2019 in Review

2019 is almost done and we're heading into a new decade. Before the year is over, I would like to do a review of my blog posts for the last year. The posts were weekly throughout the year, these are a few of the highlights:

This year there were fewer stories told through a series of posts or in a general theme. In January I started with a series of posts about research and inspiration starting with A Fearful Social History
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-fearful-social-history.html

February 2nd started two related posts about ancestral places with Buildings for Our Families
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/02/buildings-for-our-families.html

In March there were two posts about research in Jersey in the Channel Islands starting with Searching for an Elusive Marriage
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/03/searching-for-elusive-marriage.html

There were DNA related posts throughout the year but April 13 saw the beginning of two related DNA posts starting with
The McPhees - Scots or French? 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-mcphees-scots-or-french_13.html

May 4th - June 15th were my genealogy on the road posts from when I was in Europe. They started with Tenement Tours 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/05/tenement-tours.html
 

From June 22 on, the posts were inspired by my ongoing research, reading, webinar watching and thoughts about the travel I had done. The posts start with Questioning Family Tree Conventions 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/06/questioning-family-tree-conventions.html 

 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you all!

Loyalist or just loyal?

Revolutionary War Soldier

Maybe it was because my ancestor, Charles Tripp, had fought on the side of the patriots in the American War of Independence, but information in a recent webinar called Colonizing Canada caught my attention. The presenter called the members of the Highland Regiments recruited to fight against the Americans, Loyalists. It was my understanding that the Scots who were recruited may have been given land grants because they fought on the side of the crown but they were not Loyalists. In the definitions I had seen, a Loyalist was someone from the thirteen colonies who remained loyal to the crown during the conflict and subsequently settled in Canada.

I also found the information interesting because my personal research included someone who had obtained a land grant in Canada after having been a member of a Highland Regiment. Could he have been one of the 84th Regiment of Foot as was mentioned in the webinar? If so, maybe then, I had an interest in men who fought on both sides in the War of Independence/American Revolution.

Now I am intrigued. This will require a more in depth look to see what information I have already amassed on the line of my Highland soldier, how he fits into the family tree and if anything further can be found. At least I remember that the surname was McNeil and any land grant would have been in Nova Scotia, so I have a starting point. 

UEL definition:

"The United Empire Loyalists were generally those who had been settled in the thirteen colonies at the outbreak of the American Revolution, who remained loyal to and took up the Royal Standard, and who settled in what is now Canada at the end of the war."*

Sources:

*www.uelac.org 

Images:

By Scan by NYPL - https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a20151f8-d3cf-5c25-e040-e00a18066189, Public Domain,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46447639 

DNA Update

Time for a DNA update. It has been a while. Since my last update. I have been keeping my hand in by watching webinars about the latest developments in genetic DNA testing. Recently I watched Which Spot Does X Mark Anyway? X-DNA Testing in Action, a Legacy webinar with presented Debra Smith Renard. I had been noticing the X matches which showed with some of my autosomal matches on FTDNA (Family Tree DNA) and had been wondering how to use them. This webinar was a very good basic primer on how to use that data to figure out which would be the likely family links on my tree as the X match eliminates certain lines.

While electronic education is good, nothing can beat face to face events and this week I attended a talk about DNA Painter. It reminded me that I really should start to use this site for more than their shared CM (centimorgan) tool. Another DNA related group that I attend is a DNA discussion group. Many of the people in the group are really into researching their DNA and have explored different sites. Gedmatch is a popular one. I signed up for Gedmatch a while ago but only had a few responses so nothing much came of it. I thought maybe putting a GEDCOM on there, so that my family tree could be visible to interested parties, might generate some interest so I did that today and will wait to see if there is any response.

Another new tool that the DNA discussion group is exploring is Genetic Affairs. From the demos I have seen it looks cool in action as the user's family links group together in clusters in front of your eyes. The idea is that you will be able to identify each group by family name. I was very impressed when I saw a novice user demonstrating her clusters and being able to identify most of them with family names. My Heritage has a similar tool on their website for DNA matches so I tried it with my own DNA matches on the My Heritage website. I ended up with a bunch of clusters and had no clue which families were represented or who any of my matches were. I wonder if it would be different if I used the actual Genetic Affairs site and downloaded my Ancestry or FTDNA matches. At least I know who one or two of those matches are.

The bottom line seems to be that I need to spend more time researching my DNA matches and, hopefully, getting some targeted DNA testing done of close relatives so I have more data to play with. I hope I have more to report on my next DNA update