikitree I believe my research will be there as a resource for my descendants and my cousins to use now and indefinitely into the future, safe, I hope, from accidental or malicious damage.

To sum up: Wikitree is not a records repository but a global family tree with a profile for each person. Wikitree users collaborate in their research. Wikitree is a site to give to rather than take from. My family members and distant cousins can make use of what I’ve found and review sources to make sure that I didn’t get any of it wrong. I agree with the idea of “genealogy as a perpetual work in progress”, and that we should share what we know. Not having to replicate complicated research that someone else has already done can save a lot of time. The Wikitree interface is a little rough and ready, and it takes time to learn, but there are tools to help.

Related posts

• Tree progress September 2022

Tree progress September 2022

In May 2018 I wrote in this journal about progress I was making on my family tree. The previous ten generations of my children’s ancestors have a maximum total of 1,023 people. How many of these, I wondered, could I name.

I found that I knew the names of only 319 (31%). Today, four and a half years later, I can name 384 (38%). This is 65 more, an increase of 26 on what I knew a year ago. I have yet to discover the names and other information about the remaining 639.

Ten generations takes you to your 7th great grandparents. Where I know their date of birth, most of my children’s 7th great grandparents were born in the late 1600s and 1700s. I know the names of 99 of the 512 ancestors of this generation. I don’t know very much more than the names of 44.

In recent years I have transferred the outcome of much of my research to WikiTree, a collaborative project intended to produce a single worldwide family tree.

In a post of 26 April 2019, the genealogist Kitty Cooper discusses why you should add your research to WikiTree. My research will be there as a resource for my cousins to use now and indefinitely into the future, safe, I hope, from accidental or malicious damage.

There are discrepancies between my personal research tree and WikiTree. For one thing, I have names of ancestors on my personal tree about whom I know nothing more. These people cannot be added to WikiTree until I have more information about them. When I add a person to WikiTree I provide source citations: I state how I know the facts being added and about the relationship of the newly-added profile to other people on the tree. Adding my family tree to WikiTree is an excellent way to review and verify my family history research.

When looking at the 1,023 individuals of the previous ten generations of our ancestors, I now have 313 recorded on WikiTree, 31% of the possible maximum. This is 55 more than the 258 recorded on WikiTree a year ago. I need to find more details for the 70 ancestors where I know not much more than the name and add them to WikiTree. The challenge remains to try to learn about the 639 ancestors missing from our tree.

Chart generated from Wikitree of my daughter’s ancestors

Related posts

• Progress on my tree from May 2018
• Tree progress September 2021

AncestryDNA: latest updates to ethnicity estimates

AncestryDNA has launched a new feature, a chromosome painter, which ‘paints’ your DNA with your ethnicities, showing the DNA regions that make up your ethnicity estimate.

Overnight my kits updated to show the new information. It’s found under the ‘DNA Story’ tab.

Five years ago when I looked at my ethnicity AncestryDNA reported it as 100% European:

• 59% from Great Britain, which includes England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man
• 20% Europe East
• 12% from Ireland
• 4% from Finland / North-west Russia
• 2% from Europe-West
• 2% from Italy/Greece
• <1% from the Iberian peninsula

At the time, the results seemed to underestimate my German heritage. My mother and her ancestors are from Germany.

It has now refined the results:

• Scotland 41%
• Germanic Europe 33%
• England and Northwestern Europe 13%
• Sweden and Denmark 6%
• Wales 3%
• Ireland 3%
• Baltics 1%

At https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Ethnicity AncestryDNA explains it calculates its ethnicity estimate:

To discover where you come from, we compare your DNA to the DNA of people with known origins from around the world. These people are our reference panel. Our reference panel has over 56,580 DNA samples from people with deep regional roots and documented family trees. We survey your DNA at over 700,000 locations and look at how much DNA you share with people from the reference panel in each ethnicity region.

Recently AncestryDNA provides estimates of ethnicity inheritance from each parent. They use your DNA matches to split your DNA into the halves that came from each parent. First, they find the segments that connect only to one parent or the other. Then, they separate out the DNA you got from each parent by piecing together the segments that overlap. After they have separated your DNA into the parts that correspond with each parent, they calculate an ethnicity estimate on the two halves. From this, they can show your “ethnicity inheritance”—the ethnicity percentages passed down to you from each parent.

These are my results.

Both of my parents have tested with AncestryDNA, so I can compare the estimate with its results. The differences are partly because I inherited only part of their DNA.

Column 1 has the ethnicity percentage I am estimated to have inherited from my parent and column 2 has their ethnicity estimate from their own test with AncestryDNA.

	% I inherited from parent 1	My father’s ethnicity estimate
Scotland	41%	43%
Germanic Europe	0%	3%
England and Northwestern Europe	6%	8%
Sweden and Denmark	0%	0%
Wales	3%	14%
Ireland	0%	31%
Basque		1%

	% I inherited from parent 2	My mother’s ethnicity estimate
Scotland	0%	2%
Germanic Europe	33%	79%
England and Northwestern Europe	7%	10%
Sweden and Denmark	6%	3%
Wales	0%	0%
Ireland	3%	0%
Eastern Europe and Russia	0%	6%
Baltics	1%	0%

It seems doubtful to me that I inherited Irish ethnicity from my mother. She herself shows no Irish ethnicity in her results and my documented family tree has an Irish connection on my father’s side, reflected in his ethnicity results, with no Irish connections for my mother.

AncestryDNA’s Chromosome Painter displays these results:

My Chromosome map at AncestryDNA as at July 2022

My chromosome map divided between my two parents

When I look at the results by different regions I see that Ireland has been assigned solely to chromosome 7, as has Wales. AncestryDNA has allocated Wales to one of my parents and Ireland to the other.

I suspect the breakdown by chromosome needs to be refined.

By way of comparison this is my father’s AncestryDNA chromosome painter picture. It can be compared with the map I have developed using DNAPainter.

My father’s Chromosome Painter results from AncestryDNA July 2022

My father’s chromosome map at DNAPainter where I have been able to assign shared DNA according to ancestors shared with DNA matches

For the most part AncestryDNA has allocated regions to whole chromosomes.

So far at DNAPainter I have only managed to paint just over a quarter of my father’s DNA profile. I can make some comparison between the two diagrams.

The Basque inheritance AncestryDNA shows on the paternal chromosome 1 appears to be inherited from Philip Chauncy and Susan Mitchell, my father’s great great grandparents.

My father has inherited Scottish and Irish ancestry from both his mother and his father. His Welsh ancestry was inherited only from his father. This does correspond with my known tree.

English ancestry has only been inherited from his mother; English ancestry is not so well defined for me – many forebears were born in England but had come from elsewhere, the issue becomes from what generation ethnicity is determined.

My father has inherited his Germanic Europe ancestry from his father on chromosome 6. It is not clear which ancestors might be responsible for this inheritance.

To be useful AncestryDNA’s Chromosome Painter diagrams clearly need more work.

I remain more interested in ancestral contributions to DNA rather than the vague attributions of ethnicity.

Unfortunately, for privacy reasons (or so it is said), AncestryDNA chooses not share detailed information about DNA matches. To obtain the details and be able to derive the information about which DNA you inherited from which ancestors you need to use other companies, such as MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, or GedMatch.

RELATED POSTS AND FURTHER READING:

• Looking at my ethnicity as determined by DNA testing
• ‘ethnicity’ DNA: beware of inheritance from daughter to mother
• Update to AncestryDNA communities: Vinnie has views
• DNA Painter – a new tool

• AncestryDNA articles
  • Chromosome Painter
  • AncestryDNA® Ethnicity Estimate
  • Ethnicity Inheritance
  • How SideView™ Technology Splits Your DNA Results by Parent
  • Ethnicity Estimate 2021 White Paper

Wikitree:

• Anne (Champion de Crespigny) Young

Y not Y?

My fourth great-grandparents Edward Hughes and his wife Elizabeth Jones were Welsh; Edward was from Newmarket, Flintshire, and Elizabeth from Cardiganshire. Hughes, however, is not an unusual surname in Wales, nor is Jones, and for a while I’ve been muddling them with another Welsh couple from Flintshire with the same names.

• 

• 

  Photographs of Edward and Elizabeth Hughes from pages 67 and 72 of Cherry Stones by Helen Hudson

When three years ago I wrote about Edward and Elizabeth I believed, mistakenly, that they had married at Ysgeifiog (also written Ysceifiog) in 1821 and that this was Elizabeth’s birthplace. Edward was from Holywell, a couple of miles north.

I have since ordered Elizabeth’s Victorian death certificate. She died on 4 July 1865 in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.

Australian death certificates include much information useful to the genealogist, though the reliability of this depends on the knowledge and good will of the informant. In Elizabeth’s case the informant was her husband Edward Hughes.

The 1865 death certificate of Elizabeth Hughes

From Elizabeth’s death certificate I learnt that she was born in Cardiganshire to Edward Jones, who was a farmer, and Elizabeth Jones née Humphreys. She was 66 years old when she died, so she was born about 1799. Elizabeth and Edward married about 1825 in Liverpool when she was twenty-six. They had eight children:

• Mary, dead;
• Samuel aged 37 years (at the time of Elizabeth’s death in 1865, so born about 1828);
• Mary aged 35 years (born about 1830);
• John dead;
• Eliza Ann dead;
• Elizabeth Humphreys dead;
• Goodman Edward Jones dead; and
• Henry aged 24 years (born about 1841).

At the time of her death Elizabeth had been in Victoria for twelve years eleven months, so she had arrived about August 1852. Although she died in Brighton, the home address of her husband Edward was View Street, Bendigo (the town at that time was also known as Sandhurst), a hundred miles north. The cause of her death was recorded as chronic disease of the liver and stomach trouble. She had been ill for two months, which perhaps implies that she had come from Bendigo to Melbourne for treatment.

Elizabeth Hughes was buried in Brighton General Cemetery on 13 July 1865. The gravestone inscription reads:

In memory 
of 
Elizabeth
Beloved wife of 
Edward Hughes 
of Sandhurst
Died 10th July 1865 
aged 66.
Precious in the sight of the lord is 
the death of his saints

(The verse is from Psalm 116.)

The Bishop’s transcripts, copies of the parish registers which had been sent to the bishop, of Liverpool marriages includes a record at the church of St Philip for a marriage by banns on 24 April 1825 of Edward Hughes and Elizabeth Jones. Neither had been previously married; both were of the parish. A transcript of the marriage register shows the witnesses were John Parry and G. Jared; I believe the witnesses are not related to the bride and groom.

As this record is a better match for the details given at the time of Elizabeth’s death I am more confident that this is the record of the marriage of my fourth great grandparents Edward and Elizabeth Hughes. Unfortunately, details which would help to confirm that we have the right couple, such as their parents’ names and occupations, are not recorded.

Building a family tree with common surnames such as Hughes and Jones is often more difficult than not, because there is more likely to be confusion over two people with the same name. From the information on Elizabeth’s death certificate, it seems that I was wrong: my fourth great grandmother was not from Ysgeifiog and my Edward and Elizabeth were not married there. I have corrected my tree and added the new information.

RELATED POSTS

• F is for Flintshire

Wikitree:

• Edward Hughes (1803 – 1876)
• Elizabeth (Jones) Hughes (abt. 1798 – 1865)

600th blog post

I wrote my first family-history blog post ten years ago, on 25 April 2012. My 500th came two years ago, on 1 June 2020. This is my 600th.

My blog—really an online research journal—has been an effective and efficient way of recording my family history.

From time to time I like to measure the progress I have made in my research into my own direct ancestors and those of my handsome husband Greg (my very patient and helpful editor!).

Six months ago I found that of the previous ten generations of my children’s ancestors I knew little more than the names of most of the 86 of their 512 7th great grandparents. I didn’t know much about my German ancestors before my children’s 3rd great grandparents. When I first started reviewing progress on my ancestors in May 2018 I knew only 54 of these 7th great grand parents.

Generation from my children

parents to 3rd great grandparents

Ancestors identified

62

Change since May 2018

–

Tree
completeness

100%

4th great grandparents

58 of 64

+4

91%

5th great grandparents

80 of 128

+13

63%

6th great grandparents

91 of 256

+24

36%

7th great grandparents

91 of 512

+24

18%

Of the possible 1022 ancestors up to 10 generations of 7th great grandparents I have identified 366 or about 36%. I know all 32 of my children’s 3rd great grandparents and thus all 62 of their possible ancestors to that level. At the 4th to the 7th great grandparent level I now know about 65 more ancestors since I first documented my progress in May 2018. I have, of course, also been discovering more about our ancestors’ lives since that time.

Image of 10 generation tree generated using DNAPainter

I continue to enjoy my research and writing about our ancestors.

Related posts:

• 500th blog post
• Progress on my tree in May 2018
• Tree progress September 2021

Finding the parents of Frederick Harold Plowright born 1881

My husband Greg’s great great grandparents John Plowright (1831 – 1910) and Margaret Plowright nee Smyth (1834 – 1897) were married in 1855. They had six children, the youngest born in 1872. In 1881 they adopted a child named Frederick Harold Plowright. I have not found his birth certificate, and until recently I did not know how he was related to the Plowright family. Until 1929 there was no formal adoption process in Victoria and so there was no directly relevant documentary material from 1881 to establish a relationship.

Frederick Harold Plowright 1881 – 1929, photograph in the collection of his grandson J P

In 2018 J P, grandson of Frederick Plowright, took a DNA test. This showed that he was related to the descendants of John and Margaret Plowright but that his grandfather was not the son of John and Margaret.

I used a DNA Painter analysis tool called ‘What are the Odds?’ to estimate where J P stood in the family tree and so how Frederick Harold might be related. The tool calculates where somebody probably fits in the family tree based on the amount of DNA they share with people about whose position in the tree you have complete confidence. The tool predicted that the best hypothesis is that J P was the great grandchild of James Henry Plowright, one of the sons of John and Margaret Plowright, and that his grandfather Frederick was a half-sibling to the other children of James Henry.

In short, it appears very likely that Frederick was adopted by his paternal grandparents.

Using the What are the odds (WATO) tool from DNA Painter to calculate how J P might be related to his Plowright cousins. Hypothesis 5 is the most likely and is indicated with a red *. J P’s grandfather’s most probable position in the family tree is indicated with a green *.

The Avoca Mail reported on 28 June 1881 that Elizabeth Ann Cooke brought an affiliation case against James Henry Plowright. This is a legal proceeding, usually initiated by an unwed mother, claiming legal recognition that a particular man is the father of her child. It was often associated with a claim for financial support.

AVOCA POLICE COURT. Monday, June 28th, 1881. (Before C. W. Carr, Esq., P.M.)

Elizabeth Ann Cooke v. James Henry Plowright. — This was an affiliation case, and Mr Matthews, who appeared for the plaintiff, asked that it might be postponed to allow it to be arranged out of court. The case was accordingly postponed by mutual consent for one week.

Avoca Mail 28 June 1881

A week later the case had been settled, presumably by the parents of James Henry Plowright agreeing to adopt the child:

AVOCA POLICE COURT. Monday, July 4th, 1881. Before W. Goodshaw, Esq., J.P.

E. A. Cooke v. J. H. Plowright. — Mr Matthews, for the plaintiff, stated that the case (adjourned from last court) had been settled

Avoca Mail 5 July 1881

Elizabeth Ann Onthong was born in 1862 in Avoca, Victoria, to Thomas Onthong and Bridget Onthong nee Fogarty. The family later used the surname Cook or Cooke. Elizabeth was the fourth of six children; she had four brothers, none of whom apparently married or had children, and one sister, Mary Ann, who married and had children.

J P shares DNA with descendants of Mary Ann

Related posts:

• John Plowright (1831 – 1910)

Wikitree:

• Frederick Harold Plowright (1881 – 1929)
• James Henry Plowright (1860 – 1932)
• John Plowright (1831 – 1910)
• Margaret (Smyth) Plowright (1834 – 1897)
• Elizabeth Ann (Onthong) Wiffen (1862 – 1927)