Armchair Genealogy - Family Tree & History

Jingle 0:04
The genealogy guide podcast, demystifying technology and exploring family tree research, please remember to subscribe and share the podcast with family and friends.

Mell T 0:16
And joining me now is Laura house, a genetic genealogist at ancestry and works within the probe genealogist arm. So I'm fascinated just to find out, how do you describe yourself?

Laura House 0:28
Pretty much like that, genetic genealogist, in many ways, the same as being a genealogist. I do a lot of traditional documentary research, genealogical research, but I specialize in the application of DNA data to genealogical research. So within my team, I am the primary genetic genealogist. So I take all of the unknown parentagecases, people who don't know who one or both of their parents are. Sometimes it's an unknown grandparent or an unknown great grandparent, and sometimes it's a ancient line in their family tree that they're struggling with, that we think we could use DNA to make a breakthrough. So all of those sorts of DNA centric cases, those are the ones I work on

Yeah, when you take any direct to consumer DNA test, you are oftencompared with all the other people in the database, and then you get a list of everyone who shares DNA with you. So of course, if you imagine that you've got a half sibling that's also taken a test, they're going to appear in that database. And if you're not biologically related to a parent or a grandparent, you will quickly figure that out when you look at the family trees of your siblings, first cousins, second cousins. People don't always realize that it's possible to make these sorts of discoveries using DNA testing. And there's two sides to that. One is that it's important for people to be aware before they test that it's possible that they might have an unexpected discovery. But the other side of it is that people don't always realize the potential of DNA testing, so they might want to find something and not realize that DNA testing is the way forward for them

Mell T 2:31
When it's a consequence. How do you when you're trying to support people, how do you manage to turn it into a positive when, when you can find it something that, for instance, your dad's not your dad, or you've got a brother or a sister that they have no idea about.

Now I first came across you, and when I actually heard you on Womens Hour, BBC, radio 4, and I was fascinated with the the angle of the story they took and your take on, well, without me explaining it all the understanding of the consequences of a DNA because everyone thinks it's just about finding your own sort of genealogical storyline. But there's lots of consequences that can happen that you just don't expect.

Laura House 2:47
What's really interesting, particularly in cases where people discoverthat their dad's not their dad, I do so I do have to break this news. Sometimes all our clients, including traditional genealogical clients, take a DNA test in case it's going to be useful for their goal. So sometimes it's just, you know, I want to build my tree back to 1700 and then I look at their DNA results, and their dad's not their dad. So we have to tell them that, of course, because the line that they want to research is not genetically related to them, and therefore they may want to change their goal. They may want to switch to a different line, or they may want to carry on with that line, regardless,or they may want to switch their goal to researching their biological heritage. And when we have that conversation where we tell them the news, more often than not, it seems to answer a lot of questions for people. So it's very unusual that it's a complete shock. Usually people say something like, oh, I never really felt like I fit into my family. Or, I always felt like my dad treated me a bit differently to the other children, or, oh, yeah, yeah, my mom said something whenI was little, and it never really made sense to me, and now it's all coming together. So often, these things rarely go people rarely go through their lives with an unknown parent and without picking up on something during the course of their lives. So often, when we tell them this news, all those little weird things that happen throughout their life that didn't seem to make sense, they all fall into place.

And more often than not, that's the response we get. We get shock, but also closure and questions being answered. So then often they want to know more about who their biological father is. So they have all these questions, and they want to know what's his name, and, oh, what was his job? And do I have other siblings? And oh, my goodness. So then we start working on that. Oftentimes we will switch goals and start working on that. So I would say to people who are struggling, who maybe made this discovery and are struggling with that news that this is the truth of your biological heritage. It's not necessarily the truth of you know who you love and who raised you, but it's the truth of your biological heritage. It's always been true, even before you knew about it, and now there's an opportunity to learn more about that biological heritage that wasn't there before.

All so to me making these sorts of discoveries, and I've made them in my own family as well, not with my dad, but with other relatives. For me, it's always positive to get to the truth, because I like to know the truth of my heritage. So I'd rather know than not know personally myself

Mell T 5:17
From my side of it. I'm aware of a story that was quite close to me, where, where someone did their DNA, because I'd encourage them to do the DNA, because they were doing their genealogy. And I encouraged their their parents to do their DNA, which they did, and their parent found out that they they'd had a daughter from a party many, many, many, many years ago, had no idea that they even existed, and that person had done their DNA and had been looking for years and had just been sitting there waiting, and it was only when that that gentleman actually had his DNA tested that he threw up this person's name, and it was instantly like, I looked at thefigures, and I went that, that's, that's, that's a big number, that's a very close match. And to her, she was over the moon. To him, it was like, oh, and the family around them, what you've got a another child? Well, what we don't know about, and he didn't know either. So it was, it's those type of stories that I find fascinating, because the dynamics of a family have to adapt and work with, as you say, the truth. It wasn't set out to hurt anybody, but it's now discovered something that, like has answered a lot of questions for someone else, but created a lot of questions for another family.

Laura House 6:40
Yeah, it's true, and it must be a very different experience from from the top down, if you like, when you're discovering your own child. And I don't come across that, because you can't use genetic genealogy in the same way to find a child in the same way that you were to find a parent, because the process doesn't work that way. So unless a child's tested, you'll never find them. So I don't often get to hear that side of the story, the side where someone's found a child that they didn't know they had, and that must just be such a shocking and extraordinary thing to experience. My dad always claimed that he had other children around the world, and I tell you, I'm in every database on the planet, and I haven't seen any children yet. So I'm starting to doubt this story, because I was promised hundreds of siblings, and I haven't got them, so I'm a little disappointed.

Mell T 7:28
So how did you get into genealogy? Is there? Is there a direct link through, or is it something you stumbled into?

Laura House 7:35
It started as a hobby because my mum was interested in family history, and both of my parents have really interesting heritage. So when I was about 18, 19, 20, somewhere around there, I got into it as a hobby, and got obsessed with it, as people so often do. And at that time, DNA testing was just starting to become useful for genealogy in the UK previously had been very sort of American centric, and it was starting to become useful for us here. So I caught on to this, the fact that things were starting to get more exciting in the DNA world in this country, tested my whole family. And then a few years after that, I discovered that there was a master's programat the University of Strathclyde to study genealogy. So I enrolled onthat and I specialized in DNA the whole way through the program, and then I wrote my dissertation on a genetic genealogical topic, and then it almost immediately got the job at Ancestry after I graduated. So it's been most of my adult life, I can't imagine having gone any other way now. Yeah, I love it.

Mell T 8:44
I'm picking up on you're saying you've got all your family. What are the benefits? So other people can understand why it's good to get everybody in your family to do the DNA.

Laura House 8:54
Most genealogical DNA tests, including Ancestry DNA, are autosomal DNA tests. We inherit exactly 50% of our autosomal DNA from our parents, which means that there's another 50% that we didn't inherit. So they have an extra 50% of the ancestral DNA that we don't have. So when we test our parents, we get that extra 50% and when you go up to your grandparents, you get approximately 25% of your autosomal DNA from each of them, so they've got all that extra DNA from your ancestors that you didn't inherit at all. And if you test your grandparents, you can get all of that DNA into the database as well. So for example, I've tested bothmy parents, and they have twice as many matches as I do, because they've got all that extra DNA that I didn't inherit. And I've tested two of my grandparents as well. So I've got all that extra ancestral DNA and their matches, some of their matches, the common ancestors date back to the mid 1700s early 1700s because they're soold. So it just goes back really, really far. And I would never share DNA with those people, because the link is too distant. And if I did share DNA with those people, it wouldn't be a reliable amount, because we're such distant relatives, but because, like, my grandmother was born in 1930 she's got matches that go way, way, way back, and so I'm able to verify lines of my family tree that go way back into history that I wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't tested those members of my family. It's a fantastic thing to do, and I absolutely recommend it. You won't believe how the quality of the matches improves when you test parents and grandparents.

Mell T 10:27
So the next question is, you talked about, like going back through ancestors, what about if you go outside and say it's brothers and sisters? Does that? Does that broaden it as well

Laura House 10:37
It depends. So if you have two living parents and you're able to test them both, then there isn't really any point in testing your siblings unless you have a specific question about how you're related to your siblings, like maybe you're wondering if you're half siblings or four siblings, but you and your siblings don't have any DNA that you didn't get from your parents, so if you're able to test both parents, don't worry about Testing siblings. Go to the oldest generation that's still alive, and then test all the siblings, and then you'll get more and more of the ancestral DNA. So for example, my grandmother is still alive. She is, of course, the oldest generation in my family. She's born in 1930 but she has a brother as well. So I tested them both, because they both inherited different DNA from their parents, so they've each got an extra 50% that the other one doesn't have. So by testing both of them, I have so much more of the ancestral DNA, and I'm able to find matches. My grandmother has matches her brother doesn't have, like her brother has matches that my grandmother doesn't have. So again, you're capturing all of this genetic information, all of these people descended from their ancestors who I wouldn't otherwise have been able to identify, information about their ethnicity, information about all sorts of things. So when you get to the oldest living generation, then it's worth branching out to the siblings. And also, if one parent is dead, then it's worth branching out to the siblings. So let me think of an example. Yeah, so my father, for example, his mother was alive, but his father was not alive, so I tested him and his sister to try and capture as much of their dad's DNA as I possibly could, because he wasn't alive to test. So when there's a missing parent as well, it's also a really good idea to test as many siblings as possible, because every single sibling brings more DNA into the database that you didn't have. Is that a clear answer?

Mell T 12:27
I'm just thinking of my own. So what happened a lot in the sort of decades before, people didn't live as young, so they tended to have a marriage, and then one of them would pass away and then remarry and sometimes have more children. So those become half siblings, because I've lost my parents so, so they've gone but, but I know of my grandfather. He was married, then his wife died, and then he married my grandmother, who I never met, descendants of of his first marriage. Would that help me with my DNA journey, if I was trying to connect with them, if they've done DNAs?

Laura House 12:29
Yeah, absolutely. So it's really interesting with half relationships, because you're able to narrow it to a specific ancestral line, any matches that are descended from your grandfather via his first wife,the DNA that you share with them is only going to have come from your grandfather, so you can really home in on that line of your family tree, and you know that any DNA you share with them you inherited from him, and any matches you share with them come from that same line of your family Tree, whereas if they were from both your grandparents, you'd have to try and figure out how much of this DNA came from the granddad, how much came from the grandma? Which of the matches are from my grandad's side, which of the matches are from my grandma's side? But with a half relative,you're able to immediately home in on one specific branch of your tree. So yeah, they're really useful. Half relatives,

Mell T 13:59
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Mell T 14:35
When people are setting out, how important is the Centimorgans? What number is it that you should start going, this is really important, and what number is they might be connected, but it's going to take a lot more harder work and research.

Laura House 16:04
It's

It's hard to put a specific figure on it, because it always depends on the situation. You'll often find that the segment cut for a segment of DNA for a number of Centimorgans is seven. So anything below seven Centimorgans is considered to be identical by chance or not indicative of a meaningful genealogical relationship. And then people often consider segments over seven Centimorgans to be identical by descent or indicative of a meaningful genetic relationship. But that's not always strictly true. You will get segmentsunder seven that are valid, but it's very, very unusual to getsegments under seven that are valid, and it's almost impossible to tell when they're valid and when they're not valid, so we do recommend sticking with that cut off, but you'll also get segments over seven that are false positives as well. So it's not like as soon as it's over seven, you know that it's a valid genetic relationship. You don't. You've always got to use your judgment. Yeah, it's context dependent. So if you belong to, for example, an endogamous community, a community that practices cultural intermarriage, and you see that you've got 1000s of 1000s of matches, and they all share a 10 centimorgan segment at the same location. It's likely thatthat segment of DNA is shared by all of you because you belong to that cultural group, and not because you're recent cousins. So it's always context dependent. And if you find that you've got 10s of 1000s of matches, no matter what cultural group you belong to, if you know you have 10s of 1000s of matches who allshare the same segment, there's a good chance that that's a pile up region. And so what that means is this is a piece of DNA that you share in your family, and it's not indicative of a genealogical relationship. It's just a place, a segment of DNA that happens to have been passed downto 1000s and 1000s of people over time, over hundreds and hundreds of years. So it's a hard question to answer. Seven is the standard cutoff point, but you even with biggersegments, you have to be careful, and you have to be sensible. And if you feel like something's not quite right, if you're looking at the DNA and you feellike you're pushing your luck a little bit with a segment of DNA, trust your gut and try not to rely too much on something that you feel like might be shaky evidence. 20 is when it really becomes more when it really becomes much more reliable statistically.

Mell T 16:06
Okay, magic number 20 and above. Okay, right? That's locked in. I've just become aware of that. I don't know why. I've never really thought of this before. When you've got your DNA done, can you search your surname to see if there's a list of those that have got the same surname and have done a DNA test. It's really interesting that you asked me that, because I talk about this a lot, so I do a lot of trainings in my team about genetic genealogy, and this is one of the things that people do that I really caution against, because you will find with most surnames that they will appear in the trees of people who are not related to you via that line. And so what we endup with in that situation is confirmation bias. So let's say that you think that your great grandfather is a Smith. Then you search your DNA match list for Smith, you are going to get 1000s of results of people who have the surname Smith or who have it in their tree somewhere, and most of those people are not going to be related toyou via your Smith ancestor. Now let's mix it up a bit and say that actually you're not biologically related to your Smith ancestor. Therewas, you know, someone had an affair, and you're not a Smith at all,but you type in Smith into the box, and because of how common the surname is, you get 1000s and 1000s of results, and then you sayto yourself, great, I'm a Smith. Here are all my Smith matches. It's proven. It's verified. That's confirmation bias, because you have constructed evidence to support a conclusion. It's not real evidence, and it's not meaningful, but it looks meaningful because of the scope of the data that you've obtained by doing that search, 1000s of matches called Smith. Surely, most of them are from my Smith line. But of course, we know how common that name is, so we know that that's not a reliable way of looking for relatives switching it over a very unusual name, not not massively, but one that's not a common name that everyone's got. What I'm trying to get to is, if you're stuck on a a blank area, and you're going, I just need to do that jump to the next family level. But I can't find it myself. Should I be looking for that person's surname and then going, Well, can I findanother person that has got a tree and in their DNA that I can go, oh, wait a minute, maybe I'm connected with this one. Honestly, Iwould never recommend doing it. And actually, there's no need, there's no need to do it, because there's a more reliable method thatwill get you to that answer that you're looking for, and that's called the leads method, which is genealogical match grouping. So what you do is you go to your closest DNA match on ancestry. You can color code them so you can add a dot next to the matches name and sort them into groups. So you put that first match into a group. Let's say that they're from your Jones line, so you put them into yourJones group, and then you look at all of the matches you share in common with them.

Laura House 20:00
If they share DNA with you and they share DNA with Jones, there's apretty good chance they're from that Jones line, or from the ancestors of that Jones ancestor. So they're from that bit of your tree. Then you add all of those shared matches into the group, and then as you go through your matches, you sort them all into groups on the basis of which ones share DNA with each other. So what you have here is real information. These people share DNA with each other. They share DNA with you. So you're starting from something that's scientifically factual and reliable. That's your basis. Once you've got your groups, you then look within that group, and you look at the ancestors they share with each other. So let's say your Jones cousin number one is descended from William and Mary Jones, and so are four other of those matches. Fantastic. They all share DNA with you. They all share DNA with each other, and they're all descended from William and Mary Jones. That's really, really, a really good sign that you're genuinely descended from William and Mary and that they are genuinely descended from that couple as well, and that that DNA comes from that bit of your family tree. So you can get to those branches, those difficult branches, using this method, instead of risking confirmation bias. And then once you've got to that difficult eventually you'll find a group of matches who are descended from the the ancestor you're having trouble with. And then you can use that group to figure out, you know, the next generation in that part of your family tree. You can figure out which of those matches are more likely to be distantly related to you. So there's perhaps their descendants from the preceding ancestor, and that can help you break through your brick wall. But at least you're starting on a foundation of scientific truth, which is that they share DNA with you, and they share DNA with each other, and they're from that section of your family tree, soyou're not risking getting random people who just happen to havethat surname in their tree. So I always recommend avoiding a surname search, even if it's an unusual name. So like in my family, for example, I have a very unusual surname. My great grandmother's surname was Casebo, but it's a highly localized name in Norfolk, so even though it's really, really rare, any of my relatives who have ancestors from Norfolk could end up with a Casebo in that tree, and they may not be related to me via that line at all. And of course, I could focus on that and end up completely barking up the wrong tree and wasting a load of time. So I never recommend doing surnames and just stick with match grouping. Who's related to who? How are they related to each other? How are they related to you? That's what I would stick with.

Mell T 22:24
In other words, use the science to actually always stick to the facts

Laura House 22:28
Yes, and always watch out for confirmation bias, because it's such an easy trap to fall into. And when you're doing it, it really does feel like this is reliable information, and it must be true, because it just feels great to find the answers, you know, but you have to be strict with yourself if you want to get to the truth of your heritage, you have to be strict and disciplined and not fall into bad habits.

Mell T 22:50
Now the usual DNA is doing it by using saliva. Is there another way? For instance, I know some people as a keepsake, keep a locket of hair, for instance, of maybe their their mother or their father, and they put it in a piece of jewelry, and it becomes very treasurable. Are you able to take something like that and get the DNA from from their hair?

Laura House 23:11
That's called artifact testing. And ancestry doesn't offer artifact testing because it is incredibly expensive and not always very reliable. With testing hair. There have recently been technological breakthroughs in extracting DNA from hair, but it's generally very, very challenging, almost impossible to do without destroying the artifact as well. Most of the DNA in hair comes from the root, so unless it's been torn out from the root, you're going to really struggleto get any reliable autosomal DNA out of it. This is not something that we currently offer, because it's early days for that kind of technology, and it doesn't produce a very good result a lot ofthe time. What I recommend doing, actually, if you've got those sorts of artifacts, licked stamps, hair samples, that sort of thing, I recommend hanging on to it for a few years, keeping an eye on the technology. Wait for it to get a little bit better, because you don't want to destroy it for no reason, you know. So wait for the technology to improve if you've got the luxury of time, and then send your artifact off once it's looking like things are starting to get really interesting in the future with the technology,

Mell T 24:16
That's very good advice. Sometimes you have to wait for the technology to catch up to the point you're at, and it will. It's one of those things. Sometimes people are in a rush, and sometimes you'vejust got to wait. You have to wait for things to come in the right order.

Laura House 24:30
Otherwise you could end up losing your artifact.

Mell T 24:31
So your family tree,have you managed to trace way back? How far have you reached back to?

Laura House 24:37
It depends on the line. Of course, on my dad's side, I have Dutch Jewish heritage, and those records are absolutely glorious. So a lot of those lines go back very, very far, back to when the Jews were exiled from Portugal and Spain to Amsterdam. So some of my family were the first Jewish people to settle in Amsterdam and buildthe Jewish synagogue. So those lines are really well documented, because a lot of them are history figures. So the documentation is a lot more sound than it is for some of the other lineages, and then onsome lines, it's been much more challenging. So my maternal grandmother has an unknown father, but she's Spanish, and DNA testing isn't super popular in Spain yet, so it's early days for that project. I don't have a dad for her yet. So on that line, my tree stops in the 1930s which is a shame, but I'm hoping to get a breakthrough once DNA testing starts taking off in other countries around the world.

Mell T 26:34
Is it worth if you hadn't done back in 2001 is it worth having it done again nowadays, or does the same data stand up to the same DNA sequencing?

Laura House 26:45
So as far as I know, if you took the earliest Ancestry DNA test, it's the same technology now. It's testing the same number of markers, so it's using the same and of course, your resultsupdate in real time. So even though it's the same DNA samplefrom all those years ago, your snip data is already in the database. It's the same SNIPs then as the snips we test now, and as the technologyimproves, they rerun the algorithms on your sample. And so you get all those improved results every time we run an update, so you don't need to retest if there ever comes a time that there's some dramatic improvement in what's possible. Like, for example, there's something called whole genome sequencing that direct to consumer DNA testing companies do not do because it costs too much money test the entire genome, but it costs too much money torun the test, and it costs too much money to store the data, and it's terrible for the environment to have to store that much data as well. So currently, this is not feasible, but there may come a time in the future when whole genome sequencing becomes standard practice, and when that day comes, then maybe people are going to have to retest to get the whole genome into the database. But at the moment, it's standard practice to do about 700,000 SNPs across the genome a representative sample. It's the same now as it was back then. So no, nobody needs to retest. It doesn't make any difference.

Can you see a time where, in the future, people would just be able tohave the full, full test and then just look at the database, do its magic, and go, this is your family line. In terms of predicting a familyline?

Mell T 28:17
Yes,

Laura House 28:17
I could see that happening. I mean, obviously I'm not speaking as like, you know, I'm not promising anything from an Ancestry perspective, but in terms of the technology being possible, yeah, I could see exactly how, how that would happen.

Mell T 28:30
From my side of it, I'm passionate about trying to constantly get people to record their relatives just talking for their voices, because in the future, you will be able to just AI it, and your grandfather could read bedtime stories to your great grandchildren, which wouldbe magical, I think, short term, if you're able to solve it a lot easier inthe future, if that possibility is there, to me, it's just like, well, all the documents, it's just like, Well, yeah, you can find the documents and you know they exist. But to have the magic of the picture of someone or the voice of someone is going to really make ancestry live for people. It will be a real connection with their true heritage.

Laura House 29:12
Yeah, and Ancestry has been trying to tap into that more with things like features like the storymaker studio. So on the app, you have the storymaker studio, and you there's a recording feature so that you can record stories being told by your ancestors, and you can ask them questions, and you can record their story, and then you can add that to your tree. So we are moving into more of a multimedia era where we're trying to get much more of that sort of thing documented in our family trees and preserved for future generations. We want to preserve voices. We want to preserve videos. And you're right, once these things are gone, they're gone forever, and it's just so important to capture this information.

Exactly. And it's so early days, it's easy to feel impatient, and I feel impatient a lot, but we got to remember, the first direct to consumer DNA test came out in 2001 or 2000 and so this technologyis only existed for a tiny amount of time, and it's really, really early days, and I can remember when it was not yet popular in the UK to take a DNA test for fun. It wasn't a practice here, and so people talked about taking DNA tests in this country and not getting very good results. And that's changed dramatically in the last decade. If you take a DNA test and you've got UK heritage now you're going toget absolutely fantastic results from that. So we're in the very earliest days of this technology and in this journey, and it's just going to get more and more popular. And as it takes off around the world, everything's going to change.

Mell T 29:47
You are reliant on how popular something is in a particular country before you can actually really have your DNA run against a bigger database, because, as we all know, the bigger the data set, the more likely is you're going to get some positives,

Once again, I always run out of time everyone I speak to, and we always go. I could do with that whole afternoon with this person justto find out more. But you've certainly given some great advice on where people should start seriously thinking about DNA and what they should do with it and and how they should maybe judge what they're looking at and not just grab the nearest thing that's close to what they want.

Laura House 30:14
Yeah, I hope it's been useful.

Mell T 30:16
Okay. Thank you very much Laura house, and if people want to get ahold of you, is there a connection to you online.

Laura House 30:21
I'm on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn, and I work for the research division of Ancestry, ancestry pro genealogists. So if you are somebody looking for a genetic genealogy specialist, for whatever reason, I can be hired through there, through the company. So yeah, there are various ways to make contacting

Mell T 30:43
Once again. Thank you very much. Laura, it's been a fascinating conversation, and I've just learned a lot more about DNA. So thank you very much.

Laura House 30:51
Thank you for having me.

Jingle 30:52
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