Finks Ancestors

So I told you you're related to my Finks family.

Do not be afraid!

That likely means you overlapped and matched with a known Finks relative from a 23 and me, FTDNA or AncestryDNA test. Or it means our tree match is so strong that you're on your way to becoming a known "Finks" relative. Don't worry if you don't see a name you recognize. There are missing leaves and branches on my family tree too.

Here is a list of my dad's "Finks" relatives by cousinship:

****2nd cousin sharing great grandparents****

Robert Sanford Finks
Birth 16 Sep 1879 in Mackinaw, Tazewell, Illinois, USA

Ida Ellen Mitchell (Michel)
Birth Jul 1883 in Illinois, USA


****3rd cousin sharing 2nd great grandparents****

William Jackson Finks
Birth Sep 22 1837 in Culpepper county, Virginia, USA
Death 6 May 1922 in TAZEWELL CO., ILLINOIS

Telitha Hibbard
Birth abt 1845 in Illinois, USA
Death after 1910

Charles Auguste Mitchell (Michel)
Birth 30 Mar 1834 in Croismare, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine, France
Death 1889 in Tazewell County, Illinois, USA

Margaret A PERNELL
Birth 27 Jan 1853 in Pekin, Tazewell, Illinois, United States
Death 9 Dec 1927 in Groveland, Tazewell, Illinois, United States


****4th cousin sharing 3rd great grandparents****


John Finks
Birth 1793 in Rappahannock County, Virginia, USA
Death Nov 1871 in MacKinaw, Tazewell, Illinois, United States

Winifred McQueen
Birth 1791 in Rappahannock County, Virginia, USA
Death 6 sep 1859 in MacKinaw, Tazewell, Illinois, United States

Mortimer G Hibbard
Birth abt 1827 in Ohio, USA

Philicy Felicia Ann Jeffers (Jeffries)
View relationship to me
Birth 1821 in Kentucky, USA

Jean Louis Mitchell Michel
Death 8 Dec 1862 in Tazewell County, Illinois, USA

Anne Aubert
Birth 13 May 1799 in Haudonville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine, France

Parents of Margaret Pernell born 1853 in Tazewell Ill
...pos John Pernell and Mary Ann Lambert


****5th cousin sharing 4th great grandparents****


Andrew Finks?
Birth  Virginia


Mary Fielding..or maybe Lucy Vawter (wife of Andrew Finks)

Samuel McQueen
Birth 1762 in Culpeper, Culpeper, Virginia, United States
Death 1815 in Culpeper, Culpeper, Virginia, United States

Martha Unknown
Birth 1758
Death 1821 in Culpeper County, Virginia, USA

Elias Hibbard
Birth 4 Mar 1797 in Fairhaven, Rutland, Vermont, USA
Death abt 1846 in Clark, Illinois, United States

Diadama Amanda Darcy Bridge
Birth 1804 in Canada
Death 1890 in Fulton County, Illinois, USA

William Jeffries
Birth 1783 in Virginia, United States
Death 1823 in Washington, Kentucky, United States

Ann Jett
Birth Abt 1785 in Virginia, United States
Death Aft 1840

Parents of Jean Michel and Ann Aubert from France

Parents of John Pernell?

Parents of Mary Ann Lambert (pos Joseph Lambert and Margaret Smilaire)

Paper Trail Thompson - Ancestors by Cousinship

At 23 and me, you'll often get an idea of Cousinship with a match request. It will say something like "estimated 4th cousin with a range of 3rd to 5th cousin" or "5th to distant cousin". Some lines in my family end at second great grandparents, so I've tried to note them in every generation as parents of or grandparents of a known person.

I'm splitting this one out from my other Ancestors by cousinship because of the divergence in our Thompson family DNA. This is what the paper says though and it is a good starter for looking at Thompson genetic matches for the U152 Indiana Thompson line.

Here is our Thompson side paper trail list of ancestors by cousinship:

****2nd cousin sharing great grandparents****

Albert Thompson
Birth 19 Jan 1870 in Alexandria, Madison, Indiana, United States
Death 14 Oct 1909 in Alexandria, Madison, Indiana, United States

Ida Rachael Williamson
Birth 8 Nov 1874 in Greenville, Wayne, Missouri, USA
Death 11 Sep 1936 in Alexandria, Madison, Indiana, United States


****3rd cousin sharing 2nd great grandparents****

Levi Thompson
Birth abt 1838 in Butler County, Pennsylvania, USA
Death in pos. Tama, Mercer, Ohio, United States

Rose Anna (Rosa) Blades
Birth Oct 1837 in Van Buren, Madison, Indiana, United States
Death 1906 in Anderson, Madison, Indiana, United States

Henry H Williamson
Birth 1 Mar 1840 in Indiana
Death 19 Jun 1913 in Monroe Township

Susan or Susannah Maynard
Birth 8 Mar 1839 in Madison County, Indiana, United States
Death abt 1887 in Madison County, Indiana, United States


****4th cousin sharing 3rd great grandparents****

Parents of Levi Thompson born 1834-38 Butler PA.
...pos Albert E Thompson and Nancy Unknown from Pike Berks Pa

James Blades
Birth 1795 in Maryland, USA
Death 30 Jan 1872 in Van Buren, Madison, Indiana

Elizabeth Unknown
Birth abt 1816 in Maryland, USA
Death Mar 1850 in Van Buren, Madison, Indiana, United States

William or Joseph Williamson (Multiple Williamsons from the same family died between 1840 and 50 leaving wives and children but no husbands listed)
Birth abt 1814 in Kentucky, USA
Death abt 1846 in Richland, Madison, Indiana, United States

Susannah Unknown
Birth 1817 in Indiana, United States
Death 8 Dec 1863 in Richland, Madison, Indiana, United States


Christopher Columbus Maynard
Birth May 24, 1815 in Pike, Kentucky, United States
Death May 23, 1862 in Madison Co., Ind (bur: Holson Cem)

Elizabeth Mabbitt
Birth 14 Jul 1821/23 in Indiana
Death 18 Jul 1879/80 in Indiana, United States


****5th cousin sharing 4th great grandparents****

Grandparents of Levi Thompson born 1834-38 Butler PA
...pos James Thompson and Elizabeth who lived in Pike Berks Pa

Parents of James Blades and Elizabeth from Maryland pioneers in Madison IN.

Hammond Hammon Haman Williamson
Birth abt 1783 in Clinch River Valley, Russell, Virginia, United States
Death 1874 in Anderson, Madison, Indiana, United States

Ruth Ford
Birth abt 1785 in Washington, Tennessee, USA
Death aft 1860 in of Anderson, Madison, Indiana

Parents of Susannah Unknown born 1817 in Indiana died 1863 in Richland, Madison IN

MOSES JACOB MAYNARD
Birth 18 OCT 1766 in Hillsboro, Chatham, North Carolina
Death 15 JUN 1874 at 108 in Alexandria, Madison, Indiana

SARAH ELIZABETH GREENSTREET
Birth 20 APR 1777 in Hillsboro, Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States
Death 28 OCT 1846 in Richland City, Madison, Indiana, United States

Thornburg or Thornberry Mabbitt
Birth 28 Oct 1799 in South Carolina, United States
Death 9 Mar 1870 in Madison, Indiana, United States

SUSANNA SMITH
Birth 22 Oct 1801 in Rushville, Rush, Indiana, United States
Death 2 Dec 1858 in Richland City, Madison, Indiana, United States

Autosomal DNA Mile Marker

Now that I have many maternal and paternal segments worked out I thought it would be good to put up some graphics of the general map. Again using Kitty Munson Cooper's segment mapper utility to get great visual representations of the segments using my dad as the base person.

To be clear, this won't represent all of the matches for my dad, just those known to be maternal or paternal right now.

Here are his Seelye Campbell and Beadle relatives along with other known "found" maternal matches.

Blue is a Beadle only relative. Light blue Campbell only. Red various maternal genetic relatives. Peach Seelye side only (would include the Beadle family DNA too). Green Seelye Campbell which basically represents everything Seelye, Beadle or Campbell.

You can see I have lots and lots of coverage with multiple maternal relatives, sometimes matching each other and sometimes going off on their own, but I benefit from having so many maternal only relatives to check against (up to and including my dad's maternal uncle there in green).

Here is the condensed version of that map. All maternal matches.

You can see there are some gaps, but with all those layers of relatives tested, we've filled in quite a bit. The X is all maternal, but those are the matches available which is interesting. Because of this coverage it is much more likely that I can place a match as maternal.

It's good to note here that the kind of coverage you see in the consolidated maternal map required four people at various distances to get tested.

Here is the one known paternal relative on our Finks side along with various paternal matches:

Light blue is anyone I've determined to be paternal. Usually because their group of matches does not match a known maternal group. Dark blue is the known Finks relative, sometimes illuminating unknown paternal matches and sometimes breaking new ground.

Here is the consolidated version of that map, all paternal including the Finks family. You can see that even though I am using the shadow cast from my dad's maternal matches, I am still struggling without closer known paternal relatives to test. My grandfather had no siblings and my attempt to fill in with our Thompson cousins did not show any matches, so there are more gaps to fall through on this side of things.

That may sound bitter, but I'm not. I am exceptionally grateful for my Finks family tester. I've learned a lot since getting those results back from FTDNA. I think doing this kind of analysis is just opening my eyes to the value of testing multiple known relatives on the same side of a family (assuming you can't test your target person..in my case my grandparents).

Here is a map showing both maternal and paternal segments as they overlap. It's a great display that shows what I'm missing on that paternal side.

In this instance, red is matneral and blue paternal. Paternal matches aren't breaking tons of new ground here, probably because the maternal coverage is so good. In many cases, it's not that I wouldn't know a maternal match from a paternal match, just that no paternal matches have come in.

You can see some of that in the maternal chart above that shows the breakdown of known Seelye side relatives compared to organic "maternal" matches found at 23 and me and Gedmatch. In that chart red is just maternal "found" matches, while the other colors (peach, green etc..) are the tested known relatives.

Without those known tester matches the map is even more bleak and for the most part, I would have no idea which side of the family a triangulated group of matches was on. So thanks go out to the "knowns"!

A Finks Cousin's Genome Analysis

The results are in for my grandfather's Finks cousin (his cousin through his mother's family) and I took a few minutes to look at the tools in FTDNA for general analysis. My Origins is the tool FTDNA has for this. It's the broad overview of your genome with some hints on geographic location. Since this is my first FTDNA kit, I don't have a good feel for comparing this tool to the results from 23 and me's ancestry tools, other than that the results for my grandfather's cousin seem pretty similar to my dad's (except maybe a bit more middle-eastern or central asian than I would expect).

Here is a pic:

A nice map with some highlighted colorful areas. Very similar to the maps I've made in the past. My grandfather's cousin has a higher portion of Scandinavian DNA than my dad, but she has some more recent scandinavian ancestry on her father's side (her mother is the Finks). Western and Central Europe is to be expected I think as well as British Isles which she would get from both sides of her family. I'm uncertain on middle eastern or central asian and how they might tie in.

For comparison to my dad's results, I ran her through DIY Dodecad and the Oracle too. The Final admixture proportions are pretty similar to my dad.

----------------------------
 FINAL ADMIXTURE PROPORTIONS:
 ----------------------------

 10.82%  East_European    
 50.57%  West_European    
 26.43%  Mediterranean    
  0.00%  Neo_African      
  8.58%  West_Asian        
  1.36%  South_Asian      
  0.32%  Northeast_Asian  
  0.09%  Southeast_Asian    50
  0.12%  East_African      
  1.70%  Southwest_Asian  
  0.02%  Northwest_African
  0.00%  Palaeo_African  

The Oracle results are also pretty similar with a little shuffling at the top. CEU (explained as white people from Utah) still on top, her Orcadian..etc are scoring a bit differently, but overall things seem to be in about the same order. Her family, taken as a whole has more immigration more recently from Europe, but I imagine the proportions are similar to adding up all my dad's more distant immigrant relatives, not to mention that they share one full set of my father's great grandparents. I am not too surprised that they are very similar people genetically.

Dodecad oracle for v3 results:

  [,1]               [,2]  
 [1,] "CEU"              "3.901"
 [2,] "N._European"      "5.2828"
 [3,] "Argyll_1KG"       "6.1403"
 [4,] "Orcadian"         "6.2461"
 [5,] "Orkney_1KG"       "6.6245"
 [6,] "German_D"         "8.1126"
 [7,] "French"           "10.4414"
 [8,] "French_D"         "10.6907"
 [9,] "Mixed_Germanic_D" "11.8097"
[10,] "Dutch_D"          "12.9789"


One final analysis for admixture. I looked at the world results to see if there were small traces of Native DNA. I recently posted about the possibilities that our family story is true and that Telitha Hibbard is not really a Hibbard at all, but half native. This cousin would share Telitha Hibbard's DNA as Telitha was her great grandmother.

Here were the Global 13 results:

  0.08%  Siberian          
  0.32%  Amerindian        
  0.01%  West_African      
  0.00%  Palaeo_African    
  2.17%  Southwest_Asian  
  0.23%  East_Asian        
 33.48%  Mediterranean    
  0.06%  Australasian      
  0.11%  Arctic            
 10.01%  West_Asian        
 51.52%  North_European    
  1.88%  South_Asian      
  0.13%  East_African

I don't really know how to read the southwest asian except to say that it might relate to the Central Asian segments FTDNA was picking up on. The Amerindian levels seem fairly low and of course FTDNA did not pick up any of that. I know sometimes DNA from Asia is a stand in for Native DNA, but I'm not sure how that plays out.
   
In Comparing the coverage of my grandfather's cousin to my dad's DNA, I had to rely on Gedmatch.com. Because my tests are from two different companies, a third comparison company is required. Similar to how I checked my dad's Seelye relatives. I was able to use Kitty Munson Cooper's segment mapper to make a great graphical representation of the Gedmatch.com comparison data:

Overall, my grandfather's Finks cousin here covers less ground for my dad than my grandmother's Seelye cousin did. 396cM compared to 446cM on the Seelye side. Interestingly for me though the sharing is reversed when my dad hands down these matches to me. I share 259cM with our Finks cousin and only 162cM with the Seelye cousin.

Four Years On

Time for a pep talk.

About four years ago, I started this blog to keep track of my progress finding my Thompson family. A pretty narrow scope. Straight up the male line. That was my intent.

Once I entered the realm of genetic genealogy, the scope creep was inevitable. My Y DNA results were ambiguous. My autosomal DNA results were and are a tangled mess. I've contemplated everything from pre-historic human migrations to the birth of my own grandfather in 1925. That is a lot of ground to cover and most of it could not really be considered "Thompson" research.

Now, I'm on the edge of exploring my Finks family through autosomal DNA and I've been actively pursuing my Seelyes and Beadles for a few years. They help me to define our shared DNA and highlight where my straight paternal roots may lie but they are also outside my initial intent for this particular blog.

In the beginning I saw myself creating nice tidy little boxes for my different separate families, but that hasn't proven to be the case. In trying to find one thread in my spiderweb of ancestry, I've had to touch on every other thread. In the end, it seems that my narrow focus was really, really short sighted. Families are not nice and tidy. They are messy and organic.

It's become clear (as I've said quite a few times) that I cannot define one part of my heritage without defining them all.

I started this to research my Thompson family. Along the way "Thompson" has become a bigger tent. I'm researching my paternal family and it's a little more complicated than I expected. It's bigger than I thought. More inclusive and yet much more elusive too. The easy answers are gone.

I cannot say what the next years will bring. If' they're like the last four they will be full of surprises and mystery and a lot of waiting around for documents to come in the mail, for people to share and for tests to complete. I do some of my best work in that waiting around phase.

I will grow and change and my "Thompson" family will grow and change too. The tent will get bigger, I'm sure. It's okay though. We are all Jock Tamson's bairns.

The more I see the less I know

Having just bought a Family Finder test from FTDNA for my grandfather's maternal Finks Cousin and having a nice long phone call with her to talk about the kit, I decided to go back and look at the Finks family records again to get a handle on things.

The mythology among people related to the Finks and Hibbard family is that Telitha Hibbard, my 3rd great grandmother who married William Jackson Finks is half native. There are a lot of these stories in the U.S. People say all kinds of things to explain differences in people. My dad and I don't carry more than a 0.1% amount of Native DNA. So probably within some margin of error, not even as much as we carry for African DNA.

I have generally disregarded the story because I was able to find Telitha's dad and see the marriage records for her parents. Her parents, Mortimer G. Hibbard and Philicia Jeffries (Jeffers) were married in April of 1845. Telitha was born around 1845..nothing firm there, but nothing real out of the ordinary either.

Like I said though, I kind of looked at it with new eyes after this phone conversation. I've been really picky about getting the details of my great grandmother's whereabouts in the lead up to my grandfather's birth in 1925 since I received the test results back from the U152 Thompsons.

Talking with this cousin about a family photo of the Finks at their farm and specifically talking about Telitha Hibbard and her sister Hannah..well I had to wonder if there wasn't something to it. They are obviously related women I think thier noses are strikingly similar (something that appears to have been handed on to Robert Sanford Finks) but they are also very different looking from each other too.

Here is the caption I found with the photo: From Far left; Robert Sanford Finks, William J Finks, Lily Finks, Telitha Finks, Susan Short (Telithas daughter from first marriage) ,& Earl Vivian Finks. Bottom from left: I think this is Minnie,(she would have died a few years after this pic though1870-1895), Hannah in Pic, and Ethyle Elnora (Nora).

Hannah Hibbard in the picture was William Jackson Finks' wife. After she died he married her older sister Telitha Hibbard (who had also been previously married).

Here is William Finks. 

Hannah Hibbard (Markley from a former marriage) in the photo

Telitha Hibbard (Short from previous marriage)

Okay, so "Looks like" evidence is the worst kind of evidence. I will give it to the story tellers, she does look darker and obviously has dark hair and some different features from her sister, but I've always thought about how different siblings can look from each other.

In my new eyes review of the evidence though, I found something striking. A death certificate index for Telitha Hibbard that gives a birth date. She is the first child of Mortimer Hibbard and Philicia Jeffries, but she is a bit too old for to match up to that. She was born in January of 1845 and her parents were married in April. 

I've seen a lot of people who are married and then have children born a few months later and the assumption is that they were making it legal. In this case though, Telitha was several months old when her parents were married. 

Now that is unexpected. Where was Philicia Jeffries in 1844? 

Her parents, William Jeffries and Anne Jett were married in Fauquier, Virginia and moved to Washington, Kentucky. Philicia was born in Kentucky but married Mortimer Hibbard in Illinois where his family had located from Ohio (and Vermont before that). William Jeffries died around 1823. In 1830 I find his wife Anne Jett Jeffries still living in Washington KY, but in 1840 she is in Edgar Illinois. I don't know what brought her there, but it put Philicia in range to be in Illinois in 1844 when she was (as legend would have it) "kidnapped by the natives and returned pregnant" with Telitha. 

The battle in the Finks family is not whether Philicia was kidnapped and returned pregnant, but by which group of natives.

That could be the case, surely the area was in some turmoil and had seen a lot of warfare between the the many various factions of French and Illinois natives, traveling Lakota and British and U.S. and Great Lakes nations. It's a big jumble there. It could also be that Philicia was involved with someone and it didn't work out and she moved on. Hard to say. People make things up and sometimes they don't and still other times they make parts of things up, but there are grains of truth.

In any case, I don't think either random kidnappers or people who willingly (or under force) moved to Oklahoma and Kansas in those years are going to be good record keepers. 

Still, since I have some record of Telitha's birth and it seems off, the idea that she is Hannah Hibbard's half sister is more likely to me than it was even a few months ago. Telitha would basically be Mortimer's step child who he adopted. It's unlikely she would have had a last name of her own.

That makes it extremely unlikely that I will find the Hibbard family through DNA testing...they simply are not there or should not be there. So the great leaps I made a few years ago in finding Mortimer Hibbard's parents and his family from Vermont will not shed light on genetic matches for my dad or my grandfather's Finks cousin.

Through genetic testing and documentation I've been able to sort of dismiss these stories as fable. I placed us in the great "Wannabe" tribe in the U.S. of blue eyed natives, or in some group that was afraid of it's eastern European, African or unknown Roma roots and had, maybe, picked a better story. I kind of shut the door on it. Even if it were true, I would never be able to figure it out.

What now though? 

Do I reconsider those matches whose grandparents or great grandparents come from reservations in Oklahoma or from Kansas with a native background? Can I comfortably and smugly dismiss it as coincidence anymore? 

I suppose in this instance I'll have to follow my leads as best I can and keep an open mind. What I know now is that there is a discrepancy that makes it seem likely to me that Telitha is not a "Hibbard" but is only a "Jeffries". Her father would remain unknown...but likely someone who was in the Edgar Illinois or Clark Illinois area in 1844.

The unknowns are beginning to overpower the knowns in my new-ish quest to define my grandfather.

Thinking About Switching

Since I took my first autosomal test in April of 2011 with 23 and me, I've been a pretty happy customer. I happily use the service and I appreciate some of the side perks (like getting a Y haplogroup as part of the test) even if some of the information is outdated...or not as in-depth. I also hate the idea of a de facto genetic genealogy company. All the groups and projects for genetic genealogy are dominated by FTDNA. I like that there is diversity and competition provided by YSEQ and 23 and me...but I also have to do what's best for me now.

Issues with getting information

Like a lot of 23 and me customers I think they are a bit too tight with the autosomal matching/ shared segments portion of the site. 23 and me makes you request sharing before they will show you where someone matches you. Most of us who have used the service blame that on a strict privacy policy adopted for health results testers...really the majority of their database is for health results so it makes sense for them to err on the side of caution. There has been an ongoing petition to make matching results and segment information available from the beginning but I don't think there has been any movement on that.

Those settings have been a relative hassle. You have to beg for information from someone before you have any idea what will be provided. The return rate is pretty low. If I ask 10 people to share I can expect 2 or 3 to take me up on it. Only after they share can I see where they match and which segments they share with other matches. Certainly there are many people I would not have bothered, had I known where they matched.

Short Comparison of Tools

The Family Inheritance Advanced tool is excellent if you manage to find it. I alert all of my matches to it's presence. You can check a match and also see exactly where they match with you and you can easily swap them into the number one position to check them against your other matches. So once someone shares they can be compared to everyone else you're sharing with exactly down to the segment. This is an enormous help when you are trying to determine if two matches are on opposite sides of the chromosome.

I checked out some of the tools on a friends kit at FTDNA. I may have missed an option on one of them, so this review of their tools is based on limited experience.

FTDNA provides a chromosome browser with similar functions for checking your matches and seeing exactly where they match you, but to see if they actually match someone else in the same spot is a bit harder. To get that information, I had to go to the matrix tool which is separate from the chromosome browser. That tool will tell you that two or more of your matches match each other which is helpful, but not exactly where.

I think FTDNA's implementation is clunky there. I've had it happen several times that someone matches me on chromosome 7 (for example) where they overlap with another match. So my next step would be to see if they match that other person there. When I check them against that match though I sometimes come to find that they don't match each other where they overlap on 7..but they do match each other on a chromosome that is not shared with me. So in one instance they represent a paternal vs. maternal match, but they also are related to each other somewhere else that doesn't concern me.

That kind of data is invaluable when you're working with someone who matches both your maternal and paternal families...or who just happens to randomly match someone in the group on a different chromosome than the one you're focused on. Not having it, could lead you to the wrong conclusions.

In this arena Gedmatch is really the king. Their comparison tools so far are the best and it's a donation run site. Still they've managed to womp on the pay sites by having all the information available right up front and showing you where matches match each other and you. Of course you have to choose to upload to Gedmatch.com and they have to be up and running.

The Matching Pool

At 23 and me, I have shared with about 470 of my 1200 plus matches. That represents three years of convincing people to offer up the most basic information you need to work in genetic genealogy..."where do we match". It's nothing to sneeze at because at FTDNA, I'm likely to only have 400 matches total.

Unlike 23 and me though, I won't have to work for three years just to see where I match someone. That information is there on the first day. I can download a csv file of all my matches and which chromosomes and segments they match on right then and there. Then I can make informed decisions about who to bother with family tree requests based on what I'm researching at the time.

I've heard rumors that FTDNA customers are more likely to respond to requests for information, but I've also heard from people who transfer that the rate for information exchange is about the same as at 23 and me and also that just about as many people have absolutely no family trees at all. So that seems like a coin toss.

For older V3 23 and me kits like mine, FTDNA offers a $69 transfer that puts your results in their database. Gedmatch of course does this for free and requests a donation. Still though there may be people who tested at FTDNA who just aren't ready to try out Gedmatch, so it would help to be in the FTDNA database for more coverage. Transferring at some point seems like a no brainer. It's something I should do, just like I did with my Y from ancestry.com.

I have a few more autosomal tests to purchase though and they are the tests I'm thinking about switching over.

23 and Me Concerns..or the things that are pushing me over

In the past, the general advice was to get your test at 23 and me, and then take advantage of FTDNA's transfer to put yourself in both databases. That is no longer possible. 

23 and me has a new chip, that is incompatible with FTDNA's transfer (although Gedmatch can manage to match them up just fine and I'm sure FTDNA just doesn't see the profit in spending time on it). So new kits purchased with 23 and me just don't have the option to transfer into FTDNA's database. That is one concern I have. One of the testing companies is now not like the others, and it's the one I use the most. My old kits will transfer just fine, but anything I buy from here on out will have to rely on Gedmatch.com as it's only cross company solution...and it's frequently down because it's a donation run volunteer site.

Although 23 and me has given up on health results (for the time being) and their focus should be on genealogy only, the strict privacy policies are still in place. Getting basic information is still hard and the return rate is still pretty low. Not getting  a share at 23 and me is crippling because you won't ever know where someone, who is anonymous, matches you and if they match any of your other matches.

Those are pretty big concerns, but the thing that really has me motivated to start purchasing tests elsewhere is how the purchase and execution of a test for my dad's maternal uncle has spiraled out of my reach.

A Rookie Mistake and a Losing Battle with Privacy

I purchased a test for my dad's maternal uncle from 23 and me. The focus of my research here has been on my paternal line but I value my dad's maternal family as well. The Seelyes were pretty well covered, but the Campbells were missing. My dad's maternal uncle has both and he would be my dad's largest match. His test would really help to define those families in my dad as well as defining the paternal side of many matches by the absence of a match with him on overlapping segments (Dark Side of the Moon).

It's actually the first time I've purchased a test for someone I have little contact with. The plan was that I would set up an account at 23 and me, purchase the test, send it to him. His part would be to spit in the vile and return the test unregistered. 23 and me would then notify me of the test that was turned in that I had purchased because it was unregistered and I would claim the test. All of that is basically laid out in 23 and me's policies and procedures. The goal there was simplicity. If I ship the kit to myself first so I can register it, then I have to pay for shipping to my great uncle..basically double paying shipping.

Unfortunately things did not go as planned. The kit shipped and then we lost contact with my great uncle. So I waited, and waited and waited for it to appear in my dad's list of matches. It never did. Finally I thought that maybe he changed his mind about testing. I've heard that 23 and me kits have an expiration at about a year. So now, a year later I worked through family members to get in contact with my dad's uncle to see if I could recover the kit in time to use it on a different relative.

This was a lot like cold calling someone, because I've only met the man a few times in my life. So I cold called an 80 year old man about something that happened a year ago. 

I asked him if he wanted the test and he said, at this point, no. I asked if I could take it to use on another person and he said. Other than the one I sent back?

wait...what?!?

Some more questions and quick searching at 23 and me show that he definitely registered the kit a year ago and it has just sat there ever since. Never showing up in my dad's list of matches and without any sort of notification. All of that due to the privacy settings on the account.

What follows is totally paraphrased, truncated and jumbled like my frantic mind. Just know that it was more tedious to go through than it was to write and that it encompasses a week or so of time.

Another phone call to uncle the next day: Can you remember your password? no. Do you know what email address you used? no. I'm going to call support to see if we can recover the results and get back on track.

Initiate contact with support. I explain the situation they inform me that they only communicate with the email account that registered the kit, not the purchaser of the kit. I tell them he may not have access to the email account and has forgotten his password.
If he has forgotten his password and cannot get into email he can fill out a form for support [address of form not given]. 

Another phone call to uncle a couple of days later: Do you have an email address? Yes [address here]. Do you check it? I think so. 

Me back to support: Look, here is his email, but I'm not sure it's the one he used to register the kit or if he can receive email there. 

Support case closed...fill out a survey to tell us how awesomely we helped you! 

wait...what?!? 

Comment from me on the support case: Angry tirade about how I don't think the issue was resolved and how I have more questions about what to do. 

From support: It looks like you want access to your uncle's results. You will have to work with him directly to get that. 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Uncle magically appears in list of relatives...after a year..immediately make sharing requests! 

Comment back to support. I don't think he can get into his email or his account at 23 and me. He's 80. Is there a phone number he can call? Also why does he appear in my matches now? 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Support: we only communicate with the email account that registered the kit. If your uncle cannot log in at 23 and me he will have to initiate a password reset.  

Me: The password reset is sent to the email account that he may not access! Is there another form of communication like a phone number. Have you attempted to contact him? What are the steps I should tell him to take when I call. If I'm going to be his long distance support, you need to give me the tools to do that. 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Support: we cannot communicate about your uncles test with you. He will need to initiate contact with support. Our primary communication is with email. Perhaps his appearance in your match list indicates that he can log in. 

Me: I don't know why he's appearing now. I'm not sure he's getting his email. I've not been able to contact him about it. What steps can I take if my uncle cannot get his email? 

Support: he can fill out a form [address given] to initiate contact with support. we only communicate with the email account that registered the kit. 

A quick look at the form shows the second field is the email address. Clearly, I'm not getting anywhere with this circular logic.  

Four more phone calls to uncle...no answer or response to messages. He could be out.  He could be on vacation. He could be sick. He could be avoiding these annoying calls from someone he barely knows...I don't know.  

Me: Okay if I can get back in touch with my uncle, and I have him fill out the form and he wants to inform 23 and me that his email account has been compromised, do I need to lead him through creating a new email account? 

Support: Yes. Indicate that the email account has been compromised and put the new email account in the comments. 

Support case closed.

At this point, I'm sort of worried about my great uncle. I don't know him very well, but he's fairly old and he's sort of disappeared. If my dad hadn't mentioned him doing something like this in the past, I would be even more concerned. Maybe this is just his pattern.

Because of my experiences using my dad's account, I know they ask for your answer to your security question for things like downloading your raw results. My guess is that a support contact to change your email address would follow the same protocols and my goal here is not to socially engineer 23 and me or my great uncle. It's really simply to see this basic information..where do we match and where does he match others I'm sharing with. I don't need his health results. They are useless to me because I already have my own.

My guess is that because he doesn't even want the account the results are not important to him. He was only doing it for my dad in the first place. He is caught in the default privacy policy and probably has some settings that would keep him out of the DNA relatives list.

Someone somewhere got into his account and changed some settings so he would appear in DNA relatives, but all that really tells me is that he is my dad's uncle...which I already knew. 

Now every time I look at my DNA relatives list, I can think about the 22%..really 44% of my dad's DNA I won't be able to define and about how a simple mistake in my planning and missed communication between family members can lead to this total loss of information. I may never get this opportunity to see these results again. I doubt my great uncle would take another test, assuming I can ever get in contact with him in the future. This attempt to catalog my grandmother has been a total failure.

The sad part is that if I had tested him at FTDNA, I would have his results without anything more needed on his part...which I'm pretty sure is what he would want. Now I have to try to get him to navigate this confusing maze of settings and check boxes or have him go through a password reset. Or not. Maybe he can already log in. I just don't know. 

I'm also impatient. I've waited for a year for these results. You'd think that would make me more patient but it hasn't. Maybe in a couple of months I'd be able to get in touch again and get more information. Maybe he'll be back next week. Maybe not. It's frustrating to be able to brush your finger tips on something but never actually grab it. I view the last year as lost time.

Making the Switch

Of course, I'm angry and I'm making decisions while I'm angry (ill advised). On the other hand a cost/benefit analysis is telling me that I'm already not getting the level of service I need to make informed decisions and that my preferred company is no longer compatible. Instead of bumping up their service for genetic genealogy like we all hoped they would in the wake of the FDA issue..it's just stagnating under the same rules they've always had, without the benefit of being able to transfer to other companies. Their focus is clearly on getting their medical information back online, not in making it easier for genealogists to use their products.

I still really appreciate the built in limited Y haplogroup which, with a little research you can match up to todays haplogroup listings..but I'm not sure that minor benefit outweighs the detractors. 

The writing appears to be on the wall. 

Why not Ancestry DNA? Simple. They don't offer any tools yet, that I know of, to actually compare segments of DNA. So it's less information than I need and I would have to go to Gedmatch to do any comparisons. Ancestry provides "leaves" saying you have a genetic relative who has matches in your tree, but no information about where they match making it possible to have a relative show up as part of your maternal family  because of a tree match, when really they belong on your dad's side. Both FTDNA and 23 and me win that one hands down.

Tests I purchase in the future for my wife and her family should probably just go to FTDNA where I already have some of her family members Y tested. Chances are I can use their current sample to upgrade to family finder and then check them against her. 

I should also purchase my mom's families tests there since I would also likely Y test one of her brothers to gather my Hutchinson Y DNA. I have maybe 3 more autosomal tests to get for them and a Y. 

Future autosomal tests for the U152 Thompsons could go there as well. With the option of checking my last 23 and me tested Thompson at Gedmatch.com for comparison.

The next test I plan to get for my dad is a test to define my dad's Finks family. I have another aging relative on that side who has agreed to do it. My plan was to order the 23 and me test and ship it to myself and then hand deliver it to this relative, but I think my plans have changed. Now I think I will ship a family finder test to myself instead and then actually transfer my dad's test to FTDNA too. Two Seelye relatives are already tested there so we won't be alone.

$99 for the FTDNA test and $69 for the transfer. Those are the minimal costs in switching my dad's results and having someone known to compare to. You might also count the $99 we spent on the lesson in privacy from 23 and me. It takes me sometimes a whole year to save up money for these tests but I think at this point, it will be worth it.

That is just the money involved. What really has me disappointed is the loss of information. My great uncle's results are available but they are untouchable..that's way worse than losing a hundred bucks.

..