DNA Triangulation

As I was working on my DNA matches, checking to see if I had any new matches and checking their shared matches and looking for common ancestors, etc.…

I came back to my closest cousin match, who happens to be adopted. Even though she doesn’t want to know who her biological parents are, I was wondering if I could try to pin-point our most common ancestor better. AncestryDNA states she is a 2^nd Cousin. Therefore I first thought perhaps my great-grandparents, 8 David Crinion and 9 Amelia Gadow were our common ancestors.

However, according to AncestryDNA, this could also mean a 1^st cousins 1x removed, thus a child of one of my first cousins. She has told me that she was born June 28, 1978 in Phoenix, AZ.

My second instinct was to think she might be one of my male cousin’s daughters, since I had one cousin who was living in the Phoenix area at the time.

Anyway, there were updates on AncestryDNA and more shared matches appeared. Our shared matches consist of 16 James Crinion & 17 Mary Ann Mahon; 20 Michael McDonald & 21 Catherine Quinn; 22 Myron O’Brion & 23 Mary Goodwin; 34 Ed McMahon & 35 Rose Kirley; 36 Gottfried Gadow & 37 Anna Maria Rosenow; 180 Samuel Kress & 181 Catherine Slaughter.

Once I saw Michael McDonald and Catherine Quinn, I realized that I would have to step down a generation from David and Amelia and move to my grandparents, 4 John Lawrence Crinion and 5 Isabella McDonald.

Therefore I confirmed this by theory because John’s Ancestors are 16, 17, 34, 35, 36, & 37 while Isabella’s ancestors are 20, 21, 22, 23, 180 & 181.

In conclusion, all I can confirm at this time is that our closest ancestors are my grandparents.  Whether she is a product of my father’s only sister’s child or his only brother’s child remains unknown. However I am leaning towards my one of my aunt’s children, and probably one of her sons’ child. Perhaps someday, she will want to learn more about her family and I will be here waiting to share the information.

All Browsers are not created equal

Today while updating my husband’s family in my Family Tree Maker program, I realized that all browsers are not created equal.

I was looking at the Ancestry hints that FTM displays for one of my husband’s ancestors. When I click on the link to open in a new window, the program defaults to Internet Explorer even though my preferred browser is Chrome. My computer is set up to have Chrome as my default browser. Before today, I never realized that there was a difference when I was looking at the “view printer friendly” version.

The first image below shows how it was going to print via Internet Explorer. Notice that the Household members take up two lines per person and thus could produce a 2^nd page if the household size was greater than 6 members.

The second image below shows how it was going to print via Chrome. Not only do the household members only take up one line each, I now can view the entire Source information, all on one page. Since I like to print out direct line documents to share with non-genealogy members, I find being able to print it on one page is very useful, especially since I like to print the image of the census page on the back side of the same page.

Another thing I noticed was when I selected the item to print in Internet Explorer and then right click to print, I can select either print or print preview, while Chrome takes you directly into print preview when you select print.  Plus the two print previews are very different.

In Internet Explorer you see the image as it will print on the page and then you need to select print to get to the printer setting. 

While in Chrome you have the printer settings on the left and the image on the right. Everything is at my fingertips and I like that. If I change from portrait to landscape, the image in Chrome will adjust to reflect my printing change.

Lesson learned, if you find a browser you like and it works the way you want, remember to always use it even when other programs might default to another browser. It might take me a little longer to type in my search criteria into Ancestry to get the same list of hints as FTM does, but for me, the little extra steps give me the printed and saved digital images in the format that I want.