March 2016

Calendar for May – August 2016

By |2016-03-06T23:31:57-08:00March 6th, 2016|

My calendar will be updated on an ongoing basis May 18, 2016 7:00 pm You Will Never Look at Your Old Photos the Same Way Again! South Bay Genealogical Society Katy Geissert Civic Center Library Community Meeting Room 3301 Torrance Boulevard Torrance, CA  90503 Contact: Donna Braly ndbraly@pacbell.net ***** 28 May - June 4, 2016 Lectures at the FHL TBD Hooked on Genealogy Tour Salt Lake City, UT www.facebook.com/HookedonGenealogy/posts/418216061717914 ***** 9 June 2016 1:00 pm The Secrets of Abraham Lincoln's DNA Orange County Rotary Club Grand Catering Events 300 S. Flower St. Orange, CA  92866 Contact: Warren Parchan warrbarr@aol.com ***** August 12, 2016 10 am Topic TBD Sunshine Club Leisure World 12501 [...]

August 2010

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part IV (Conclusion)

By |2010-08-21T14:55:54-07:00August 21st, 2010|

When AFDIL attempted an identification through Y-DNA, I was asked by my colleague Dr. Odile Loreille to find a Y-DNA reference for Sidney Goodwin.  We were just finishing up the identification of The Hand in the Snow, so she knew I was available for a new project. Of course, my first step was to search Ancestry.com to obtain information about the Goodwin genealogy.  I immediately found Sidney's parents Frederick and Augusta in 1901 living in Middlesex with their four oldest children Lillian (5), Charles (4), William (2), and Jessie (1).  Frederick was listed as a print compositer.  Because Frederick and his sons perished on the Titanic, to find a Y-reference for the family I researched Frederick's [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part III

By |2010-08-19T01:05:26-07:00August 19th, 2010|

To understand what happened next, you have to know a little about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondrial DNA is contained in small, football-shaped inclusions outside the nucleus of a cell. It's widely believed that mitochondria were once independent bacteria that invaded primitive cells millions of years ago.  Instead of being digested, these bacteria took up residence in the cell, forming a symbiotic relationship with it.  The cell provided them with food and water, and the mitochondria provided the cell with energy for metabolism and heat.  The arrangement worked out so well that millennia later, a human cell has up to 1,000 mitochondria, each carrying five to ten copies of its own genome.     [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part II

By |2010-08-17T18:48:48-07:00August 17th, 2010|

After eight and a half decades, there was little left of the child's body. Only a small piece of wrist bone and the crowns of three tiny baby teeth had survived the inclement weather and damp, slightly acidic soil. In the spring of 2002, when Parr and Ruffman determined that the child was not Gosta Paulson based on a mismatch between the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) obtained from the bone shard and DNA provided by a maternally-linked Paulson relative, the teeth became more significant in the identification efforts.  Dr. E. J. Molto, an anthropologist and the director of the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University, suggested that the three teeth belonged to "quite a young child".  [...]

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