Genetic Genealogy Simplified: Intro to AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA is the Goliath of genetic genealogy. They broke 7 million testers in their database at the end of 2017, and will likely only continue to grow as we enter the 2018 holiday season. To give you an idea of how many people that is, it's roughly the population of the entire state of Arizona.

So what does this mean?

It means that more people than ever are taking AncestryDNA tests to learn something about themselves... and more people than ever are going to look at their ethnicity results and think, "That's it? That's what I paid all that money to find out?"

But it doesn't have to be that way!

The AncestryDNA test, like all genetic genealogy tests, does more than cheap scientific parlor tricks in estimating your ethnicity. It can tell you volumes about your genealogy, your personal history, and your connections to all the best highlights of history.

The trick is, it takes work. And time. And research.

All those commercials that told you finding out about yourself was as simple as spitting in a tube? Gimmick. Pure and simple.

 

But don't let that stop you! AncestryDNA has some amazing features, which I talk about in my newest video. There has never been a tool like it to document and discover the story of your family. And because DNA tells the stories that have been lost from memory and written records, it's likely the only way to find the secrets your ancestors took to their graves... or never knew about.

So if you're looking for a guide to AncestryDNA for beginners, look no further. Get ready to dig into all the best tips and tricks right here. And if you want to get even more bang for your buck, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more tutorials on all things genetic genealogy.

Facebook Groups and Crowdsourcing for DNA

The way some commercials and advertisements talk about genetic genealogy, it's easy to believe all you have to do is spit in a cup and learn the secrets of your family history. Not so! There is A LOT of work that goes into learning anything truly substantial about your family from genetic testing. And along the way, it becomes necessary to ask for help from people who have also put in the work to learn.

One of the places I recommend people to start is with Facebook groups dedicated to genetic genealogy. The people, knowledge, and resources available to you in those spaces is truly without price. Imagine an entire community of people who personally invest themselves in what you want to know about your family, and engage with you to find answers with you. You may be new, but you don't have to be completely lost and alone while trying to make the most of your DNA test.

All you have to do is search for "DNA testing" into the Facebook search box, sort by Groups, and you'll see so many of these groups appear. Why are there so many? What's the difference between them? How do you know which ones to join? And what should you post once you join them?

No Two Groups are Exactly Alike

Each group has different rules about what kinds of posts they accept. Some welcome people to post their GEDmatch kit numbers. Others don't. Some are targeted at new users. Some are targeted at adoptees and the donor conceived. Some allow sharing personal success stories. Others want to focus solely on inquiries and solving specific research problems. Some don't mind if you post relevant or topical stories from the news as it relates to genetic genealogy. Others view those posts to be a distraction from the core purpose they are trying to fulfill. To find the groups that best match your needs and interests, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the conversational culture of the group.

Most admins will try to communicate those rules and the group's purpose in their About section, as well as their group entrance questions, and possibly even a welcome post to all new members. Be sure to familiarize yourself with these before you post in a group. This truly is not something you should skip, and attempt to learn "on the fly" if you truly want people to help you.

Inquiries

When you're writing a message to a cousin match from a testing site, it's very important not to throw too much information at the person all at once. You go into the interaction assuming they may not know anything about genetic genealogy, segment data, or their family tree. You break your research questions into basic, digestible chunks. You try to engage someone in a prolonged conversation, in which you explore many questions over an extended period of time--months, or sometimes even years. At the same time you're trying to solve research problems, you're also trying to build a personal connection with another relative or family member.

Posting in these groups is completely different. You go into these interactions with completely different assumptions and behavior because your audience is different. You're talking to people who DO understand segment data, and who will assume that to you do too (unless you clarify otherwise.) You take into account the volume of inquiries the group has. Your post is one of many that is entering what essentially amounts to an assembly line. The more already-complete pieces you can bring to that line, the more complete your final product will be. And the results you get will vary depending on who is on the line that day.

What the users in these groups need to know to help you is who you're trying to find, what cousin matches you think might be related to your question, the segment data for those matches, and what you've already done to solve your own problem. All these details center around the same one question: "Do your numbers and segment data line up with the relationships you think you share with these people? And if not, why not?" You won't need to include loads of private information or back story. The segment data is its own language for family relationships, and will help people to tell you where to look for the answers you're trying to find.

Questions

Sometimes the questions you need to ask won't always be related to a research problem. Sometimes they'll be conceptual problems, and trying to grasp how DNA works and how to use it. Don't be afraid to ask these questions when you need to. Even if people have taught about something like X DNA a thousand times, and you read all the background material in the world, there's no guarantee that someone would explain it in a way you understand it completely. Sometimes the only way to achieve understanding in your own mind is to ask questions. 

A good example of this for me was when I was seeing my cousin matches line up on my chromosomes in the same places, but the people weren't related to each other in any way I could see. It was a basic question that I knew must have a very simple answer, and I didn't want to ask it for that reason. But I asked it anyway in one of these groups because I knew it was the only way I would learn.

The answer I got from one woman was perfect, and even came with a visual that I still think about to this day. We don't just have one copy of each chromosome. We have two of each: one from our birth mother and one from our birth father. And we can think of these as being overhead projector transparencies sitting on top of each other. The only way to tell them apart is to see who does and doesn't match each other in these positions together, and then determine which matches come from our maternal side, and which from the paternal side.

Had I not asked that question where and when I did, I don't know when or how I would've had the "A-Ha!" moment when everything finally made sense. But it would've been much later on in my journey than if I'd tried to do everything myself.

Thread Etiquette and Tips

Discussions in these groups are organized into "threads." You have two options in how to interact with these threads: to post a new thread, or to respond to someone else's thread. Knowing when to do each one can be really helpful in being the most efficient and respectful group member you can be.

Before you ask any question or make a post, it's helpful to search the back catalog of the group to see if someone else has asked the question before. In Facebook groups, the search box is on the left side of the page. Think about how you might Google the question you're asking, breaking down your question into search terms. Use those in the search box and see what you find. You may find not only the answer to the question you were looking for, but answers to questions you haven't even thought to ask yet!

It may be helpful to tack your question onto a previous thread, if the issue or question you're trying to explore isn't substantially different from what someone else has already posted about. It can save you and others the work of having to get and reframe the same context that went into that discussion. What you should avoid, however, is posting a completely irrelevant response or question on someone else's thread. It distracts people's attention away from the original poster's question, making it less likely they will get the help they asked for. And for posts that may be very old and involve a lot of respondents, it's helpful to consider how many people will have to sit through a slew of notification and responses in a conversation they not longer want to be a part of.

The temptation to post your same question, word for word, into various other groups isn't the best course of action. I recently saw a woman do this, and someone pointed out that he'd seen her same post for the 4th time that day. It's better to err on the side of assuming that most people will be in more than one group. If you're going to post the same question to multiple groups, consider spacing them out a week or more apart, and posting them at different times of day to get the greatest variety of responses.

What makes Facebook groups great for traditional genealogy and connecting with local communities where our ancestors lived also makes them great for DNA analysis. Who you know or can access in person is no longer a limitation with the social media machine on your side. And with just a little bit of prep work, the returns on that time are sometimes exponential.

A Group List

Here are some Facebook groups you could consider joining for your genetic genealogy journey. Note, there are other regional, national, and ethnicity specific DNA analysis groups that are more specialized than these. Try combining different search terms together with DNA to see what you find!

• Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques
• Ancestry GEDmatch 23andMe FTDNA MyHeritage Genealogy DNA
• AncestryDNA Matching
• GEDmatch.com User Group
• International Society of Genetic Genealogy Facebook Group
• DNA Newbie
• DNA Detectives
• DNA Painter User Group

Uploading Your Raw Data to MyHeritage DNA

If you've tested your DNA with one company and want to connect with others from other companies, we can all meet together on MyHeritage DNA. The upload is free, and includes access to segment data. Why wait? Take advantage of those features today for your DNA analysis!

Jane Lyon and Willaim Penn's Welcome Fleet

Having recently discovered Amy Johnson Crow's #52Ancestors blogging prompts on Twitter, I'm excited to get started this week with the "Oldest" prompt.

Immediately, my mind jumped to the oldest female immigrant to the United States I've been able to document in my family so far. I could've sworn I'd previously written about her. But seeing as I haven't, let me introduce you to Jane Lyon, my Quaker foremother from Lancashire, England!

Friends Meeting House, (woodcut), Philadelphia, PA, circa 1830.

Jane Lyon was one of the original Quakers from Lancashire, England. She came over on the ship Submission in 1682, as part of William Penn's original fleet. Being unable to pay for her own passage, she came as a servant to an older couple from Lancashire named James and Ann Harrison. These settlers, known in many circles as Welcome claimants, were among the earliest Quaker settlers in the New World. They have their own lineage society, similar to that of the Mayflower descendants. The difference between the two, however, is that original passenger lists for the Welcome fleet do not survive. Much work has been done to reconstruct these lists and determine who made the voyage as part of this fleet.

Because Jane Lyon was a servant to James Harrison, following the record of his journey to Bucks County, Pennsylvania will mean following Jane's as well. And it's important to note The Submission deviated significantly from its original navigation. Due to a storm and some possible intentional interferences from the ship's captain, the ship had to detour into Maryland instead of the Delaware River. James Harrison's family disembarked in Choptank, Maryland at the end of October--nowhere near their original destination of Pennsylvania. James Harrison left his family and servants in the house of William Dickerson and attempted to rendezvous with William Penn in New Castle, Delaware. He and his son-in-law then headed for Philadelphia, and eventually made their way to Bucks County. They wouldn't send for their families and associates to join them in Bucks County until the spring of 1683.

"Pensilvania in America, Divided into Countyes Townships and Lotts," surveyed by Thomas Holme, ca. 1687.
(Note the property of Richard Lundy, listed as person 22 in the plot immediately to the left of Pennsbury Manor, the estate of William Penn)

Jane Lyon was among these early settlers of Bucks County. I've attempted to determine the length of her service to the Harrison family, but there don't appear to be any surviving records of it. She doesn't reappear in what records I can access until 1691. She appears several times in various congregational records for the Society of Friends, called meeting minutes. And as a good example of what these minutes look like, here's her marriage record to Richard Lundy from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

"U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935," database, Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : accessed 6 August 2018), filed under Bucks Quarterly Meeting, "Records for Marriage Certificates, 1683," image 53, entry for the marriage of Jane Lyon and Richard Lundy; citing Society of Friends (Bucks County, Pennsylvania), "The Quarter meeting record for marriag certificates in Bucks County beginning in the yeare 1683," call number: RG2 Ph B86 3.2, Swarthmore College.

An important thing to keep in mind with Quaker records is how to read the dates on the records. Dates from before 1752 in Quaker records use the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar we know today. This means that the marriage date in this record, rendered the 24th day of the 4th month, is June 24th. Not April 24th. Here's a guide on how to convert the dates in case you need one.

Another thing to know is Quaker meeting minutes were not just a record of a single event, kept in a local congregation (called a monthly meeting) for their reference. Activity in monthly meetings were presented in Quarterly meetings, and were also published in their records. This means that the same event will appear in various meeting records, including in records for communities in which the event did NOT take place. The records were also recopied and abstracted for the sake of records preservation, and will appear in meeting minutes in later time periods. The Ancestry entries and indexes to these records rarely, if ever reflect this distinction. You must examine each image carefully to determine its age and source.

This record appears in the Philadelphia (Archer Street) Monthly Meeting minutes, even though the event took place in Bucks County. It's also an abstracted copy of earlier records, assembled and published in 1889. I've included it here because it's much easier to read, and even provides some insight into the ceremonial content of early Quaker marriages.

"U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935," database, Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : accessed 6 August 2018), filed under Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Arch Street, "Record of Certificates of Removal, 1682," images 76-77; abstracted entry for the marriage of Jane Lyon and Richard Lundy; citing Society of Friends (Bucks County, Pennsylvania), "A Record of certificates of removal of Friends, commencing in the year 1682: copied from the original records int he year 1889," pages 149-150, call number: MR Ph 738, Swarthmore College.

Quaker records hosted at Ancestry are not easy records to cite, especially to appropriately reflect when they are derivatives of other records. One source citation, as in the example above, may include information for an online database, information for the primary source, the derivative, and the repository holding the records. But making the attempt is always important because it's the most direct way to wrap our minds around the exact record, among many abstractions and reproductions that also exist for the same event in Quaker collections.

Society of Friends records are some of the oldest records in the United States. If you have Quakers in your family, don't overlook these amazing resources in your quest for family stories. They do have a learning curve to them. But few communities have gone to as much trouble to document and re-document their history. For that reason, Quaker genealogy is some of the most fruitful and rewarding to genealogists who are lucky enough to have those roots!

X DNA Analysis for Microsoft Word

If you haven't checked out my shop lately, you won't want to miss out on my newest addition for X DNA analysis. I've got loads of great products on deck for you and your research, right now, so be sure to check back often!

X DNA is a double-edged sword in DNA analysis. It's great because it follows a strict inheritance pattern that allows you to zero in on certain lines at the exclusion of others. But because it follows a strict inheritance line, it can be really hard to visualize which ancestors gave you your X DNA and which ones didn't.

A common way to overcome the challenge of visualizing X DNA inheritance is to use spiffy charts. That's what I was doing the other day, working from a really popular inheritance chart for X DNA... which was clunky, slow, and didn't make the best use of space on the page. That template is dated, which is part of why current versions of Word are struggling to load and use it. It was past time to replace it with something else.

There had to be a better way to represent this information, I told myself. Where the writing is legible and the chart is visually appealing on the page.

So that's what I sat down to create.

What resulted from those efforts is a collection of charts that are easy to use, easy to read, and easy to annotate if you're looking for living relatives. The screenshot I've provided is just one example from the collection of charts I've created. Use whichever one makes the most sense to you, or visually appeals to you the most. 

I learned a lot about X DNA recombination in preparing these charts. While the chart shows you all possible ancestors who could've passed on X DNA to you, chances are you didn't actually receive it from everyone listed here. DNA recombination means that some relatives pass along paternal or maternal X DNA, in tact right from their mothers. Other times, you may receive a recombined X chromosome, which can include a wider range of X DNA from more relatives. And this will vary even from sibling to sibling.

For all you know, that missing ancestor you've been stuck on for years may fall along an X DNA inheritance line, and the only person living who still has their X DNA could be you!

Don't forget to check out the research guide, included for free in the listing. Learn everything you need to know to make the most of your X DNA today!

Protecting Your Privacy on GEDmatch

Recently, I posted my misgivings about law enforcement agencies using GEDmatch to solve cold cases. In that post, I said I would follow up on privacy options for GEDmatch users. I'll also be demonstrating how to delete various kinds of data from the site, for those who feel they are best served by that option.

Public, Private, and Research Settings

Up until this point, my main method of finding and interacting with cousin matches has been the One-to-Many match list. This would also be the primary means that law enforcement agents and their representatives would use to find me on GEDmatch. So the best way to keep them from being able to do that would be to change the privacy options of my match data.

• Public - allows anyone on GEDmatch to see you kit number in their match list, and to run comparison utilities across the site to establish relationships. Is the best option if you don't care who accesses your data on GEDmatch and how they use it.
• Private - removes your kit number from the match list. Doesn't allow for anyone to use your kit number in the comparison utilities on GEDmatch, even if they know it. Is the best option if you want to establish a completely invisible presence on GEDmatch to see your match list, but have no intentions to communicate with anyone there or to use their analysis utilities.
• Research - removes your kit number from the match list, but allows those who already have your kit number to use other GEDmatch utilities to analyze your data. Is the best option if you want to control who has access to your kit numbers and how they use them.

I weighed each of these options and chose the one that most closely reflects how I want my data to be used, and what I want my relationship with GEDmatch users to look like going forward.

My New Approach to Using GEDmatch

I want to continue having access to GEDmatch and the tools and data it offers. I'm not interested in removing my data or locking myself out of the comparison utilities that GEDmatch offers. The Research option, therefore, is the best one that fits my needs for now. As long as my data is present and available in any form on GEDmatch, I know I can't ultimately stop someone who tries hard enough from getting access to my data. But I can make it sufficiently inconvenient for the wrong people who don't want to go that far out of their way. My hope is that this will be an effective deterrent to people I don't want to have access to my data.

Instead, I'm choosing to make my kit number available in places where family and other genealogists are most likely to see it. By making it available on my profiles with testing companies, social media, and in the Facebook groups for the surnames and locations where I research, I'm still allowing others to use GEDmatch with me. Rather than relying on the One-to-Many match list as the source of those connections, I can create those opportunities where they're most likely to produce real results.

Rather than passively waiting for connections to happen, this approach puts the onus on me to go and make those connections myself. In conjunction with all the other tools available to me, this seems like the best option for me going forward with GEDmatch. And if that ever changes, I won't hesitate to make more adjustments.

Thoughts from the #FamiliesBelongTogether National Protest

Across the United States today, demonstrations in cities large and small have taken place to protest the inhumane and illegal treatment of immigrants and refugees. As soon as I saw that my city was on the map and a demonstration was being planned, I decided I was going to attend.

Immigration as an issue has come to mean a lot to me over the past couple of years--largely because of the whirlwind of discovery that is DNA testing. The stories of immigrants, more than ever before, are my stories. I have so many immigrant ancestors I had no idea existed. And truthfully, many times it was because I wasn't allowed to know they existed. But I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the freedom of people to build new lives in new places. I couldn't be more proud of my immigrant heritage, and the richness of the narratives that have come into my life now that I have the privilege to know them.

Arriving at the capital building in downtown Boise, I wasn't prepared for the massive turnout of people I saw--with hundreds more showing up by the minute. My heart felt so full to see I wasn't alone, and it brought a moment of clarity that nearly overwhelmed all my senses.

From the "FamiliesBelongTogether march in Boise, Idaho
June 30th, 2018

Minidoka was a Japanese internment camp in Idaho. #KeepFamiliesTogether rally in #Boise. #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/jDN8NpPpzE

— Nancy DeWitt (@IdahoLark) June 30, 2018

As I clutched the sign I'd been thinking about for days, the face of my grandmother filled my mind. She came to the United States as a bi-racial woman in 1963, during the height of the Civil Rights movement. She had very little money, a small daughter, and was fleeing the threat of violence from her former husband after her tumultuous divorce and custody battle. She'd told me that story herself the last time I ever saw her alive. It was the first and only time I'd ever heard the story.

The realization dawned on me that if her same situation was playing out today, she wouldn't have the money or the "importance" to be admitted into the United States "legally." She'd have to come seeking asylum, and would have been separated from her daughter at the border--maybe to never see her again.

For the first time, I considered how life would be different if it were MY family in the circumstances of those arriving at the southern border. My emotion nearly overcame me. My grandmother would have been destroyed. In everything I know about her and how sensitive she was, she could never have coped with that kind of violence. My aunt would have been forever traumatized. The very thought of it breaks my heart, in a way I'm struggling even now to put into words.

It didn't take until that moment for me to act, to reject this cruelty with the full weight of my convictions. But it wasn't until I was in that setting, standing up for someone else, that I could touch some of that pain with my own hands and imagine if it belonged to my family. It made me see my own grandmother with new eyes. It was only then that I understood, in the fullest sense, who I am and where I come from.

I've been in search of those answers as a genealogist for all of my adult life. And I found some of them today; not in records or repositories, but in the lived experiences of others who are walking the same path my grandmother walked on. Marching beside them is its own kind of family history research. Holding a handmade statement of my convictions, surrounded by other people who had come to do the same, is its own kind of new discovery.

Questioning the Ethics of Law Enforcement Using GEDmatch to Solve Cold Cases

No one has been a stronger, more willing advocate of GEDmatch.com than I have been over these past several years. I believe in the ideals of sharing and cooperation that brought that website into existence. It seemed like a win-win for all. Buy one DNA test, then share your results with other genealogists who tested at other companies? It's like buying all the DNA tests for the price of one!

And let's not forget that GEDmatch exists to fill a market gap, which AncestryDNA created purposefully by refusing to provide full segment data to its users. In many respects, I wouldn't need GEDmatch if AncestryDNA would provide the same amount of information between its users that every other testing company does. It's the single biggest dependence on GEDmatch that I currently experience as a user of that site.

Because of how much I've encouraged people to use GEDmatch in the past, I would be remiss if I didn't dive into the changing landscape of DNA testing and GEDmatch's place in it. I never thought I would have to say this, but it's time for every person who uses GEDmatch to reconsider their presence on that website because of the problematic, invisible relationship it currently has with law enforcement.

You may have seen cases in the news related to the Golden State Killer, and the role that GEDmatch played in the solving of that case. I was alarmed the moment I heard that story. I have been watching for how the situation would play out, to see if that case would somehow exist in isolation. I wasn't ready to consider losing one of the most important tools I use for genetic genealogy. I had naive hopes that the situation wouldn't progress beyond that point, and everything could go back to the way it was before.

Except it hasn't. And I see now that it won't. Several more cases have been solved by using crime scene DNA, in comparison with DNA submitted by hobbyist genealogists from all over the world to GEDmatch. And I personally don't understand why more people aren't deeply troubled by this situation. There are so many legal, moral, and ethical issues in that one sentence alone. I'm no legal expert, so I can't pretend I have all/the best/the right answers.

But I'm a concerned person with questions, a conscience, and Constitutional rights. So that's what I want to explore today.

Transparency

The first issue I see in this situation is one of transparency--both on the part of the law enforcement community and the genealogists who represent them. Just roaming around on GEDmatch (like you do), you can't tell who could be a law enforcement agent and who isn't. You can't tell who their representatives are. There's no system in place that allows them to identify themselves. That's the entire point of cops carrying badges--so people can properly identify them, their jurisdiction, and their activities as being official uses of tax dollars and community resources, and to report them if there's a problem.

"Why should they identify themselves
if they're not police?"

If you think that's never going to change,
I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell to you.

Instead, investigators have hired professional genealogists like CeCe Moore through Parabon, a consulting agency who specializes in forensics. This changes the legality of what is being gathered and used by law enforcement, since the agents themselves are not the ones gathering and interpreting information from the database. No court order or warrant is needed.

And that may be completely legal in the sight of the law. But there is still something to be said for a certified, professional genealogist using the research and samples of others in a criminal investigation--without directly asking for and receiving informed, written consent BEFORE their information is used.

Before a professional genealogist hired by law enforcement ever puts my kit number into a One-to-One analysis with a known rapist/serial killer, I want my name on a signed legal document saying I gave them permission to use my data in that way. Before you submit my tree and a positive connection to my DNA sample as evidence in a criminal investigation, let alone a criminal trial, I deserve the ability to give or revoke my consent from you. I deserve a say in what your choice could do to my name, my family, and the way my work and identity becomes part of that case in the public record.

For those appealing to the GEDmatch Terms and Conditions in this situation, let me be perfectly clear and upfront with you: I don't care what the GEDmatch Terms and Conditions say. Especially since the Terms and Conditions exist to establish legal permissions and consent between me and GEDmatch, not me and the rest of the world who shows up there.The Terms and Conditions on that website do not invalidate my personal legal rights in the state and country where I live.

Legal behavior is not the same thing as moral and ethical behavior. Professional genealogy, like the professionals in any other industry, have ethical standards they agreed to abide by when they were certified. And if those ethical standards don't reflect how a genealogist should behave in their relationships with law enforcement, perhaps it's time for those ethical standards to be reexamined and expanded.

Note: Jeff Goldblum is one of only a handful of people who doesn't end up eaten by dinosaurs in this scenario.

Always listen to Jeff Goldblum.

Hobbyists as the Legally Admissible

In the realms of "genetic genealogy," there still are no certified professionals or a certifying body to speak of. While there are certifying boards for traditional genealogists, there is no such equivalent for genetic genealogy. It's a new frontier to all of us, which I don't think enough of the general public understands. We're all still figuring out what that means and what it should look like, especially as we are catapulted into the future by the popularity of commercial DNA testing by the masses.

GEDmatch wasn't created by "professionals." It was created by hobbyists, for hobbyists. Curtis Rogers is a businessman from Florida, and John Olson is an engineer from Texas. Neither one of them is a professional genealogist, from what I can tell. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this and I will correct it in the post.) It was only very recently that GEDmatch even started taking money for their services. And I question any judge who, being familiar with the age and operational history of this website, would allow their matches and services to be considered legally admissible in court.

GEDmatch's creators being hobbyists DOES matter. Being hobbyists is going to be reflected in the operation they run. It's going to be reflected in the security of the platform, the quality and reliability of the matches being produced, and the administrative decisions being made on behalf of their users. And it matters that we examine each of these now that GEDmatch is becoming a tool to find and catch criminals.

Is the GEDmatch database secure enough not to be manipulated by outside attackers, who may want to manipulate or change the data in the system to misrepresent relationships between people? I don't know the answer to that question. But I don't think law enforcement officers do either.

With that question comes another that is very closely related, regarding professional standards of identification and accuracy. Just because a website links two people together and says they're related doesn't make it true. Likewise, just because it says they're not related doesn't make it true. What is the foundation, the reliability of those claims? Because you can't point to any formal qualification that the founders at GEDmatch have for two reasons--because they either don't have them, or that information isn't available for consideration. Their personal information and backgrounds are not posted anywhere on GEDmatch that I can find. (Someone please advise me if this is incorrect or if it changes, and I'll change the post to reflect it.) According to his Facebook profile, Curtis Rogers received his MS/MBA from either Denison University, Michigan State, or Berry University. I can find only credit mentions to John Olson for utilities that he implemented into the website.

In terms of exploring who else may be on the GEDmatch team, I've found two additional names: John Hayward and Blaine Bettinger. John Hayward has answered support questions to users, which suggests he has administrative capacities on the website and can make changes to its matching operations. Blaine Bettinger is a professional genealogist with a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and is affiliated with GEDmatch in what has been described as a legal capacity. To what extent he consults or provides any additional expertise to GEDmatch is not something I can comment on, because I don't know the answer.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to accuse the GEDmatch team or any individual person on it of being guilty of some kind of oversight or negligence, or being untrustworthy in any way. How can I, when I don't even know who they are, and I've had to search through news articles and forum posts to find what little information I now possess? But I think pointing out this lack of transparency is important, in the event that legal action becomes necessary for users who may be injured in some way by using this site. It may be legal for the team at GEDmatch to conceal their identities from the website, thereby making it difficult to hold them accountable for potential oversight or negligence on their part. But is it an ethical thing to do?

Just this week, I came across an example of a woman whose brother was given the same GEDmatch kit number as another user on GEDmatch. She thought she had a niece she knew nothing about, when in reality the GEDmatch website was presenting match information to her that simply wasn't accurate. It led her to confront her family with false allegations regarding the paternity of this woman, based entirely on a relationship presented to her by GEDmatch. Fortunately, the error was "immediately" corrected by GEDmatch, according to the woman involved.

While no website is completely free from human error 100% of the time, how often do these errors happen on GEDmatch? Does anyone actually know? Do the people behind the scenes at GEDmatch know? What is their turnaround time on mistakes like these? Do they have systems in place to find and correct them? And does this administrative error overlap with certain minority populations--like Jewish and African populations--being more susceptible to Identical by State (IBS) false positives?

I'm not saying any of this has happened in the criminal cases being worked by the genealogists on the Parabon consulting team. I can't possibly know that. I do know that certified professional genealogists are well-trained, and their work deserves respect. They are qualified to be legal experts in the tracing and documenting of familial relationships. And I trust the professional genealogists in this community to recognize and work around the weaknesses of tools like GEDmatch to the best of their abilities.

If we learn nothing else from Karen Keegan and
Lydia Fairchild, it should be that DNA doesn't lie...

But we don't always understand the story it's telling us either.

But genealogists, professional or otherwise, simply cannot account for all the errors in the tools they use. Those errors exist on every platform, to varying degrees and for a variety of reasons. And to be honest, I don't trust law enforcement agents, legal professionals, juries, and the general public to understand those limitations with enough nuance to prevent people from being falsely accused, based on what a DNA match on the internet allegedly says.

Before more cases are subjected to the matching abilities of commercial websites (and third-party websites like GEDmatch), there needs to be a unified standard for DNA matching, and for the consistent performance of algorithms to make positive, accurate matches without false positives. There need to be policies and protections in place to consider and recognize when DNA is not foolproof. We need a greater cultural awareness beyond the familiar adage that "DNA doesn't lie."

If we learn nothing else from Karen Keegan and Lydia Fairchild, it should be that DNA doesn't lie. But we don't always understand the story it's telling us either.

I would trust the technology from GEDmatch to tell me my mother has a half brother we had no idea existed. I would trust it to help me find and identify the birth fathers of my grandmothers. I have/would trust it to back up genealogical claims in low-stakes situations that few, if any other people outside of my own family are ever going to care about or be affected by.

But I wouldn't stake my life on GEDmatch, or the life and death of another human being on it--as will no doubt be the case in some of these trials. And I defy anyone who has used GEDmatch when more than 400 people are on it at the same time to tell me they would trust a human life to any assertion made by that website.

I expect inconsistent performance, and even mistakes, from a website I know is run by volunteers--who created this website as a service to help bring hobbyists together to do genealogy. I don't expect it from a website whose performance is going to be treated as legally admissible in a court of law for a criminal murder trial. GEDmatch may have access to a wide variety of user-submitted data from multiple testing companies. But should they be on the same legal footing with those testing companies, who have more resources and employees to guarantee consistent results in presenting reliable, accurate claims about relationships between people?

What qualifies GEDmatch, their founders and their current team as presently constituted, to occupy that position in someone else's criminal trial?

You'd think with me asking these kinds of questions, I want to see murders and rapists go free. I want exactly the opposite of that. I want the right person, who is guilty of the crime of which they stand accused, to be convicted and sentenced to a punishment that fits their crime. I want the law enforcement officers in charge of those investigations to use legal, ethical means to gather information and vet suspects in their investigation. I want eyes on the future in terms of dangerous legal precedents that could lift up a system that is too quick and hasty to judge the falsely accused. I want fairness and justice under the law for everyone. And I'm speaking up because I fear we're on the cusp of creating an international situation that is not in keeping with those values.

If we've learned nothing from #MeToo stories, can we please acknowledge how notoriously difficult it is to convict a rapist? Any weakness in the defenses and the bastard walks free. I'm not saying all of this because I want that to happen. I'm saying this because I think it will. It inevitably will if part of the foundation of evidence can not stand up in court due to it being declared inadmissible. (If you're interested in reading more about the admissibility of DNA evidence in court and all the powers that will be at play in these trials, I recommend reading this and this.) Inadmissible evidence is how criminal cases fall apart, and families who thought they were going to receive justice for unspeakable violence do not get it.

I'm saying all of this because I know how that feels. I know how it feels to watch a man who deserves to be punished walk free when he should be in prison. I know the games that lawyers play with evidence. I couldn't bear to see that happen, and to see GEDmatch at the center of it. As genealogists and as citizens, regardless of where we live, we all deserve better than this.

And if the legal precedents that are already being established by these cases don't disturb you, it's because you're not thinking concretely enough about the future they could lead to.

Civil and Constitutional Rights

Imagine a world where law enforcement agencies want a universal DNA database of all citizens, for the purpose of criminal investigations. Imagine if they had to publicly petition for the existence of that database. Imagine if they had to go to the legislators in their respective communities and countries, to publicly justify the existence of such an assemblage of human data.

Imagine the outrage people would have to that request. Imagine the legal and ethical conversations we would be having about many of the points I've already raised. Who should keep such a database? Who would maintain it? Who would keep it secure? Who would have jurisdiction over it? Who could access it? What kinds of legal permission would they need? How does using such a database violate or co-exist with (in the US) our 4th amendment due process rights, and our legal protections against "unreasonable searches and seisures"?

"It'll never happen," I've heard people say already. The sheer scope of the obstacles to be overcome is what they always appeal to. No one in their right minds would trust law enforcement agents to respect those rights when they have unrestricted access to DNA. Why bother with warrants when you could just pop a DNA sample into a computer and know exactly who it belongs to? The people who have no problem with this picture tell themselves, "if the person is guilty, why does it matter?"

Because when law enforcement agents do this, it's not just a justified search for one person. It's a warrantless, undocumented search against everyone else in the database. Everyone in that database is a suspect, over and over again, until the DNA says they're not. There is no presumption of innocence. There is no consent. There is no accountability to how and why that system might be manipulated--either from without or within--to make the database reflect whatever anyone with access to it wants it to say.

By allowing law enforcement agents to use GEDmatch to solve cold cases, we are one step closer to living in this reality. The genetic genealogists involved in researching these cases are on the front lines of giving away a DNA database that isn't subject to warrants and court orders. It's a threat to our rights against "unreasonable search and seizures." And that behavior is being normalized at the expense of users, many of whom are from an older generation who is deeply uncomfortable with technology. They may not understand the legal consent they are giving by participating in GEDmatch, or even the very act of when they gave consent by clicking on a check box.

Their consent may be legal, but in many cases it is not informed. It cannot be considered ethical. And it angers me to know that if many GEDmatch users truly understood the situation they were in, the future they are helping to create, they would likely want to remove themselves from GEDmatch. And they may not even have the necessary technological understanding to remove their information from the website, thereby revoking their consent.

The entire reason for reading or reciting a person's rights at the time of arrest is so they understand the boundaries of their relationship with law enforcement agents. We do this because we care about people being able to make informed decisions about their conduct in relation to police and their investigations. But being informed in this way isn't just necessary for those accused of crimes. It matters to everyone, including witnesses or assistants to any kind of formal investigation by law enforcement.

We deserve to have our rights explained to us in any interaction with police. How can we expect that when the officers involved in these investigations never show their faces to us, don't identify themselves, never speak to us directly, and use intermediaries that purposefully circumvent our legal protections under the law?

If you're okay with assisting law enforcement in the United States with their cold cases and criminal investigations, feel free to stay on GEDmatch and not take any additional action.

For the rest of us, we need to understand, in no uncertain terms:

By participating in GEDmatch, you agree to let anyone with access to the website use your public DNA match results in whatever way they want. GEDmatch is not going to attempt to limit, stop, or control the behavior of their users--even if that behavior is unethical, immoral, or in violation of your legal rights. They have absolved themselves of any and all responsibility for how the data on their website is being used, or may be used. They will not legally defend or protect you as a user. Your presence there is your sole legal responsibility.

If you are a citizen in a country outside the United States, and you upload your results publicly to GEDmatch, you give consent for them to be used in an untold number of criminal investigations--outside of the local and national jurisdictions where you live. Even if you are not a positive match to someone accused of a crime, your results are going to be used by an algorithm to narrow down the people who are. And if convicted, those who are accused will likely receive the death penalty or life sentences in prison, regardless of your personal or ethical feelings on those forms of punishment.

I've already changed my relationship with GEDmatch in response to this situation, and I will be doing follow-up posts to help you understand your options going forward.

If GEDmatch is going to let anyone in through an unguarded revolving door and leave with anything they want, it's not a safe place for its users to save money on additional DNA testing anymore.

And now I'm beginning to wonder if it ever was.

Downloading Your Raw Data from AncestryDNA

If you've tested your DNA with AncestryDNA, you might be wondering if you should invest even more money taking additional tests from other companies. If you're looking to find someone, or the answers to a very specific question, it can make sense to fish in as many ponds as you can access?

But why not see if the matches you're looking for are already available without having to spend that extra money?

That's where GEDmatch.com comes in. Because people from various testing companies have uploaded their results there, it's like taking multiple DNA tests for the price of one. And since you have upload your results there yourself, the people you reach out to are looking to make connections and actually write back to you!

But before you can upload your results to GEDmatch, you have to download your raw data from the AncestryDNA website first. And with this video, you'll know exactly where to go, what to click, and how to get the data that rightfully belongs to you.

Emily Michaels: Daughter of the Commonwealth

Do you ever fall so far behind on so many projects that you become crippled with indecision about where to begin and how to catch up? And the inability to make a decision means you willingly chase down every distraction you can find?

That's where I've been for several months on sharing one of my newest and greatest discoveries... because it's not quite finished yet. And maybe never will be.

As I've mentioned previously, neither one of my grandmothers knew their biological fathers. I've just talked about my maternal grandmother and her Italian roots. Finding that family and getting to know their story has been in the works for fifteen years, and has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I was walking on air for weeks afterwards, burying myself as deep into Italian research as I possibly could until I couldn't do anything else.

I was so hyped up on that discovery, I couldn't be stopped. I decided that once and for all, I was going to solve the mystery of my paternal grandmother too. And having ruled out the cousin matches from a major section of my tree, I felt confident that there was no reason I couldn't succeed. I didn't care how many nights of sleep I lost. I would do it because fifteen years is long enough to stare at a gaping hole in your family tree. I wanted that part of my identity to be filled in, and I was tired of waiting.

 So I spent hundreds of dollars on additional testing. I worked the DNA Day sales to death. I won't tell you how many kits I purchased. But I'd learned from researching my Italian family that the drop-off rate for cousin matches over even a single generation was much more than I imagined. It was likely my sample just wasn't pulling in the cousin matches I needed to solve the problem. I needed to fish in someone else's pond who had DNA I just didn't inherit.

My sister was among the people I tested. And sure enough, she had the matches I was missing. None of what I'm about to share would have come together without her. And true to the same pattern I followed with my mother's family, I found the ancestors I had in common with my cousin matches, then worked forward through their descendants until I arrived at the correct family who is related to me.

The unique thing about this case is that, in the process of doing that, I was actually able to document various older branches of this tree long before I narrowed Emily's connection to any specific list of men. And in many ways, I'm much more sure of my great grandfather's ancestors than I am of his identity at the moment, having documented his lineage across the Commonwealth.

Emily Michaels: She's British!

Let's pick up in 1939 in Ontario, Canada. That's where my grandmother Emily Michaels was born. She was born to Muriel Ince Michaels, who was abandoned by her husband several years previously, which I've talked about before. And unlike the rest of her Caribbean family, Muriel was the only person living in Ontario province. Everyone else was in Montreal, having moved there together from Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War II. Living apart from the entire extended family was not typical for them. How she came to be in the area surrounding Toronto and why is a mystery I've not yet solved. But I do know she gave birth there.

I may not know who her birth father is yet, but I do know who his parents are--and by extension, much of his heritage. To get to this point, I had to find the relationship between several different cousin matches I knew had to be related to Emily because they weren't related to anyone else. And for a long time I couldn't find any relationship between those matches, even though they were all supposed to be related. Then I got a much closer cousin match who tied them all together, and started working from her tree. If I could find the relationship between her and all our shared matches, I could narrow down who in her tree had to be Emily's birth father.

So that's what I did. I made a copy of her tree and went to work. The closer I looked at her tree and our shared matches, the more certain I was that I was on the right track. Based on the amount of DNA we shared and our relationship estimate, I was pretty sure I'd found our common ancestors. The only way for us to share the cousin matches we had, spread across England and Canada, was if she and I shared Charles Newman-Jones and Ada Cheffins in our trees.

Charles Richard Newman-Jones was born in Kent, England, which he left as a young man to start a new life in Canada. He met and married Ada Maud Cheffins, who descends from an English father and a mother whose stock goes back to early settlers in Canada. Charles and Ada were married in Regina, Saskatchewan, where they had their children and spent their lives together. They moved to the Northumberland region of Ontario some time between 1921 and 1924. Charles died and was buried in St. John's Anglican Church Cemetery in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada.

Put a pin in that last piece of information. We're going to come back to it.

They had four sons: Eric, Lewis, Charles, and Elton. I'm still working out which one of them is Emily's father and how he would have come to know Muriel. My theories up until now have all centered around brief encounters and accidental conception, with no further contact and a birth father who had no idea my grandmother existed.

The one thing that makes me question that now is a single record I never saw until after my grandmother passed away.

The Cradle Roll certificate for Emily Michaels
From Saint John's Anglican Church in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada

It took me a long time to figure out what this certificate was because I'd never heard of a Cradle Roll before. An archivist explained to me that it was a children's auxiliary in the Anglican church, and this certificate would have been issued after she was baptized. And you'll notice the church it was issued from is...

(Wait for it)

...Saint John's Anglican Church in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada.

Charles Newman-Jones was buried at the same church where my grandmother was baptized. Whatever the full story is, it's not as simple as a connection between two people who never saw each other again.

Getting Closer

The only way to narrow down the situation from here is to analyze DNA from descendants of each Charles and Ada's children. And to date, we've been able to document DNA from two of them. It may not be possible to obtain a sample from the youngest because he has no known biological descendants, having lived as an openly gay man. That is not to say he has no descendants. It would be inappropriate to exclude him from consideration based on his sexuality alone. Gay men throughout history have been involved with women and conceived children. But based on the conversations I've had with members of his extended family, they know of no children he may have had. And for all we know right now, my grandmother could be his only descendant.

It's strange to think that it's possible to fill in our family tree with perfect certainty around and beyond this one person because of DNA. Everything I've learned from traditional research is screaming at me that it shouldn't be possible to just skip a generation like this. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: DNA doesn't care about your feelings and hang-ups. All it can do is tell the truth.

And the truth is, the story that's emerging is stranger than fiction. And I can only hope that more answers are out there, just waiting to be uncovered.

Mary Marrone Annibali and the Myths of "Legal" Immigration

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I just made some amazing breakthroughs with my DNA. Through DNA analysis, collaboration with family, and with the support of several DNA cousin matches, I've found my maternal grandmother's missing birth father. He was Italian, and his parents and grandparents were among many of the Italian immigrants living in New York and New Jersey during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

My fortune in arriving at this relationship through DNA testing is to walk into research which has already been completed. It didn't take much work to find my great grandfather, my 2x great grandparents, and even some of my 3x great grandparents. The specific regions of Italy they came from, the alternate spellings of their last names, newspaper articles, photos, and naturalization dates and documents. All of it lovingly gathered by those who came before me. Never had I linked myself into another family line where as much love and care had been given to stories and documentation alike.

Part of the reason for this is because immigration narratives have to be carefully maintained by the families who inherit them. Voices and forces throughout history have tried to manipulate and replace immigrant narratives with myths and suspicion to suit their own political purposes. My Italian family is no exception to this. I want to discuss these myths today: how they persist in our current climate, and what genealogists can do to prevent them from supplanting the work we do as family historians.

The Myths of "Legal" Immigration

Before the turn of the century, immigration was an unregulated process. Anyone who could obtain passage to the United States, by whatever means was necessary or forced upon them, could come here without any expectation to become a citizen. There was no legal process by which a person entered and assimilated into the United States.

The first laws limiting admission into the U.S. weren't passed until the 1880s, and applied to Chinese/Asian nationals, targeting migrants tied to the Gold Rush. In short, anyone else whose heritage in the United States predates the early 1900s cannot claim to descend from a "legal" immigrant, because legal immigration as we currently understand it did not exist until decades later. And for more than a century, descendants of those early immigrants to the United States reaped the benefits and suffered the consequences of that unregulated system.

Obtaining citizenship, however, has been a formal process since 1790. Performed usually (but not always) at a county level, this process involved maintaining residency in the same location for a period of 5 years. It required filing two sets of papers: a declaration of intent and a petition for naturalization. Because these were filed on a local level and were non-transferable, moving during that 5 year window would start the process over again. While the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship automatically upon birth on American soil, this has not prevented many violations of constitutional law against immigrants and their descendants in the decades that have followed.

The greatest myth of American citizenship is that it will never be unjustly challenged or rescinded by the government. No promise has been broken more often than guaranteeing constitutional rights to American citizens who also happen to be immigrants, or are related to them.

Mary Marrone Annibali: Why was she naturalized twice?

After 1906, immigration policy in the United States takes a left turn into uncharted territory. Rather than a county or state-level process, granting citizenship becomes a federal function, subject to federal standards and approval. This also means that legislators and presidents both begin exercising new control over the process of immigration. One of these was the Expatriation Act of 1907, through which American women, whether they were born or naturalized in the United States, had their legal citizenship revoked.

As part of their disenfranchisement before the 19th Amendment, women could not apply for legal citizenship in the United States. This directly affected one of my Italian ancestors, whose citizenship was conditional upon her father before marriage, and her husband afterward. No matter where I look for naturalization papers for her, I will never find them for that reason.

1900 U.S. census, Bergen County, New Jersey, population schedule, Garfield borough, p. 18 B, dwelling 270, family 336, family of Louis and Rosie Marrone (spelled Marone), digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 June 2018); citing FHL microfilm 1240955, roll 955.

She gained her naturalization and citizenship as a child through her father, Luigi Marrone, in 1889.

1920 U.S. census, Bergen County, New Jersey population schedule, Garfield, p. 1A, dwelling 5, family 6, family of Alfred and Mary Annibal (spelled Annibell); digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 16 June 2018); citing NARA microfilm publication T625, roll 2076.

She then lost that citizenship when she married Goffredo "Alfred" Annibali, an Italian non-citizen, in 1908. She wouldn't be considered a citizen again until 1919, when her husband finished his naturalization.

The Cable Act of 1922, which challenged the legality of revoking women's citizenship, didn't fix the problem fully even after it was passed. Any woman who lost her citizenship because of the Expatriation Act would have to apply to reobtain it, even if she had been born in the United States. It didn't fully extricate a woman's citizenship from her husband's, disqualifying her if he couldn't qualify. And as the legal classification of "enemy aliens" enters the equation, it becomes impossible for many women to reclaim what was taken from them, in violation of their constitutional rights.

What many people mean by insisting that immigrants should be "legal," is the expectation for those who enter the United States do so with the formal permission of the government, with the intention to assimilate into our society, learn English, and become a naturalized citizen. And in no uncertain terms, many of the loudest advocates for "legal" immigrants are unrepentant hypocrites--having personally benefited from the unregulated system, when their own families failed to meet the standards they now enforce upon others. What's more, legal entry and citizenship are promises waiting to be broken when the government has the ability to revoke a citizen's legal status without just cause.

Time and again, this has been the reality for those who find themselves classified as "aliens" or "enemy aliens" by the United States.

Who are "Enemy Aliens"?

How is someone's status as an "enemy alien" determined? Is it by their past criminal history? By their associations with known terrorists or organizations that commit violence?

No. It was determined only by a person's place of birth. It was the legal designation during WWI for non-naturalized immigrants from "enemy" nations. It was later applied to non-naturalized German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants during WWII. Regardless of whether they had fled the unrest in their own countries and risked their safety in rejecting those governments. Regardless of whether they had filed their declaration of intention before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in which they swore to disavow the nations of their birth. Being an immigrant from an "enemy nation" who hadn't yet become a citizen of the US, legally made someone an "enemy alien."

"Regarding the Italian Population," The (New Orleans) Mascot, 7 September 1888, p. 8; digital images, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ItalianPopulationMascott1888.jpg : 16 June 2018); citing the microfilm collection of the New Orleans Public Library.

In 1942, non-naturalized immigrants from Germany, Japan, and Italy were required to register at their post office. They were required to be fingerprinted, photographed, and carry identification on them at all times, labeling them as "enemy aliens." They were restricted from owning firearms and radios, and were restricted in where they could travel. While these laws were not enforced the same way in every state, proximity to military installations could result in curfews and other restrictions.

The punishment for failure to register as an "enemy alien" in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Montana, Utah and Idaho was to be forcibly removed to a concentration camp.

(To view records related to "enemy alien" registration, view the catalog from the National Archives and the collections listings/card catalog of your databases of choice. Note: Similar restrictions also existed in the United Kingdom and Canada.)

But what about "legal" citizens? Did their "legal" status protect them from harm and suspicion?

The dry goods store of Luigi "Louis" Marrone
Garfield, New Jersey

No. After Pearl Harbor, my Italian ancestors woke up to a world they didn't recognize. And it changed the course of their lives in the United States forever. To get some idea I decided to branch out and read accounts of other Italian Americans from cities around the United States. And it was my good fortune to find the story of Frank DiCara, who lived in the suburbs of Baltimore, similar to where my great grandparents met.

Frank DiCara grew up in an Italian suburb of Baltimore called Highlandtown. He dropped out of school after his three brothers left to fight in the war, and was eventually drafted to fight for the country that had rejected him. Being a "legal" citizen was no more a shield from hatred, bigotry, and the violation of Constitutional rights than it is for immigrants today. Arrests by federal agents began almost immediately.

In other cities across the United States, Italians citizens were arrested and detained for years, without a trial, representation, or conviction. Their houses were ransacked, and their businesses, assets, and property were seized by the government. Some were even stripped of their citizenship, having broken no law. Others had illnesses exacerbated by the stresses of moving or incarceration and died during their internment. Their only crime was having once been born in what was now considered an enemy country, or having parents and relatives who were. Fortunately for my family, they lived in the densely-populated Italian communities on the east coast, whose financial livelihoods were minimally affected in comparison to those who lived in the western United States. But the compulsion and erasure that affected so many Italian families also affected mine, beginning with the outbreak of World War II.

From Wikimedia Commons

Italian Americans joined the armed forces in large numbers, hoping to prove their loyalty and patriotism. At 500,000 strong, Italians made up the largest minority in the military during WWII. My great grandfather was one such person, having joined the Navy. Through that service, he met my great grandmother in Baltimore where she later gave birth to their daughter. I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for this man's military service. His sacrifice, his willingness to fight for a country that had rejected his identity, his family, and his community is the reason I'm living and breathing. His blood is in my veins, and even though I never met him, I feel a growing sense of kinship with him. His story has become part of my story, opening my eyes to what being American cost him and those he cared about.

The biggest impact this period had on my family is cultural erasure. It's at about this time that my family Americanized the spelling of their surname, turning Annibali into Annibal. And from talking to my great grandfather's descendants, I know now that one of the greatest personal losses to them was the ability to speak Italian. Like many Italian Americans, the children and grandchildren born in the U.S. were not allowed to speak Italian. "You're in America now, and you will speak English" was the sentiment instilled in them by the older generation. Far from being the full embrace of American identity, that insistence was born of fear and oppression from the United States government. It was a natural consequence of propaganda posters that mandated: "Don't speak the enemy's language. Speak American." The older generation, who had seen oppression and tyranny in Italy and could recognize it on its face, understood legal and social consequences that would follow for anyone who failed to comply with that forced assimilation.

The identity and narrative that many Americans want to construct for themselves out of our role in World War II is that of a people who resists against tyranny, fascism, and despotism. We lift ourselves up as saviors to the oppressed in other nations, the occupants of the moral high ground. We associate totalitarian control with the Axis powers. What gets lost in that retelling, however, are the atrocities committed by the United States government against its own people on the home front. The history and ongoing impact of mass incarceration, cultural erasure, and disenfranchisement is one we must reckon with as a nation because it was part of our response during that time. And in many ways, it's up to genealogists to unearth and reassemble the fragments of those stories, which have gone unspoken and forgotten for far too long. It's up to us to share them and make them known by those who wish to bury them, and replace them with their own narratives about who we've been as a country.

There is no better time to be sharing immigrant narratives like these on social media, with the hashtag #ResistanceGenealogy. The soil in which the seeds of oppression and dehumanization are sown is always historical revisionism. Making the lives and experiences of our immigrant ancestors visible is how we confront and correct revisionism, ignorance, and prejudice where it still exists in our communities.

Discovering these parts of the Italian American experience is difficult, and seeing how it also affected members of my family is uncomfortable. But that discovery motivates me to call this collective shrugging off of human rights by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration exactly what it is. It's a repetition of painful history no one should ever have to live through. It's a new twist on the old refrain as "unaccompanied alien children" becomes a legal designation for innocent, incarcerated Hispanic and Latino children.

I've heard many politicians and opinion leaders respond to these revelations by saying, "This is not America. This is not who we are." But anyone with an honest understanding of the history of this country would never say that, because it isn't true. This is exactly who and what American has been for so many immigrants who have come here seeking new lives. These are the actions of an oppressive government, having learned nothing from its past. And we cannot allow it to continue if we're to have any hope for a different future.

For ways you can help, check out this list of charitable organizations who are on the front lines across the southern border, helping immigrants and refugees to be reunited with their children.