All the best in 2018!

  Hope you all had a great holiday season to round up 2017 with great family time. During the holidays I was able to meet all of my living ancestors, as well as all of my siblings and their kids, so I am definitely satisfied.

What I want to achieve in this blog post is wrapping up last year with the evaluation of my 2017 goal set, so I can improve setting up a more realistic 2018 list.

Let's shortly revise what I set up to:

1. Have a healthy son introduced into the world. 
2. Improve the family tree. This has subgoals as per the latest 2016 balancing blog.
   2.1. Identify 40% of ancestors up to 10th gen - identify 818 ancestors (out of 2046).
   I currently [think I] know 512 of them. This means 306 new ancestors in 2017.
   2.2. Identify half of my paternal grandfather's 7th generation. I.e. 64 ancestors. 
3. Run a Czech series for newbies in genetic genealogy. 
4. Break one or both of my closest brick walls.
   4.1. This includes a sub-goal of gathering as much relevant samples as possible.
   4.2. Work on recombination map and chromosome coverage on paternal side.
5. Test my own children.
6. Start an "Ancestor of the week" feature - were I blog about one of my ancestors.
7. Keep working with my genetic genealogy matches (this includes 23andMe matches and the relevant goal mentioned in the recent 2016 balancing blog).

Let's start with the resounding successes:

1. Have a healthy son introduced into the world. 

Yes! Vitus is not only a great boy (he can already say "daddy"), I was able to deepen the knowledge of my paternal ancestry driven by my first born son - here. 100% complete

2.2. Identify half of my paternal grandfather's 7th generation. I.e. 64 ancestors. 

By very focused work, I was able to just achieve this goal! Yay!

7. Working with genetic matches.

I was definitely active in this direction and was able to map several US cousins to my tree (usually by building their own tree in the process).

On to the partial successes:

2.1. Identify 40% of ancestors up to 10th gen - identify 818 ancestors (out of 2046).

Well, today finds me at 635 ancestors. Some somewhat hypothetical. That is not too bad of a growth from the 512 I had last year (24%). I guess my goal was just too aggressive.

If I want to aim at another 24%, my goal for 2018 would be 788 ancestors.

3. Run a Czech series for newbies in genetic genealogy. 

This was a very small success at the last minute. I ran a blog about the most common Czech DNA test - Genetics and Surnames project.

4. Break one or both of my closest brick walls. 

Based on DNA testing, I now have a candidate father for my great-great-grandfather, Antonin Sula, 1871. The new supposed ancestor is Frantisek Skrejsovsky, 1837.

Further testing will be needed to verify this hypothesis.

The other MPE will be harder to identify, as there is quite heavy endogamy in the Hornacko region, and lack of Czech testers.

5. Test my own children.

This was another last minute save. We sent out my daughters tests to 23andMe on Dec 23rd. It was a pleasant surprise that my 3 year old was able to spit enough (not verified by the lab).

My youngest remains untested. I am kinda on a lookout for FTDNA move to GSA chip...

Total failure:

6. Start an "Ancestor of the week" feature - were I blog about one of my ancestors.

Well the Ancestor of the week is the only thing I have not managed to start in 2017. Hopefully, I can do better in 2018!

With that I am looking forward to the 2018 plan post and hope you all had better success planning your goals than I did.

2017 Goal 2.2 - half of my 7th great grandparents on paternal grandfather's side identified

So 2017 is running to an end and I have barely blogged. As I explained, it was largely due to my 3rd kid and first son being born and generally time being at a premium.

So how did I fare against my goals?
Well I can report at least one success. The research of my paternal grandfather, Emil Krchak.

The goal was to identify half of my 7th great grandparents on Emil's side of the family.
And here is where I am (number of identified Emil's ancestors, generation per line):

While I am already missing two 4th great grandparents, I managed to hit the coveted 64 7th great grandparents. Unfortunately after that, the amount on known ancestors totally plummets...

Why?
[- Forget indices. Obvious, but always a tough one.]
- It is hard to keep fighting the ever increasing number of ancestors.
- The older materials are harder to work with. No parent information even on marriage records, no house numbers, no surnames for wives...
- The instability of surnames. Unfortunately, it seems the surnames are not completely stable any longer around the 17th to 18th century transition.
- There are several surnames, that cover significant portion of a village.
- The deeper we go, the more locations we need to cover, and any move is very hard to track...

Note: these are all Hornacko parish records on actapublica, i.e. Velka nad Velickou [then "Velka"] parish pre-tolerance.

So what do I do to combat the problems above?

1. I maintain a list of all relevant surnames, and try to memorize it well.
   It is just not feasible to go through the same parish book over and over again, with one of few surnames in mind. Going through it once, or few times, with many surnames in mind is more time efficient.
   So how many? I try to cover all known 7th great grandparent surnames. They start to repeat, so this makes it around 38 surnames currently (some unknown, some repeated, some known to be in a different parish).
2. I maintain a pen&paper ancestral index at hand.
   Having a quick reference of my ancestors, with all relevant where & when is indispensable tool.
3. Note down every detail.
   Only by diligent research of every bearer of the surname in the parish can you distinguish the many occurrences of multiple pairs with the same name of husband & wife. Without house numbers, you need to use the indirect information - names of godfathers, alignment of children being born with mother's death.
   Similarly, only this can help you connect your multiple time widowed ancestor wedding information as being about the same person.
4. Patience.
   It takes time. If you are not willing to pull 5 hours of work without obtaining a single new bit of information about your actual ancestors, this approach is not for you.
5. Work on the weddings first.
   It is best to establish the known pairs who made it too adulthood, than decorate them with children. And only at last, fill in the details from the death records.
   The best approach to timeline for me being: generation T weddings first, then generation T+1 kids, then generation T+1 weddings, then T+2 kids and last but not least generation T+2 deaths...
6. Some more patience.
7. Have partners, friends, grandmas or great uncles work with you.
   Unfortunately, I did not succeed in this direction much, but clearly, all of the effort above scales well with people. Get them on board.

Best of luck to anyone, who decides to go for it. You definitely find matches with the wrong parents, descendants of a kid who died at 5 days of age, etc. when you compare your well researched surname results to less systematic research of some cousins. And that feels good.

On the other hand, without the DNA to back the tree up, it is all just a shaky hypothesis.

Goals for 2017

First and foremost: Happy New Year! 🎉🎉🎉 May you all have a very successful 2017 with lot of genealogical successes, uncovered DNA cousins and healthy family members.

A new year is a great time for tidying up and starting afresh with new vigor.

So what are the goals I want to achieve? I have already mentioned some of them in my last two blogs, but I will incorporate those into the overall list with order by importance.

1. Have a healthy son introduced into the world. Yay! This is not strictly genealogical, nor strictly genetical, but taking care of my newborn son will be a great experience in 2017. It will take away some of my free time - so excuse in me in times of silence. Importantly, here comes a huge thank you to my wife, for being such an excellent person and mother. Love you, honey 💖
   
2. Improve the family tree. This has subgoals as per the latest 2016 balancing blog.
   
   2.1. Identify 40% of my own overall ancestors up to the 10th generation. This means identifying 818 ancestors of mine (out of 2046). I currently [think I] know 512 of them. This means identifying 306 new ancestors of mine in the new year 2017.
   
   2.2. Identify half of my paternal grandfather's 7th generation. I.e. 64 ancestors. This is an ambitious plan, as I have not reached 64 ancestors on this level for none of my other grandparents. But it is important to aim high.
   
3. Run a Czech series for newbies in genetic genealogy. (This will probably be Czech only - there is a lot of existing English material and maintaining bilinguality costs a lot of time and energy).
   
4. Break one or both of my closest brick walls. One of my paternal grandmother's great-grandfathers is unknown, as well as one of my paternal grandfather's great-grandfathers. Attacking them with autosomal DNA was the goal from the beginning, so identifying one or both of them would be a tremendous achievement.
   
   4.1. This includes a sub-goal of gathering as much relevant samples from those sides of the family as possible.
   
   4.2. Work on recombination map and chromosome ancestral coverage on my paternal side.
   
5. Test my own children. We have agreed with my wife to test the children, so looking into what's the best option and going through with it is one of the topics of 2017.
   
6. Start an "Ancestor of the week" feature - were I blog about one of my ancestors. I expect only a few of these throughout the year
   
7. Keep working with my genetic genealogy matches (this includes 23andMe matches and the relevant goal mentioned in the recent 2016 balancing blog).

I have more on my mind, but let's keep it at 7. I will try to address each and every one of these goals, with the priority going top to bottom.

How did I fare with my family tree research since starting the blog?

So the very first post on this blog wisely talked about family tree being the number one resource and prerequisite for a genetic genealogists work. We have stressed out how most of our DNA matches are probably 8th followed by 7th cousins. And we need a deep tree for that.

Well, the sad truth is I was more distracted elsewhere (e.g. 23andMe sharing series) and haven't done the progress I hoped for, when writing the initial blog post.

Here comes the comparison table:

gen#	rel	match	#anc/gen	#idd me	#idd mgm	#idd mgf	#idd pgm	#idd pgf
2	gp	1C	4	4	4	4	4	4
3	Ggp	2C	8	8	8	8	7	7
4	GGgp	3C	16	16	15	16	14 (+3)	14
5	3Ggp	4C	32	30	30	32 (+1)	22 (+4)	26 (+1)
6	4Ggp	5C	64	59 (+3)	49 (+1)	38 (+4)	27	32 (+7)
7	5Ggp	6C	128	110 (+6)	21 (+5)	31 (+6)	18 (+3)	4 (+1)
8	6Ggp	7C	256	146 (+11)	6 (+2)	46 (+19)	11 (+4)	0
9	7Ggp	8C	512	74 (+15)	4 (+3)	43 (+15)	10 (+4)	0
10	8Ggp	9C	1024	63 (+25)	1 (+1)	8 (+2)	6 (+4)	0

Thankfully, we have made some progress since the first post, signified by the little + numbers in brackets.

Let's first look at the number of my identified ancestors in the light purple (#idd me) column. Our final goal is to have all of the ancestors identified - for this light purple number to be equal to the darker purple number. Up till 7th generation, we're faring well, but then, the numbers fall of extremely rapidly.

We said most of our matches are likely 8th cousins (blue column) and we have still only identified 74 out of 512 possible ancestors. This clearly shows working with DNA matches is going to be frustrating! We need to improve our tree tree further!

Also, I was only talking about my own numbers, but in the 4 white columns, I have included my grandparent's point of view. This is because I am mostly working with DNA matches from the point of view of my grandparents. Here we can see the 8C level is abysmal. We just can't expect finding any common relatives at all, with the trees being so sparse.

Clearly, while I like the DNA work, it is time to sit by the parish records again, and do some serious heavy lifting. I need to call the target for my paternal grandfather (pgf in the table) again, and focus on it this time.

Let me try to shoot for two goals in 2017:

1. Identify half of my paternal grandfather's 7th generation. I.e. 64 ancestors. This is an ambitious plan, as I have not reached 64 ancestors on this level for none of my other grandparents. But it is important to aim high.
2. Identify 40% of my own overall ancestors up to the 10th generation. This means identifying 818 ancestors of mine (out of 2046). I currently [think I] know 512 of them. This means identifying 306 new ancestors of mine in the new year 2017.

All in all, I will try to keep active with the blog but focus on tree building efforts.

We begin!

  I always thought about maintaining a genealogy or genetic genealogy blog, aimed especially to educate the Czech and Central European genealogist. But also helping everyone fighting with this difficult topic. Additionally, I often find myself wanting to add something to the discussions and idea going around the internet, without a proper channel.

  Today, I want to start with something, every genetic genealogist should put at the front of his efforts. And that is his family tree.

  What we often hear from the testing companies, is 3rd cousin this, 4th cousin that, but the reality of our matches is different. We can visit http://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics to see, that even with conservative cousin count estimate, we are likely to have more 8th genetic cousins than 7th genetic cousins that 6th genetic cousins and so forth.

What this means for us, genetic genealogists? If we want to find common ancestors with our matches, we need to actually work on our trees! And firmly deep at that. 8th cousins are at the 7 great grandparents level, meaning we have 512 of these ancestors, which amounts to 1022 ancestors including all previous generations from parents up.

For two genetic genealogist, to be able to compare their most likely type of cousin, 8th cousin - they would both need to have 1022 correct ancestors in their trees and compare them.

This goal is probably not feasible in the Czech republic, due to typical time where records fail to be available (end of 17th century). Still I want to be able to track my progress of this goal, and blog seems like a perfect medium.

Let's do this from the perspective of my grandparents first, and then one for me. I wrote a script that pulls this analysis out of GEDCOM, it is not perfect, but being a single ancestor off here and there won't make or break this statistics.

Maternal Grandmother Anežka Kočíbová, 1935, gedmatch ID# M789839

gen#	rel	~DoB	match	#anc/gen	#idd/gen	%idd/gen	#anc	#idd	%idd
1	p	1907		2	2	100.00%	2	2	100.00%
2	gp	1873	1C	4	4	100.00%	6	6	100.00%
3	Ggp	1838	2C	8	8	100.00%	14	14	100.00%
4	GGgp	1806	3C	16	15	93.75%	30	29	96.67%
5	3Ggp	1778	4C	32	30	93.75%	62	59	95.16%
6	4Ggp	0	5C	64	48	75.00%	126	107	84.92%
7	5Ggp		6C	128	16	12.50%	254	123	48.43%
8	6Ggp		7C	256	4	1.56%	510	127	24.90%
9	7Ggp		8C	512	1	0.20%	1022	128	12.52%

Maternal Grandfather Jan Musil, 1927, gedmatch ID# M396921

gen#	rel	~DoB	match	#anc/gen	#idd/gen	%idd/gen	#anc	#idd	%idd
1	p	1899		2	2	100.00%	2	2	100.00%
2	gp	1860	1C	4	4	100.00%	6	6	100.00%
3	Ggp	1829	2C	8	8	100.00%	14	14	100.00%
4	GGgp	1799	3C	16	16	100.00%	30	30	100.00%
5	3Ggp	1767	4C	32	32	100.00%	62	62	100.00%
6	4Ggp		5C	64	34	53.13%	126	96	76.19%
7	5Ggp		6C	128	35	27.34%	254	131	51.57%
8	6Ggp		7C	256	23	8.98%	510	154	30.20%
9	7Ggp		8C	512	25	4.88%	1022	179	17.51%

Paternal Grandmother Irena Moravcová, 1932, gedmatch ID# M425590

gen#	rel	~DoB	match	#anc/gen	#idd/gen	%idd/gen	#anc	#idd	%idd
1	p			2	2	100.00%	2	2	100.00%
2	gp		1C	4	4	100.00%	6	6	100.00%
3	Ggp		2C	8	8	100.00%	14	14	100.00%
4	GGgp		3C	16	11	68.75%	30	25	83.33%
5	3Ggp		4C	32	18	56.25%	62	43	69.35%
6	4Ggp		5C	64	27	42.19%	126	70	55.56%
7	5Ggp		6C	128	15	11.72%	254	85	33.46%
8	6Ggp		7C	256	7	2.73%	510	92	18.04%
9	7Ggp		8C	512	6	1.17%	1022	98	9.59%

Paternal Grandfather Emil Krchák, 1930, no autosomal data

gen#	rel	~DoB	match	#anc/gen	#idd/gen	%idd/gen	#anc	#idd	%idd
1	p			2	2	100.00%	2	2	100.00%
2	gp		1C	4	4	100.00%	6	6	100.00%
3	Ggp		2C	8	8	100.00%	14	14	100.00%
4	GGgp		3C	16	14	87.50%	30	28	93.33%
5	3Ggp		4C	32	25	78.13%	62	53	85.48%
6	4Ggp		5C	64	25	39.06%	126	78	61.90%
7	5Ggp		6C	128	3	2.34%	254	81	31.89%
8	6Ggp		7C	256	0	0.00%	510	81	15.88%
9	7Ggp		8C	512	0	0.00%	1022	81	7.93%

Now it is clear, there is a lot of work to be done, and it is even very visible, where I should start (my paternal grandfather).


Overall, myself, gedmatch ID# M240291 (PM240291M1, PM240291P1)

gen#	rel	~DoB	match	#anc/gen	#idd/gen	%idd/gen	#anc	#idd	%idd
1	p	1960		2	2	100.00%	2	2	100.00%
2	gp	1931	1C	4	4	100.00%	6	6	100.00%
3	Ggp		2C	8	8	100.00%	14	14	100.00%
4	GGgp		3C	16	16	100.00%	30	30	100.00%
5	3Ggp		4C	32	32	100.00%	62	62	100.00%
6	4Ggp		5C	64	56	87.50%	126	118	93.65%
7	5Ggp		6C	128	104	81.25%	254	222	87.40%
8	6Ggp		7C	256	135	52.73%	510	357	70.00%
9	7Ggp		8C	512	59	11.52%	1022	416	40.70%

Now having over 50% of 6xgreat grandparents is not terrible, but I am positive much more coverage is achievable.

I will try to publish the progress as it makes sense (few times a year) and we'll see how some improvements of my tree help with the genetic genealogy research :)

Thanks for reading!

Kuba

P.S. This effort, GEDCOM script and this blog were originally inspired by 2015 blog wave on this topic, including http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2015/08/11/how-much-of-your-family-tree-do-you-know-and-why-does-that-matter.