Ancestry.com Member Connect

Good idea...bad implementation. Anyone who's used Ancestry.com for more than one tree knows that Ancestry will list results from your other trees when you are searching on a person who exists in all of your trees. So, you'd think before they implement Member Connect, the new social networking feature, that they would correct this. I mean, I'm a programmer too...how hard is it to exclude results from trees associated with the same username as the one conducting the search? Apparently, it's really hard because they didn't fix it. Witness:

I log onto Ancestry.com and am excited to see that Member Connect has found one other person searching for Major Reddick and that person has records and timeline events. Great! I may have found a new cousin. Click....click through the "Welcome to Member Connect" intro...and there it is:
The other person searching for Major Reddick is ME! They gave me a result from my other tree...

Ancestry, get it together please....

BBC on African-American Genetic Genealogy

via news.bbc.co.uk

The BBC has an article about Americans looking for their roots through their DNA. There is some criticism of how African Ancestry interprets their results. I used African DNA for my tests because African Ancestry was a bit expensive ($349).

The criticism of African Ancestry is not unwarranted. What I liked about African DNA was that they were very clear to state that maternal DNA CANNOT conclusively link you back to a tribe in Africa for several reasons. Chief among these reasons is that the database that your DNA is compared to comes from people who are "known" to be--or say they are--of a particular tribe or region that are living. It's simply not conclusive.

This is not to say that the information is not useful. It can give you some ideas, confirm some leads and even offer new leads. DNA doesn't stand alone, but it can be combined with thoughtful genealogical analysis to draw conclusions about ancestry.

I was particularly offended by the quote from Mr. Ofori Anor, Asante magazine editor, "African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world." That is simply not true. What African-Americans want is what was TAKEN from us: our history, our heritage and our culture. We want connections to understand how we came to be here. We want a better understanding of what our ancestors believed and what gave them the strength to survive the holocaust that was American slavery. It's a shame that Mr. Anor fails to grasp the power of knowing your roots.


Found via the The Genetic Genealogist