Using Industrial Revolution Home Inventories

From Boston.com:

On the eve of their marriage in 1682, Hans Hürning and Barbara Herrenmann, like all German couples of their time, invited a local official into each of their homes to catalog every single one of their possessions.  

Three hundred years after Hans and Barbara made their lists, a graduate student named Sheilagh Ogilvie began searching through the archives of central German villages for a dissertation topic. In every town she visited there would inevitably be reams of such lists, and she was shocked to find how pervasive and untouched these household inventories were. They had been produced by the local municipalities at marriage and death from at least the 17th century onwards, and in many cases nobody had looked at them for centuries: The sand used by scribes to blot the ink just after writing would often fall out onto her lap.

At the time, there were simply too many for her to try to research. But three years ago, armed with computing capabilities that did not exist in the 1980s, Ogilvie — now a professor at the University of Cambridge — began an ambitious project to process every one of the thousands of lists from two towns in the Württemberg region, beginning with the year 1602 and up until the late 1800s.

 Never forget to look for direct sources that may not be immediately available!

11 Fictional Family Trees

From Mental Floss - I especially like this rendering of the Weasley family tree, including the extended Potter branch:

Ancestry Project Reveals Students' Genetic Ancestry

From Medicalxpress.com:

At the event, Spencer Wells, co-director of the project and a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor at Cornell, summarized the analyses of the lineages and migration stories revealed in the DNA of 200 random Cornell undergraduates tested in February. He showed how they fit into the picture of humanity's migration history.

The project, which focuses exclusively on deep ancestry genetic markers and has no medical or clinical relevance, provides a great opportunity to teach the public about genetics, said Charles Aquadro, director of the Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics, who co-led the project and presentation. With the current advances in life sciences, "genetics is going to become part of the fabric of our lives very quickly," he said.

With projects like these, as well as more tailored services like 23andme and familytreedna.com, we will increasingly be able to look further back than ever before to see the commonality within everyone!

Fascinating Paper on Patrilineal Descendants in Asia - Are You a Descendant of Gneghis Khan?

This paper gives a great background on the common trope that 1 in 200 Asian men are descendant from Genghis Khan through his four "legitimate" sons.  Also provides an overview of similar studies throughout the world and specifically the Middle East.

Immigration Tracker

Great resource via the New York Times, using U.S. Census information for tracking immigration patterns of most major immigrant groups! You can adjust the map by immigrant group and by year. Drag the slider across the timeline and you can see how immigration patterns evolved over time! Check out Social Explorer for maps and other demographic resources for exploring your immigrant roots.

Y-marker tests Really Work!!

Several companies have arisen in recent years that provide different types of genetic testing in order to further your genealogical research (ONGEN favorite FamilyTree DNA is one). Now, PhysOrg provides a summary of new research published this week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, may help genealogists create more accurate family trees even when records are missing. It also suggests that the often quoted "one in ten" figure for children born through infidelity is unlikely to be true. From the article:

Dr Turi King and Professor Mark Jobling from the University of Leicester examined the Y chromosomes of over 1,600 unrelated men with forty surnames (including variations in spelling). Sons inherit both the Y chromosome and - generally - the surname from their fathers, unlike daughters, who do not carry this sex-specific chromosome and usually change their surname through marriage.

The researchers also looked at whether the Y chromosome-surname link could provide information about historical rates of children born illegitimately. People with a rare surname are very likely to be related as the surname is likely to have been adopted by only one or two men initially, so anyone now sharing this surname but with a different Y chromosome to the majority is likely to have an ancestor born illegitimately.

"People often quote a figure of one in ten for the number of people born illegitimately," says Professor Jobling. "Our study shows that this is likely to be an exaggeration. The real figure is more likely to be less that one in twenty-five."

1911 UK Census - For a Price

The UK has decided to make its UK census available to the public three years earlier than the statutorily required date. However, only searches are free. A typed transcript or copy of the relevant census page will cost "credits" that can be purchased online at the site. We'll see whether this fee lasts or if it is just until Ancestry gets it.