For awhile it was looking like Renee Zamora and I might be cousins. She descends from a Harris family in New York, and so do I.  Same county, 1700’s. The odds were fair to middlin’.

A Harris cousin of mine got one of our Harris boys to take a DNA test for the paternal lineage.  That wasn’t easy.  He had some fear that his DNA would be used to clone him in the future. When he finally admitted it, my cousin snapped back, “Who would want to clone you? You’re 70 years old!”

So she got her sample, sent it off to the lab and got back the results which knocked out every theory we’ve held dear so far.  Seems our closest match had an ancestor in South Carolina.

Ancestry doesn’t mention cloning … hmmm … Read the fine print.  They say they offer ‘complimentary’ storage but they don’t offer ’secure’ storage.  Hello?

First of all – 40% off Ancestry.com DNA testing and 25% off Family Tree Maker 2009 through December 31st.

Ancestry has launched a new mapping feature.  If you have a family tree there, all event locations are now linked to a map. If you want to know what else is new at Ancestry.com, they have a page called What’s New?

Sorry about yesterday’s post that disappeared.  The feed readers pick up new postings pretty quick so if I delete one it’s too late to pull it out of circulation. Some of you missed it altogether, but some of you went to a blank 404 page.  If you subscribe by email you got the drift.  I was tearing my hair out over the spam problem, both here and at the Forum.  But I think I found a fix.  I have now been 24 hours spam free.  It’s a miracle!  Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  No, it’s Captcha.  If you leave a comment here, or at the Forum, you will be required to type some letters into a box to prove that you’re a human being.  I thought that was already happening but this is better.  It seems to be working.

NEW YORK and PROVO, Utah, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ — Today Ancestry.com, part of The Generations Network, Inc., announced it has introduced the world’s largest online collection of Jewish family history records. Ancestry.com has partnered with two leading organizations committed to the preservation of Jewish heritage — JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage –A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City that maintains the world’s premier Jewish genealogy website, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an overseas humanitarian aid organization committed to providing relief for Jews in more than 70 countries. These partnerships will make millions of important Jewish historical documents available on Ancestry.com, many of which are online for the first time ever and searchable for free. These unique records, including photographs, immigration records, Holocaust records and memorials, can now be searched alongside other records already accessible on Ancestry.com, creating the largest collection of Jewish family history records on the Web with more than 26 million records documenting Jewish life.

Ancestry.com recently launched the World Archives Project, its new public indexing project that gives everyone the opportunity to help index and preserve historical records. The indexes created through the World Archives Project will be free to everyone. Images will remain behind the paid subscription wall to cover the costs of digitization, but active contributors to the project will have access to all of the images that are part of the World Archives Project. Organizations can also partner with the World Archives Project and sponsor indexing projects. Ancestry.com will donate a digital copy of the sponsored index and images back to partnering organizations. The project is in beta mode, but here’s your chance to try out the World Archives Project.

Learn more …