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Old 05-14-2018, 07:25 AM
 
3,886 posts, read 3,462,000 times
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"Ellis Island" renaming was a real phenomenon, regardless of what that highly respected research journal "Smithsonian" says. It may have happened via the shipping clerk, the immigrant him/herself, or the immigration official, but that's not the point. In some cases it was essential, since we don't use the cyrillic alphabet, don't use umlauts or heissen "S" like germans do, and so on. Then there are Hebrew names, which don't translate well. And, as some have said, our ancestors sometimes americanized their names. My own mother used two different spellings of her maiden name during her lifetime. One grandmother went through multiple iterations.

My point was not to single out Ellis Island. It was to point out the risks of blind name matching with Ancestry and other sources.
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Old 05-14-2018, 09:54 AM
 
Location: Retired in VT; previously MD & NJ
14,277 posts, read 6,872,739 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbear99 View Post
"Ellis Island" renaming was a real phenomenon, regardless of what that highly respected research journal "Smithsonian" says. It may have happened via the shipping clerk, the immigrant him/herself, or the immigration official, but that's not the point. In some cases it was essential, since we don't use the cyrillic alphabet, don't use umlauts or heissen "S" like germans do, and so on. Then there are Hebrew names, which don't translate well. And, as some have said, our ancestors sometimes americanized their names. My own mother used two different spellings of her maiden name during her lifetime. One grandmother went through multiple iterations.

My point was not to single out Ellis Island. It was to point out the risks of blind name matching with Ancestry and other sources.
A lot of the immigrant name changing came at the point the immigrants bought their tickets for the ship... back in the old country. This was often done to flee a bad situations and "erase" their backgrounds. Ellis Island used the names from the ship manifests, which came from the tickets. There were also a lot of misspellings because many could not read or write, so depended on the person selling the tickets to figure out how to spell their names. Other changes came about when the person applied to be Naturalized. It makes for a lot of confusion when searching the old records.

Added: First names for Jewish people were another source of confusion. I had cousins who were Gitla and Gustava on the ship manifest... I knew them as Goldie and Gussie when I was a little girl. My grandmother Shaindel changed to Jenny on her Naturalization papers. Many Jews had a Yiddish/Hebrew name and another name relating to the country they lived in (Poland, Russia, etc.) Which one they chose to put on the ship ticket is anyone's guess.
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Old 05-14-2018, 10:20 AM
 
Location: North Carolina
10,196 posts, read 17,740,824 times
Reputation: 13903
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbear99 View Post
"Ellis Island" renaming was a real phenomenon, regardless of what that highly respected research journal "Smithsonian" says. It may have happened via the shipping clerk, the immigrant him/herself, or the immigration official, but that's not the point. In some cases it was essential, since we don't use the cyrillic alphabet, don't use umlauts or heissen "S" like germans do, and so on. Then there are Hebrew names, which don't translate well. And, as some have said, our ancestors sometimes americanized their names. My own mother used two different spellings of her maiden name during her lifetime. One grandmother went through multiple iterations.

My point was not to single out Ellis Island. It was to point out the risks of blind name matching with Ancestry and other sources.
It's not just the Smithsonian, google it, there's articles about it all over the internet. Did you even read any of the articles I posted? Immigration ports worked off passenger lists recorded at the port of departure and even if there was an error in spelling it didn't permanently change ones name.
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Old 05-20-2018, 09:43 AM
 
16,174 posts, read 32,341,090 times
Reputation: 20577
DNA has helped me with research because things weren't adding up. Real research is so time consuming! I am several years in and only have a little to show for it since I do it on the side when I have time. I often wish I had a coach or a mentor as well. Despite taking online classes there is a lot to learn!
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Old 05-23-2018, 12:10 AM
 
13,389 posts, read 6,375,021 times
Reputation: 10022
Quote:
Originally Posted by ansible90 View Post
A lot of the immigrant name changing came at the point the immigrants bought their tickets for the ship... back in the old country. This was often done to flee a bad situations and "erase" their backgrounds. Ellis Island used the names from the ship manifests, which came from the tickets. There were also a lot of misspellings because many could not read or write, so depended on the person selling the tickets to figure out how to spell their names. Other changes came about when the person applied to be Naturalized. It makes for a lot of confusion when searching the old records.

Added: First names for Jewish people were another source of confusion. I had cousins who were Gitla and Gustava on the ship manifest... I knew them as Goldie and Gussie when I was a little girl. My grandmother Shaindel changed to Jenny on her Naturalization papers. Many Jews had a Yiddish/Hebrew name and another name relating to the country they lived in (Poland, Russia, etc.) Which one they chose to put on the ship ticket is anyone's guess.
I think its also important to know that some immigrants or even second gen off the boat changed their names due to whatever stigma they perceived attached to them.

My Italian MIL changed her name herself in adulthood from Antonia to Lillian. She also altered her birthdate to make herself younger lol.

Additionally, she never ate pasta as an adult because growing up in poverty she had it every night.
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Old 05-30-2018, 01:49 PM
 
Location: NJ
23,790 posts, read 33,254,238 times
Reputation: 30591
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallysmom View Post
Not superior at all. I started doing genealogy before there was an Ancestry.com. In fact, I started before Family Tree Maker put out four diskettes of information, one of which was a SS death index.

All I had were documents. And letters sent out and holes in my tree and a fledgling internet. It was a boon! To me DNA is the icing on the cake.

Cake sounds good.

One approach isn’t more right than other approaches. All approaches work as well as they can given the parameters of your familial situation. As a white person firmly ensconsed in PA and NY, I got loads of documents and searching. Each find, I could pick the phone and tell my mom. Oh, telling her I found my great grandparents? The best.

And losing mom dimmed my genealogy zeal for a long while. I’ve gotten back into it and now my sisters get the calls.

It’s a hobby, and some people take their hobbies seriously. Too seriously, too. I quilt, and I’ve run into people who will flat out tell you, unless it is totally stitched by hand, and quilted by hand, it’s not a quilt. To those people, I usually give them a one finger salute.
I sew. Who really has the time to sit there and hand sew? Back 50 or so years; life for women was very different, now it takes both parents to work to support a house hold.

To me, quilting with a machine makes sense. We have the technology, why not use it? People who quilt with a machine are still making the same end product; whether it's just for fun or a family tradition for births or marriages.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbear99 View Post
"Ellis Island" renaming was a real phenomenon, regardless of what that highly respected research journal "Smithsonian" says. It may have happened via the shipping clerk, the immigrant him/herself, or the immigration official, but that's not the point. In some cases it was essential, since we don't use the cyrillic alphabet, don't use umlauts or heissen "S" like germans do, and so on. Then there are Hebrew names, which don't translate well. And, as some have said, our ancestors sometimes americanized their names. My own mother used two different spellings of her maiden name during her lifetime. One grandmother went through multiple iterations.

My point was not to single out Ellis Island. It was to point out the risks of blind name matching with Ancestry and other sources.
I agree, you really have to watch your research. I wish I could remember how I originally found out my grandparents had siblings that came here because I had done name searches with google but never turned anyone up.

From what I see of researching my Hungarian maternal side, my mothers maiden name was recorded a few different ways during Christenings; it should be ---monits, but was also recorded as ---manics. When my grand fathers 3 brothers and my mother came over they ended up with the ---manics spelling on the ship manifest. My aunt also came over, I'm not sure if I have her record and if her name was recorded wrong; she flew.

My grandmothers sisters also came over, their last name is spelled various ways on the ship manifests. One that has the same 1st name as my mother had the spelling changed to a W from a V. There is no W in the Hungarian language.

My daughters fathers side (Polish) had their last name changed but I'm unsure of where that change happened. I have the 1914 manifest record of her great grandfather (17) and his brother (9), it's spelled right.

This thread ended up motivating me to look at my daughters fathers side and had I not doner that; I wouldn't have found her great grandfather's parents. I had found their find a grave memorials and knew they were related because everyone with this last name is related; but I didn't know how. Turns out they are the parents! I'm so psyched that I not only connected them but I found other names too.

Quote:
Originally Posted by NyWriterdude View Post
Of course, when you're dealing with DNA research, some genes simply won't get passed down. Allegedly there was Native American in my family tree (I have serious doubts about it). I wasn't able to verify this either via genetic testing or through whatever documents I could find. After speaking to various relatives, I think a big part of the Native American was the fact some people had great difficulty in admitting that certain ancestors were the children of slave/maid/concubines and their owners, so the "Native American" was made to explain away people who had light skin, light hair color, and light eye color.

I wasn't able to verify any Native American ancestry via DNA or historical records, but at the same time that doesn't mean that there was never Native American in my family. I seriously doubt it though, and it would take broader genetic testing of my family along with some positive results to convince me that there is.

Re: Last names, Jewish experts use last names and other related evidence in various records to assess whether a family had Jewish naming patterns or not. Outsiders who consider themselves knowledgeable often don't know anything at all on the topic.

There was no Scandinavian in my DNA, so I don't have that in my family. There was definitely Spanish though.
Where did you do your DNA? Have you uploaded it to My Heritage, GEDmatc and GEDmatch Genesis for free ethnicity and family matching? My Heritage also gives surnames and chromosome browser. FTDNA gives free family matching and for $19 you can get ethnicity and other tools. See my thread //www.city-data.com/forum/genea...l#post49250127. If there is Native American in your family somewhere, GEDmatch and GEDmatch Genesis will show it. My son has Native from his fathers mother. Neither of them had NA results anywhere except GEDmatch.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Roselvr View Post
GEDmatch where you can upload both your DNA and a GEDcom file; look for matches and do all sorts of things with finding out your ethnicity that's more involved then any of the other companies. They go back to hunter-gatherer. GEDmatch upload in case you can't find it. It only takes a few minutes to upload the DNA, then you can play around with the tools. Full results will come in a day or 2. I have not spent much time here so can't go into more detail on the matches. There are tutorials on DNA matching that I have not read yet. Click here to register

To get the break down on your ethnicity, see below GEDmatch Heritage Tool

GEDmatch Tools for DNA and Genealogy Research -
Analyze Your Data
'One-to-one' compare
X 'One-to-one'
Admixture (heritage) - Eurogenes and other admixture utilities
Admixture/Oracle with Population Search
Phasing
People who match one or both of 2 kits Updated
Predict Eye Color
Are your parents related?
3D Chromosome Browser
Archaic DNA matches
Multiple Kit Analysis NEW
DNA File Diagnostic Utility

GEDmatch Heritage Tool
copy your DNA sample number, go to Admixture (heritage), select project, Eurogenes. Next page, Select how you want to process it: Admixture Proportions (With link to Oracle); Enter your kit number: Select the 'calculator' model to use: Eurogenes K13, Enter your Ethnicity: you'll then get the graph, Eurogenes K13 Admixture Proportions; under the populations on the left, you'll see oracle and oracle -4
Here's a basic intro guide to gedmatch's admixture calculators: Genealogical Musings: Finally! A Gedmatch Admixture Guide!

Near East Neolithic K13 - select Admixture (heritage), Select the project GedrosiaDNA, Select how you want to process it: Admixture Proportions (With link to Oracle); Enter your kit number; Select the 'calculator' model to use: Near East Neolithic K13 .
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roselvr View Post
Also be sure to upload to GEDmatch Genesis which is separate from GEDmatch. Right now it's beta, eventually it will be merged with GEDmatch. IT contains results from the major 3 as well as results from 24 Genetics, Atlas, Complete Genomics, DNA Land, Full Genomes, Gencove, Gene By Gene, Genes For Good, Genos, GPS Originas, HGDP (Stanford), Living DNA, NatGeo, Oxford (FTDNA), We Gene, YSEQ, and some labs that a few of my matches used; Parabon, Dante Labs, Whole Genome and other sites that are not supported with regular GEDmatch. It also says there are more accurate matching tools.
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Old 05-31-2018, 09:47 AM
 
16,212 posts, read 10,742,846 times
Reputation: 8437
Quote:
Originally Posted by NyWriterdude View Post
Basic research depending on the group is impossible.

I'm African American. My great great great grandmother, on side of my family was a SLAVE. An UNNAMED slave. My great great great grandfather was Jewish. There was a mixed race child named after the owner (same first and last name). It's pretty obvious what happened and I do have his name.

Using census records to track people is easier along paternal lines. Women changed their names when they get married historically, and unless you know a particular ancestors maiden name you might not ever find out who her parents were.

And of course, some nations did poor record keeping, or records were destroyed due to wars or whatever disaster. In many cases the best all people can do is DNA testing.

Wanted to note I am also a black American. I have both enslaved and "free" black ancestors (prior to 1860 - I have a lot of PA, OH, and MI ancestry along with NC free people of color/tri-racial ancestry).



I do think DNA is useful for looking into ethnic origins in Africa for black people but honesstly, the origins are very broad and they do not pin point a tribe either.



I feel that nearly everyone has some lines that dead end. One can only go back so far.



On my NC FPOC lines, I have some ancestors who have been documented as being indentured servants in America in the late 1600s and early 1700s who had "mulatto" children. Those children and their progeny were FPOC so I have a lot of documentation on them through the years. One of my FPOC families are Bass surname descendants and the Bass family is one of the earliest American families (early 1600s). I have some English ancestors on this line as well that go to the 1500s. That is enough.


For my enslaved ancestors, most of them I have traced at least to the late 1700s. Some I do have no information on, but because I very much enjoy research, I do believe that I will find something in my lifetime on them. One of my paternal great grandfathers was born out of wedlock and I do not know his father's name (2nd great grandfather) so his is a line that I'm testing family members on this line to see if we can locate his family. Once I discover it, I plan on doing a lot of traditional research.



I also have a 2nd great grandfather who I've gotten some DNA clues on my maternal side where I believe he changed or took a new surname in the 1880s. Like you mentioned Jewish people did, it actually was not uncommon for black Americans to change their surname and not take the surname of their former owners.



I have the most information on my enslaved lines that were from Virginia as Virginia has a wealth of information on their state library's website regarding the African American population (both enslaved and free). My South Carolina lines give me the most grief but there are methods to discover one's enslaved ancestors from SE states as well. A lot of the research methods though do have to be brought up or taught to people and IMO most of the seminars I've attended haven't been all that helpful to me in this regard.



What state was your enslaved ancestor from? There are specific records that most people don't think about to look at that may give you some clues. I know in my own family, I found the names of enslaved ancestors via records of their children (death records or marriage records done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) but sometimes those are few and far in between as well. There are other court documents to look at, that will require time though, that may offer some leads.
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Old 06-07-2018, 12:48 AM
 
Location: TX
4,051 posts, read 5,612,932 times
Reputation: 4739
It's so easy to make mistakes, even doing your own research. In one case, if we hadn't ordered a death certificate on one ancestor, we would've continued to believe her father's wife that appeared on census with the small girl was the girl's mother. The death certificate showed the first wife's name as mother. The real mother died, then the father remarried.
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Old 06-07-2018, 07:54 AM
 
3,886 posts, read 3,462,000 times
Reputation: 5287
Be careful with death certificates, too. They're based on the recall of someone alive, and that recall can be in error. The older the decedent, the more likely errors. Found that several times among my ancestors.
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Old 06-16-2018, 02:27 PM
 
25,556 posts, read 23,820,596 times
Reputation: 10119
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roselvr View Post
I sew. Who really has the time to sit there and hand sew? Back 50 or so years; life for women was very different, now it takes both parents to work to support a house hold.

To me, quilting with a machine makes sense. We have the technology, why not use it? People who quilt with a machine are still making the same end product; whether it's just for fun or a family tradition for births or marriages.



I agree, you really have to watch your research. I wish I could remember how I originally found out my grandparents had siblings that came here because I had done name searches with google but never turned anyone up.

From what I see of researching my Hungarian maternal side, my mothers maiden name was recorded a few different ways during Christenings; it should be ---monits, but was also recorded as ---manics. When my grand fathers 3 brothers and my mother came over they ended up with the ---manics spelling on the ship manifest. My aunt also came over, I'm not sure if I have her record and if her name was recorded wrong; she flew.

My grandmothers sisters also came over, their last name is spelled various ways on the ship manifests. One that has the same 1st name as my mother had the spelling changed to a W from a V. There is no W in the Hungarian language.

My daughters fathers side (Polish) had their last name changed but I'm unsure of where that change happened. I have the 1914 manifest record of her great grandfather (17) and his brother (9), it's spelled right.

This thread ended up motivating me to look at my daughters fathers side and had I not doner that; I wouldn't have found her great grandfather's parents. I had found their find a grave memorials and knew they were related because everyone with this last name is related; but I didn't know how. Turns out they are the parents! I'm so psyched that I not only connected them but I found other names too.



Where did you do your DNA? Have you uploaded it to My Heritage, GEDmatc and GEDmatch Genesis for free ethnicity and family matching? My Heritage also gives surnames and chromosome browser. FTDNA gives free family matching and for $19 you can get ethnicity and other tools. See my thread //www.city-data.com/forum/genea...l#post49250127. If there is Native American in your family somewhere, GEDmatch and GEDmatch Genesis will show it. My son has Native from his fathers mother. Neither of them had NA results anywhere except GEDmatch.
I used DNA Ancestry. I have not uploaded it to My Heritage or those other sites you mentioned. In ethnicity tests sometimes traits or ancestry are so distant they don't show up. So it's possible I could do those tests and have no NA ancestry. But going over the primary records I also found no evidence of anyone being Native.
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