Raining Down Results

When it rains, it pours, as some say. When we do the rainmaker dance to get my old frankenputer to work again—allowing precious access to old research files tucked away in cyberspace for years—we get a veritable deluge.

In this case, that is a good thing.

The primary beneficiary in that endeavor was my mother-in-law's Flowers line. Now that I've re-opened that old file—predating Internet-era research, for many of the records—I now can cross-check that with verifications found online. Double-checking my work from decades ago, without even trying, I'm zooming forward and the count on that tree shows it.

Last time I checked my biweekly count, I had amassed 10,843 individuals in that tree. In these past two weeks, that number has jumped 383 to total 11,226 people. I'm still in the midst of verifying all the records I'm moving over from my old file, but most everything looks right. In some cases, the number has gone backwards as I discover and remove duplicate entries in this intermarried line of ancestors.

Perhaps subconsciously seeking balance between both sides of our family, I tried to ramp up my progress on my own mother's line. I added 145 names to end this biweekly count at 10,035. Not as much as I had done on that easy project for my mother-in-law, but still a good amount of effort. Besides, I can now say both moms' databases have crossed the ten thousand mark. You know: parity.

Despite all the wonderful DNA sales happening—first for DNA Day, then around Mother's Day—the results for those tests apparently haven't yet hit our match lists. My matches at Family Tree DNA only increased by twenty three, leaving me at a total of 2,048, and my AncestryDNA matches increased by fifteen to total 581. One bonus was that my results finally came in at 23andMe: 1,197 in total, although only one match is as close as the second to fourth cousin range. Thankfully, that person is an avid genealogy researcher, so we are carrying on a merry conversation in search of our most recent common ancestors.

My husband's DNA matches seem to be just shy of those exploding sale results, as well. His FTDNA count is now 1,335, up thirty three, and his AncestryDNA results are at 273, up twelve, with 23andMe holding steady at 1,276. At least no more "cousins" are pulling out of the matching side of 23andMe's offerings to cause his count to go backwards.

With all the progress these past two weeks, I'm hoping the amply-augmented trees will provide some cousin bait to help sort out those mystery matches in our DNA accounts. There are some matches who definitely seem to fit certain branches of our trees, though we can't yet find the paper trail. The "in common with" function hints that this is what likely is the case.

As for our two neglected paternal trees, I know I need to get back to cleaning up the records and hunting for more hints, but that will have to wait another week, as we head to Montreal this week for a first visit to the eastern region of our neighbors to the north.