tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25786679534949963792024-02-21T05:33:45.152-08:00Adoption Reunion Search Resources BlogAdoption Reunion Search Resources is founded by Diane with the help of many other Search Angels to help educate the Adoption Reunion Search Angel Community and birth family searchers with what is possible, how to do it and what has been done.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-30011912065951541212015-11-25T17:11:00.000-08:002015-11-26T07:48:53.971-08:00The DNA Testing Companies Ignore Customer Feedback and Requests<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzRgOP4qUdt2xrH4NfRGV9OI75iRqe1ZjGZuzOBQZBI5EHW0yNb7Rvc19LwDUCgw_X9lZyNp3vxlj0OItR2p4E-2x-oaDkIzHSLYOJJyOI2Wh_LJmzErErfz-pv-9QGTkJpeGDiE24tyY/s1600/colorful+family+tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzRgOP4qUdt2xrH4NfRGV9OI75iRqe1ZjGZuzOBQZBI5EHW0yNb7Rvc19LwDUCgw_X9lZyNp3vxlj0OItR2p4E-2x-oaDkIzHSLYOJJyOI2Wh_LJmzErErfz-pv-9QGTkJpeGDiE24tyY/s320/colorful+family+tree.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Please do not include FTDNA in this category, As a company, they have tried to be very helpful and responsive. My comments in this blog are for 23andme and AncestryDNA. Both of these companies give us the impression that the customer is just a nuisance factor to be ignored. They are both going after the big money from selling our data and seem to be forgetting - no customer equals no data.<br />
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<b>23andme</b></div>
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I will start with 23andme. For years 23andme has ignored the complaints and requests from genealogical customers to change the way genealogical searchers can interact with matches on 23andme. These have been the chief complaints:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Contacts with anonymous matches are limited and ignored</li>
<li>Obscure options have affected results</li>
<ul>
<li>No close relative option</li>
<li>People do not understand that a match must share genomes for you to see any data about them at all as opposed to other testers</li>
<li>No ICW information unless you extract it one at a time - also not clear to users</li>
<li>People are anonymous without their knowing it</li>
<li>C of A is a poor substitute for real information and people do not know that they have to use it.</li>
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</ul>
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I even have a first cousin match that is anonymous there and now it has disappeared. This is frustrating enough for me, what if I were a adoptee and this was my only close match. Is this any way to treat a customer.<br />
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In the last month, 23andme has announced extensive changes in the user interface and data interpretation. We are waiting to see what happens with that. For all the years that they ignored user complaints, now that they are starting to repair their relationship with FDA, let' see if they figure out that the customer is an important part of the overall picture.</div>
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<b>AncestryDNA</b><br />
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Ancestry DNA has continued to ignore customer requests that would allow their data to be better aligned with the rest of the industry. Anyone trying to map chromosomes throughout their ancestral tree is out of luck with Ancestry data. The decision to provide "black box" data manipulation has also made it difficult for adoptees and those in endogamous relationships to make educated guesses about the alignment of DNA segments and the length of those segments. Traditional comparisons across results from different companies is not possible unless tests are uploaded to FTDNA or GedMatch,</div>
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<ul>
<li>We wanted a chromosome browser for these reasons, so they gave us Timber which eliminated even some valid matches, </li>
<li>We wanted a chromosome browser so they gave us DNA circles and NADS, (did I tell you my only NAD was the wife of a first cousin, seven times removed, This was far from useful.</li>
<li>We wanted a chromosome browser so they gave us DNA Matches.</li>
<li>We wanted a chromosome browser so they gave us total cM and number of segments after they had fragmented them through a form of phasing</li>
</ul>
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For some reason AncestryDNA has their blinders on or they have decided that they know what is best for us.<br />
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What they seem to be ignoring is that they do not exist in a vacuum. The customer, particularly those searching for missing or unknown ancestors, needs the ability to bridge test results from different vendors and to consistently use tools and to know what we are looking at in the results.</div>
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Admittedly, AncestryDNA may be trying to move the field forward and has a different concept of what the forward direction, might be. However, they still do not exist in a vacuum and need to provide meaningful information on their results and interpretations that the average customer can understand and equate to the mixed vendor world.</div>
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Several things at this moment have made me think that I, personally, do not trust Ancestry to make the best decisions in my interests without my buy-in. These factors are based on the inability to get any kind of meaningful response from a decision maker at AncestryDNA regarding our observations that the New Ancestry as they call it is not ready for prime time. I have been trying to contact managers at AncestryDNA with no success to this point to provide actual cases of problems. No one seems interested.</div>
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<b>Two areas of Concern with the New Ancestry</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8erfIb-RDSsyLzAARfKs_fOzgumFHjU_3KsSBbmyr_M6P7KWm8fktTFplSBMQGYGSWxhrOife69edcJYgfR6glUDHWIe-XY1zphk9dO9u05E24R1jDsL2TYHOAj30CC2frcFMAhVzVY/s1600/dancing-156041_1280.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8erfIb-RDSsyLzAARfKs_fOzgumFHjU_3KsSBbmyr_M6P7KWm8fktTFplSBMQGYGSWxhrOife69edcJYgfR6glUDHWIe-XY1zphk9dO9u05E24R1jDsL2TYHOAj30CC2frcFMAhVzVY/s320/dancing-156041_1280.png" width="320" /></a></div>
There are two major areas of concern for those of us working heavily with Ancestry data in regards to the New Ancestry imposition on the customer.</div>
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<b>1 - User interface</b></div>
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The new user interface is very awkward to use and requires more clicks, and more interim copying of data by handwriting.</div>
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Here are some specifics I have noted. The list is by no means complete.</div>
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<ul>
<li>I can’t just hover to get basic information from tree boxes which can really slow down the user.</li>
<li>I Cannot cut and paste basic info to tree from the initial views into a developing tree or for comparison.</li>
<li>More clicks needed for many operations</li>
<li>I want the family tree as a tree, it is very slow to have to
scan a story and get the information</li>
<li>Very few hints are available, meaning that you have to go to Search
Records for information and it is a long way back to a screen where you can
enter information you have looked up so information must be written down in the interim.</li>
<li>The hints like the Ancestry Review are too light a gray on a
white background, hard for older people to see. </li>
<li>The box that comes up to enter a new individual sits right
over the one in the tree you might want to copy the information from and grays
out the tree info under it making it impossible to copy the information. The
box should be movable and the screen underneath still visible;</li>
<li><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 110%;">Ancestry
as a genealogy tool is still severely lacking in functionality. You should be
able to merge gedcoms, split off branches, see offspring with at least birth dates
all at one time. Deletions of siblings for example should be available to do
more than one at a time. Merging of duplicated individuals has no utility to
identify them as duplicates and no way to merge them other than a single one at a time. Deleting an
individual takes you back to the owner of the tree instead of leaving you where
you were. There is no reporting ability and this is ridiculous in this day and age.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 110%;">Ancestry's attempts at an almost a comic book interface are insulting to the genealogy user. I want facts, not facts buried in prose.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 110%;">I have been working with several people who had worked on trees previously and cannot figure out how to use the New Ancestry to do the most rudimentary tasks.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>2 - Data Integrity</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;">I could get stuck in this part of the discussion for a long time. This is very important to the customer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;">Searches and matching are bringing up wrong information.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Hovering over census data shows a different person in the tip screen than the person in the census. This is not a one time occurrence but is happening repeatedly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Search on a person born in California in 1932 for example. The unrestricted search brings up thousands of hits. Refine the search to an exact date, a range of dates still appear in the hits. add the restriction to California as Exact birth place and I will get no hits. This happens consistently.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Search on a name with the exact restriction and some of the time it comes up with an entirely different name, some time with many similar names, sometimes with several occurrences of the name and sometimes with no hits. This can be on one search after another.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Look for the duplicate of a name to merge two names together. It may not come up and you have to go to the second name and search from that direction to get the hit.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Look for the name of a person in the tree you are working on and you may or may not get a hit (the person is in the tree)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Try reporting an error of this type to the help desk and you will be told it may be fixed when it fits in with its priorities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Date errors in the returns. especially with city directory results. Many pages there have the date format incorrect.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: 1940 census interpolation is so bad that one has to have an excellent imagination for possibilities to find people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Searches on census results may not get a valid hit, even though your person is actually in the database</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: The leaf hints are not nearly as reliable as they used to be. Vital information is not brought up, and wrong information presented</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: Date and place formats should be enforced to facilitate searching and comparison. Look at PC and Mac programs for how that is done.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Example</b>: A DNA circle centered around Jesse Gallimore. When the user clicks on more about, a totally different and unrelated Jesse Gallimore comes up</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;">These are not the only examples, I just picked a few. This not a professional way to run a business.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.6px;"><b>Conclusion</b></span></span></div>
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Ancestry is a big business founded to help people research their family history. They have decided to go for the really big money to sell data to pharmaceutical companies. What a deal, take the traditional customer and ignore their stated needs, charge money to collect your data, have you sign away your rights to any use of that data and reap in the profits from that sale. I expected better of ancestry than this. What makes it worse is that there is no acknowledgement of the customers' wishes here, Ancestry remember your roots.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-57854443561358391092015-09-20T12:13:00.000-07:002015-09-21T13:56:57.601-07:00Our Greatest Challenge<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1j00dImpfTdOI3g75mXRGEOVWP7kzY4RFmImQKTXrnwrBCj32r4a5Q6kNn25LA3RrnTXtn9cnE_6C6bV3zMvEDY4Nqn-CQMo965UGWuH0tMf8UMYsrfgMp_E9b4463YiqX-VfHGZjIc/s1600/9-11-2012+Blue+Ridge+Skyway+barn4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1j00dImpfTdOI3g75mXRGEOVWP7kzY4RFmImQKTXrnwrBCj32r4a5Q6kNn25LA3RrnTXtn9cnE_6C6bV3zMvEDY4Nqn-CQMo965UGWuH0tMf8UMYsrfgMp_E9b4463YiqX-VfHGZjIc/s320/9-11-2012+Blue+Ridge+Skyway+barn4.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>The participants</b></div>
Karin Corbeil, Patty Drabing, Marianne Brown and I are all Search Angels. We are all also members of DNAadoption.com. <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/" target="_blank">DNAadoption</a> is a non-profit group which provides education for those trying to interpret DNA results. This means that we wear several hats, CeCe Moore has often been our mentor.<br />
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Patty is the President of DNAadoption.com, Karin is on the board of DNAadoption.com and DNAgedcom.com (our tools building companion site) and she also provides the support for DNAGedcom, Diane is the director of education for DNAadoption. Marianne is our magician who we call in to solve a problem when we are stuck, or to give us ideas. We all also help people search for missing or unidentified family members by analyzing the DNA results.<br />
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This blog is intended to reveal the role of DNAadoption in the search. Others were involved and they can tell you more about their role.<br />
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<b>How it started</b></div>
About 2 years ago, CeCe Moore came to Karin and asked that she look into identifying a man known as Benjaman Kyle who was an amnesiac with no memory of who he was and only fleeting memories of his past. CeCe had been working on this case for some time on her own.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1ve19QNkUHE065VgzWs4Hcox6mJq8644PlwWVk2nyoycE-bF8XFNOp7z0z7FOTbF_RsfM4a6iLjY-8aBRhs4nnN1nbIsn4_I43uZb6r54DYCBnwv3RJXlC7p_HaHbeTrRuGRU6NRfzA/s1600/before+find.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1ve19QNkUHE065VgzWs4Hcox6mJq8644PlwWVk2nyoycE-bF8XFNOp7z0z7FOTbF_RsfM4a6iLjY-8aBRhs4nnN1nbIsn4_I43uZb6r54DYCBnwv3RJXlC7p_HaHbeTrRuGRU6NRfzA/s1600/before+find.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Benjaman from the early days</span></td></tr>
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Benjaman had received lots of publicity but no one had come forth to say that he was someone that they knew, The police had not been able to identify him either. CeCe had gotten FTDNA to donate DNA test kits. Others, including DNAadoption's Angel Fund, bought Ancestry and 23andme kits and paid for Ancestry accounts to work on the test results. DNAGedcom also paid for a couple of Ancestry subscriptions in the past years.</div>
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Our hearts kicked into high gear and we were determined to help out this lost man, no matter what it took. Little did we know it would take 2 years. We said all along that we did not care about who got the credit or who found the answers as long as he found out who he was and could resume a more more normal life. However, since we did solve it, we want to let others know that DNA is a miracle and that with work it can provide answers - sometimes a lot of work.<br />
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<b>How we worked</b></div>
Karin started working the DNA results and after a while asked me and Patty to give her a hand in the search. Karin's principal role continued to be analyzing the DNA and constructing a large combined tree of the people who had been identified as DNA relatives. She eventually wound up with over 30,000 people in the tree.<br />
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I assisted in the expansion of the tree and analyzing the results. Patty is an expert in resources so she helped with that as well as tree building. When I realized from some of Benjaman's memories that we had lived in some of the same places at the same time, he and I started chatting about the days we had lived in Colorado.When Benjaman remembered a detail, I would check it out and add to a timeline. However, Karin was the real workhorse on this. She would not let it go<br />
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I also started concentrating on certain trees figuring that sooner or later they had to lead to Benjaman.<br />
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<b>It went on and on</b></div>
We had plenty of other things to do, but worked on this case when we could fit it in. One of the people who was most likely related in some way to Benjaman started helping with family genealogical history and facts, This was a big push to the search. CeCe started encouraging us on, Email between us would keep saying we have to find this answer.<br />
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I have had a method in searching. Every time a search got to a certain point, I would call in Marianne Brown who has a wonderful reputation of being able to find information about anyone, I call her the magician.<br />
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<b>Our methodology</b></div>
In the meantime, we were using the methodology we have developed to find the missing family members of adoptees. We have been very successful with this and genealogists have started taking our classes to learn this methodology. The methodology was started when I was brand new to DNA Analysis and kept asking where are the directions. Only to find that there were none. I kept quizzing Gaye Tannebaum, an early analyst in our field and as I followed her ideas, I logged the methods being used. The first search worked! Now we were excited. Rob Warthen started developing tools for us, Karin jumped in and the two of us worked as one to improve the methodology which has proven to be a constant task, the methodology is <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/uploads/DNAadoption/DNAadoption_files/General/Methodology_for_Researching_Autosomal_DNA_Results_V3_1-9-2015.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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There were so many people clamoring for help and so few to help them, that we made the decision that we needed to educate searchers to use our techniques rather than do the searches ourselves. This has worked well and we offer classes at http://dnaadoption.com<br />
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<b>Why this case was more difficult</b></div>
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Benjaman's family tree that incorporated his many DNA matches was tremendously endogamous. Not much analysis has gone into the effects of endogamy on the results of DNA testing and we were partly under the misconception of how much distortion can occur to DNA predictions with the multiple intermarriages within small communities. The marriages do cause some pile up of DNA. It appears to be at its worst with 3rd cousins and improves from second grandparents and closer where the predictions again become more accurate,</div>
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<b>Benjaman's more immediate family</b></div>
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Identification is being withheld at his request. We early on identified what appeared to be his second grandparents, These families were very large families and the endogamy was occuring in small communities and within the Baptist church communities that were quite isolated. It turned out that Benjaman's specific line was less endogamous than most of the family, probably because they migrated to another area. </div>
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<b>Marianne strikes again</b></div>
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As we were wallowing in thirty thousand members of the extended tree, we once again contacted Marianne and told her that we thought we were close and just could not close the deal. After a couple of days, she asked if we had checked this branch. We looked at it, I personally took one look at it and said, OMG, he was right he is Catholic, He had insisted on this as well as his birth date throughout the search. In the meantime CeCe, was reworking data to see if she could isolate the last part. At this point, we asked CeCe to take over the actual contacts and after convincing the family that it was not a hoax, a positive identification was made.</div>
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<b>Our reaction</b></div>
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We all cried with joy and relief and then went back to our other searches.Our children and grandchildren had been aware of this search over the many months and had repeatedly asked if we had solved it. They had total empathy for Benjaman, so they were the first outsiders I told. And like in this blog the specific answers were not so important as the fact that there was an answer.</div>
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Benjaman from NBC feed after the search</div>
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<b>Word to Benjaman</b></div>
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Benjaman, we grew to love you and greatly admire your strength. We were so pleased to able to give this gift to you.We wish you happiness and good health.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-36134451426080925942015-09-14T08:54:00.000-07:002015-09-14T08:54:12.847-07:00Acadian Adventures<div>
By coincidence, I have wound up in the middle of several Acadian searches recently. I had done one previously, but I am now looking for my maternal cousin's grandfather and to our great surprise, we are finding partial Acadian roots.</div>
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This snowballed, it turns out that my cousin's wife is related to that unknown grandfather and thus to my cousin through Acadian ancestry. Then very close family friends were visiting with us when we were in Maine and they also had Acadian roots.</div>
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There is a great deal of endogamy among Acadians. There were not a huge number of them in the first place and they were geographically fairly isolated.</div>
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We decided to make out return cross country trip from Maine back to Washington through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. What a lovely adventure that turned out to be. I am using this in this blog to show you genealogy can be fun..<br />
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We had not planned on staying in Nova Scotia so long but it is an
incredible place. On our way to Maine we had visited with cousin Roland Arsenault, he is of Acadian descent from New Brunswick and now living in New Hampshire. We had a lovely time going through common genealogies at our camping site in Southern Maine.,</div>
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I got lots of history background from him and then more from talking to people during our trip. What wonderful friendly people! Some of you are particularly interested in the Acadians of Nova Scotia. I
have found out a lot and talked to several of them</div>
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In the early days, the Acadians had befriended the Native Americans and
this saved many people during the troubles that were to come as the Indians
warned them of trouble, hid them and snuck supplies to them. After a lot of French and British warfare, the Acadians who occupied very fertile country in Nova Scotia were expelled from the country. In 1755, the
Acadians were forceably expelled from Nova Scotia by being loaded onto boats and
sent away. Families were often separated during this and shipped to different
places. Many of the Acadians were sent to France, some eventually came back to
Nova Scotia, to Quebec, to Maine and other states and to Louisiana. In Louisiana they became the Cajuns.</div>
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The Arsenault family in particular escaped to Prince Edward Island. They
eventually came back down into New Brunswick and settled there. This is close to the seacoast. However, when traveling in Nova Scotia, directions, which are not my strong point in the best of times totally eluded me. I had no clue to what was North, South, East or West, a brief look at Nova Scotia on a map could help to explain this. You can see what one might think of as North when there is actually east,</div>
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The Acadians had to drain the marshlands aaround Annapolis Royal and the result was beautiful, fertile farmlands.</div>
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The areas where the Acadians were eventually given some restitution were not farmlands and forced them to become fisherman and loggers<br />
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While traveling in Acadian Nova Scotia. Particularly in the French speaking
areas, we came across huge churches in very small communities. They were all
built around 1900. Considering that when we went to the 1900 Acadien village in
Pinlico Peninsula, there were very small houses, one housed two families with a total of 23 children. These were very plain and poor communitites yet, they
gathered resources to build these enormous and often very fancy churches.<br />
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We toured several of these churches with a docent. We came to one smaller church and were
taking pictures of the outside and a man came over from a neighboring house and
offered to show us around.<br />
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At this church we were treated to not only a tour of the church but
also to the history of his ancestors. They had rich farms in the Royal Annapolis
area where Acadians first settled in Canada. Some of them came via the same
communities where the Pilgrims had lived in the Netherlands as a refuge before coming to North America..<br />
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After the expulsion, this man's family eventually came back to Nova Scotia
and were given land by the then governing British as reparation. Unfortunately
on the original, fertile lands they were farmers, but they were given lands
along the coasts in rocky inhospitable terrain. Here they had to become
lumbermen and fishermen.<br />
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This picture is the view from a restored Acadian village ca 1900.</div>
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Their relatives who went to Louisiana and with whom
they still keep in touch, added the x to the end of their names - thus Comeau in
Nova Scotia and Comeaux in Louisana. The most common names in the area before we
got to Yarmouth (English town) were LeBlanc and Comeau.</div>
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This is an area of majestic old homes in many areas that have been well
preserved. The churches show you what ethnicity has lived there in the last
century, huge Catholic churches in the French areas and smaller Baptist,
Wesleyan and Anglican churches in the English speaking areas. These were not typical Acadian homes but rather from wealthier citizens. The one below was from a Loyalist family that resettled in Nova Scotia at the time of the Revolutionary War in the United States.<br />
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These old homes were amazing, The Acadian homes were one story with a sleeping loft for the children. In the typical home ca 1900, the kids slept in the loft. This was quite different than these big fancy homes! </div>
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The Acadian genealogy is quite well documented. I am still working on the various arms of this search and these are some good sites to check.</div>
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The Genealogy of Canada -<a href="http://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/genealogielistfirstname.aspx?Family=Morin_887&lng=en">http://www.nosorigines.qc.ca</a></div>
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Canadian Automated Genealogy <a href="http://automatedgenealogy.com/">http://automatedgenealogy.com/</a></div>
Acadian Genealogy Resources <a href="http://www.cangenealogy.com/acadian.htm"><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">www.can</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">genealogy</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">.com/</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">acadian</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">.htm</span></a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">Nova Scotia Archives<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1459322837"> www.</a></span><a href="http://novascotia.ca/archives/acadian.asp"><b style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">novascotia</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">.ca/archives/</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">acadian</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">.asp</span></a><br />
Acadian Genealogy Home Page <a href="http://www.acadian.org/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">www.</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">acadian</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #006621; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">.org</span></a><br />
Acadian Genealogy and History Links <a href="http://www.islandnet.com/~cghl/region.php?cat=Acadian">http://www.islandnet.com/~cghl/region.php?cat=Acadian</a><br />
Googling Acadians in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick will get you hundreds of resources.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-17867233597908540192015-07-14T11:03:00.002-07:002015-07-14T11:03:31.850-07:00DNAadoption Classes Turn 2 Years OldIn July of 2013, Karin Corbeil and I got the idea that there was such a huge demand for our assistance in searches, we would never be able to help everyone who needs it. Along with Rob Warthen, we had formed a Yahoo Group called DNAadoption and were determined to find a way to help people who were getting their DNA results to be able to use them in searches for family members.<br />
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A few months earlier, Gaye Tannenbaum had suggested the principles of triangulation to facilitate these searches. The concept being that people who have overlapping DNA segments and who are also ICW with each other (blood related) should share Common Ancestors. This meant that by taking these individuals and expanding their trees sufficiently, one should find these Common Ancestors. This becomes TRIangulation with the addition of the key person in the search. That person is related through blood (ICW) to everyone they match and also has overlapping DNA segments with each of the matches.<br />
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Diane went on to document a search using these principles and create what we call the <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/uploads/DNAadoption/DNAadoption_files/General/Methodology_for_Researching_Autosomal_DNA_Results_V3_1-9-2015.pdf" target="_blank">Methodology</a> which can be found on http://dnaadoption.com. Karin Corbeil has provided a great deal of direction to the Methodology as well.<br />
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The classes have been based on this methodology. However, earlier this year, we were re-thinking the curriculum. We now have some new classes that are not based on the methodology. In addition, seeing the questions that were being asked in our classes, we decided that we had enough experience to adapt our teaching methods. We changed to a more practical approach.<br />
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We have now taught our classes to over 1000 students. As far as we know we were the first people to offer these Autosomal DNA classes. There are now a few others offering them as well. We can offer proof that our methods work. Just the last couple of days we had 5 finds of family members among the DNAadoption folk.<br />
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In addition, our classes which were first formed for Adoptees, are now being enrolled in at the rate of about half adoptees and half genealogists. We find it so rewarding to have students come into classes, totally confused by the results of their search, but leaving in the midst of an active search.<br />
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So I am posting our class list here. All classes are <span style="color: red;">online classes</span> with access to experts who answer your questions in a class forum. You can do the classes at your own pace.<br />
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<b><u>Just For Beginners </u></b>- This class is designed to give you information about : Working with Yahoo Groups Mailing Lists, getting your non-id (for adoptees), the basics of DNA, DNA tests, transferring your data, building a tree, internet resources, basic tools, FTDNA, spreadsheet basics, and Messaging Your Matches. If you are either an adoptee or new to DNA and genealogy, and you do not know about Non-Ids, building trees and think we are all speaking a foreign language this class is for you.<br />
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<b><u>First Look - Intro to Results classes</u></b> - <span style="background-color: white;">The First Look classes are designed to help people get started using and understanding their Autosomal DNA results with a specific vendor. This is a basic, entry level course.</span><br />
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This one-day course covers how to introduce yourself to matches, how to share match lists, how to link a family tree and much more. A forum is available for students to ask questions and make suggestions.</div>
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<li>Ancestry DNA First Look</li>
<li> FTDNA First Look</li>
<li>23andme First Look</li>
<li>Gedmatch First Look</li>
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<b><u>Y-DNA Classes</u></b> - learn the basics of Y-DNA and how to apply it to your results.<br />
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<b><u>Basic Autosomal DNA</u></b> - All of the basics of DNA that you need to interpret your results. The class was changed from a theoretical style to one involving you as the student in learning how the experts solve a case. To take this class, it is suggested that you have tested at least at FTDNA and preferrably with all 3 vendors.<br />
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<b><u>Advanced Autosomal DNA</u></b> - Some people want to continue beyond the how to the why and this course is designed to do this. People will be working with combined results as well as a more difficult case that you will work yourself with some guidance from our team.<br />
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To sign up go to the bottom of this page: <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/index.php?page=online-classes">http://dnaadoption.com/index.php?page=online-classes</a><br />
There are now a few other classes around. Do take advantage of training that is available. It can make your search a lot easier.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-545871045580547802015-07-02T17:49:00.001-07:002015-07-02T17:49:36.926-07:00Speaking to Genealogy Groups About DNAI love speaking to genealogy groups about DNA. We communicate every day with people who know quite a bit about DNA. When you speak to a genealogy group, you get all degrees of knowledge involved.<br />
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Unless the particular Genealogy Group has been heavily involved in DNA discussions, you will get quite a few people who kind of know what DNA is but not really. The attitude is "I heard you can use DNA in genealogical research".<br />
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My answer is, you sure can. It is a miracle what you can find out. But then I have to add that the 3 major testing vendors, whom you must use, make it seem like if you test, they will give you a paper with all your ancestors on it.<br />
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That of course, is not even close to the truth although we have had 2 people open their results during the course of one of our classes and find a birth parent match right then and there. That is exciting for them and the rest of us who have spent many hours on these types of searches go off and sulk, why not me? Of course those of us in the Search business actually celebrate every find even though it is not the first one.<br />
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We originally formed our group, DNAadoption, which you can join through yahoogroups, because adoptees had no clue how to use their results to search. Karin Corbeil and I published a methodology for working with Autosomal Results. We published lots of how-to pages and references and started the http://Dnaadoption.com web site. We came to the conclusion that the dozen of us or so with growing experience in this field could not help everyone, so we moved into educating people who were getting their results. We were very surprised when our students turned out to be genealogists trying to break down brick wall or wanting to find other relatives. So even though it says Adoptees, it is really for anyone trying to use DNA to work with their genealogy.<br />
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So when we talk to genealogy group, usually they want to know how this works. Not in great detail of course, but we can explain that we turn matches into ancestors partly through triangulation. It turns out that you as the tester have overlapping DNA segments and are a blood relative to everyone of your matches. For adoptees this is a big moment, a real relative! For most others , it is more like - "I am related to ALL of these people? This will be impossible to figure out". So when talking to a group, you need to consider both of these extremes.<br />
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We have tools to organize your matches into overlapping sets of DNA segments and to identify who is In Common With whom. (ICW). Plug the words "blood related to whom" in there instead of ICW. I use this example to explain this. Your maternal great grandmother is probably not blood related to your paternal great grandfather. However, your maternal aunts are blood related to your maternal great grandmother. We can restate that - your maternal aunts are ICW with your maternal great grandmother, and your maternal great grandmother is not ICW with your paternal grandfather.<br />
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In order to look for common ancestors to add to your family tree, you need people who have overlapping DNA segments who are blood related (ICW) with each other. You also need people who have information about a family tree. It turns out that these people that meet these conditions, have family trees that intersect with each other at some point and that these intersections are their common Ancestor. Better yet, they are your common ancestors too! This is called triangulation. To make it as easy as possible (well not easy exactly) choose matches with as long a segments as possible. The longer the better. You will never be able to get all your family trees to match though. You won't need to either.<br />
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So we describe this process to our genealogy group and some people get it, some do not.<br />
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Then comes what everybody wants to hear, real live cases. The adoptee whose birthday had been changed by two months and that you still found. The woman who when casually testing DNA for fun found out that her father was not her birth father or that she and her sister were only half sisters. We can cite older people who discovered that they were adopted only when in their sixties and who are desperate to find out who they really are before they die. Then there is the person with a rare disease which is discovered because getting a health history saved her live. You will also present cases of serious genealogists who are able to move past a long standing brick wall. The stories are many.We caution to use fictitious names for stories though. Nobody wants to be outed in that manner!<br />
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The excitement builds over your presentation, there is always that husband over in the corner who got dragged to the meeting and who is nodding off and that you cannot take your eyes off, - will he fall out of his chair?, but in general there is lots of excitement. Plan somewhere that you can continue to answer personal questions after the library closes because you will probably be there that long.<br />
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Speaking to genealogy groups is a good way to spread the word and to increase everyone's enthusiasm for the subject including yours. I think every time I have spoken, I have either found someone for a person in the audience, or given enough pointers and encouragement that a person was found by someone else.<br />
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If that isn't enough incentive, what is?<br />
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If you are a genealogy group and would like to have someone speak contact me through the comments here and we will find someone for you. If you need genealogical help with DNA, consider taking one of our classes. They are listed on our <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/">web site</a> on the Classes tab. If you need help finding something check our website references. Give back!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-6815065222034529612015-06-28T09:12:00.000-07:002015-06-28T09:43:56.463-07:00Some Views on Supporting Those Looking For Family Members with DNA<br />
Several years ago, a handful of us took on the responsibility of supporting the Adoption Community through forums, tools and education. We carefully put a support structure in place including:<br />
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<li>DNAadoption Yahoo Group - where we actively support people trying to analyze DNA results as well as provide community support for the technical and emotional issues that a group like this has.</li>
<li>http://DNAadoption.com - which provides many how-to documents and resources that range from getting started to advanced search topics</li>
<li>Technical Support - mostly through Karin Corbeil who provides support answers for third party software as it applies to our group and for DNAgedcom.com utilities as well as our computing resources.</li>
<li>Educational Resources - We have held the first classes on Autosomal DNA analysis and have continued to grow the scope of the classes to include Beginning, Basic and Advanced Autosomal classes, Y classes and classes to help people learn the ins and outs of working with different vendors. We have had 925 students to date, many taking more than one class.</li>
<li>Advocacy for the Adoptee - through participation in many online groups</li>
<li>A growing Support Resource for Genealogists' Education in DNA analysis</li>
<li>A greatly expanded tool set and utilities to facilitate data gathering and analysis mostly by Rob Warthen through DNAGedcom. com including:</li>
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<li>Download capabilities for FTDNA data through an established API.</li>
<li>This includes Chromosome browser files, ICW files, Family Finder matches and the </li>
<li>new ability to download FTDNA tree data to Gworks on DNAGedcom</li>
<li>Download capabilities for several 23andme files</li>
<li>The ability to process these files for triangulation and ICW status.</li>
<li>A utility to accept data from Gedmatch Triangulation Tier 1 utility and the Segment matcher and prepare it so that it can be processed by our triangulation utilities and compared with data from other sources.</li>
<li>The Gworks utility to search data from the matches and to compare it.</li>
<li>Providing ADSA utility by Don Worth</li>
<li>Providing Jworks by Juan Pizarro</li>
<li>Providing Kworks by Kitty Munson Cooper,</li>
<li>The ability to compare results from different vendors</li>
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You can see that we have put a lot of time and effort into the support infra-structure which has grown to include about 60% non-adoptee genealogists.<br />
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Earlier this year, DNAGedcom split into two parts to better support education through a non-profit entity (DNAdoption) and DNAGedcom remained for tools development and support.<br />
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This is all supported by monies from classes as well as donations.<br />
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So what am I getting to? This is a Pet Peeve of mine. People have taken to opening FaceBook pages to support Adoptees. Unfortunately most of these lack:<br />
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<li>Support infra structure</li>
<li>Support personnel</li>
<li>A file structure to adequately support case research.</li>
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The typical FaceBook page for Family Searching comes to Karin and I as a statement that a new FaceBook page has been set up and that we are named as administrators on these groups. Most of these groups are really floundering. The people have so little resources and education and are not directed to ones that are available. I feel very sorry for them. The answers that they get from fellow lost souls are atrociously inaccurate. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot take responsibility for everything that comes my way.</div>
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I have taken on a personal responsibility to monitor these pages and to answer questions that need answering as they came up. No More.</div>
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I noticed that I was not getting any mail stream on Facebook from my family. All the items in my Facebook Feed were from these support pages. I started removing groups from active monitoring by me and lo and behold, I am now getting messages and pictures from my family again.</div>
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I have made the personal decision that the person who sets up a Facebook page has a personal responsibility to support the people who use the page and to spend time developing the resources to support it.</div>
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FaceBook is a very poor forum for working these cases any way. It also does not have a good structure for Help Desk type support.</div>
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So I will be continuing to provide answers and support to the DNAadoption classes, to the DNAadoption yahoogroup, to the Unknown fathers group and to those who personally seek my help as well as for the time being to the DNA-Newbie Facebook users who seem particularly to need my help. This leaves me a little more time to research issues, write classes and answer class questions and to keep the infrastructure of DNAadoption up to date.</div>
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This is fair warning, please do not set up a new Family Finding or DNA research Facebook page and expect me to be an administrator. It is not going to happen.</div>
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To those who have chosen the Facebook interface over the yahoogroup interface and all the support people and resources that are in place, think about the quality of the information that you get and go to the places that can really give you the support that you need and deserve.</div>
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There are a couple and I would really limit it to a handful of decent Support assistance Facebook pages, but research the help resources that you are asking for. Do not increase your personal frustration level by joining unsupported Facebook groups. Like it or not, the number of people who can help you is severely limited, be picky about the support level you get. If you are joining a Facebook page because of the social experience, that is one thing. Think about the type of support you need and go where it is.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-36419776611453108342015-06-04T13:27:00.002-07:002015-06-04T15:49:48.054-07:00Ancestry is Playing Around With Your DNAAnd you have no say in the matter.<br />
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Ancestry has decided to reinvent not only genetic genealogy, but also genealogy itself.<br />
They do not give us the ability to check their predictions against the known facts of genetic genealogy by refusing to provide a chromosome browser capability.If you can get your match to upload their results to gedmatch that is wonderful. Then I can get an idea of how this person might fit into the family I am helping.<br />
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However, and it is a really big however only about 10% of the Ancestry testers make it to gedmatch, So we can not check between multiple matches. Another big "However", Ancestry provides the capability to share DNA results. I have records of sending out several hundred sharing requests and have received 3 agreements to do that.<br />
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Now Ancestry has taken it upon themselves to do 3 things, supposedly in place of a chromosome browser. One of their excuses has been that the average DNA tester cannot work with chromosome data. Has anyone at the company tried to figure out how the new approaches that Ancestry now gives us really works for adoptees. It s a lot more complex than working with chromosome data, I assure you.<br />
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The 3 things Ancestry has given us are:<br />
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<b>DNA Circles</b>; A grouping of people Ancestry has decided are related to you, no matter what the DNA says, The position is that they take a couple of people who do share DNA with you and try to link up others who share tree connections in their collections. One of my questions after writing a lesson on using these tools, is why do I want to include third cousins 3 times removed in my tree? Almost all of the people they present as being related to me are - so what? They are not people one would normally have added to a family tree. I will admit that I identified the offspring of a very distant cousin through these circles, but if I had wanted to, I would have already discovered them in a more direct way.<br />
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<b>Predicted Ancestors</b>, called New Ancestor Discoveries. I prefer to refer to these as Predicted Ancestors as they may be someone's New Ancestor Discoveries, but they are not mine. As an adoption researcher, they might as well give me the Emperor of China. I would have as much chance of finding the tie in as I do with these "NAD"s.<br />
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<b>Your Ancestor's Life</b>. Now here comes Ancestry's attempt to reinvent your genealogy. For your DNA Circles matches and Predicted Ancestors, they scrape the bottom of the barrel and lump together all those erroneous trees and give your Ancestor a totally new life. My third great-grandfather, for instance, one of a line of namesakes, marries his step mother in their version, and moves around the State of Maine when in fact, the county and town names changed. Who can I get to correct this? Ancestry is contaminating the carefully researched life histories reported by many genealogists, In my book, this is a crime.<br />
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I do suggest to people that they test first with Ancestry as the database and resources are so huge that I am eventually solving many of my cases with the help of their data. There is a difference in data and information. I am looking at Ancestry for <u>data</u>. They want to give me <u>information</u>, data that they have processed and given their slant.<br />
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When I suggest that people test with Ancestry, I tell them that they must upload the results to Gedmatch and to FTDNA so I have a backbone of chromosome data to work with. That has been working reasonably well. If possible a person should also test with 23andme so that they can fish in all the ponds of test takers.<br />
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We are all aware that interpreting your test results can involve a lot of work. The advertisements make it sound like you test and they hand you the ancestors you need to identify, Well, it does not work that way. We at DNAAdoption and DNAGedcom work hard to provide educational resources to help you.<br />
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I have been rewriting our classes with a different approach in mind. What if I give you the chance to actually work through a case with me. I explain the theories and facts along the way and provide lots of resource and hints about how to proceed. We have split our old class into a Basic Autosomal Class and an Advanced Class. The Basic will give you all the instruction you need for 95% of the cases, but if you have a particularly difficult case or you are a DNA Junkie type person, I will go deeper into some advanced techniques in the Advanced Class.<br />
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We also have a Beginning Class for the very new Beginner,We have First Look classes for when you get your First Results to help you move around the vendor's web site and a Y-DNA class.<br />
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You can see the list of classes at <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/index.php?page=online-classes">http://dnaadoption.com/index.php?page=online-classes</a>. We have an automatic sign up process that takes payment through Paypal. You can always send us a check instead if you prefer. We have extremely low charges for these online classes that you take at your own pace. If you have a financial hardship we will waive the fee.<br />
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I am sorry it was so long between posts but I have been awfully busy.I hope this one helps you to skeptically look at Ancestry information and prove or disprove it in your search.<br />
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Happy Searching and enjoy the journey<br />
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DianeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-87086893911446171482014-12-28T14:02:00.001-08:002014-12-28T14:19:56.757-08:00DNA is a Miracle<div style="text-align: left;">
DNA is a miracle for those trying to find birth family members as well as those genealogists looking to get through brickwalls.</div>
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At DNAadoption.com and its associated yahoogroup, DNAadoption, we have been helping people solve those impossible searches for birth parents and birth siblings where either nothing is known about them , or where a limited amount is known. This includes adoptees, those who do not know their fathers and donor babies.</div>
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The demand for help on these cases is huge. The people who can help is limited so DNAadoption takes the approach of educating people to do their own search as much as possible. We provide classes, documents, tools (through our tool website DNAgedcom.com), methodologies, and answers to questions for those who are searching.</div>
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The Methodology involves testing with at least one of the 3 major companies, and then organizing the results to show where there are overlapping DNA segments. In general, the closer the relationship, the longer the segment. </div>
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As mentioned before, there are two sides to a helix and the address numbering sequences are the same, so in addition to the overlapping segments, it must also be determined who is In Common With (ICW) whom. I call this having a blood relationship with each other. This determines which people are on one side of the helix and which are on the other side. These are paternal and maternal side, but there is no clue at this point as to which side is which.</div>
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To follow through with the people identified in this manner as being blood related as well as sharing inherited DNA segments, it is necessary to explore the trees of these matches, If the searcher can establish an intersection between the trees at some time in history, then the ancestors of these matches are likely to be the ancestors of the searcher as well.</div>
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I have covered most of this recently but there is a new avenue to be approached to augment this, I am finding more and more matches with the help of the testing at AncestryDNA. Unfortunately, AncestryDNA does not provide visibility of the DNA segments and numbers behind their matches. so an adoptee or someone who does not have a good family tree, must upload their data to FTDNA ($39 fee) and/or to gedmatch.com so that we can interpret these numbers into relationships. This is particularly important as we get into the closer relationships. We just had a case where Ancestry identified a match as a first cousin, but when analyzing these numbers, we realized that it was an aunt. At that point, identification of the birth father as the brother of the match was straight forward. AncestryDNA insists that most people do not want to have to work with the numbers, but in failing to provide the facts behind the match they are doing adoptees and those whose trees involve unexpected parental events, such as a father who was not the mother's husband, a great disservice. In my opinion, the reason why AncestryDNA insists on sticking to this approach can only be because of some hidden financial motive in an unknown business plan. Pressure from the community has not convinced them to change their ways. Ancestry has now tested a half million people, and they hold huge amounts of data that belong to the person testing and refuse to reveal it.</div>
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Recently Ancestry decided to develop algorithms that eliminated 2/3 or so of a person's matches. It may not have mattered to the genealogist, but to the genetic genealogist trying to uncover birth families, these smaller matches, many of which were documented to fit into an adoptee's ancestry line were important clues in the search. It is shameful that these were taken out of the matches without consideration of proven common ancestors.</div>
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Now comes the plus of Ancestry's extensive testing. This is converted to a plus by the independent development of tools to help analyze what data we have.</div>
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DNAgedcom.com which is run by the partnership of Rob Warthen (developer), Karin Corbeil (support) and Diane Harman-Hoog (analysis), is stepping up to provide a set of tools which can reveal relationships. As of the current stage of development, someone using DNAgedcom.com, can download data from FTDNA and 23andme to analyze the DNA segments. Programs written by KItty Cooper and Juan Pizarro organize the data into a spreadsheet form, The new additions to this site, facilitate uploading gedcoms and the Ancestors of Matches and Matches files produced by the Chrome Ancestry DNA Helper, into a database where ancestors can be matched, compared and searched for pertinent data. This ability is referred to as Gworks on DNAgedcom.com</div>
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This gives us a lot more insight into the flow of surnames in the trees of DNA cousins and has already revealed some birth family matches.</div>
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So now we are using the DNA to set up an investigative framework and Gworks to explore that framework. This is proving to be very powerful.</div>
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FTDNA made changes to their infrastrucure which broke our downloads process and at the same time, Gedmatch.com decided to offer a tiered system of programs. In doing so, gedmatch removed a key program output for our identification of ICW matches - changing it from a free file output of several thousand matches to a subscribe charged output of about 400 matches. This has hurt the way adoptees can work with this data. At the same time, FTDNA really stepped up to the plate and is now providing an API through which Rob and his programmers can download more reliable data. Thank you FTDNA! But all these changes happened at the same time and necessitated our suspending our classes until the process could be redefined and new documentation written. Classes should resume for Autosomal DNA in the near future and we have just added an Y-DNA class to start this month.</div>
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So I see a lot of progress and hope for great work and results in 2015.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-51635253692729868942013-11-21T11:05:00.001-08:002013-11-21T11:05:16.304-08:00Adoption Searches Using DNAThe method some of us have developed in the DNAAdoption group for working with Autosomal DNA results is pertinent to genealogy searches as well.<br />
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You will find a methodology and other documentation on <a href="http://www.dnaadoption.com/">http://www.dnaadoption.com</a><br />
There is a yahoogroup DNAadoption, that provides interchange of information among individuals working with their DNA results.<br />
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Despite what the ads for DNA testing look like, in almost every case, it takes a great deal of work to uncover the connections. However, the methodology does work.<br />
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Usually one gets a list of DNA cousins spread over many generations. However, recently one lucky person logged in to see her results and found that her birth mother had been tested and identified! This is everyone's dream of course.<br />
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The usual method is to identify the closest cousins. The longer the length of overlapping DNA segments, the closer the relationship. Then we try to get trees for these cousins and identify how they are related. Where the have a common ancestor, the person who is seeking also has that ancestor. Working down through trees looking for a person who might have been in the right place at the right time, it is necessary to follow all offspring of all generations. This can get pretty messy to follow, so I break out a separate tree using genealogy software of all descendants of that common ancestor.<br />
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I am working with a woman who has been looking a long time. She went a couple of years without any significant results from her DNA testing, but in the last couple of months has gotten results from 8 third DNA cousins. It is now a matter of hoping for good trees and following down these trees looking for the point where they once again intersect.<br />
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I have now been able to add people who tested with all three systems to one spreadsheet for comparison. I do this by downloading the FTDNA and 23andme files from <a href="http://dnagedcom.com/">http://dnagedcom.com</a>. I use data in FTDNA's chromosome browser list and 23andme's FIA list. The only data you will have in the FIA list is that from people who have shared genomes with you. I then ask Ancestry matches to upload to <a href="http://gedmatch.com/">http://gedmatch.com</a> where I can see the chromosome numbers. Now I can compare the data of what once seemed like apples and oranges.<br />
<br />
I hope in the next blog to give you some success stories.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-39127002429676150402013-10-27T13:03:00.002-07:002013-10-27T13:03:35.427-07:00The Miracle of DNA for AdopteesWhen I first started working with DNA for adoptee searches, I had some skepticsm as to how it could be done by most adoptees. Many of those searching having little computer experience and are older than the average computer user. I can now report that I am pleasantly surprised. In my first couple of months of searching, I asked everyone I came across for an outline of the methodology that should be used with DNA results to find birth family. No one could really tell me, so I finally stopped looking and decided to write down the process as I went. It was a trial and error process that continues to be refined to this day. The original <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/">methodology</a> was contributed to by many patient people. Recently Karin Corbeil has been a huge help. With Karin's encouragement, I wrote a class on Working With Autosomal DNA. Karin and I take turns teaching it. Over 100 people have completed the course. The class has been very successful. To our immense gratification the method works. It is really a lot of effort, but it does work and it does identify birth families. You can find out about the class on the <a href="http://dnaadoption.com/">DNAadoption</a> server. If you browse through the site index you will see many kinds of papers for various aspects of the search.<br />
<br />
When I started working with DNA, we might have had one or two reunions a month at the most. Now we have having multiple ones per week and the rate of solution is increasing.<br />
<br />
A few months ago, a core of the DNA Search Angels and technologists moved to a new Yahoogroup - DNAAdoption. This was done so that people who were serious about advancing the ability to use DNA results could communicate more directly with those who were searching and so that we would have a place to make our documentation and tools available for those who need them. You can join this group at <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/DNAAdoption">DNA Adoption Yahoo Group</a>. Sometimes there are lots of messages but by reading them you will accumulate knowledge of the subject and also find out how to get more information.<br />
<br />
There is a third part to our educational system. This is the server <a href="http://dnagedcom.com/">http://dnagedcom.com</a> where you can download tools and use on line tools to get your data from tests.
About our class; it is necessary to learn to work with a spreadsheet to do the work. We are talking about storing and manipulation large amounts of data. We had one lovely lady in our first class who was pretty clueless on spreadsheets and DNA. She is in her late 70s. She worked hard and is now researching her data as well as answering questions for others. We are so proud of her. It can be done!<br />
<br />
The process is that you test. You get a set of DNA cousins back. You identify those that have overlapping DNA segments with each other. Then we triangulate these results with you as part of the triangle. We have to use trees to find where people are related. We build a lot of trees. Once we have identified persons who are 3rd DNA cousins (common great-great grandparents or closer), we start to look at all the offspring in every generation, looking for someone in the right place at the right time who generally meets the predicted generation difference.
Often this requires another DNA test to confirm or deny. The suspense of waiting for results is intense, but what joy when it comes through.<br />
<br />
I hope if you are an adoptee and have been kept from finding your birth parents by lack of information, you will investigate this possibility. We are solving the impossible ones! It truly is a miracle!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-13639407888306495702012-06-16T09:00:00.000-07:002012-06-16T09:00:14.290-07:00Adoption Reunion and DNAI have been postponing writing on this subject for some time until I decided just how to handle this. I have been recruited to work on DNA matching for adoptees. This is a pretty complicated issue. It is not just a matter of get a DNA test, find your birth parents.<br />
<br />
For those without computer skills and the ability or willingness to grasp scientific concepts this is a major hurdle to overcome. Part of the problem is that there are only a few very overworked search angels doing this. There are two yahoogroups - AdoptionDNA and DNA-Newbie that can help answer questions and guide you but for the timid this can be overwhelming,<br />
<br />
Several of us have been pressuring the DNA testing companies to supply more tools and interpretations of the data. Some are coming and I have no doubt that in the future there will be more tools. However, as of today they are not there.<br />
<br />
The tests I have been working with are tests on autosomal DNA. For this I recommend testing with FamilyTree DNA. There are two major companies involved in the testing, Ancestry.com is also entering the field. You do not want to just choose the cheapest available company for this. You want one that has a significantly large database of testers to match your test against. I choose Family Tree DNA, despite the fact that they have a smaller database than 23andme for the following reason which I feel is significant. Many of the testers in 23andme are there for medical predictor tests and are not interested in responding to adoptees looking for ancestry information. It can be very frustrating to see that you have matches to people and to not be able to get them to respond to give you the information you need to make any connection. You will definitely get more matches there, but I suggest testing with Family Tree DNA first. A test costs about $300 They occasionally go on sale. A male adoptee can try a Y-DNA test and/or a Family Finder test which tests autosomal DNA. A female can have the Family Finder test. Y-DNA only passes from male to male, but autosomal is passed by both sexes,. This is on the cutting edge of DNA science and there are still lots of things to work out. If you have Ashkenazi heritage, then the results can be less clear. The autosomal testing which I work with , identifies "cousins" who are related. This is a bit of a misnomer as one would expect one cousin to be related to another. This is not always the case. "Cousins" are labeled with a degree of distance prediction which can range from 1st cousin on up. Anything past 4th cousin can be problematical as the reliabilty decreases with distance.<br />
<br />
The idea is that one takes two cousins who are related to you and to each other and who share significantly long DNA segments on the same chromosome. After securing a family tree (which rules out other adoptees for the most part), then you look for common ancestors (intersections) on these trees. Theoretically you then trace down the possible descendants from there and find your line. This is very difficult (read impossible) if you have no information on your parentage at all. Also most of these ancestries are further back than the prediction so a fourth cousin, which is most probable, is probably a 5th or 6th cousin in actuality. This means that the common ancestor is in the 17th or 18th century. In these days, there were usually very big families so tracing down the branches is most difficult. Many family trees cannot be extended fully to this era..<br />
<br />
Here is the good news. More will be coming and you can in fact collect family information that will be of use then and that helps you understand your ancestry now.<br />
<br />
I am working on several cases, currently with two of them, I have a target (a family name or enough information on the person that I may be fortunate enough to identify them). I am going to discuss a different search where I do not have any of this information.<br />
<br />
This search involves a woman from Texas who has no confirmed birth information. Her birth information is missing or falsified. We are not even 100% sure of the birth date. So far I have been able to identify the family line from one side of her family (we think it is the maternal side, there is no way to predict from the data). We are looking for those we think may be closer relatives for additional DNA testing to confirm this. On this side of the family we had two predicted second cousins which helped us zero in on the line. On the other side of the family,we have mostly 3rd and 4th cousins so we are only able to identify ancestors so far. Matches come in all the time, so this will change. In the meantime, I have been able to construct a family tree of hundreds of ancestors. She now knows that her family mostly came to this country from England to Isle of Wight or Henrico County Virginia. They remained there for a generation or two and spread out into the rest of Virginia and North Carolina. Many of these ancestors followed Daniel Boone up into Kentucky. These were mostly the second or younger sons who did not inherit the plantations. Her relatives then came from Kentucky and Virginia to Texas to settle yet another frontier.<br />
<br />
For this adoptee, this has been a big deal. She says it proves that she did not drop from the sky. It gives her a deeper identity.<br />
<br />
This is the result of several hundred hours of research. It is not easy, but this sort of information is there. If these are your expectations, please test and go for it. The more people who test, the more possibility we have of matches. I recently found out that my brother had done the health testing at 23andme and predictably was not answering relationship queries. I am taking care of that and also making sure that our extensive New England genealogy is available for matching. Results from 23andme can be ported to ftDNA for a fee so I am doing that. This is definitely the wave of the future and you can get it on it if you are open to learning and have the right expectations.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-39698709412713765442012-02-23T11:48:00.000-08:002012-02-23T11:48:30.234-08:00The Role of DNA in Birth Family Searches<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many adoptees who had exhausted other avenues for finding birth families, have been turning to DNA testing. The science is still new but can give important clues as to one's heritage. In additional to identifying people who are different degrees of "cousin" matches, it also can give the adoptee information on ethic heritage as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The two largest DNA companies for this purpose are FTDNA and 23andme. For this, it is beneficial to have a company that has a lot of tests recorded so that your DNA can be matched with as many others as possible. Recent tools have been developed that let you use the information from one of these services in the other. Since each service checks on on different markers, the results will be different and a comparison the two sets of results can be beneficial. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After testing and getting results joining a forum, such as the yahoo group AdoptionDNA can be helpful as advice is freely shared among members of the group.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As more testing is done, your results are updated so over time you get more and more information. Either of these services can advise you as to what tests you should get.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You will expect to see results come back with indications of 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins, etc. Also important is the length. Regarding FTDNA results, both the TOTAL amount of shared DNA and the LONGEST BLOCK are important, but it is the longest block that is more indicative of a more recent connection. For example, a person could have lots of little pieces of shared DNA, depending on how DNA combines over many years-many generations, but not any large shared block, so the most recent common shared ancestor may not be as recent. A larger <b>shared block</b> of DNA means a more recent shared common ancestor. Usually a longest shared block of over 10-12.cM is considered most significant for considering a closer common connection. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are a number of online tutorials to help you understand how this works and the folks on the forum will also help guide you through this. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Exploring these relationships is a lot of work, but when you have no more information, it is another avenue to explore.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-87743207199413669902011-11-19T11:40:00.000-08:002011-11-19T11:40:32.672-08:00Back at Last - Have You Thought About Your Library As A Resource?I had a long vacation and just did not get back into the blog writing groove.<br />
Have you thought about the resources your local and university library have for you. I use them a lot.<br />
Local Library Resources -<br />
My local library - King County Library System in Washington has hundreds of data bases. Many that with your library card id you can just log in and use. A few that because of licensing you have to go in to use.<br />
The is usually a category list and many databases under each one. Of particular note is:<br />
Ancestry.com (you usually have to go to the library to use this one)<br />
Newspaper archives including state wide newspapers not found elsewhere.<br />
Obituaries<br />
Heritage Quest<br />
New York Times Historical Articles 1857-2001<br />
19th Century Newspapers<br />
World Wide Vital Records<br />
American Indian History and Culture<br />
and many more sources.<br />
<br />
In the University of Washington Library you can search on the UW collections but also on universities world wide. I have found this particularly useful for college yearbooks and masters theses.<br />
<br />
The best part of most library websites is the ability to ask a librarian a question and receive a fairly quick response. Some libraries even have chat facilities. They can tell you where to find resources - I recently found that there are commencement lists of UW classes, they will usually look things up and copy material for you - sometimes there is a small fee for material and very occasionally for hourly cost, but they have always been very reasonable.<br />
<br />
Most libraries maintain obituaries of people in their area. The Rochester NY library for example has life event lists where volunteers have taken births, deaths and marriages from newspapers and made a large database. It is worth contacting a library in an area you are working on to see what additional resources they have and if you are not a member of that library ask if there is a way you can get access to the information.<br />
<br />
Librarians are for the most part great researchers. Use their skills.<br />
<br />
Until next time.<br />
DianeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-14069057936723454082011-04-16T09:59:00.000-07:002011-04-16T09:59:05.923-07:00The Courage to Search<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">When someone finally reaches out and makes the search commitment, I understand that it is a decision not lightly taken.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">It takes a lot of courage to really bite the bullet. We see a lot of people on lists who are lurking trying to get up that courage. In looking, you are really exposing yourself to that fear of rejection again. Is the hope of discovering the truth of your birth family worth the risk? People who have even found things that they do not like, being born in jail, parents deceased, drug use, etc., say that knowing is better than not knowing. That there is a certain peace and completeness to their life having found out.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">Of course, we have lots of good reunions as well. </span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">I search even though I am not one of the adoption triad, because I feel that this country treats adoptees unfairly. I do not think that anyone should be discriminated against by the government; adoptees and also birth parents definitely are. I have truly enjoyed doing my family genealogy. It is important for me to know where I came from. Adoptees do not have that option. I sometimes give adoptees the start of a family tree once I resolve the identity problem. </span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">Having medical information is becoming more and more important.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">But what actually spurs me the most is that nobody should have these things withheld from them.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">So for those of you lurkers, dive in. It is YOUR information, you deserve to have what everyone else has in the way of access and rights.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">I wish there was no need for adoption, but as long as there is, I hope to get many more calls that say “for the first time I saw someone who looks like me”.</span><o></o><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1f497d;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11.0pt;">This was written and posted on nwsar@yahoogroups.com. This is a list dedicated to helping people in the Pacific Northwest and California who are looking to reunite with birth family members.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-12030441200189463532011-02-02T14:32:00.000-08:002011-02-02T14:32:18.290-08:00Another Reunion Search StoryIt has been a while since I posted. This is an older case, but still one of my favorite. I thought I had found her mother and then waited 3 hours to hear from her. I picked up the phone to hear - "I just got off a 3 hour phone call with my mother!" Here is Polly Jones' story in her own words.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I have always known I was adopted. My name is Polly Jones and I am 56. I was born October 10, 1954 in San Francisco. After many years of waffling, trying to decide, do I look or don't I for my birth Mother. I was adopted when I was only a few weeks old through The Children's Home Society and raised by the best parents and a loving sister who is 8 years older. But as I got older, I got curious. As an adult, I had decided to search and got some information from the Children's home. My family name was Sirak and all were healthy. My birth mother was 26 when I was born. I also tried a search company Omnitrace who also gave me some information, I was born Suzanne Maire Ryles. They had told me there were many daughters in the family and all close in age so they did not know which one gave birth to me. These bits of information were very exciting to know. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Then one day in August 2008, I was looking for a Yahoo Group and my search brought the list up alphabetically and the 1st one was Adoption Search Angels.... that had to be a sign...I searched the site and found that people wrote the information about themselves or a person they were searching for and one of the Angels took that information and really dug deep into their resources and found answers from the entries I was reading. I took the chance. I put in everything I had gathered and pushed the 'enter' button,,, and waited... It was not more than an hour and I had my angel, Diane Harman-Hoog.... I was ecstatic that my story was actually going to be researched. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We communicated daily about information she had found, people I needed to call to find the right Sirak family. She gave me so many leads to call to try to find family dynamics that could fit my situation. I was no nervous making those calls. All the people I called were very helpful and curious about what I was doing... all wished me good luck and gave me information on their Sirak family,,,that was my part of the search. Added into my Angel mix was Diane's friend, Marilie Auger who did a lot of the history of the family, newspaper articles, obituaries and marriages in the Sirak family. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Then that fateful day, after 2 weeks of emails and phone calls, I got multiple emails and calls from Diane and I knew something had been discovered. . She was pretty sure she had found the right Sirak family and my mother's name is JoAnne. She is the oldest of 5 children, 1 younger sister 4 brothers. She gave me phone number to call in Florida Now I had jumping beans inside. What if I found her? What would her reaction be? Growing up, I always had one statement that I wanted to tell my birth mother. "I was raised by a great family. This is what I always wanted you to know." As I got older, I wanted her to know I have 2 daughters and a granddaughter. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I called the number with shaking hands and it rang and rang and I got a generic answering machine. This was not something you leaving and a message. I called over 2 days and got the same machine. I asked Diane what should I do. She said to call her brother. OMG!! So I called James Sirak, he answered. I could barely speak. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">"I said my name is Polly Jones and I was working on a genealogy search for a client and I was looking for the Sirak family that has 2 daughters and 5 son's. (we found out another brother had been born after I was) Is this your family dynamics?" "Yes it is." James replied. "I am looking for the oldest sister and if I could have her name?" James said "No, but if you give me your information, I will have her call you." So I gave him my information and told him Thank You very much and wondered,,, will she call? That was the longest 3 minutes of my life. My phone rang and it was her. She said "As soon as Jimmy told me there was a call from from San Francisco, she knew it was me." I gave her my original message after all these years and 3 hours later we were still talking... I found out where my green eyes came from, her. She and her husband, who had passed 4 years before, had 5 children, 3 daughters and 2 sons. Their middle daughter has my same birth date, 4 years later. All her girls were 2 years apart including me. Now I as the oldest of 6... How cool!!! All of her children have children so my gut feeling that I had siblings was true. We said "I Love You" so many times during that 1st 3 hour conversation. She emailed me her picture and I did the same. Oh how we looked alike... Finally I have a family I resemble, and also for my girls. We found out so much about each other. She lives in Tennessee, but she was in Florida when she got pregnant and came to San Francisco to stay with an Aunt and Uncle. After I was born, she stayed in San Francisco, got a job and met her husband, who was from Salinas. After they were married on October 29th, 1955, their 1st daughter Jenny, was also born in San Francisco. October 29th is also the same date my adopted parents were wed in 1944. After the earthquake in 1957, there left San Francisco. JoAnn asked me how I got the name Polly from Suzanne? My parents had changed it to Polly Ann. Like me, we have thought about each other every day,, wondering. Now that was all over. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Within the next month, JoAnne had told her children, about me. They were shocked that she could keep the secret for 55 years. Jenny told her "Where is she? Let's go meet her" So last September, JoAnne and Jenny came to San Francisco for our reunion. The first meeting at the airport, was indescribable. We couldn't stop hugging and smiling. It was looking at myself! We are so much alike, same temperament, same sence of humor, same eyes. It as spending time with my best friend. We spent hour talking and trying to catch up on everything we had not said on the phone and almost daily emails. Jenny arrived a couple of days later and it started over again. We look so much alike, there was no doubt we were sisters. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We spent time in the city, finding the apartment the 3 of them had lived in, the church where JoAnne and Richard had been married in, just reliving where they worked and walked as they got to know each other. Pictures galore. We had a story to tell and we did just that. To the people on the Cable Car, waitresses, busboys, not every one, but a few chosen ones who were all so happy for us. I remember a young busboy at a restaurant in Tiburon, we talked to, it brought tears to his eyes. He had never hard anything like our story. We were so touched by his emotion. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We 3 all text, and email and keep up with all of the going's on... I plan to go to Tennessee this year to meet the rest of the family. Jenny travels a lot in her profession, so I am planning a trip to Colorado where she is currently working in February or March. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">During one of our conversations while we were walking around, Mom was talking about telling her kids about me and Jenny said something about Mom spilling the beans. I asked if I was the beans, Yes,,that was me. So she gave me the nickname, of course, Beans. I love it... </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Suzanne Marie Ryles, aka Polly Jones</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-87785550371061734812010-12-17T11:20:00.000-08:002010-12-17T11:33:34.862-08:00One Child's Solution to the Family Tree Project ProblemMarianne recently completed her search after many years. She had to get the assistance of the state as an emergency medical search. From information provided by the intermediary the birth family was able to contact her. She has 7 siblings on her mother's side alone! They have even met in person and Marianne is receiving some answers about her medical and family history.<br />
When I started working with her on her search over a year ago, I told her I would do some genealogy searching for her when we found her family. I was able to fulfill that promise and just sent her 15 generations of her family history. This is her reply:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"WOW! THANK YOU so much! From a twig to a TREE! When I was a little girl in 4th grade I got my first F. "ROOTS" was in full bloom on national television, and everyone wanted to suddenly find theirs! Our teacher assigned us to research and write out our family tree, and do some sort of art project to go with it. <br />
<br />
Well I went home and told my adoptive parents about this assignment, and they happily shared information about their family. They took out the family photo's and showed me their grandparents, aunts, uncles great aunts etc...It was all very interesting and fulfilling-for them. I meanwhile, felt more and more alien with each generation they discussed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
All of a sudden at the age of 10, I felt more alone then ever. <br />
<br />
I put together a very nice report,(in my opinion). I took a small fallen branch with still smaller branches, and made photo ornaments to hang on each branch, with my mother and fathers pictures at the top. I turned this in with a written report, citing when and where people were born,etc. The teacher had us all read our reports out loud. When it came to my turn she told me that mine was incomplete. She would let me do mine the next day when I had finished it. She wanted me to put MY info on my tree. <br />
<br />
Well at this point, call it rebellion-call it feeling very strange trying to be someone you truly were not, call it whatever you will, as I STILL don't know what to call it- I had no place of birth, my birth certificate was blank on identifying information. I was always introduced by my parents as their adopted daughter, When I would ask about my ethnic origins my (a)parents would tell me, that I was something -ish, they didnt remember. This made me feel like anything that mattered to me or my identity was insignificant in comparison to my adoptive identity. (Yes- i was 10 and yes- I had these feelings)<br />
<br />
I was really 'feeling adopted' with this "ROOTS" assignment. Okay Teacher-you want MY family tree, your gonna get it! I turned in my family tree, as I saw it. I took a coffee can, painted it pink, filled it with sand and stuck a single twig in it, with my picture atop. My report read something like, My name is Marianne Biondo. I don't know what name I was born with. I dont know where I was born, and I think my birthday is right, but I'm not sure. I don't know where my roots lie. I am a something-ish. This is all I know about my roots.<br />
<br />
I got an F. But even today I am proud of that F, because that was all I truly knew about my "roots". That F was honest with no bells or whistles."<br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I thought many of you adoptees would identify, but Marianne had the courage at 10 to speak out. It is incredible even today how insensitive teachers can be on that issue. My grandchildren still get assigned that project and I always wonder if the teachers have any idea how much they hurt the adopted ones. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-47166024811569247092010-11-30T08:17:00.000-08:002010-11-30T08:17:00.671-08:00From A Birth Parent - Why Your Parent Has Not Searched for You<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">The following is submitted by Pris Sharp. Pris is a mother of loss as well as mother of an adoptee. She is a highly respected Search Angel and is associate with the yahoo groups "theregistry" and "nyadoptees" who can assist you in your search. Pris actually wrote this article last year and I have been sending it t people who asked me this question.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><i> Here come the Holidays again. I know many of you become depressed that your birth family is apparently not looking for you. But, there are so many reasons why and not one of them means your mother doesn't love you or yearn for you. Most likely your mother married and/or moved away and does not know about the state and on-line registries. Perhaps she never told anyone, as we were counseled to do, and does not want to risk exposure. More than 90% of the mothers we find do not search or register anywhere; those who say they wanted to had no idea how to go about it, where to start. Many of them are afraid because we were told that once we had relinquished our babies we had no more rights ever, for eternity; some of us were even threatened with criminal prosecution if we ever tried to find our children or interfere with their new lives. We were constantly reminded of what terrible, immoral women we were, that we would be shunned and shamed if people knew, even our own children. I was told, "Don't ever tell anyone what you've done, especially not a prospective husband, because no <b>decent</b> man will want to have anything to do with you!"<br />
These were all means adoption agencies and adoptive families used to pry our babies away from us and keep us away from you. It was a cruel, vicious business that has and will impact everyone for many years -- mothers and children especially. I don't know of one mother who came away emotionally unscarred. It lasts a lifetime; there is no relief -- not even having more children repairs the hole our baby lost to adoption leaves.<br />
Most of us slunk back home in shame and fear and tried to heal and gradually got on with our lives. I moved 3,000 miles away because everywhere I went, whenever I would see a baby about my daughter's age, I would begin crying. Some of us went on to prove the old adage, "The best revenge is a good life." We became successful businesswomen, super-achievers, as if to say, subconsciously, "I am *not* a bad person and I will not accept your blame!" Others could not recover from the trauma and sunk into depression, alcoholism, drugs. A very few became what I call "serial birthmothers" -- getting involved in more inappropriate, doomed relationships , having one or more babies and giving them up to adoption. These women tend to be scarred with a lot of guilt and definitely will not search. <br />
So many mothers, when they are found, say, "I thought you would be mad at me. I didn't think you would want to have anything to do with me."<br />
This is what we have to keep reminding the NY and other state legislatures when they claim original birth certificates (OBCs) of adoptees are sealed "to protect the privacy of the mother." It's a privacy cruelly *enforced* on us, never asked for, never wanted. <br />
The best thing you can do when your search seems to be stalled is get involved in the efforts to restore OBCs to adoptees and tell them when they try to tell you "Your birthmother wants privacy" that you want to hear it from her own mouth and don't need anyone presuming to speak for her, thank you very much!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i>For more information on adoption and how mothers were treated in the “Baby Scoop Era” (end of World War II to 1972), go to <a href="http://www.babyscoopera.com/"><span style="color: purple;">www.babyscoopera.com</span></a> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i>For information on how to get involved in legislative efforts to unseal OBCs, go to:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>In NY State: <a href="http://www.unsealedinitiative.org/">www.unsealedinitiative.org</a></i></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i> </i></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i><br />
In PA: Pennsylvania Adoptee's Rights <a href="http://www.adopteerightspa.org/">www.adopteerightspa.org</a> or on Facebook or <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/AdopteeRightsPA">http://groups.google.com/group/AdopteeRightsPA</a><br />
In NJ: NJCare on Facebook or <a href="http://nj-care.org/">http://nj-care.org/</a></i></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Search on Yahoo Groups for other geographically specific groups Theregistry will help anywhere.</span><br />
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-33641657072719975952010-11-20T17:37:00.000-08:002010-11-20T17:49:09.620-08:00The Search is Over - Greg's StoryThe success of Greg's search was greatly due to his perseverance to get the truth. Greg is his birth name. It took many pieces to get Greg's answers and help from all over the United States. Greg asked if he could tell his story in his own words as he wants to share how he feels about having been an adopted child with no answers. So here it is:<br />
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<i>The search began twelve years ago, was revisited six years ago, and concluded this month. The big question that needs to be answered, " Why search at all?" Pragmatically thinking in my case I was chosen by people who wanted me. They were able to want me because the state had me, and the state had me because the people that conceived me didn't want me.<br />
<br />
Where did the search start? Six months ago with the registry of New York, a Yahoo group. Six years ago with the Alma society. Twelve years ago with the Hugs organization. But the search really started in a doctors office in Oakland where I was being tested for allergies. I was 5 and kinda hanging out in the kids toy area of the lobby. 40 years ago a popular toy was the wood bench that you would fit different shaped articles in and then bop it with a hammer to get them through the opening. As I was looking trying to get a full set (communal toys are often incomplete, remember that phrase) There were about 3 different "sets" but none were complete, so I decided to make a set, and was able to save one piece. There was a circle shape in the 'bench' but no dowel, there was however a star shaped dowel that would fit within the confines of the shape. It worked, the other kid in the area said, "You fixed it! Can I play with it?" I handed it over, went and sat down, and waited for my turn in the doctors office. To the kid it worked, to me it did also, just not correctly. <br />
<br />
Was I looking for a correct fit? No, I know the sacrifices and the love of my family that raised me. I also knew the shortsightedness and quick fix mentality of the family that abandoned me. Please do not be offended, the truth is the truth, and no amount of political correctness will reveal more truth than the blunt honest truth. Just like communal toys, this communal child was incomplete. I do not know why, but I knew the difference between a volunteer (the family that raised me) and an obligation (the family that abandoned me) I knew and saw through my friends and family that there was something a little more that there was blood in the game, And whether real or imagined I thought that the bloodline made a difference.<br />
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The first and second searches were wrong time, wrong place types of deals, I was often hooked up with "free or low cost persons" who guaranteed contact, but ignored the basic non-identifying information, often telling me "your mother's name was princess snowflake, and your father was Shaka Zulu" or something that ridiculous. It was an ever frustrating experience, and although I do not fault people for making a living, I didn't think that someone should charge an illegitimate child to find out who his parents were. Really, hasn't the child been through enough? One of the pieces of information mentioned the birthmother had moved to New York. So 6 months ago, I joined the NY group. I was helped by several people most notably and most helpful Diane Harman-Hoog. <br />
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The secret to the search is fresh eyes and pointed questions. If you paint a government worker into a corner with information about your search, they will often reveal more than just the simple information that you requested. One of those things was a psychological profile done 9 months after my birth. The psychiatrist listed my first and middle name on the evaluation, and mothers maiden name. This was huge information, because in prior searches the birth mother and birthfathers last names were transposed. The middle name was also key, because it was the same as the birthfather's middle name. Through the process of elimination, we were able to crosscheck hundreds of bits of information and narrow it down to 12 names on the birthmothers side, and 4 on the birthfathers side. Then 2 months passed with nothing. Two months compared to 43 years seems like not a lot of time, and it wasn't but it felt like an eternity. We had a stalemate, then a searcher who seemingly was throwing spaghetti off the wall e-mailed me the name of my birthfather, I looked at my notes, and the state of birth, the date of birth, the age of his father and time of death all were wrong, But the middle name was right. So I called for a week, he finally answered, I believed that he knew who I was, and when he answered he confirmed it. From him we got the first name of the birthmother and were able to close the search in about 12 hours time. <br />
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What did I hope to get out of this? I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I wanted to be wanted by the ones who were supposed to have wanted me. So that would be a fairy tale ending. We live in the real world sometimes its great, sometimes its less than that. For now I'll have to be content with the star shaped dowel through the circle. I know plenty of people got their noses out of joint when Rules of Engagement made a comment about "used babies" I didn't. That statement didn't offend me, in fact it kinda described how I felt. Thank you for your time, and good luck.</i> <br />
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Greg found his birth father with one adopted son and a daughter in Utah. Greg particularly feels pain that his father rejected him but yet went on to adopt another son. From my point of view, perhaps it was an attempt to make amends in some sort of way.<br />
<br />
His mother was a nurse and was tracked down through rather sketchy information on his non-ID as well as through a news article about her getting her nurses cap at a ceremony. He also has two male siblings from her. She died in 1990. Greg was able to get a picture of her by asking the nursing school if they had one and they were kind enough to send it. She was a beautiful woman.<br />
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The most recent development was that Greg was able to find her nursing school roommate and learn a little more about his mother. She was also found through a news article.<br />
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Please note that Greg kept up the search despite the fact that his parents had two of the most common last names which slowed us down for quite a while. He will always grieve for the mother he never knew and for what might have been.<br />
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As a curious last note, Greg lives quite near me, far from where he was born in California. I used to live even closer to him when he was a young boy and his soccer team played my son's soccer teams. I hope to actually meet him one day.<br />
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Greg was willing to come out and tell us just how he felt and feels in the hope that other adoptees will identify with his feelings and also know that many searches are solved.. I would like a birth parent to share their feelings as well in a future blog.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-80072477289241893532010-11-06T09:15:00.000-07:002010-11-06T09:15:39.247-07:00Help Emergency Locators Find Matches for Medical EmergenciesEMLA is a volunteer organization that specializes in helping find family members when a medical emergency is at hand. Some examples are when a donor is needed or when an adoptee has a medical condition and the physicians need family medical information.<br />
Thanks to short sighted legislation that seals adoption records from even adult adoptees, 5 million or more Americans do not have a family medical history available.<br />
One of our own Search Angels has just found her birth sister and has learned that her birth brother died from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). In Googling the hereditary component of the disease I found the following write up<br />
<br />
<i>Q. Is ALS hereditary?<br />
A. ALS is directly hereditary in only a small percentage of families. The majority of patients with adult-onset ALS (90%) have no family history of ALS, and present as an isolated case. This is called sporadic ALS (SALS), and although there is likely a genetic predisposition involved, SALS is not directly inherited in a family. Rare exceptions are when familial ALS (FALS) is masked due to an incomplete family history, such as if the patient is adopted or the patient's parents died at a young age. The remaining 10% of persons with ALS have a close second family member with ALS, which is referred to as familial ALS (FALS).<br />
Currently the best tool to distinguish between SALS and FALS is the family history. A neurologist or genetic counselor will ask whether anyone else has ever been diagnosed with ALS, and if anyone else in the family had progressive walking or speech problems. If so, they will likely ask additional questions to see if the health problems were related to ALS or any number of other causes. They will also inquire about the ages that family members passed away to see if any close relatives passed away at a young age, meaning that a long health history is not available. It is very common to have limited information on one's family, but most families can still be reassured since the majority of instances of ALS are not hereditary. Older relatives are often good sources of family history information, and medical records can often be obtained with the help of a hospital's medical release form.<br />
</i><br />
There are many diseases where the hereditary component is much more crucial to treating or diagnosing the disease.<br />
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Adoptees should not have to die because they were adopted. Help EMLA underwrite the costs of subscription databases by buying their cookbook. If like me, you do not cook, Joan, the moderator of several reunion adoption lists, suggests that you buy it to give to your lawmakers who have refused to pass adoption record reform laws. It contains not only recipes but heartwarming reunion stories.<br />
<br />
EMLA posts this information in their flyer;<br />
<i>The Angel Food Volume II, our second cookbook of favorite recipes from the<br />
EMLA! Search Angels, associates, & friends, is the perfect gift for your<br />
family members & friends. The Angel Food II cookbook contains over 700<br />
delicious recipes, cooking tips, successful reunion stories & more. 100% of<br />
proceeds from the sale of this cookbook go to funding AFS/EMLA<br />
<http://adoption- free-search. org/> http://adoption- free-search. org/ so we<br />
can continue to help adoptees and birth parents with medical issues. </i><br />
<br />
<br />
The cookbook can be purchased by emailing<br />
npeuraharju@yahoo.com<br />
The cost of the cookbook is $10.00 plus $5.00 postage in the US.<br />
<br />
All money goes directly towards covering the cost of databases and other computing services. Our Search Angels on many boards use these services to help you. Please help us continue to afford it. All of the search angels donate money as well as their time. Please contribute so we can provide these and more outstanding services for youAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-52758210802862329592010-11-04T06:57:00.000-07:002010-11-04T07:00:53.233-07:00A Thrilling Search - Patty's SearchPatty has been searching for her birth family for several years. All her life she had wondered about her birth family. She loves her adoptive family, but for an adoptee, there often seems to be the feeling of a disconnect in one’s life. Any one who does genealogy should understand this need to know, but with an adoptee it is even more urgent as an adoptee has no family medical history to report. In the area of something less tangible, unless an adoptee has children, they have never seen someone who looks like them. Remember the thrill you had when you saw a picture of Great-Aunt Sarah and realized you had her smile or the inner grimace when you had Uncle Roscoe’s ears? Those identifications are all part of the human experience that defines our existence. In addition, in most states, an adoptee has no access to an original birth certificate or to information that identifies her origins. There are a number of legal ramifications involved, but why should this significant minority of 5 – 6 million people be denied what every other citizen has?<br />
Patty like hundreds of other people discovered Search Angels. These are people who donate many hours of their time and other resources to reuniting families separated by adoption. Patty was able to get some information on her birth mother’s name and eventually a possible birth name for her father. She contacted a few close relatives of her mother’s and was shocked to find that she was born in prison. An aunt by marriage told her that she had heard that her mother killed a man in a poker game and was sentenced to 5 years in the Kentucky Women’s Correctional Institute. It turned out that her mother had died at the age of 66 in Indiana.<br />
Patty felt discouraged and even though she had become a leading Search Angel herself, she dropped her own search to help hundreds of other people find their birth families. At the same time, her mind kept coming back to her own search. Like many adoptees, she had fear about what she would find. She would make jokes about what she had found and used the experience to assure others tht she understood and that knowing was better than not knowing.<br />
In the world of adoptions, there is such a thing as a non-identifying document. While the people who are entitled to them vary from state to state and the content is dependent on the state laws as well as the mood of the person who extracts the information, this is a document available to many adoptees. Patty had always advised people she worked with to order theirs, but Patty had never had the nerve to order her own. A few months ago she did just that and was shocked and disappointed that it contained far less information than she already knew. This made no sense since she was born in state custody. She shared that information with her fellow search angels and one of them decided that Patty needed some answers.<br />
Search Angel Diane is a genealogist who came into the field of adoption reunion through trying to find a cousin’s birth child. She is passionate about the belief that adoptees are not treated as full citizens in this country. She donates time and money to rectifying this. Diane says:<br />
I had no idea what I was getting into when I started looking for my cousin’s child. The impact of sealed records on a person’s life had never occurred to me. When I heard of people dying because they could not get their medical history, stuck in another country because the amended birth certificate given to adoptees had different information than the person’s government file, unable to participate in genealogy and to identify with the people that made up her past, I knew I had to use my computer research skills to fix what I could.<br />
Diane had become a good on-line friend of Patty’s and when she saw the comments Patty made about her non-non-ID that she got that was basically a form letter with not much filled in, she decided that she needed to at least try to help.<br />
She volunteered to see what she could do. She started by doing a family tree that went back many generations on Patty’s mother’s side. Her people were some of the first people to settle in Kentucky. They came from North Carolina and Virginia. Patty’s son was able to find more information about her European roots as well. After she got the mother’s side done, she made a list of possible relatives who were still alive. She also cross checked with existing family trees on ancestry.com and low and behold found a Cousin Billy also doing a genealogy on this family. They corresponded and he went to the library and sent them some news articles on the crime, on deaths in the family, a list of how all the family died who were buried in the Baker Baptist Cemetery in Crittenden County Kentucky, family pictures, marriage licenses for great grandparents, etc. Cousin Billy’s great grandfather and Patty’s great grandfather were brothers.<br />
So the next day he went to the library, and when Patty and Diane opened up an email clipping he sent they were astounded. It was the article on Patty’s mom’s trial. She claimed that the man attacked her and that it was self defense. One of Patty’s birth brothers, Donald was a witness. She did get 2 years in prison for killing the man instead of the 5 years Patty had heard from a relative. The sweet part for Patty was that the article ended saying that the lawyers were trying to get an appeal approved so that the baby would not be born in prison. The other really, really important part is that the article gave her mother’s name as Kathleen Campbell and said that it was her third marriage. Patty had thought her father’s name was Campbell, but we had no proof. So not only was that the case, but her parents were married. The next email had an article on the death of Patty’s toddler sister a few years previously and listed the family members so we had a list of siblings. (attachments enclosed at end of article)<br />
So here we were, her mother was not a hardened criminal, her father was a Campbell and Patty’s brother Donald was a witness and could also confirm Patty’s dad’s full name.<br />
So we were riding high. I looked up her brother and he had died last year. He lived less than an hour from Patty. He looked like a wonderful man and his memorial site had comments from grandchildren about how they would miss him. This was an awful shock to Patty as you can imagine. She had known he had existed but had delayed contacting him. We were fortunate that his obituary listed family members. Marianne found Facebook accounts with pictures for Donald’s daughter who is the spitting image of Patty and for Patty’s birth sister, Sandra. Sandra looks more like Patty’s mother. The only person Patty had ever seen who looked like her was her granddaughter.<br />
Patty had to wait a few days before contacting them as her emotions are fragile at the moment. However, Sandra will be able to confirm which Campbell and then she will have all of her birth family as well as genealogy. Sandra even had a picture of herself and Donald as little kids on her Facebook page.<br />
Patty’s mother died in 1993 and we feel so sad for her. She had a hard life but I have talked to a number of family members who have said that she was a considerate person sending Christmas presents and crocheting a scarf for her sister. As the Search Angel, think Patty would have liked her. Patty is a fun loving and generous soul which I expect she got from both her birth mother and adoptive family. If Patty’s father is still alive he would be 89, so he is probably gone, but she has a large family of siblings and nieces and nephews out there to get acquainted with. <br />
Kat liked what she saw from her point of view of growing up in a poor farmer/coalminer family of what she perceived as the good life and enjoyed drinking, partying and playing cards. She ended her life as a waitress. She had married again and we believe she may have had another son. We are checking on this now.<br />
Patty is also dealing with the fact that there was and is mental illness, such as bi-polar disease in the family as well as the fact that for the last several generations, family members died very young. Even the ones who had left the environment seem to have been affected. As of her great-grandfather’s generation, the life span seems to be what one might expect for a family in this environment, but after that point, the age of death is low with many childhood deaths. However, now she has that information and her new found Cousin Billy has been finding death certificates so we can see the cause of death. Now her doctors can be told. Billy has our honorary Search Angel award for his willing assistance.<br />
So the moral is don’t delay contacting people and if one approach does not work try another. I have solved several searches recently through those family trees so check them out.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-36073926364861801212010-08-27T22:31:00.000-07:002010-08-29T03:26:35.604-07:00Search and Support Online Groups - TheRegistry - YahooGroupThere are many groups with Search Angels or other resources to help you with your search. Perhaps the best is <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theregistry">theregistry</a> on yahoogroups. Theregistry was started in April 1999. It is an interactive email group. People post encouraging messages, information and queries to the whole group. The messages are delivered to the subscriber's mailbox.<br />
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In addition to the message forum, the site includes folders to hold informational and reference files, albums for photos and other features. Messages, files and photos published here are only visible to the members of the group.<br />
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<br />
The Registry was started by a lady who called herself Angry Grandma. Grandma was an adoptee, and found her mother. She took care of her birthmother till she died. At that time, she turned the group over to Jan known as Grandma Jan. That was in 2006.<br />
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Jan is a first mother, and started to run the group. At which time, Joan offered to help. She gladly accepted Joan's assistance. Joan was in the background doing things for the board, and members, till Jan became ill, and wasn't able to work the group. Jan isn't able to participate and then Joan became the Head person of the group. She has three groups, one is <a href="http://www.nyadoptees.com/">www.nyadoptees.com</a> the other is Arizona Search _support at yahoo. Joan appreciates the yahoo format, for messages, and files, and links. This best helps members with information and guidance. <br />
Joan states that "<i>in the meantime, our wonderful angels have been helping people find their loved ones. </i><
<i>We have angels from all different states. Some run their own sites, and help those that come to our board, to get the best guidance for the states they know. Some Angels will help with all states.</i><br />
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<i>We network with other groups. The top goal is to reunite people. </i><br />
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<i>I hope our new presence on Facebook, will help others to get the search help they need.</i><br />
<i>We have more plans to expand so people can find us and again get the search and support help they need.</i><br />
<i>Since you are reading this, it could be helpful if you would share information about us on your Fb pages. </i><br />
<i>There are a lot of people who want to search and don't know where to begin. .You might help someone else without knowing it by sharing our group name and contact information.</i>"<br />
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In November 2006, Joan E took over as moderator of the group, she screens each person who tries to join and answers their initial questions and advises them to sign up on isrr.com and their state mutual consent registry. There are now almost 3000 members in this group. The majority are silent lurkers, but some of the best Search Angels are associated with this group.<br />
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Joan continues to screen each message that is posted to be sure that personal information like phone numbers is not published to the list, but rather exchanged privately among members.<br />
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Group resources include files on how to proceed with searches and an explanation of the laws that pertain to reunion searches for each state.<br />
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Group members solve 4 or 5 cases per month. Each search can take from an hour to months or years. Group members take a great deal of pride in their work and keep confidential information secret. Being a Search Angel, involves emotionally moving in with the family for a while and becoming one of them and thinking like them. The Search Angels have a high standard of professionalism. There are two style of Search Angels, the loner, introspective type like I am and the more gregarious type who solve problems in groups. No matter which category the Search Angel falls into we still share information and network our resources.<br />
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Joan has just set up two Facebook accounts : <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114845758531166">Looking For</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/group.php?gid=147104205312634">SearchAngelCentral </a>to help get the word out that there is help out there. Please join <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theregistry">theregistry</a> if you are looking for help and support.<br />
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There are also regional support groups on Yahoo groups such as <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nyadoptees">nyadoptees</a> (also moderated by Joan E) to help with those very difficult NY searches.<br />
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There is also a very active group for <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nwasr">Pacific Northwest Searches</a>,Their moderator writes -<br />
<i>In the 90s, there was an online group focused on WA searches called "Washington State Triad" mailing list. There were many in that group that helped with searches before the term 'search angel' came into being. Members of this group were activists, some were involved in getting the OBC unsealed in Oregon, then made several attempts to get laws changed in WA. This original group is also responsible for getting Spokane County to release non-id because until some group members went and had a face-to-face visit with the then County Clerk, Spokane had refused to release non-id. Now days they give some of the best info around.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>In the early 2000s, that group started dying down most likely from burn out so another WA adoptee started this group in Sept of 2002. The original name of the group was 'Washington State Adoption Search' and as the name implies, the group was focused on searches in WA.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>For the first couple of years, this group had pretty light activity. Then in Dec 2004, BrendaO joined the group and got the group really fired up (YEA!) because of Brenda's enthusiasm to help others with their searches. Kind of fun to go look at the group's home page and look at the "Message History" and see the spike in posts from Dec 2004 onward. : ) </i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>In 2005, we started requiring potential members to fill out a pretty long application before they could be accepted into the group. There were several reasons for this:</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>1. We wanted to know all the basics of someone's search so we could provide them with 'next steps.'</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>2. We only wanted people in the group that we could really help.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>3. We only wanted legit people in the group that were connected to adoption. We wanted to prevent any scammers, paid searchers, trouble makers, etc, from joining the group. So far this has worked well and we really do have a great group of people in this group and many feel like family. : )</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>In Spring 2006, I was helping a long-time adoptee friend of mine with her Oregon search. I knew nothing about searching in Oregon other than adoptees can get their OBC and I was fortunate to find Donna and Connie (HOORAY!!). They joined this group so then this group was able to help with both WA and OR searches. Because there were no groups focused on helping with Idaho, Montana, Alaska, we started taking on those searches, too.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>In April of 2007, we changed our name from "Washington State Adoption Search" to the current name "Northwest Adoption Search and Reunion" to better reflect all the areas we are able to help with.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>For the last 3-4 yrs, we've had a lot of search angels from around the country join the group so we have experts for all over the place. Because we happen to have some of the best California searchers in the group now, we are also able to help them. So I've been thinking we might have to change the name of our group once again to something that includes 'West Coast' or who knows what!</i><br />
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Don't struggle blindly in the dark, get some support, some help and find friends. Most important find a Search Angel.<br />
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Good luck with your search.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-46317259207286856932010-08-25T07:10:00.000-07:002010-08-25T07:12:15.531-07:00The WIlliams Sisters Believe They Have Found Sister #5Excitement was in the air yesterday as the Williams family got ready to appear on Good Morning America to tell the viewers about finding each other and about the search for Sister #5. (See previous blog from June 18 .) At the last minute GMA canceled their appearance. Apparently they had hoped to find sister #5 and present her in the course of the show. Well, I could have told them that it was not that easy!<br />
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In the late 50s, something had happened to rip apart the family. The only son, who was 11 months old died after a 2 hour illness. It has been speculated that the mother then suffered from a mental breakdown but we will never know. All the children were born at one year intervals and in different states. They were all put for adoption in Monroe Louisiana and adopted separately. Some had received what is referred to as a non-identifying information from the state and in two cases it said that there was another sister born in 1957. That is what we thought we knew. One non-ID gave a birth date of 2/21/1957.<br />
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Needless to say the family and all their supporters were crushed when GMA canceled their appearance. It had seemed such a good way to try to reach the fifth sister. However, <u>USA Today</u> picked up the information that morning and had an article on them. That is where sister #5 saw it and called Sister #2 Betty Robeson.<br />
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I received a call from the stunned family right after that. I asked for more Search Angels to check this woman out. They flew to the rescue and confirmed that she was a nurse, had gone to high school where she said she did and had a sister who attended the same high school and identified her mother.<br />
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We had planned to send someone to the hospital where she worked to take her picture on their phone and send it to us, bur she beat us to it and sent one herself. This is the picture that she sent -<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZI80jiCutkMa_ZQhTw-lVQy3RnNkt83cxRoZWtRryMGSxTuQ2YupRrFFY7N0k2jQ08Uf9opCWvP_gmJSEFjJytOek5Em90_4mpZDsdajTSf_e-FtIFnWwKe8E1FsduKZh4kCjrLBpkr8/s1600/sister+%235.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZI80jiCutkMa_ZQhTw-lVQy3RnNkt83cxRoZWtRryMGSxTuQ2YupRrFFY7N0k2jQ08Uf9opCWvP_gmJSEFjJytOek5Em90_4mpZDsdajTSf_e-FtIFnWwKe8E1FsduKZh4kCjrLBpkr8/s320/sister+%235.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38IV1dUcxke35PmZE8F4RXRNqTjF26PApQhxrAF11e9e3QiSM5kD-_SZZCMcW9atLyY3N-jX9hYf6HkdGFtTdnn4ckN9P9L03xN1Xq7zRFTcKGKMG9R7_CkE5_WZdtJecquBjTWTZotg/s1600/sandra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38IV1dUcxke35PmZE8F4RXRNqTjF26PApQhxrAF11e9e3QiSM5kD-_SZZCMcW9atLyY3N-jX9hYf6HkdGFtTdnn4ckN9P9L03xN1Xq7zRFTcKGKMG9R7_CkE5_WZdtJecquBjTWTZotg/s320/sandra.jpg" /></a></div>The top picture is sister #5 , the bottom one is sister #4, Sandra taken on a phone a the hotel yesterday evening..<br />
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Here is a quick paste up of sister #5 on top of the reunion picture from June.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWRiwONiFlbRkKpNX6npscJmenTr4YtxJ4r2XRuZpV5gEJDOYM-nlcJJNNG2vU1ZZZItJJhLyTSUXoueK4iuds6TltwLGZ7STFDA8tAnts7_ZYXAbR8BaBOx3xVaiy4axBQFpVQ31kRgs/s1600/williams+sisters+reunion3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWRiwONiFlbRkKpNX6npscJmenTr4YtxJ4r2XRuZpV5gEJDOYM-nlcJJNNG2vU1ZZZItJJhLyTSUXoueK4iuds6TltwLGZ7STFDA8tAnts7_ZYXAbR8BaBOx3xVaiy4axBQFpVQ31kRgs/s320/williams+sisters+reunion3.jpg" /></a></div>She seems to check out. The family is requesting a DNA test to be sure.<br />
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As all the Williams family is, she appears to be very nice and with a good sense of humor. They were even comparing feet on the phone last night. We had been planning and sharing on Skype when they placed a call back to Sister #5. What a privilege to be part of this event!<br />
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I am leaving it to the family to name the sister, but I am so happy for them and will be holding my breath waiting for the DNA test,<br />
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This is a wonderful example of how perseverance, planning and publicity pays off.<br />
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Congratulations to this great family. Sister #5, you are one lucky galAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-86551161939161970602010-08-18T08:32:00.000-07:002010-08-18T08:32:25.783-07:00Thinking Outside the BoxOften searching requires creativity.<br />
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When searching for a person on Facebook, try searching for all the possible relatives listed on various lookup sites as well. You may find family pictures or other information that you can use. In fact, unless it is a really popular surname, try searching on just the surname and go grazing for information.<br />
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I am doing an mixed ethnicity search at the moment and the family pictures are very important as we investigate one possible person after another.<br />
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Do the same thing when getting the possible relatives on one of the many lookup sites like http://www.usa-people-search.com. Look up every possible relative. Some times you may happen on to a gem of information. Do thorough searches on everyone listed.<br />
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When searching on ancestry.com, think of all the ways you can stretch the information. If you find someone in public records, refine your search and search using just the address that person lived. You may find out who else lived there.<br />
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Sometimes you need to go up a generation and come back to the generation you are interested in. Be sure to check the obituaries that ancestry.com has on line. While you are it, use the family tree, photos and other tabs that come up with your hits. Although the family trees will not typically show living people, sometimes they indicate "Living" and then the last name of descendants.<br />
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Check Classmates and check their new yearbook section. You never know!<br />
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If you are not finding someone under a birthdate that you have, try just the year and month.<br />
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If your search is for a woman who married, look in pipl.com also for the maiden name. Legal records and old addresses may still be accessible.<br />
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Speaking of legal records. Many of the states have online searchable court record databases. Google "search New Mexico court records" for example. In some states this includes divorces and or marriages that took place with a judge.<br />
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Much of what you are looking for is in free sources. However, there are a number of useful sites. No one can subscribe to all of them so join a group like theregistry on yahoogroups.com. There you can ask for people to look things up for you. There are many such online groups.<br />
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Here are some of the paid subscription sites I use. I am sure I will leave some off by accident. Some to these sites may also be available through your public library free if you have a library card.<br />
Http://www.ancestry.com<br />
http://newspaperarchive.com<br />
http://mylife.com (if you are looking for a number of people)<br />
http://genealogybank,com<br />
http://www.peoplefinders.com<br />
http://www.classmates.com<br />
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I hope this will help someone. I also want to post the names of some of the best volunteer search angels I know. These are women with high principals, networking in place and excellent skills.<br />
Patty Drabing<br />
Priscilla Sharp<br />
Michelle Gross<br />
Diana Iwanski<br />
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There are many more I will try to name some more over time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-53766899795047049142010-08-02T15:21:00.000-07:002010-08-02T15:21:39.245-07:00Getting Contact InformationOften the hardest part of a search is getting current contact information. Often the online directories lag a couple of years behind. In addition, many people now have cell phones and at this time, we do not have a cell phone directory. I always Google the full name using quotation marks, then first, middle initial and last name and finally just first and last name. You often find someone's name on a club roster or membership list that has been posted online.<br />
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I have a paid subscription to peoplefinders.com. That can give me the phone number, pipl.com and spokeo.com as well as whitepages.com, and 411.com and many similar directories may have it. If you have the address, try a reverse look up on whitepages.com as well as search on the address in Google.<br />
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I have had two finds this past week. The first is a birth daughter and I am still trying to find a good phone number for her. She does have a Facebook account with pictures, but it has not been touched for a few months. So I have the family, she has a birth sibling, trying to send messages to all her facebook friends saying that family is trying to contact her and can they help them. This has worked before.<br />
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The next find, has been many years in coming, with about a year's involvement on my part. This is from the St Louis MO area. Missouri gives detailed non-IDs (non-identifying documents that give general information about the family). They are extremely good at not giving you the details that would make a difference. In this case the adoptee, A, received a non_ID several years ago and we had been working from that. I had discovered with another Missouri case, that a request for a non-ID from the court would provide additional information to that from the adoption agency. A requested another non-ID and it had several pieces of information that pointed us in the right direction. It had ancestry information which we pursued as well as information on which school 3 of the birth mother's siblings went to (they went to a special school for a handicap).<br />
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A found a Facebook site for the school and contacted someone she believed to be in the same graduating class as her uncle. Bingo! A name of a classmate with two similarly handicapped siblings came forth and then A and I spent hours using Skype and looking up all the people with that last name and figuring how they fit in with the non-ID.<br />
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We knew that we had the right person and family, but A was very emotional and petrified to call. She finally has and her mother was very, very receptive and the first thing she told A was that she had always loved her.<br />
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Now I will put together a small family tree for A. She has a large extended family now by birth and adoption.<br />
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I hope that these thoughts give you some ideas for your search.<br />
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As I tell my husband each time, one down and 5 million to go.<br />
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Good luck on your search.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578667953494996379.post-45615748101473057102010-07-25T07:50:00.000-07:002010-07-25T07:50:20.487-07:00Use the Social Media Sites like FacebookI am hearing more and more stories about people finding lost family members including adoptees and birth families on Facebook. I am actually very pleased if the person is younger and might have a MySpace account. Facebook has an application for advanced searching that you can install, but they have not required some of the information you might need to search. MySpace has great search capabilities.<br />
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Despite the lack of good search information and tools, there is a very good chance that someone you are searching for is there on Facebook so brew a pot of coffee or tea, and start looking.In addition to individual accounts there are group or community accounts. A woman who has been looking for a long time for a birth family that included deaf members just had her find on Facebook. She knew the approximate year of graduation of one of the deaf children and which school the children had attended. She contacted a person who would have been in that graduating class on that school's site and asked if the family was known from the characterististics given in the non-ID. After a couple of tries, she got a last name and it has proven to match the family members in the non-ID. SHe should be calling her birth mother today.<br />
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I have found many people for "clients" on Facebook and after I have found them, then gone on to check pictures and family members on their accounts. MySpace lets you search more thoroughly. For example, once you have found all the Bill Williams, you can then filter them by sex, age and location.<br />
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Don't forget Classmates.com. When I have a maiden name for a birth mother I check there first to see if I can find a married name, or if I am looking for someone who may have changed their name. It is very helpful when you know a last name and general age and general area where they might have gone to school. The advanced search on Classmates is quite helpful.<br />
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If you are the one trying to be found, be sure and put yourself on these sites. Include pictures and a little story about your search. Someone may find you this way.<br />
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Good luck with your searchAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01830260908831057459noreply@blogger.com0