Calculating Consanguinity — #Genealogy #Genetic #Internet

Stanczyk learned a new trick! There is software called Wolfram Alpha. It parses your textual question and answers it via its AI/Mathematics engine. The software is similar to smart-assistants like  Siri or Alexa being asked a question, except Alpha coming from Wolfram is really great at math. It also is parsing your typed words. So I mostly used it for math. But, a facebook user told me to use Wolfram Alpha to calculate if our common ancestor indicated kinship. It did not:

My grand-aunt’s husband’s first cousin’s wife

I could try my cousin’s son who just tested his DNA. Do we share a Y chromosome?

Since this jester is indeed male, we do share a Y-chromosome. Our degree of kinship is five (father, grandparents, uncle, 1stcousin,

1stcousin-once-removed). Our blood relationship is 3.125% (1/32). Now the 32 (in 1/32) is derived from the degree of kinship. (1/(2^5))= 1/32= 0.03125= 3.125% . Very cool. Now I don’t need to keep a chart around to calculate my degree of kinship or estimated percentage of dna shared.

Thanks Camille N Greg!

Now some useful notes for you to try. The Wolfram Alpha is an iphone app and its also a web app, runable via a link (URL):

http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=my+uncle%27s+grandson

Notice I took a shortcut. That will hurt the Y-chromosome calculation which depends on gender. Type the following instead:

my father’s brother’s son’s son

Which is the same as:

my uncle’s grandson

Apparently, the shorter form does not lend itself to helping the software determine all genders.

Thinking About @Ancestrydotcom ‘s GEDCOM — #Genealogy, #GEDCOM

Ancestry.com (Twitter: @Ancestrydotcom ) is the proverbial 800 lb (362.87 kg) gorilla in the genealogical archive. You cannot miss him — mostly he’s lovable. So today after you read this blog post, Stanczyk wants you to tweet at him (see Twitter link above). I am hoping the big ape will make some improvements to their software. Hint .. Hint !

A couple of days ago (25-Feb-2013), I ran my PERL program against the GEDCOM file I exported from my family tree on Ancestry.com ‘s  website. That tree, the RootsWeb tree, and this blog are Stanczyk’s main tools for collaboration with near and distant cousin-genealogists (2nd cousins, 3rd, 4th, 5th cousins — all are welcome).

Quick Facts —

1. No invalid tags  – Good
2. Five custom tags – Also Good
3. CHAR tag misused – ANSI [not good]
4. My Ancestry Family Tree uses diacriticals: ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż   in proper nouns [not good]
5. Phantom Notes ??? [really not good]

So, Mr. Ancestry (sir) can you please fix #’s 3, 4, and 5, please?

CHAR –  I think Ancestry should use what is in the standards: ANSEL | UTF-8 | UNICODE | ASCII . I think this is easily do-able (even if all you do is just substitute ASCII).

This is not a picayune, nit-picky, persnickety, or snarky complaint. In fact, it leads right into the next problem (#4 above). Not only does Ancestry export the GEDCOM file as “ANSI”, it strips out my diacriticals too (as a result?). So now I have potentially lost valuable information from my research. For Slavic researchers, these diacriticals can be vital to finding an ancestor as they guide how original name was pronounced and how it might have been misspelled or mistranscribed in the many databases. Without the diacriticals that vital link is lost.

The last criticism is an insidious problem. Every time I exported the GEDCOM, I would get a note on one person in the tree. I would carefully craft the note on Ancestry, but what I received in the GEDCOM file downloaded would be different ???

I reported the problem to no avail and no response. This is not very good for an 800 lb gorilla.

Digging Deeper

I have since gone on to do some experiments and the results may astound you (or not). I copied the NOTE I was getting in my GEDCOM and saved it off to a text file, perplexed as to where it came from, since it was not the NOTE I was editing on Ancestry??? Now I did something bold. I deleted the note from that person on Ancestry and then downloaded the GEDCOM file again. Do you what I got? Wrong! I did not get my carefully crafted NOTE, I got yet another NOTE. I copied that note’s text and repeated my process of deleting the note and downloading the GEDCOM file a 3rd time. This time when I edited my GEDCOM file, I found MY note!!! But where/how did the other two notes come about? Why were there three notes? Why could I see and edit the 3rd note, but only get the first note when I downloaded the GEDCOM file? How did notes 2 & 3 get there? Why did I not get all three notes when I downloaded the GEDCOM? All good questions that I have no answer to. My suspicion is that Ancestry should not allow more than one EDITOR on a tree, other contributors should only be allowed to comment or maybe provide an ability to leave sticky-notes on a person [that does not go into a GEDCOM file]. I do not think the notes were created by their mobile app since I always saw my NOTE (and not the other two notes). I am chalking this up to an Ancestry.com bug and urging others who see strange things in their notes to take deliberate steps to unravel their notes. I hope Ancestry will fix this and let people know. I hope they fix all of items #’s: 3, 4, and 5.

So, my dear readers, I am asking you to tweet to Ancestry (as I will too) and  ask them for bug fixes. Perhaps if enough people tweet at @Ancestrydotcom, they will respond and not give us the cold  gorilla shoulder.

Polish National Archives to post 2.4 Million Historic Church Records — #Genealogy

Stanczyk ‘s position has been overrun! I was trying to write a blog, but the course of events has been running at EXTREME Internet speed so much of this blog post may be “old news” to you — but in case its not, this is very exciting news!

According to a Polish website (The National Digital Library of Poland) …

URL: http://nac.gov.pl/node/682

• By mid-year (2013), they plan to digitize 2.3 Million  historical  (>100 years old) vital records.
• This will happen in two phases: March,  June
• This PDF file (see link) lists 40 pages vital records from MANY parishes (a few synagogues too):
  • http://nac.gov.pl/files/D’ASC1_02_2013v.3.pdf
• It appears the plan is to digitize about 1.37 Million records by March and the remainder (another 1 Milliion) by the end of June.

These are actual church record images! I hope they plan on digitizing records from the Kielce Archive (please do PACANOW, BIECHOW, SWINIARY, BESZOWA, ZBOROWEK, KSIAZNICE and STOPNICA parishes).

Can anyone detail the plans for JUNE yet? Unfortunately, the 1.37 Million records in March are NOT from the KIELCE archive or any parish where Stanczyk’s ancestors resided?

Do not forget about GENETEKA database in the meantime:

• Geneteka Database:  http://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/

Thanks in advance for any answers from our genealogists resident in Poland!

iGoogle is Going Bye-Bye — #RootsTech

Stanczyk is sad. Google is planning on phasing out a service that allows millions of people to personalize its home page with applications such as weather updates and stock quotes. The customization service, known as iGoogle, will be turned off in November 2013. So we have about 16 months to find a similar replacement for these capabilities …

Unless you mainly use iGoogle-mobile which will be retired sooner. The mobile version will be retired at the end of this month, on July 31, 2012. More details/suggestions are here on Google’s site.

If you have been on your iGoogle page you should have seen the following on your page:

Now the reason this jester is sad is that I used this web tool as a search engine and a kind of genealogy aggregator of news/announcements from sources that are very helpful to my personal research or to keeping me informed in general on genealogical matters. It also was a landing page (portal)  for some web widgets that performed useful tricks (date calculators, language translation, etc.).

Long time readers will recall that I recommended they use this tool. So if you use iGoogle let me know. Also please let me know what you intend to do for a work-around. Google won’t you please reconsider keeping the iGoogle tool and if you need a few ideas for making it a hit web app — email me. I have a few ideas.

—Stanczyk

Big Data – Every Minute Of Every Day …

     Every minute of Every day,  you and I and the rest of the Internati produce data, big data in some kind of Internet colony. We email or blog or even a Facebook post or a 140 character tweet. Being genealogists we search databases and post trees with their connections and images like the 1940 US Census pages that hold our family members. And every day we post more data to the Internet. That is what the picture shows.

The pace of Big Data is increasing too.

Who backs up the Internet? Who archives the web? The “Wayback Machine” seems to record our civilization’s record so this work may last as long as Babylon’s cuneiform or Egypts hieroglyphs. Or will it? I know the Library of Congress is wrestling with Archival Issues of Digital works.

What is the disaster recovery plan of a sun spot interference or another magnetic burst? Books will survive and be immediately available but what about digital works? How do we backup all of this data exlposion?

Almost Wordless Wednesday – iPhone Organization for Genealogy — #Mobile, #Technology, #Genealogy

Here’s what I am doing with Mobil Tech …

Home Screen

Social Media & Media

Genealogy Page

There’s still 4 more screens  that I’ll spare you from …

On the Genealogy page, notice that  I added Dr Stephen Morse’s One-Step Website to my “home screen” as if it were an app.

I did likewise, for the web page: Yet Another Calendar Calculator.

What do you do with your iOS device?

–Stanczyk

P.S. 

If you follow my blog, you must see the constant churn on my iPhone as my software tools change the way I work.

Wordless Wednesday – Diacritcals/Cyrillic Glyphs On Your iPhone? — #Mobile, #Technology

Here’s what I do …

Diacriticals Under The E

Russian/Cyrillic Keyboard

On the left (above), press & hold down a key like: a, e, o, c, l, n, s, -or-  z, …
On the left (below) is an Internation Keyboard for Russian/Cyrillic characters …

Do you enter diacriticals in your Family Tree?

–Stanczyk

Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach – Pomoc — #Polish, #Genealogy

Stanczyk,

Recently, I asked for help (pomoc) from a genealogy society in Poland (PTG). I asked if anyone in their society (via their forum) could tell me what holdings the, Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach (The Diocessan Archive in Kielce) has for the village of Pacanów.

This is the village of my grandfather, Jozef Elijasz and his parents Jozef Elijasz/Marianna Paluch, and Jozef’s parents: Marcin Elijasz/Anna Zasucha.

I am hoping to visit the Church Archive or to have a Polish genealogist visit the Church Archive in Kielce for me to do some research.

I’ll let my readers know what happens!

Wordless Wednesday – What Do You Do On Your iPhone? — #Mobile, #Technology

Here’s what I do …

Home - 1st Screen -- most used Apps

2nd Screen - Social, Genealogy, & Informed

3rd Screen - Some Tools & Some Classes

There’s still 3 more screens and part of another that I’ll spare you from …

What do you do on your iPhone?

–Stanczyk

Family Search Website – Free Central / Eastern European Records – #Genealogy, #Slavic

Stanczyk was checking out the family search  European Holdings for Slavic record counts / images to see what progress was made up through 2011.

It is good if your heritage includes the Germanic peoples or locales which were previously under their dominion. Do not get me wrong. I am thrilled that there  now over a million Polish records/images online or indexed at FamilySearch.org.

Country	Records	Percentage
Austria	196,940	0.37
Czech Republic	85,469	0.16
Germany	50,998,675	96.98
Hungary	Browsable Images Only	0.00
Poland	1,002,155	1.91
Russia	303,146	0.58
Slovakia	Browsable Images Only	0.00
Ukraine	14,143	0.03
TOTALS:	52,586,385

We have the ability to better. Please consider volunteering as an indexer. You can start and stop and start again, your  volunteering at any time. Find out more at indexing.familysearch.org. Every little bit helps. Stanczyk managed to do over 150 records this year. Genealogy is collaborative. Helping each other, we also help ourselves. Please pitch in — make this part of your Random Act of Genealogical Kindness efforts.

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #5 Online Databases in Poland

Stanczyk is a Data Architect by trade. So if it is one thing I love it is databases. This posting is all about some online Polish Databases. The Parish Church Books is a website that collects and indexes and keeps it up to date . It points you to the website, but it is written from a Poland point of view. So I have decoded the website index and made them into LINKS (URLs) so you can click on them and go to the resource from their list. Enjoy!

Parish Church Books – http://www.ksiegi-parafialne.pl/

The above Polish website (from Poland and in Polish language) attempts to gather in one place index all interesting projects where Church Parish Indexes are being collected in online databases. This page is updated often. This makes it an excellent website for your bookmarks/favorites (or add it to delicious).

Index of Databases

BASIA – http://www.basia.famula.pl/en/

Geneteka – http://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/

Lubgens.Eu – http://lubgens.eu/portal.php

Pomorskie TG – http://www.ptg.gda.pl/index.php/ptgnews/action/basesearch/

The Pomorskie Genealogical Society (Pomorskie TG) website needs some explanation. It has a menu named “PomGenBase“;  Click on menu, then on the submenu, “Search PomGenBase” and click on the final submenu (one of five: Christenings, Marriages, Deaths,  Cemeteries or Monuments) to search.

Poznan Project – http://bindweed.man.poznan.pl/posen/project.php

T.G.Z.Cz. – http://www.genealodzy.czestochowa.pl/pl/start

#Genealogy & #Technology – #1: iGoogle To Keep Tabs On Genealogy –

How do you keep the pulse of the Internet? At present (and for a good while now), there are over a billion websites. You can Google/Bing searches and possibly save the searches for future use or make them a Bookmark/Favorite. That is ok. But I want to go somewhere and see what my agents dug up for me to look at and examine. It is almost a Genealogy Newsletter (ok, but I want more than Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter). But I want it is tailored to my needs and interests. Eastman is broad,  but seldom specific to Slavic (Polish, Russian, Czech, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) research, or to a specific locale: Detroit, Toledo, Buffalo, Philadelphia, etc.

Enter iGoogle. I have been using it for a year or two now and  have steadily tweaked it to my purpose and tastes. iGoogle is what we techies call a customized portal (similar to Yahoo or AOL, but more like My-Yahoo). People may be vaguely aware that Google has more software available than its iconic Search Engine. But where is this software? The Google products are located:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/index.html

iGoogle is near the top (presently second). Ok, so now you register for an account and login to Google and igoogle.com instead of google.com (for both search and portal capabilities). You can use Classic Google or iGoogle (so you are not locked in to the new search portal) and go back and forth. Now you need to add TABs (I pick one per subject: Genealogy, Science, Financial, etc.). So create a “Genealogy” Tab.  Now you can add gadgets or feeds. I have a mix of some of each on my Genealogy TAB. I like to have Google’s Translator gadget and Sirius Genealogy Date Calculator as handy gadgets. Useful tools to my research right at hand.

Next we need to define the blogs or RSS feeds of websites that we need to cull information from on a “regular” basis. Now a blog is just an article (or web log) that an author creates with useful info/data. The RSS thingys are just the Internet’s way of broadcasting to you what has changed at a website, but you must subscribe (no fee). This is how I can stay on top of what is happening elsewhere on the Internet (without intensive googling, web surfing or reading many emails/newsletters or magazines).   HINT: you may want to subscribe to this blog if you are a Polish Genealogist or a genealogist with some Polish ancestors.

OK, I did add Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter to my Genealogy Tab as he does one of the finest newsletters on genealogy. I also subscribe to Tracing The Tribe and many other Polish genealogy websites. Libraries, Genealogy/Historical Societies,  and Archives specific to locations where my ancestors lived are excellent candidates for my Genealogy Portal that I am creating in iGoogle.  Here’s a winning tip, I use what’s changed in Ancestry.com (in my shared area) as a feed. That is the essence. Tailored like a nice suit.

Now left-brain people will thrill that you can arrange your page and set how many lines each feed gets or how many columns you can have (1,2,3 or 4). You can even “skin” your page to improve the esthetics (eye of the beholder). Now I put my feeds up near the top and the gadgets near the bottom, so I do not have to scroll to see info. I do in fact tweak my page periodically to get the most useful feeds near the top or to get rid of feeds that are not useful or are too static (unchanging). Since I am researching ancestors across the ocean, I do have foreign-language websites too (hence Google Translator). Here’s what a finished product looks like ( a partial screenshot) …

So now iGoogle is my Hubble-Space-Telescope into the vastness of the Internet taking snapshots and presenting me a daily synopsis of what is going on far and wide that I may want to apprise myself of. That’s it,  a technological solution to information overload and time management — as this is my window and I make it a discipline to make a quick daily check of what is going on.

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #4 Genealogical Societies in Poland

Stanczyk, continues with his favorite websites in Poland. I hope you speak Polish or at least have mastered using Google Translate .

Pay especial attention to: Polskiego Towarzystwa Genealogicznego (Polish Genealogical Society). They have valuable databases online and their forums have experts, some of whom speak English and generally all of them are friendly and knowledgeable. Stanczyk once found a Polish genealogist who had ancestors from the same villages as mine. This fine lad (Jacek) from Krakow even shared images from church books with me and he was amenable to being a genealogy researcher for me on a trip to an Archive! I also found some distant cousins who traded emails with me on the website’s email facility and that was helpful. One of my grandfather’s cousins was a member of Haller’s Army (aka Blue Army)  and I was able to find his record amongst the fallen in one of their books, which answered why he was no longer found in any US census or in any US death record [since he had died in World War I overseas in Poland’s post WWI battle with Russia]. These snippets of info have been able to enrich my family tree. Finally, they have a database of parishes that is invaluable.

Take a look and see what you find …

Genealogical Societies (Some w/ Heraldic Info)	WebSite
Bydgoskie Towarzystwo Heraldyczno–Genealogiczne	http://www.mok.bydgoszcz.pl/index.php?cid=199
Galicyjskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://www.republika.pl/slucki/gtg.htm
Kaliskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://genealogia.kalisz.pl/
Kujawsko-Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://kptg.pl/
Lubelskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://www.ltg.zg.pl/index.html
MaloPolska Towarzystwa Genealogicznego	http://www.mtg-malopolska.org.pl/index.html
Opolskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://www.otg.mojeforum.net/search.php
Ostrowskiego Towarzystwa Genealogicznego	http://www.otg.xt.pl/
Polskiego Towarzystwa Genealogicznego (Polish Genealogucal Society)	http://genealodzy.pl/changelang-eng.phtml
Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://www.ptg.gda.pl
Śląskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://gento.free.ngo.pl/
Suwalskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://www.mem.net.pl/stg/
Świętokrzyskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne “Świętogen”	http://www.genealodzy-kielce.pl/beta2/index.php
Towarzystwo Genealogiczne Centralnej Polski	http://www.tgcp.pl
Towarzystwo Genealogiczne Ziemi Częstochowskiej	http://www.genealodzy.czestochowa.pl/
Towarzystwo Genealogiczno – Heraldyczne w Poznaniu	http://www.tgh.friko.pl/info.html
Warszawskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne	http://genealogysociety.republika.pl/
Wielkopolskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne „Gniazdo”	http://www.wtg-gniazdo.org/wiki.php?page=Info_English
Heraldic Societies in Poland	WebSite
Polskie Towarzystwo Heraldyczne	http://www.sejm-wielki.pl/
Związek Szlachty Polskiej	http://www.szlachta.org.pl/

Let me know what you find!

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #3 Mapa.Szukacz.pl

To recap, please look at Stanczyk’s little graphic. We have covered genealogyindexer.org, Poland’s Digital Libraries (Biblioteka Cyfrowa), and now number three in our series:  Mapa.Szukacz.pl  .

If you want to trace Polish genealogy a good many skills are required of the researcher. The ability to read a map or a gazetteer is critical. Where is Babcia’s village?  So mapa.szukacz.pl is good for locating today’s existing villages/towns/cities. If you use Google Maps, then the basic concept should be familiar to you. But Stanczyk likes mapa.szukacz.pl because you lookup the village. To lookup a placename you enter the village in the field with the title ‘Miejscowość’ in the pink dialog box with the title, ‘Pokaż na mapie’ (‘Show on Map’). Finally, you press the button named, ‘Pokaż’ (Show). That is it. The village appears, assuming it still exists and you are fortunate enough to spell it correctly. If the placename you entered is a common one, then you may see a list of choices to examine and pick from. That is it and you have located dziadek’s (grandfather’s) home town. Of course, you have probably done some extensive research to get to this point. But now you have the lay of the land of your ancestral village. The radio buttions by ‘Zebliż’ change the zoom of the map; so adjust to your needs. All this is well and good and mostly just like Google Maps, except the ability lookup by name. But there have been a few new tricks added to this wonderful tool.

It already gave you the population (ex. 1275 osób, like for Pacanow). You need not enter the diacriticals. It also gave you woj. ,  pow. ,  and gmina. Which you may think of as  state, county, and township/borrough. Write these down, you will need them over and over again. Sadly, these levels of administration have changed since your grandparent’s time. You also get a postal code and telephone prefix in case you seek out family in the mother country. If that were all it would be a useful tool. But as I said, they have enhanced this web application. There is a valuable drop down named, ‘Przydatne punkty’ (“Useful points’). It only allows you to pick one selection. I find ‘kościoły’ (Churches) and ‘cmentarze’ (Cemeteries) the most useful to a genealogist. A word to the wise. The symbols that pop-up on the map (if any,  at your zoom level) are woefully incomplete. So the church you are seeking may not show, as in my case. But I am hopeful that they will keep adding to his valuable resource. This option is akin to that of ‘search nearby’ in Google Maps. Originally, I did not use Google Maps for Poland or Ukraine because it was woeful in listing villages and its ability to search nearby was no good for countries that did not have English as their primary language. But I see today that those issues have been resolved by Google. But Mapa.szukacz.pl still gives you the population and administration levels and other demographics that Google has yet to provide. Stanczyk does have to praise Google in one way. The ‘little yellow man’ that you can place on most US roads to get a web-cam still panoramic view of the location is replaced with little blue ‘dots’ where you can drop him and see photographs from that spot (Which Pacanow seemed to have many). So I guess you should use both maps.google.com and mapa.szukacz.pl to geo-locate your ancestral village. To get  the spelling correct, perhaps you can use JewishGen’s (also now in ancestry.com) Shtetl Seeker tool to help you get the spelling correct. Alas, that is another useful website for another day….