I haven't spent much time on my own family history over the last few months, since some other areas of research have taken priority. Which is why I 'failed', during July, in my intention to make at least one post per month here.
But, does it really matter, since I am still finding having the 'intention' is a motivator.
I had hoped this month might see me reach 400 DNA matches in the "Close matches - 4th cousin or closer" category at Ancestry, since the total had sat at 399 since the 24th July.
Instead, I lost one!
It seems as if it was someone who had only appeared as a match in mid-June, supposedly sharing 30cM, and predicted to be a "half 3rd cousin 1x removed or 3rd cousin 2x removed". I'd even allocated a potential group to them, on the basis of shared matches.
But now Ancestry says they don't even share sufficient DNA with me to show at a more distant level of matching!
Interesting, but I'm not going to worry about it, at only that level of centimorgans.
FamilyTreeDNA have begun to advertise upgrades to their "Next Generation Sequencing" panel test, for people who have previously taken their FamilyFinder autosomal test.
So now I need to decide whether to upgrade my own test there, as well as those I manage for other relatives. It is fortunate that FTDNA stores our samples, since some of those relatives are now deceased.
However, I haven't had a great deal of success identifying autosomal matches at FTDNA, in comparison to Ancestry, and there is also the possibility of upgrading a Y-DNA test for one of the deceased relatives, from Y-500, to Y-700. Since I doubt that there will be sufficient sample left to upgrade both his autosomal, and his Y-DNA test, this could end up being a question of priorities.
Is it even worth upgrading?
With a nod towards future descendants, and bearing in mind my aim of documenting some current family stories, the eclipse on the 12th August seemed a good opportunity to include a bit about what we did on the day.
We'd booked ourselves onto a "Fish & Eclipse Evening Special", at the Great Central Railway. Since we had left it too late to purchase any special 'eclipse glasses', without paying ridiculous prices on the site of a well known internet retailer, we set about making several other means of viewing the event. Variations on a pinhole camera were my fellow traveller's choice, but I was quite taken with the images people had posted in previous years, just using a colander.
However, since I didn't want to turn up at the station carrying one of those, I made a few variations, which could be fitted into my bag. ☺
The results were let down by my photography, so ended up blurred - but still make nice memories of the event:
Of course, as my fellow traveller pointed out, their equipment (an empty cereal packet, with a foil section containing a pinhole) only took five minutes to make, whereas mine took…..well, perhaps we won’t go into that!
There is a page on Wikipedia1, which lists the various types of eclipses that have been visible from the Brisith Isles, so it is possible to work out which ancestors were alive at the time.
I must admit, I don't remember most of those that have occurred during my own lifetime, although for one of those in the 1990s, we did track its progress. (Note to self - find the photographs to add to my stories!)
Notes and Sources
1. Wikipedia page about eclipses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_British_Isles
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