A Month Abroad: Part Four - Speaking

This is the fourth in my series of blogs on my recent four weeks in the US.      Part One (Iberia) is here. Part Two (GRIP) is here. Part Three (Seattle) is here.

The trip to the US was built on two pillars, the genetic genealogy course at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) which I discussed in Part Two and the IAJGS conference in Seattle which I discussed in Part Three. There were two weeks in between, part of which I described at length in Part One.

I gave seven lectures before Seattle - six of them were "Lessons in Jewish DNA - One Man's Successes and What He Learned on the Journey."

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My second night in the US, I spoke at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Buffalo Grove Illinois. The turnout was not large but included a few notable people in the audience. Two were from my school days - one my best friend from second-sixth grade with his wife. We've been in touch the last few years. Another was in my high school class; we didn't have much to do with each other then, but we have had some correspondence the last few years because his uncommon surname is the same as someone in my step-children's family.

Another attendee was Victor Weisskopf who came out from Skokie. He was the first non-Pikholz to join my project at FTDNA, based on numerous matches with us. I mention him in one of my closing slides as someone whose most recent common ancestor with us is almost certainly in the pre-surname period - 1750 or 1720 or 1690.

In Part One, I mentioned the Pikkel descendant who may show that we came to Galicia from Sub-Carpathian Hungary. The man I had been after for a Y-DNA test did not show up ("I know who I am") but his wife and son were there and the son tested in Buffalo Grove. I'm looking forward to his results in another month or so.

I was staying at my sister's and although she was out of town, her older son was in the audience.

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During GRIP, I spoke Wednesday evening. This was obviously a much more knowledgeable audience, though many of the GRIP students have no DNA background at all. (Imagine that!!) We used the main assembly area, as we did two years ago, and it was well received, with good questions afterwards, some book sales and many kind words the next days. I wrote at length about GRIP in Part Two of this series.

The audience included Aunt Betty and Uncle Ken and also my friend Tammy Hepps who has been in Pittsburgh for several years writing the history of Jewish Homestead.

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 The following Sunday, was the fast of the seventeenth day of Tammuz but it takes more than a hot day with no eating or drinking to keep me from a podium. In this case, it was the JGS of Maryland in Baltimore, where I had given my first DNA talk last year. This time their president Lara Diamond had me speak on "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove," which has next to nothing about DNA.

While we were setting up, two women walked in, looking shall we say out of place. "Hi, I'm Wendy" said the younger one. My last blog before leaving home was about Wendy whose mother Carolyn matches thirty of my kits and she was hoping I could help identify Carolyn's father. Wendy is a serious and knowledgeable researcher and they - um - fit right in with the audience.

Wendy and Carolyn - my new DNA cousins

Also in the audience were my second cousin Beverly and her daughter Miriam. For those keeping score, that's at least one documented family member at each venue. The turnout in Baltimore was larger than anywhere on this trip aside from GRIP and the first Seattle presentation. (Good for you, Baltimore.)

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The following evening was the Fairfax Genealogical Society at the JCC of Northern Virginia. (In Part Two, I explained the genesis of this particular meeting.) Almost all of the fifty-odd seats were filled, though there was some expectation of more people from JGS of Greater Washington.

The audience included an old school-days friend from Pittsburgh and my second cousin Sam, Beverly's brother.

I was preceded by a comprehensive survey of the genealogy holdings of the local library.

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I had picked up a rental car when I arrived in Pittsburgh from Chicago and it served me well for nineteen days. By this time, I had had only one semi-long drive, the Friday afternoon from Pittsburgh to Baltimore. (Remember, I am no longer used to American distance driving as all of Israel is not that big.) After Fairfax, the drives were longer; Tuesday afternoon to Rachel and Dan in Charlottesville (See Part One), then Thursday to Charlotte.

The early-evening meeting was sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and the Levine-Sklut Judaic Library, where I had set to meet a woman named Gay to discuss her matches with my families. It was a small audience, about thirty people, not as well-versed in genealogy as I had expected.

It was also the only venue where I had no family members. My Charlotte third cousin once removed was out of town.

I was to spend the night near Columbia South Carolina (more on that in Part Five) so this was my one night drive. My daughter was concerned about my night driving, citing some memories from when she was young. It was uneventful, even though about half the drive (it seemed longer) was dark back roads.

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Sunday I spoke for the Triangle Jewish Genealogical Society in Durham. In fact that was the centerpiece of that whole part of the trip, the reason I went in that direction to begin with. Last summer, I had discovered a new Pikholz branch headed by a woman named Sheva Pikholz Weinstein whose children were born in Nemerow (Podolia) in the 1890s. A granddaughter lives in Durham and I had been trying to communicate with her daughter about the family and of course to get a sample of her DNA. It was my theory that Sheva is a sister of Necha / Nellie Rochester of Kansas City and California. One of Nellie great-granddaughters has tested but her matches are weak and the family is pretty much orphaned within the Pikholz structure.

So when I began putting this trip together, I decided to go to Durham to meet the mother and daughter in person. They came as did a second daughter (and husband) and the mother's DNA is now in the lab in Houston. As far as family information goes, their knowledge is sparse and they could not give me contact information for cousins, but I'm taking this one thing at a time.

The turnout was excellent considering that it's a small group. They say that they never had thirty-seven people before. I added the story of Debbie Long to my presentation as she is the founding president of the local JGS. Debbie, who is a fourth or fifth cousin of mine on the Zelinka side, was not present, but we caught up with each other in Seattle.

The Durham audience was one of the best I have had, with many good questions and much discussion both before and after

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Monday I drove to my cousin Linda in northwest West Virginia. (More on that in Part Five.) 

I was using Waze to get around and it worked very well, though occasionally sent me on more scenic routes than I would have chosen on my own. Such was the case between Durham and West Virginia, as Waze took me up Route 52 through Mt. Airy. But that was obviously meant to be.

Soon after crossing from North Carolina into Virginia, something possessed me to stop at a roadside antique shop. I had never been inside one before. While looking around, something large caught my eye. It virtually called to me and said "buy me." So I did. The manager wrapped the two pieces of porcelain very carefully and I put the basin into my suitcase and the pitcher into my hand luggage. I am happy to report that both arrived home safely and now stand on a small table in the dining room.

Sometimes driving is a chore, but on this entire trip I quite enjoyed it. I never turned on the radio and mostly sang. A lot of it I made up on the fly, both words and music. Hours and hours of singing solo in the car, for the better part of two weeks. Glorious!

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After two days of catching up with myself at Mitch and Linda's house, I made my last significant drive, setting out mid-morning Wednesday to Cincinnati. I decided I could manage without Waze until I got closer and ended up seeing more of Kentucky than I had intended.

My final pre-Seattle lecture was at noon Thursday at the Genealogy and Local History Department of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. This was my smallest turnout and a significant part of the audience was library staff.

Another venue, another genetic genealogy T-shirt
from Gold Medal Ideas

As I was setting up, I was very surprised to see Jeannie McClenahan Cecil, whom I had met a few months earlier in Jerusalem. Jeannie is a definite DNA cousin who had driven down from Spencer Ohio, three and a half hours away.

Also in attendance was my first cousin Ed, Aunt Betty and Uncle Ken's son. He is the one who initiated the contact with the library. So Jeannie and Ed are also DNA cousins and I enjoyed being able to introduce them.


The audience included the Director of the Cincinnati Hebrew Academy and one of his science teachers.

My Southwest flight to Seattle was scheduled to leave Dayton at 8:20 PM with a short stopover at Midway. The incoming flight was late but they turned it around quickly and we made the connection. We, being me and my luggage.

Part Five, the last of this series, is here.

A Month Abroad - Part Two - GRIP

This is the second in my series of blogs on my recent four weeks in the US. Part One is here.

Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh
Two years ago, I participated in the inaugural course in Practical Genetic Genealogy at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP). The knowledge and the friendships from that week helped propel me along the path I have chosen in genetic genealogy.

This year, they offered Advanced Genetic Genealogy in their July session. This is the way GRIP describes the course:

If you believe that you are ready to graduate from the basics of genetic genealogy and take the next step in genetic genealogy education, then this is the course for you. Be prepared for a fast-paced learning experience intended for the genealogist who has experience applying DNA testing to family history research and has a strong foundational understanding of genetic genealogy concepts.We will demonstrate and discuss methods used by expert genetic genealogists to get the most out of DNA results, utilizing all four types of DNA, in conjunction with documentary evidence to advance knowledge of an individual’s family tree. Genetic genealogy’s application to unknown parentage search will also be examined and resources explored for when unexpected results are encountered.  We will end each day with a discussion session to enhance and reinforce the day’s coursework.Upon completion of this course, students will have gained insight into how to take their own genetic genealogy research to the next level and what it takes to assist others in this pursuit.

Nearly all the instruction was from CeCe Moore and Blaine Bettinger, who also taught two years ago. This is the curriculum.

One hundred forty pages of syllabus for this rich program

As I did two years ago, I stayed with Aunt Betty and Uncle Ken in Squirrel Hill rather than in the LaRoche College dormitory and rented a car for the twenty minute morning drive and the thirty minute afternoon return trip. Each day after morning services, I picked up a donut and a bagel at the kosher Dunkin Donuts to get me through the day.

The audio visual equipment in the room we were assigned was excellent, with everything shown on two large screens in the front of the room and a screen in the back to enable the  instructor to see it while facing the class. We were in four rows of stadium seating, with plugs for our computers on the table and adequate WiFi. The ratio of women to men was less overwhelming than last time. There were several people I knew, from the earlier course and from other places. The class list had forty-nine names, but it didn't feel like an overly large group. Only one or two aside from me expressed any special interest in Jewish DNA.

As before, I helped myself to a front row seat.

The course itself was outstanding and after more than one session, I (and others) said "this session was worth the entire price of admission." Of course this was helped by the fact that I am better equipped to handle the more advanced material than I was two years ago.

Among the stand-out sessions were Blaine on "Advanced Applications foir Third Party Tools" and CeCe on Ethnicity and Admixture, Unknown Parentage and Triangulation. The former included a really nice presentation of Kathy Johnston's Visual Phasing which identifies grandparents' segments based on three sibling-grandchildren. I had never seen this before. It is really very clever.

Both the unknown parentage session and those on admixture led to Jewish issues and CeCe showed herself to be much more knowledgeable and much more comfortable with the Jewish DNA than she had been two years ago. I told her that I was proud of her for her progress. She thanked me publicly for not giving her a hard time and for staying awake. (The latter was a problem last time.)

There was alot of emphasis on things specific to Ancestry and 23 & Me, and since I work with neither (though I tested with 23 & Me) I was quite unfamiliar with the material. I made a decision then that when in Seattle I would go to the Ancestry booth, give them some spit.- then put up the bare bones of a tree. I am pleased to report that I followed through on that. Even if I do not need it for my own research, I really need to know how this works as part of being a professional.

I still have to do something about 23 & Me which I have been ignoring because I find it user-unfriendly to say the least.

Although I am still skeptical about the whole notion of the companies' ethnicity analyses, I saw how CeCe uses them to help identify unknown parents. I was intrigued by the 23 & Me ethnicity results which are by chromosome, rather than just an aggregate blob. I would like to see FTDNA do something like that. I seem to have picked up on what CeCe was doing, as I was quite on the ball in the session on case studies. Of course, I do not use this much in real life, so I am not sure how to keep sharp on that analysis.

The attitude of Ancestry's "we'll do the work for you so you don't need to see the data" policy was analyzed under the harshest of lights. Good things were said about triangulation in that and other contexts.

There was a lot of discussion during Blaine's session on "Ethical and Legal Considerations." Judy Russell was a participant in the course so she had what to say on the subject. (Judy and I crossed swords more than a few times, but it was all in a friendly way. I think.)

Debbie Parker Wayne did one session - on "Reporting and Citing DNA results." It started off very dry with alot of reading from the slides, but it picked up and  ended up being quite useful.

Two students who are geneticists - Brianne Kirkpatrick and Beth Balkite - gave a session on "The Intersection of Genetic Genealogy and Genetic Counseling"  which gave us a different perspective on the whole topic.

Many of the participants in the course already work at a high level so student participation in the discussions was both interesting and useful. I think I held my own in that department.

If I had to boil it down to one sentence, I'd say that the course was way beyond my expectations, which were high to begin with.

I also enjoyed the general GRIP experience even though I was not a visitor to the cafeteria and did not stay for the evening programs. I wish I could say I look forward to doing this again as Elissa Scalise Powell and Debbie Deal put together a fine week of programming, but the non-DNA topics are pretty irrelevant for me and I don't see another DNA course in the near future.

There was one evening program in which I participated - the one on Wednesday when I gave a presentation "Lessons in Jewish DNA - One Man's Successes and What He Learned on the Journey." It was well attended and well received. A few people bought my book and a few others who had bought it online gave it to me to sign.

Triangulation: Jim Bartlett
While we are are on the subject of triangulation, which I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, let me mention that during the week after GRIP I spent a wonderful day with Jim Bartlett the segmentologist.

What got the ball rolling on that was a bloggers party at the home of Pat Richley-Erickson (aka Dear Myrtle) after RootsTech. Lara Diamond introduced me to Carol Petranek, the Co-Director of the Washington DC Family History Center. Carol said that it would be nice if I could speak at one of their Saturday programs, which of course I cannot. But since I knew then that I'd be in Baltimore on the twenty-fourth of July, I offered her the twenty-fifth. One thing led to another and I ended up with an invitation to speak that evening at the Fairfax (Virginia) Genealogical Society, with Jim Bartlett as my host.

I already knew that he liked my book and I have had a tremendous respect for his engineer's approach to DNA analysis, particularly triangulation. We went on for many hours and he showed me exactly how he does his analysis. It is still difficult for me to dive into this at that level both because of the Jewish issues and because I am doing a single-surname project, not just my own personal genealogy. This means I'd have to build an Excel analysis with additional dimensions.

I felt as though I had known Jim well, perhaps in a previous life. He and his wife Olivia were gracious hosts - as were all the people I stayed with during my trip. Actually, Jim and I met at the home of one of my wife's cousins and the three of us had a pleasant time together.

Jim is also known by the email address "gedmatch3" so I decided to run the Lazarus-Endogamy talk I had prepared for Seattle by him to see what he thought. He was the only person to see it before the actual presentation.

Jim and I on TV
Tuesday, after my Fairfax presentation, Jim and I were back in Fairfax for two interviews on Sidney Sacks' local TV show, Tracing Your Family Roots. In one Jim and Sidney's wife Arline interviewed me about my book and the other was more of a three way discussion, though officially Arline was interviewing both of us. I was not at my smoothest.

After they are shown locally, they will be available on line. I'll post links when I have them.

Part Three is here. Part Four is here. And finally, Part Five is here.

Wendy and Carolyn

About a week ago, I received an inquiry about a week ago from a woman named Wendy who begins:

Hi Israel,

I am trying through a process of elimination to figure out my mom’s fathers side. Through Gedmatch, there are 3 relatives that you tested who have matches with my mom. She doesn’t know who her father is but she is 20+% Ashkenazi.

She gave me her mother Carolyn's GEDmatch kit number and the three of my kits that she matches and the chromosomes where the matches occur. I didn't pay much attention to the three people she mentioned but went straight to Carolyn's match list where I saw that she actually matches thirty of my kits.

In looking at the list of thirty, I saw that one was a match of nearly 12.5 cM with my father's second cousin Shabtai. This would be on my grandmother's mother's Hungarian side. I did a chromosome browser for that part of my family and quickly saw that all the action is on chromosome 21, at the far right end.

To remind everyone, Susan is my second cousin, Aunt Betty is my father's sister and Sarajoy is one of my sisters. So this is a nice family group. Not a large segment and probably not much use for someone looking for a birth father, but it does hint at geography as we know our Bauers were in the same area since the 1700s.

So I reported to Wendy:

This group points to my pgm's mother's family. her father is a Bauer from Apostag and Kunszentmiklos in Hungary and her mother is a Stern from Kalocsa.

I don't have more but that will give you some direction.

I also saw in the match list that Carolyn has matches with two second cousins on my father's father's (Galician) side, Rhoda and Roz who are first cousins to each other. But there were no matches with other of my Pikholz second cousins. There is, however, a match with my third cousin Pinchas. Pinchas is a third cousin to Rhoda and Roz as I am but is also a third cousin to them in a direction having nothing to do with me - their Zwiebel and Lewinter families, also from the same area of east Galicia. (It could be a Kwoczka match, but no other second cousins of mine appear.)

So I did a chromosome browser for just those three. And got this:

OK. So Carolyn has a match with the Zwiebels or the Lewinters.

Then I realized that this too is chromosome 21 and that a chromosome browser for both groups gives me this:

This really looks like one group, especially when I note that my start point (41,302,925) is the same as Shabtai while my end point (45,746,864) is the same as Pinchas.

I triangulated the two groups just in case one matchs Carolyn of her mother's side and one on her father's side. (This was unlikely as Carolyn's mother has no known Jewish ancestry.) The two groups triangulated perfectly.

So it appears clear that someplace back in genealogical time there is common ancestry between Shabtai's Hungarian Bauers or Sterns and the east Galician Zwiebels or the Lewinters. Back in time, but recent enough that segments in the 11-13 cM range were preserved in both groups.

Here's to endogamy. Even if it doesn't help Carolyn very much.

Carolyn and Wendy live in Maryland and both plan to attend my presentation at JGS Maryland at 1:30 on the twenty-fourth. That's at Hadassah, 3723 Old Court Road, Suite 205. Come join us. It's my one non-DNA talk other than Seattle. Maybe they'll meet their cousin Pinchas, if he comes.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt:

What We Know

vs

 What We Can Prove

Housekeeping notes
I'm off to the US for the next four weeks. GRIP, the IAJGS Conference, programs in half-a-dozen places, some private mentoring on Y-DNA and meeting with a few relatives I haven't seen in forever.

Perhaps the most exciting thing will be meeting a male-line descendant of the Pikkel family from Vajnag, which is across the river from Vyshkovo. If you have forgotten the significance of that, review this blog from six weeks ago. I'll have a DNA test kit with me.

I'll blog as I can.

ROZ!

I could call this post Herb's MtDNA (Part Two) because it's the continuation of something I wrote more than eighteen months ago. I even wrote at the time "I hope there will be a Part 2." But it's worth starting this from scratch. You can go back and reread Part One later.

Prologue - Mutations in Y-DNA
Back when I first started looking at DNA, I had a brief discussion with Bennett Grerenspan of Famliy Tree DNA about the rate of mutations in Y-DNA. At the time, Zachy Pickholz and I had a perfect Y-37 match and I was trying to get a handle on how my g-g-gf and his g-g-g-gf are related. FTDNA's TiP Report said that there was a ~93% chance of having a common ancestor six generations ago and I did not find that answer satisfying.

Bennett  responded:

[T]his is about as close a percentage as you can expect from [Y] DNA since mutations happen unpredictably.
[F]or example I am 36 of 37 with my own father, dad having passed a mutation to me that he did not pass to my brother.

In time, Zachy upgraded to Y-67 and we added a third line from Filip. We all matched perfectly at Y-67 even after 200+ years, so I was not going to spend much time worrying about mutation rates.

Aunt Becky and Aunt Mary
My great-grandparents, Hersch Pickholz and Jutte Leah Kwoczka had seven children who survived childhood.

The seven children in birth order

Aunt Becky and Aunt Mary, being the two older girls, were apparently close. They even crossed the ocean together, barely into their teens, to join Uncle Max. They were the two I never met. Aunt Becky died first, long before I was born and Aunt Mary, though she died last almost exactly forty-one years later, had moved to Florida before I was born. I knew the four brothers and I remember going to see Aunt Bessie before she died in 1953.

Uncle Max had no children. The other three brothers were in business together and their children were mostly the same age cohort - younger than the children of the three sisters - so I knew those cousins (both in my father's generation and in my own) well. And Uncle Joe and my grandfather married sisters. That is why I never knew my second cousin Roz, Aunt Becky's younger granddaughter, even though she lived in the neighborhood and was in my brother's high school class!

I had, however, developed a relationship with Aunt Mary's younger son Herb, though until recently we had met only once, when I was fourteen. When I started with DNA testing, my first priority was the older generation and I was comfortable asking Herb to do both a Family Finder and an MtDNA (Mitochondrial) test on his mother's line.

Herb's Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA)
MtDNA is passed by the mother to all her children. Males have it but do not pass it on.

Mt great-grandmother, Jutte Leah Kwoczka, had two brothers, so only her descendants are useful for MtDNA in that line.

Aunt Becky and Aunt Bessie each had one son whose only daughters have since done Family Finder tests for our project. But their MtDNA would be their mothers' sides, so they would not help us here. Each of the aunts also had a daughter with one daughter each, but I am not in touch with either of them. One of those is Roz.

Herb's sister had no children.

So Herb is the only source we have for MtDNA in that line - my Kwoczka great-grandmother of Zalosce, my Pollak great-great-grandmother of Jezierna and my third-great-grandmother for whom all we have is a given name, Chaie Sara.

Herb initially did the lowest level MtDNA test and later I upgraded him to the full test.

He has no perfect matches. But as of nineteen months ago, he had thirty matches at a genetic distance of one.  That is, he and they are the same, but one mutation away. That number has grown from thirty to fifty-five but I shall continue referring to them as "the thirty."

It occurred to me then that if the thirty are one group, perhaps the mutation that Herb carries is fairly recent, since he has no exact matches. In MtDNA terms, that can be two or three hundred years ago or it could have originated as recently as Aunt Mary or my great-grandmother. But if it is recent, then I should treat the thirty as if they were exact matches to Herb, for the purpose of further inquiry.

I asked one of the thirty, someone I know who lives here in Israel, to check those matches and when he did not respond promptly, I asked another of the thirty - Dr. Richard Pavelle - who agreed immediately

Dr. Pavelle was a perfect match for the other twenty-nine, which means that our line broke away from theirs. (In theory, they could have broken away from us, but since they are thirty and we are one, that is highly improbable.) I confirmed that by looking at the actual mutations. Herb has one extra mutation: something called C6925Y.

Herb's mitochondrial mutations, representing my Kwoczka great-grandmother's maternal line

So I went to work on the thirty. First I looked at the Family Finder matches of those who had done that test. I didn't see any point in chasing after people who were remote matches or no match at all. There were only a handful of the thirty who were third-fifth cousins or closer to Herb. There was next to nothing coming from any of them in response. I also contacted the nine who had not done Family Finders - FTDNA was willing to offer them a special price. No takers.

The effort petered out, as expected. After all, there was a good possibility that our line had separated from theirs two hundred or more years ago, so what was the point. We didn't know enough to chase down relatives that far back anyway.

Roz
Yet in the back of my head was this nagging feeling that maybe our mutation was very recent. Really really recent. I could call Roz - still in the neighborhood - and have an awkward conversation which would end up costing me a few hundred dollars for nothing. Keep in mind, that in the last two years, I have become acutely aware of the importance of doing Family Finders for as many people as possible, so I'd have to have Roz do both tests.

I had spoken with Roz' cousin Rhoda - who had already tested - so I knew that Roz had no Internet or email, but Rhoda gave me her phone number.

Then FTDNA had their Mothers' Day sale with a package for MtDNA and Family Finder. I called Roz. She knew who I was, knew (from Rhoda, I suppose) that I was working on the family genealogy with the help of DNA and was only too happy to oblige.  I ordered the kit and promised to see her when I come to Pittsburgh for GRIP-July.

FTDNA's track record on getting results on time leaves much to be desired, but Roz' Family Finder results were nearly two weeks early. Roz' results were what I had expected and I have not had the time to look more deeply. I phoned Roz and set up to go to dinner the Monday of GRIP. And I wrote Rhoda.

I also redid the numbers for the Lazarus talk I am preparing for Seattle, to include Roz.

Roz' MtDNA results came in a few hours ago - also nearly two weeks early. She matches Herb at a genetic distance of one. She is a perfect match with the entire group of thirty - now fifty five. Herb's mutation is his and his alone. We cannot know if it was  created by my great-grandmother Jutte Leah or by Aunt Mary. In any case, it ends with Herb.

It looks like we have threaded the needle here and Roz' test was not money thrown away. What it does mean it is that the group of thirty could include some relatives close enough to make the effort worthwhile. We have pretty much pinpointed the MtDNA mutation. Now how do I use this to our advantage?

I'll see Debbie Parker Wayne soon enough - perhaps she'll have some tricks to suggest. I hope there will be a Part Three.

Housekeeping notes
Last call for ordering books in advance for Seattle.  I will have some with me, of course, but if you order now, you are guaranteed my having one signed for you.

Once again, my speaking schedule begins in Buffalo Grove Illinois next Thursday and is laid out in full here.

I submitted two proposals for RootsTech, to be held in Salt Lake City the second week in February. If that works out, I'll be available for speaking, probably with new material. Anyone interested, please drop me a note.

London and Toronto

I'm afraid that blogging from actual events is more than I can handle and both events have been covered by blogs, Facebook posts and tweets, but having spent nearly a week abroad, I figure I should say something here, if only for my own record.

As I write this, I am in my home office expecting to get a call any minute from the fellow delivering my suitcase. Each of the three legs of my trip included a stopover in Brussels and two of the three times my suitcase was not loaded onto the connecting flight. In London, they delivered it to my hotel at 1:20 AM, in time for my four o'clock taxi. Here they are not in such a rush, but since it's mostly laundry, neither am I.

London
The Wednesday evening program was sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and the Guild of One-Name Studies (of which I am a member). The program was organized by Jeanette Rosenberg of the JGS and most of the attendees are members of that organization. The audience also included my wife's brother and one of her cousins with his wife.

Jeanette's husband Mark Nicholls picked me up at the airport after what seemed an interminable wait at Border Control, plus filling out papers for the missing suitcase. They took me from the hotel to the program site and back.

Paul Howse of the Guild did the introductions.

With Debbie Kennett, in my traveling clothes

Debbie Kennett spoke first. She gave a nice, professional, comprehensive introduction to the whole notion of DNA and its use in genealogy research. (She also addressed - aggressively - some of the nonsense that is being published in the field.)

I followed with the latest iteration of my basic DNA talk that has accompanied the publication of ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People. I have renamed it Lessons

With Paul Howse (right)

in Jewish DNA - One Man's Successes and What He Learned on the Journey. It was well received. We took questions together afterwards and in most cases we both had what to say.

Debbie and I exchanged signatures on our books. Hers was on the reading list for the course I took at GRIP two years ago.

My thanks to Mark Nicholls for the photos.

Toronto
My friend and colleague Lara Diamond and I were invited to the first-ever Jewish stream of the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference, where we heard some of the top speakers in the field. Much of the conference was centered on matters Canadian, which didn't much interest either of us. But there were also some top-notch speakers including CeCe Moore and Judy Russell, whom I already knew, and Maurice Gleason whom I knew only by reputation.

There were some of the usual vendors, but mostly Canadian groups with limited appeal for those of us with no Canadian interests. (Actually, my grandfather arrived in the US via Montreal and St. Albans Vermont, at age seven with his mother and an older brother and sister. That was 1904. The rest of the family had preceded them in stages.

Actually, Uncle Dave was nine and Aunt Bessie was a bit older

Friday, I listened to Maurice on the basics of Y-DNA research. Mostly basic stuff with a lot on the FTDNA surname projects. Even knowing much of the material, I can usually learn something from a new speaker and such was the case here.

I spoke Friday afternoon at a special "by invitation only" seminar for the Genetic Genealogy Special Interest Group of the Toronto branch of the Society, on Observations on the DNA of Populations Who "Marry Within the Tribe." This was a first-time event for this talk and it was well-received.

Lara and I both went to the Jewish neighborhood for Shabbat and I met several very nice couples, all of whom had done genealogies of their families. It made me think about how much genealogy is being done outside what we consider the genealogy community. It is important to harness all these private projects so that others can see their work in a searchable format, learn from it and perhaps connect to them. (Programs like Geni.com where people can change each others' data are not the solution.) I don't think this is being addressed. I don't even think that we are aware of the scope of such works. 

I imagine that the non-Jewish world has the same phenomenon.

Lara at 8:30, from her blog

Bright and early at 8:30 Sunday morning Lara spoke about ancestral movement in Europe in a talk called Movement Between Towns in Eastern Europe (aka Ancestral Towns May Not Have Been So Ancestral). It was a good crowd and it went well. (We aren't competing or anything, but she had more people than I.)

Shamelessly lifted from Lara's blog

I followed with my basic DNA talk, Lessons, in a different room, then we went back to Lara's room for her second talk Jewish Genealogy Research in Ukraine. It was largely the same people she had at 8:30, so they must have liked it.

Later, I did a Pop-up presentation in the hallway - fifteen minutes showing two case studies, while Lara did some "Ask the Expert" consulting.

We moved on to a panel discussion on the future of genetic genealogy, including the panel's thoughts on the long-term viability of the testing companies who control all our spit-and-swab data and many of the analytical tools. The final program was a keynote address by CeCe Moore to a packed auditorium where she impressed everyone with her stories of people who had searched successfully for their birth families. The folks doing that kind of work are having a real affect on peoples' lives.

Sunday evening, I gave a non-DNA talk to the JGS of Toronto. Perhaps they'll have me back to do DNA.

You can see Lara's more detailed descriptions of the conference here and here.

After I arrived in Toronto Thursday, I met with a fellow who had a few weak matches with my family and wanted to talk about trying to nail down the possible Jewish background of his grandfather. That is not the kind of thing that holds much interest for me as it is all so remote and tenuous, but he found it useful and attended my other talks. I thought something similar awaited me Monday morning, when I had a meeting scheduled with a man whose family matched mine on our Y-DNA line.

I was wrong. This one was real. A few days earlier, the latest Avotaynu had an article by Rachel Unkefer, J. B. Royal and Wim Penninx called Y-DNA Evidence for an Ashkenzai Lineage's Iberian Origin. This study is being done on a haplogroup called FGC20747 and it includes my line. It appears to include the Goldlust line as well, and one of the Goldlusts was my Monday meeting. As a result of our meeting, they have now joined that project and we look forward to learning more about our joint heritage, which appears headed for the days of the Inquisition - not generation after generation, but in a more macro view.

As my own work has concentrated on the past 220 years, I really do not fully understand this type of Y-DNA research but between the GRIP course next month and some personal mentoring from Rachel afterwards, I hope to enhance my understanding.

It was a good conference and a great experience. Many thanks to JGS Toronto president  Marla Waltman - whose mother matches over forty Pikholz descendants from Skalat and who was responsible for creating the Jewish stream and inviting Lara and me to speak. Les Kelman, too, facilitated our participation.

Housekeeping Notes
Suitcase arrived.

The call for papers for RootsTech2017 has gone out. I may submit some proposals for that February event. I have also submitted proposals for the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Pittsburgh at the end of August of next year.

I have another second cousin lined up for a DNA test as soon as we find out about the Fathers' Day sale prices. Perhaps some others of you will also sign up.

Only a month before my summer trip and things are falling into place nicely. I'll write more later but in the meantime, you can see some of it here.

Second Cousins and Siblings

In the course of the lecture that I have been giving about DNA analysis and endogamy, I make the point that it is important to test as many family members as possible and particularly first and second cousins.

I show a slide based on Wiki of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy which shows estimates of shared DNA for various relationships.

I emphasize that second cousins share on average only about 212.5 cM or 3% of their DNA, which means that they do NOT share nearly 97%. Second cousins are people that many of us know and have grown up with. Sometimes we even resemble one another. So by not testing second cousins, we lose alot of information.

Some months ago, Blaine Bettinger did a non-scientific (self-selected) survey of peoples' known relationships and showed that second cousins share about 246 cM on average. That's more like four percent, still not very much.

I was curious to see how endogamous families were different from non-endogamous families. (I am talking about general populations, not cases where close cousins married one another in the last few generations.)

So I did my own mini-non-scientific study. No cherry-picking. (Note, the comparisons below are for segments of five or more cM.)

Here I compare four second cousins to my own results.

The two numbers for each person are number of matching segments and total matching cM.

Sam is on my mother's mother's side. Ruth is on my mother's father's side. My mother's parents are from Belarus/Lithuania, but apparently Ruth's father is a Galizianer, hence the much larger match with her.

Marty, Terry and I are mutual second cousins on the Pikholz side.

We see that Sam, Marty and Terry match me in the general range suggested by ISOGG and Blaine's study. Ruth, as I explained above, has a greater level of matching.

For purposes of comparison, I asked Roberta Estes if she would share some of her second cousin data and she readily agreed.

Roberta was comparing her mother Barbara and two of her mother's first cousins, Donald and Cheryl, to a second cousin named Rex. The closest of her three matches - Donald with 10 segments and 191 cM - is lower than the weakest of my matches - Marty, eleven segments and 223 cM.

So, at least in this bit of anecdotal evidence, my endogamous family has much better matches than Roberta's - which makes it much more difficult to make sense of it all. I added a slide into the newest version of my presentation, in order to make that point.

Roberta's data shows something else. Cheryl is Donald's sister and her matches - both number of segments and total cM - are a third less than her brother's. So we see another demonstration of the importance of testing siblings.

I have made this point before, most dramatically at the end of this. But for sport, I ran another Pikholz second cousin Rhoda (who is also a second cousin of Terry and Marty) against my sisters and me.

Here the number of segments that we match Rhoda is in a small range - 12-15. But Jean's total cM is 217, significantly less that Sarajoy, Judith and me. Amy has only 141 cM. Imagine if we didn't know that Rhoda is a second cousin and we had only Amy's results to compare to her. We would have seen 35-49% less matching DNA.

So please folks, test your second cousins. Test your first cousins. Test your siblings. As many as you can and as many as your budget allows. Oldest first.

And while FTDNA and Ancestry are having sales is a good time.

Housekeeping notes
The Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) has announced a course in Advanced Genetic Genealogy to be held 17-22 July in Pittsburgh. Registration is 2 March and I shall be on tenterhooks until then.

(Last time they let me give an evening presentation about Jewish genealogy. Perhaps they'll let me give one this time on Jewish DNA.)

If that works out and if my speaking proposals for the IAJGS Conference in Seattle are accepted, I'll have two weeks in between - 24 July-5 August - when I'll be in the US and available.

But before all that, I have registered for RootsTech in Salt Lake City (3-6 February) as an exhibitor, with books and genetic genealogy T-shirts and tote bags for sale. Needless to say that my booth will only be open only until mid-afternoon Friday. (The local Extended Stay is about twenty minutes walk from Chabad's synagogue.)

I am also putting together a lecture tour for about ten days before and after RootsTech. Three of the four Sundays are taken, but most of the weekdays are available. Anyone looking for a presentation on genetic genealogy - Jewish societies, non-Jewish societies and groups that are not genealogy-based - please contact me by email. Tell your friends.

Finally, I have an article in the newest issue of the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly. I told much of that story here, a couple of years ago.

Writing for Readers, Writing for Listeners

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly.  The version here is the way I submitted it to them.The phrase in red was cut by the editor.

I have never met Diana Crisman Smith, so the voice in my head that read her article ("Does It Sound Like You?" June 2014) was generic. Not even generic female. Nearly everything I read comes with a voice in my head and when I know – or have heard – the writer, I usually hear the virtual echo of the actual voice. I don't suppose there is anything extraordinary about that.

My own writing tends pretty much towards the same informal style as my speech. Certainly in my blog but also in articles that I occasionally write for publication. That is the case both in my native American-English and in Hebrew. And although I like it that way, it is not deliberate.

Even in the two short paragraphs above, I have used several sentence fragments, begun a sentence with "and" and used the informal "pretty much" and "I don't suppose." My writer-friend Varda, who looks over most of what I write for publication, knows to leave that kind of thing alone.

The Panel

During the summer, I had a different kind of challenge. I was a participant in a panel discussion at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies' annual conference, in Salt Lake City,  on the subject "Internet Collaboration: How Do We Share Our Family Trees Online?" which was a polite way of saying "Geni – Yes or No?" I was "No." My indeterminate cousin Adam Brown was "Yes" and the publisher of the quarterly Avotaynu, Gary Mokotoff, spoke for "a third way." Sallyann Sack-Pikus, the editor of Avotaynu, was the moderator.

This panel was the continuation of a debate that began at last year's conference and continued in the pages of Avotaynu. To tell the truth, I was not crazy about doing this as I am not fast on my feet in debate – certainly not at Adam's level. But I had been front and center in this charge both in Avotaynu and on Facebook, so I hadn't much choice.

According to the rules Sallyann set, each of was to speak fifteen minutes from prepared text and then we would challenge each others' positions, before taking questions from the audience. We would see each others' remarks in advance in order to prepare our challenge questions.

The Problem

So I finally wrote it up about ten days before the conference, but when I read it aloud to myself to see how close I was to the assigned fifteen minutes, it just didn't sound right. It didn't sound like a speech or a presentation. It sounded like an article.

I have been speaking from notes since I was a youth leader in high school and have been using Power Point for years. I know how to do that. I have written letters to editors, op-eds and pieces for genealogy publications – I know how to do that too. I have never written a speech and I had just demonstrated to myself that I don't know how.

The sentences were too long, the structure of the thoughts too complex. In an article, if you don't get it right away you can reread the paragraph. That doesn't work when you speak from text, even if the full text is included in the handout

I had written this for readers, not for listeners.

The problem was that it was Thursday. I was going to the States on Sunday and would be busy with family matters followed by a week at GRIP in Pittsburgh before heading to the conference.

The Solution

The solution was in Pittsburgh, my home town. While attending my GRIP course, I stayed with Aunt Betty and Uncle Ken, one of whom – I forget which – is a sibling of my father. Uncle Ken

Photo by
Hannah Simon Goldman

has been retired from his job as a scientist for twenty-five years (do the math!) and spends one day a week at the University of Pittsburgh mentoring graduate students, mostly visiting Asians. Much of what he does involves helping them prepare and present papers.

He read my speech and asked many questions about genealogy – both the material itself and the nature of the research. And we worked on it. We looked at the sentence structure and we listened. My high school class just had its fiftieth reunion, so I am obviously not a youngster, but I was delighted to have an older, more experienced person helping me out, even if it was several hours after his bed-time.

By the time we were finished – by the time I left Pittsburgh – the words were 95% the same but it was not the same presentation. It sounded different. It sounded like it was meant to be heard, not read.

The Result

I was supposed to be showing how my way of presenting my research was collaborative and online without a "tree," so I jabbed with a few short sentences like "You can't say that's not collaborative" and "That's certainly collaborative." Those sentences get cut by an editor ten times out of ten. But they work in a speech.

My two-paragraph quote from Randy Seaver was relegated to the handout, as was my anecdote about the announcement from Geni that I am someone's "wife's aunt's husband's fourth cousin's wife's sister's husband's nephew's wife's mother's husband." The person responsible for that was in the audience and everyone already knew the joke.

The paragraph about my contact with the great nephew of Cousin Leo the Spy, received a new ending. "Now I have more. Now he knows more."

I changed my speech pattern a bit, not to slow it down, but to make it more deliberate. The punch lines punched.

The pro-tree position emphasized technology, young people and new researchers. I took a whack at that with this:

And an extensive web of DNA matches is about as collaborative as you can get! Even among the endogamous. Let me say that again for emphasis. An extensive web of DNA matches is about as collaborative as you can get! That is where much of my work is concentrated these days. And that is where many of tomorrow's researchers can be found.

In addition to issues like sentence length and complexity of thoughts, you can get away with bad syntax, bad grammar and even repeated words in speech, way more easily than in writing. And it's not that one is harder and one easier. They are simply different.

The handout referred to in this article can be found at 

 http://pikholz.org/34-SLC/Collaborative-Handout.html