California or Bust

 

Photo by K.D. Jones. 1 Aug 1937.

The photo above was taken by my Gumpy during his California road trip in 1937 with his brother Bob and two cousins, Guy Hankins and Tom Hendrickson. I had intended to post the photo along with the original blog post back in 2012, but apparently I never got around to doing that. It's a great photo. The caption in my Gumpy's book of short stories says "Three 'bums' in Missouri, August 1, 1937. Bob Jones, Guy Hankins and Tom 'Toad' Hendrickson (Keith taking picture). P.S. We made California!"

This chapter featured a sketch by my Gumpy, which I'm sharing below.

Sketch by K.D. Jones.

The Breakfast Club

 

Harry Naltchayan, Washington Post. 19 July 1974.

An article in today's edition of the Washington Post on the story behind the photo above is too good not to share. The story is incredibly touching, and the modern connection between the photographer and the reunion of the participants from that breakfast on the Mall 50 years ago will bring tears to your eyes.

Closing out September

Nearing the end of the month, I'd say progress is at a snail's pace instead of the slow and steady turtles I mentioned in August. I've managed to add four to my group of matches on the O'Brien-Bridget line, so now we're at 75. I still have the cluster of Pennsylvania O'Briens and I am trying to learn how to place them into a WATO tree.

I am also still waiting for MyHeritage to release version 2 (or 2 point something) of their ethnicity estimates, while AncestryDNA's 2024 update will likely be released very soon. I am hoping new features on matches grouped to a subregion or new Ancestral Journeys might shed some light on these brick walls in my tree. Last year's update was released (or at least I was able to view the results I administer) on 2 October 2023, which gives me some hope that we'll see these refined totals and new features in the coming days.

Next week I'm joining the first of the DNA Study Group sessions and looking forward to using the skills gained in the classes to work with all of these matches of matches and DNA data.

New look to By Parent info on Ancestry

 

AncestryDNA By Parent Landing Page. Sept 2024.

Ancestry continues to roll out a refreshed look to its AncestryDNA pages. Above is a snapshot from the By Parent page in the DNA section. More to come soon with the 2024 update.

Rootstech 2025 Registration Open

Registration is now open for Rootstech 2025, which will take place once again in-person in Salt Lake City and online from 6-8 March 2025. I last attended in-person in 2013, and I'm looking at attending in person again, prior to meetings on the West Coast. Recordings from previous sessions are available on the Rootstech website and YouTube, and provide useful information on a variety of family history and tech topics. DNA related sessions are still very helpful for follow-up viewing.

Saving for comparison

 

AncestryDNA regions, Sept 2023. 

Ancestry continues to make minor changes ahead of the 2024 update to its AncestryDNA pages. Just yesterday, the ancestral regions pages for the tests I manage showed varying dates as last updated in July and August 2023. Now these pages show last updated in September 2023. Above is the current ancestral regions page for my Dad's results. Below is a snapshot of my Aunt Patty's results. She's the leader in our family for different ancestral regions, with 14 regions appearing in her results.

AncestryDNA regions, Sept 2023.

I'm expecting these pages will change again in the next week or so, once the 2024 update is released.

El General

 

Movie poster for El General (2009).

For this Hispanic Heritage Month, I am catching up on some films relevant to the theme. The first one is an award-winning film by Natalia Almada titled El General. The movie weaves in audio recordings left by her grandmother Alicia recalling the life of her father, Plutarco Elias Calles, who served as President of Mexico from 1924-1928. We share a common ancestor, as Plutarco's grandfather was Vicente Antonio Campuzano, my 3rd-great-grandfather. This means Ms. Almada and I are distant cousins.

I missed the film when it was broadcast on PBS several years ago, but it is available for rental or purchase via Vimeo. It is fascinating how she blends the audio recordings, family photos and films from the time of her grandmother and great-grandfather, with the interviews and stories of everyday Mexicans in 2006-2007. This is definitely worth watching and provides an important perspective on Mexico from the last 100 years.

MyHeritage pre-update v2

 

MyHeritage ethnicity estimates.before the update

Ahead of the version 2 update for MyHeritage's DNA ethnicity estimates, I'm sharing the map for the results on my Mom (above) and my Dad (below). I previously shared my own results back in 2022. A few months ago I loaded my Dad and Mom's AncestryDNA raw data onto MyHeritage to expand our pool of matches. It will be interesting to see how the estimates change in the upcoming update, and how those will compare with the 2024 updates on Ancestry.

Oddly, MyHeritage shows my Dad's results with 6.9% Iberian and .9% Central Asian, which makes no sense. They also have him in a genetic group for Cavan and Leitrim in Ireland, which is also very close to Longford and Roscommon, his DNA communities (now ancestral journeys) on Ancestry. 

MyHeritage ethnicity estimate for my Dad, pre-update.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2024

 

AncestryDNA 2023 Results

Hispanic Heritage Month occurs from 15 September to 15 October, and as with previous years, I have a short blog post recognizing my family's connection to this heritage. Above is a snapshot of my Mom's 2023 AncestryDNA ancestral regions, ahead of the new update coming out in the near future. Spain and Indigenous Americas- Mexico feature prominently in her results. My Aunts Patty and Linda have Indigenous Americas - Yucatan and Indigenous Americas - Bolivia & Peru. 

Our son has 1% Indigenous Americas - Central in the 2023 results, and it will be fascinating to see if this drops off in the update or merges with Indigenous Americas - Mexico. He likes to say that's 1% Mayan.

AncestryDNA 2023 results S. Jones.

Partly to remind myself to look for additional information, I have a link to my September 2020 post on the estate of Concepcion Suastegui, sister of my 5th-great-grandfather Pedro Suastegui. There may be new records on some of the sites I follow (Newspapers.com, FamilySearch, etc.). 

Refreshed look for AncestryDNA

 

AncestryDNA page (still showing July 2023 update).

It looks like Ancestry is in the process of refreshing the user interface for the ancestral origins page (previously ethnicity estimates), as the left side now shows tabs for regions, journeys (previously DNA communities) and By Parent for the Sideview feature for how one's regions match into maternal and paternal sides. These changes appear to be arriving ahead of the 2024 DNA update, which should be showing up any day now.

As I speculated earlier in the month, it will be interesting to see which update arrives first, Ancestry's or MyHeritage. 

Guided Instruction

I'm taking several new approaches to try and break down some family history mysteries. First, I have written research questions to describe exactly what I am trying to uncover. Next, I've sought expert help from a DNA coach to review my work and provide suggestions for tackling these research questions. Yesterday I spoke with a very helpful expert, and through the wonders of the Internet we were able to connect online for a DNA research coaching session.

I have some follow-up action items to review my groups of matches and then take the Pittsburgh O'Brien cluster and put them into a WATO tree to determine the likelihood of connection to my John O'Brien line. It is certainly a possibility that the Pittsburgh cluster is from a mystery first family of John O'Brien or descended from one of his sons or siblings, so I need to explore this further.

The other thing I'll be doing is joining Your DNA Guide's upcoming DNA Study Group. I'm looking forward to the collaboration and focused instruction into DNA research, and hoping to apply these skills in uncovering the research mysteries in my tree. There's more to follow on this, and there may be limits to what I can share on the blog. I should be able to write about the things that I find about my own family branches using these improved skills, but there might be a delay.

September 1904

 

MET Museum, NY. Sunset Magazine.

This cover from Sunset Magazine, September 1904, was on display at the MET Museum in New York during our visit in March 2024. This reminds me of the home my great-grandparents lived in back in Tucson, Arizona in the Barrio Viejo neighborhood.

If your family story could be streaming

 

Source: Amazon Prime Video.

If you had the opportunity to kick back and turn on a movie or series based on a story in your family history, what would you choose? Taking a break from doing actual research, I let my imagination wander a bit, dreaming up a selection of shows from my own family history. As I haven't had the good fortune of having any ancestors' stories appear in a segment of Finding Your Roots or Who Do You Think You Are, for this thought experiment I am sharing a few true stories that would be amazing to see as a limited series, movie or documentary.

The story most likely to be dramatized is that of Elizabeth Key Grinstead, my 9th-great-grandmother on my Mom's side of the tree (see also this 2015 post on her father, Thomas). In 2019, Elizabeth was featured in an exhibition at Jamestown, and may still be portrayed by an actor at the Jamestown Colony museum. A short 7 minute YouTube video was produced in 2021 narrating the battle for her freedom from slavery as an important piece of Black History. Elizabeth's story is an inspiring one, and I think it has all the elements of being a compelling lesson for today.

For an epic song-and-dance Gilded Age to early Vaudeville series, the story of my Dad's great-aunt Agnes Atherton O'Brien and her rise from the La Salle County Sisters of Charity orphanage to a thirty-plus year career on the stage would be an amazing tear jerker. A second season could follow my great-grandfather Harry O'Brien, as he was inspired by Agnes to pursue a musical career as a clarinetist, venturing to New Orleans for college and playing in the jazz club scene. Comic relief would be the story of his first marriage to the actress daughter of his landlady and her amusing sister Leonora's own failed marriage in New York.

A Civil War drama with a murder mystery and legal battle going to the US Supreme Court (and with a touch of a love story narrated from an eyewitness diary), I'd watch the Notorious Captain Thornhill.

Other war time action stories would involve my 3rd-great-grandfather John O'Brien, as a ship's boy during the Battle of Trafalgar; or the touching World War II feel-good story of my great-grandmother's nephew James Clifton Whitley who completed bomber missions in the Mediterranean and later met a pilot he had shot down, who became his barber and friend. Another story in this category is the amazing Civil War spy story of Felix Stidger. He has a plaque titled "the spy that saved the Union."

For a basketball series, I'd look to the Hoosiers before Hoosiers and the story of the 1915 Indiana high school basketball champions from Thorntown. The victory by my great-grandfather's team led to the construction of a new gym in the small town. 1915, Part Two would follow Edgar Jones' first cousin Nettie Snoddy, who played star guard for the Enid High School girls basketball team in Oklahoma. Nettie's play inspired her younger brother Clarence to a championship in 1921.

My Gumpy's 1937 road trip from Indiana to California with his brother and two cousins would make a funny coming of age comedy. His photos from the trip captured the journey west and back.

For a glamorous around the world love story, I'd watch the story of globetrotting photographers Mary Isabelle Cox and her husband William Irvine.

Another story destined for a film or limited series connects our family to the famous Ronstadts of Arizona. Selena Gomez is in pre-production on a biopic based on the life of Linda Ronstadt. If her movie includes any references to the Vasquez and Suastegui families, that would be really cool.

Inspiring immigration stories I'd love to see on the small screen include my 2nd-great-grandfather Vicente Campuzano's work with Liga Protectora Latina in 1916. Or a sweeping journey across the Atlantic in 1624, from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam by the DuTrieux family.

There are so many of these stories in our family, and in the families of others, and I have not scratched the surface yet. There's more to uncover, more to write, and we may still have a segment on a famous-adjacent family branch on a future Finding Your Roots episode. Season 11 will be released in January.

Roar

Photo by Patrick Jones. Winery cat. 31 Aug 2024.

Cat mid-yawn at Hermann J. Weimer Vineyard from our visit last weekend. The pond behind the cat was a big hit with our son, who caught eight fish while we were tasting inside. We are making more regular visits to the Finger Lakes region of New York now that our daughter is attending college in the area.

The cat reminded me of another photo I captured during travel, of an angry monkey at Angkor Wat.

Looking into the Pittsburgh O'Briens

 

US City Directories. Pittsburgh. 1880.

As I prepare for a DNA coaching session late next week, I'm "doing the genealogy" and digging further into a available sources on the mystery O'Brien branch in Pittsburgh. In the page above from the US City Directory for Pittsburgh in 1880, James O'Brien is listed as a railroad section boss, living at 29th and Jane, which matches the listing for him and family in the 1880 US Census.

Working backward, James also appears at the same address in the 1877 and 1878 City Directories for Pittsburgh, working for "PV & CRR". This was the Pennsylvania, Virginia and Charleston Railroad. The family does not appear in the 1876 directory, and that makes sense if the marriage record for James' daughter Maggie O'Brien is correct. She listed her place of birth as Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in March 1876.

Allegheny County, PA. Marriage Records.

Another child of James O'Brien listed Luzerne County as his birth place on his marriage record. Below is a clipping showing the marriage record for Michael J. O'Brien, who listed his birth date as 28 November 1869. I am hoping this will help locate the family in the 1870 US Census in the area.

Allegheny County, PA. Marriage Records.

The oldest son, Dennis John O'Brien, listed his birth place as "Wales" on his marriage record. He did list an address, 477 Preble Avenue in Pittsburgh, which was very helpful in locating the family in the Pittsburgh City Directory for later years.

Allegheny County, PA. Marriage Records.

My next step is to try to verify the Luzerne County connection, and see if the family appears in the 1870 US Census.

Google Maps.

Which DNA update will arrive first?

With the calendar flip to September, we've entered the time of the year when Ancestry traditionally begins to release its update to AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates (now called Ancestral Regions). Last year's update appeared for me on 2 October 2023. The 2022 update arrived in mid-August, so this year's could certainly arrive any day now.

Earlier this summer, MyHeritage promoted its own DNA ethnicity estimate update. This still has not arrived for me, and I wonder which will arrive first, the update to AncestryDNA or MyHeritage. Maybe both will be appearing soon, and I'll follow-up with another post or two comparing the new results with the prior versions on the tests I administer.

Sunrise over Ithaca

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Ithaca, NY. 2 Sep 2024.