CategoriesGenetic GenealogyTechnology

DNA Match Network

Recently, I saw someone post about visualizing their DNA match network. They were doing this as a service. You would order a visualization and they would build one for you and send it to you for a nominal fee. It sounded and looked awesome. I noticed they were using an open source program, so I thought to myself, if they can do it, so can I. So, that’s what I did…for the most part.

The open source program is called Gephi and it’s described as the leading visualization and exploration software for all kinds of graphs and networks. And first glance it can seem scary and overwhelming, and it is in some respects. In my job and on my own time, I’ve worked a lot with sets of data; organizing them, analyzing them, morphing them to work in another way, etc. This seemed like something I could do.

Finding the Data

The first issue was figuring out how to get my match data into a format that the software needed. I first tried to get all of my match data exported from Genome Mate Pro, which I was able to do. I just don’t know how to massage it into what I need, yet, at least not without a lot of manual work. So, then I looked at some of the files that are created when I run DNAGedcom to get my match info for GMP. The Ancestry DNA files looked good. They had mostly what I needed. I had to do some minor changes to the files, but overall it worked.

After a bit of a learning curve and some Googling, I was able to get a pretty decent looking network visualization of (most of) my Ancestry DNA matches. I say most since I’m not completely sure if I have all of the connections included. Here is the final visualization, without the names.

Click for bigger version

Here is a quick overview. The size of the circles are based on how many centimorgans (cMs) I share with my match and it also shows how closely related we are.  This graph only includes matches with more than 20 cMs, so about 4th cousins or so. I color-coded a few of the major lines that I knew based on the match. I am the large white circle in the center. My mother is the large yellow circle at the bottom.

The purple-ish group at the top is from my Corrigan line as the larger one is my father’s cousin. The red group at the left, I think, is a collection of Polish matches. The small teal group under the red is my Thielke line as the larger teal circle is my mom’s cousin. The pinkish group under that one is my Van Price/Van Parijs Dutch side. The green and orange on the bottom right is mainly my mother’s French-Canadian matches. There are a lot of descendants from those original French immigrants as you can see by all of the inter-matching between them. The single pink circle above me is my one and only Zalewski match. You can see why that line is difficult to research. The rest of the randomly colored and white circles are either one-off matches or matches I have yet to organize.

Now What?

My next steps are to not only analyze this graph to see if any odd connections pop out, but also to try to do this with my other data including 23andMe and/or Family Tree DNA. I am also going to try to do it with my Genome Mate Pro data as that has everything in one place, including GedMatch matches. Seeing the software take all of these matches, which are at first in one big blob, and organizing it into the graph above is cool to see as it moves around like it’s alive until it settles.

CategoriesGenetic GenealogyGermanPolish

Ancestry DNA Genetic Communities

Yesterday, the big news across the Genetic Genealogy community was the release of Ancestry DNA’s Genetic Communities. According to Ancestry, these communities are built like this:

We find Genetic Communitiesâ„¢ by looking at a network of DNA connections we build using millions of AncestryDNA members in our database. When we build a network like this using millions of AncestryDNA members with billions of DNA relationships between them, we find groups of people in the network that have more DNA matches to each other than to people in other parts of the network. We call these groups Genetic Communities. We use a popular network analysis method called community detection to discover them.

So, it’s sort of a mix of DNA matches along with information from the millions of family trees built on the site. Together they can find a community in the more recent past. Previously, we only had ethnicity estimates to work with, but those were usually more broad and much deeper in the past. For example, here are my ethnicity results.

That Scandinavia one still confuses me a bit. but who knows where my deep ancestry came from. Those Scandinavians were known to travel.

My Communities

I have two active Genetic Communities, as do most people it seems. My first one is Germans in Brandenburg & Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (very likely >95%) which matches up very well with my known ancestry. The other one is Poles in Pomerania, which also matches up very well though their confidence is only at 20% for this one at the moment.

The German community points to this area, which is the original location of a lot of my German ancestry. The Pomeranian community points to a majority of northern Poland, which also has a lot of my ancestry. As always, click the images for a larger view.

Timelines

You can also break down the communities into time periods to find out more information about what happened in that area during those years. If I open up the time period when most of my ancestors migrated, it talks about that exact thing and also talk about how they came to the Wisconsin area.

So far these communities have been helpful and surprisingly specific and on the right track. Based on a lot of the messy, incorrect trees I see on the site I’d expect some skew, but I imagine those are not the majority. If you’re looking for much more insight on these communities, check out the great post over at The Genetic GenealogistAncestry has also put together a short video introducing the feature.

CategoriesGenetic GenealogyZalewski

The Zalewski Connection

ancestrydna-zalewskiOne of those days I was waiting for finally happened. A DNA match contacted me that is from the Jacob Zalewski line that I had always assumed was the brother of my great-great grandfather, Frank Zalewski. This proves that Jacob and Frank are definitely related. They are probably brothers (as all other evidence points to) but not proven 100%.

Unfortunately, the match comes to me from AncestryDNA. While AncestryDNA is one of the most popular, it also gives the least amount of advanced tools. I cannot see where we match on our DNA as there is no Chromosome Browser like every other site has. I have contacted my match and asked if they would upload their data to GEDMatch so we can do the more advanced matching. I’d really love to see which part of my chromosome comes from my Zalewski line. That could point me towards more Zalewski relations and possibly finally breaking down more of that monstrous Zalewski line brick wall.

The possible Jacob-Frank connection all started back in July 2009 when I noticed a Jacob Zalewski family living with and quite near Frank and his family in Milwaukee in multiple city directories. After many years and finding more and more cross-family connections, I just assumed they were brothers as the pile of evidence was getting quite large. Though, I was always waiting and hoping for a DNA connection. I was planning on trying to convince a few distant cousins from that line that I had found to do a DNA test (I would probably even have paid for it.)

I’m excited. We’ll see where we go from here.

CategoriesMilitaryNewsTips & Tricks

Extra! Extra!

20090125

After going out to dinner for our birthday (my wife & I) with my parents last night, we got to talking a bit about genealogy and some stories about my grandparents. It was mentioned that my maternal grandfather was in World War II. I was never sure on this subject since I’ve heard nothing about. I’m told that he doesn’t talk about it for reasons unknown to my parents. He’s never even mentioned it to my mother. I completely respect his decision. Who knows what he may have experienced in Europe in the 1940s.

I’m aware of all of the documents available for World War II either at Ancestry or Footnote, so I thought I’d look around. I have yet to find any mention of my grandfather in any documentation available. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I saw it mentioned that some documents have yet to be released due to privacy. My mom and dad mentioned that they think he was a Sergeant since my grandmother sometimes calls him “Sarge.” Does anyone know of any other places to check?

My search for that information turned into finding a nice collection of newspaper articles on my maternal family line. I happened to find my grandfather in an article from the Sheboygan Press in 1941 mentioning that he came in 3rd place in some sort of kite contest. I also found their wedding announcement, a mention of a speeding ticket he got in 1968 and a bunch of other neat articles. I also found some other obituaries and wedding announcements. Don’t underestimate the information in some of these old newspapers. Ancestry has a lot of newspapers on file that are mostly searchable. Footnote doesn’t have a lot yet, but knowing them they’ll be getting a lot more and I like their system a bit better.

Here are some examples of what I found:

Just find a local paper on one of these sites, if there is one available, and just browse around by searching for last names. You’ll find some cool stuff.

CategoriesGenetic GenealogyPersonalZalewski

Ancestry DNA

As the news mentioned last week, Ancestry has opened it’s DNA area. I’ve been a user on Ancestry for many years and I also have become involved in Genetic Genealogy via the National Geographic study and also Family Tree DNA. So, I was more than happy to test our Ancestry’s system.

It was easy to transfer my data over from FTDNA to Ancestry. Currently, they can only transfer from FTDNA or National Geographic, though I imagine if you have your data handy you can convert it yourself. You just need to bring up your DNA data and type in the values into Ancestry from one of these two companies.

It took a few minutes after I entered it for it to find some matches, though unfortunately there are none before 26 generations out. They show you your matches in a nice graphical format including a map. They also give you an estimate of the number of years, along with generations, that this person and you may have a common ancestor.

If you have an Ancestry.com account and also have received your DNA info, I would recommend trying this out. Any and all data can help everyone!

Link: Ancestry DNA