Much progress has been done in expanding the Jacob Conrad family tree with the help of Ancestry DNA Volunteers. As you may know, ancestry shows each person other people with significant common DNA ammounts. It also shows those other people who are common to both you and the other person. But, it only shows those "shared matches to people" up to the 4th cousin level. It also doesn't show the cM match level between the other person and the "shared match".
In order to see all of the matches, including those beyond 4th cousin, one needs to authorize that information in what used to be called a "Guest Share", which allows another person to see all of your matches as well as the closeness of the matches. To date, several Conrad cousins have done this and we've made quite a lot of progress. If you would like to help also, you would need to do the following:
- on the main ancestry page, click on the "DNA" pulldown menu, then "Your DNA Results Summary"
- click on the "Settings" gear in upper right
- go down to "DNA Ethnicity and Matches"
- Add a person, "tconrad63" (leave as Viewer only)
Note, this does not allow the other person access to your actual DNA code - it only allows someone to see DNA matches and their levels. Particpant's DNA ID will not be posted, but any participant can review their combined matches at any time. If you would like to use Tim's account to expand your own research, please contact him (he can and will only share his own matches to other researchers).
The goals of this Conrad DNA project are:
- identify clusters of "lost Conrad's" and connect them to the Jacob Conrad family tree
- identify other Conrad immigrants from Germany that are part of our expanded family (as well as rule out postulated connections)
- solve mysteries (eg, people's ancestors with missing parents)
- solve more recent adoption questions
The Power of Multiple Detectors
To date, we have founds several lost Conrad clans that had previously gone unsolved. Imagine a person named George Conrad who had migrated west, and the only identification was that he was born in Pennsylvania. There were many Conrad families around Pennsylvania prior to the 1850 census which listed all children by name. However, having many strong DNA matches to Conrad from across the country has led to the connection to the tree and in most cases, subsequent paper documentation proving the connection (including a lost George Conrad!). We have also identified multiple adoptee connections using the power of multiple accounts to measure closeness. In many of these cases, Tim has contacted people who have incomplete information in their online trees to inform them of possible or likely (or known) connections. Many mysteries have been solved, except no other recent or contemporary immigrants have been identified (Jacob seems to have come alone).
The abilty to find these lost connections benefits from the number of contributors. Since each descendent receives random DNA segments amounting to half from each parent, only close cousins have statistically likely chances of showing a match (eg, 2nd cousins or better). Having multiple accounts boosts the power of searches, just like using multiple radio telescopes in astronomy to improve reception and elimate "noise".
As of September, 2018, there are 23 participating ancestry DNA accounts, 581 Jacob Conrad DNA descendant matches identified (plus another 40 George Frederick Steinbruck only descendants). We have searchable accounts representing all of Jacob's children except Elizabeth and Mary. Shown below is a view of the spreadsheet tracker consolidating the match information.
If you have questions about the DNA project, contact Tim.