Roberta

In both recollections on the "California or Bust" 1937 road trip story, told from the perspective of my Gumpy, and then by his brother Bob, they mention the kindness of Roberta Elliott during their stop in San Francisco. Roberta was from Thorntown, Indiana, and was an older classmate of Bob's from Sugar Plains school. When my Gumpy, Bob, and cousins Tom and Guy stopped in San Francisco, Roberta put them up at her apartment with her first husband Archie Monson. She cooked them a shrimp dinner from Fishermans Wharf and guided them on a tour through the city. This memory stood out in both their stories and they remembered her fondly.

When I shared Bob's version of the road trip in 2024 (self-published in his book in 1994), I had intended to follow-up with more information about Roberta. Unfortunately I forgot to come back to her story, so I'm doing that with this post.

Roberta lived to be 102, and died in August 2016. Her obituary captures a fascinating set of achievements, including a medical school now named for her at California Pacific Medical Center.

San Francisco Chronicle, 7 Aug 2016.

Indianapolis News. 22 Apr 1937.

It looks like Roberta did not have children of her own. In 1959, Roberta traveled with second husband Newt Neustadter on a trip to South America, visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brasil and Lima, Peru. An interview with Roberta published after her 100th birthday includes further recollections of her time in Thorntown and journey to California.

Casa Dos Amados

Photo by Patrick Jones. Casa Dos Amados.

Yesterday before the Norway v England World Cup match, I went to our neighborhood wine shop to pick up something for a game viewing party at a friends' house. The local wine shop was tasting a quartet of wines from Casa Dos Amados in Portugal. The label caught my attention as I'm pursuing our Amado line back to Portugal. My Aunt Linda has 5% Portugal in her Ancestral Regions on Ancestry, and 23&Me's latest update shows me as 6.7% Portuguese and Galician.

A portion of my composition from 23&Me.

Back to Casa Dos Amados, they are located in Saima, between Lisbon and Porto. The wines were tasty. Now this place is on my list for a future visit.

Google Maps. Saima, PT.

Workers on Strike in Vizcaya

Museo del Prado. Painting by Cutanda y Toraya, 1892.

This large scale work titled Workers on Strike in Vizcaya by Vicente Cutanda y Toraya is on display at the amazing Museo del Prado in Madrid. I've visited many times and was able to walk through the museum before connecting home last month. The painting is 9 feet tall by over 17 feet wide, so the scale of the painting draws you into the scene of the Basque workers going on strike in 1890. The part of the painting that really caught my attention is in the lower left corner, showing a girl, holding back possibly a little brother, while carrying a basket and a bottle of wine.

Chromosome mapping update

 

DNAPainter.

Since starting with chromosome mapping tools on DNAPainter in March, I've made a good bit of progress identifying segments. I shared some stats in my 1 July Research Progress update, and I thought it might be useful to provide some additional detail on how this is working.

Currently segment data can be viewed for DNA matches on FamilyTreeDNA, 23&Me, MyHeritage and Gedmatch. This is where testing (or uploading DNA kits) across multiple platforms can be useful. Because Ancestry does not provide a chromosome browser, you can't view individual segments in common with matches on AncestryDNA. But it is possible shared matches of matches with Ancestry's ProTools might help identify matches in common who tested or uploaded to these other platforms, and that can be used to map segments to DNAPainter.

I'm now up to 191 segments mapped (32%) for me, 122 segments (24%) for my Dad's results, and 137 segments (28%) for my Mom's results. This is good steady progress since I made a chromosome mapping post in May.

Combining chromosome mapping with clustering has also been really useful, and Ancestry does provide clustering in ProTools. I've been able to find some matches in common from Ancestry who also tested on 23&Me, and that's helped with the segment mapping.

Revisiting the World Cup teams based on family history

 

Ancestry on Facebook. 7 Jul 2026.

Ancestry's Facebook post on DNA origins and the World Cup is a good reminder to revisit the last eight countries who might lift the trophy on 19 July. In May I shared a post on the 2026 World Cup teams based on family history. Ancestry's had the same idea to use the World Cup to generate interest in AncestryDNA and its ancestral origins tool.

Tomorrow France and Morocco are set for an epic quarterfinal clash. France has been amazing throughout the tournament, but I'm pulling for Morocco to make the last four. On Friday, Spain and Belgium play. Belgium knocked out the US, and has never won (they finished in 3rd place in 2018). I'm cheering for Spain to make the semi-final, and if Morocco is out, then for Spain to make the final.

On Saturday, the fun Norwegian squad plays England, followed by Argentina and Switzerland. I think Argentina and Messi are destined for a few more games in this tournament after their miracle comeback against Egypt (they really deserved more and it's too bad their run has ended).