, ,

Jamaican Ancestry.ca DNA Results

It has been a while since my last post, but in addition to MyHeritage.com and FamilyTreeDNA I also received my Jamaican Ancestry.ca results. I am dedicating an entire blog post to these results because I have now made Ancestry.ca my main place for my DNA research.

Ethnicity Estimate

Full disclosure… I received these results months ago and my results have changed over time. As updated data comes in for each region, ancestry.ca updates the percentages to make these results more accurate. Additionally, ancestry.ca/com has the largest data pool from which to determine these results. The more data there is the more accurate the the estimate.

Jamaican Ancestry.ca Results – Ethnicity Estimate

DNA Relatives

Due to the large pool of data (users who submitted samples) there are much more relatives that I found in this system. As you can see there are even 2nd – 3rd cousins that I found. My wife found a 1st cousin. These results are very helpful when building a family tree especially for those with Jamaican ancestry.

Jamaican Ancestry.ca Results – DNA Matches

Comparison of Results

The table below represents the findings of each of the tests that I took. When we look at the numbers the results are quite similar with minor discrepancies. To see more detail of my MyHeritage.com and FamilyTreeDNA tests click here.

West AfricanEast Central AfricanEuropean
Ancestry.ca9064
MyHeritage.com88.47.83.8
FamilyTreeDNA9042

So what? Terrence you did all of this testing and analysis. You found out a little about your ethnic breakdown and you are now connected to a myriad of long lost cousins. What do you do with this information? What use is it to you? Well, it feels good to know. Slavery has destroyed Jamaican families. Studying our ancestry and genealogy and actually finding results is something that was impossible for generations of people like me. These modern tools have unlocked a door that can lead us to places that we cannot even fathom. My Jamaican Ancestry.ca DNA results, in addition to the DNA results from the other services, have made me even more determined to learn as much as I can about the amazing people in my family tree.

/0 Comments/by
,

Jamaican Slave Register

I was doing some more research on my family tree and signed up for the Ancestry.ca world deluxe package that includes international records. I came across a collection that I never thought I would find, Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1813-1834. Thank you to all who helped to decipher the beautiful text.

Full Document

Top Section

Transcription:

Jamaica ss – A Return of Slaves in the Parish of Westmoreland in the possession of Alex James Rankine as Lessee from M. Ja Rankine on the 28th day of June in the year of our Lord 1823

Mid Section

Transcription:

Males by last return 10 Females 15 Total by last return 35
Names Colour Age African or Creole Remarks Increase & cause thereof Decrease & cause thereof
Males
Frederick Negro 2 Creole Son of Diana By Birth
Edward do 2 do Son of Nanny do
Females
Sydney do do Death
Increase 2 Decrease 1

Number of Slaves on the 28th day of June 1823 Thirty two

Births since last return 2 Deaths since last return 1

Do = ditto meaning same as record above

African refers to slaves that came directly from Africa. Creole means that the person was born in Jamaica.

Bottom Section

I Alexander James Rankine do swear that the above list and return is a true, perfect, and complete list and return, to the best of my knowledge and belief, in every particular therein mentioned, of all and every slave and slaves possessed by me as Lessee considered as most permanently settled, worked or employed in the parish of Westmoreland on the 28th day of June in the year of our lord 1823 without fraud deceit or eversion so help me God. – Alex Ja. Rankine

Sworn before me this 18th day of October 1823} John Dobson

Affidavit produced in Vestry according to Law

/0 Comments/by
, ,

The Differences Between the 3 Genealogy DNA Tests

There are 3 main types of DNA testing used for genealogy: autosomal, mitochondrial (mtDNA), paternal yDNA. Each are great ways to find out information about yourself, but the collected data can lead you in multiple directions. Here I will try to briefly explain the differences.

yDNA – Paternal Line

First thing to know about this type of test is that it is only available to males. This test requires examination of the Y chromosome which only exists in males. However, if you are a woman there is still some hope for you. You can do the test on your brother, father, paternal uncles, or grandfather and the results will be the same. yDNA has been passed unchanged through your paternal male ancestors on your family tree for thousands of years, and due to this fact genealogists are able to use this information to determine where in the world your earliest ancestors lived.

For black people who are the descendants of slaves, using the paternal line when looking for their earliest male African ancestor has a lower rate of success than using your maternal line. According to AfricanAncestry.com paternal DNA test results in African ancestry 75% of the time while mitochondrial DNA tests result in African ancestry 92% of the time. Why is this? Sadly, it is because most white slave owners and overseers raped their female slaves. President of AfricanAncestry.com Dr. Gina Paige gives further explanation about this in the video below.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)– Maternal Line

As mentioned above there is also the mtDNA test. An unchanged portion of your Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from your mother, who in tern inherited from her mother and so on. This portion of DNA has also been passed down for thousands of years, just like yDNA on your paternal side. However, this test is open to both men and woman and is used find your earliest living maternal ancestor.

 

Autosomal DNA

As you can see the two previous tests miss out on everyone in the middle portion of your family tree. This where autosomal DNA testing comes in. This is the newest type of test and it covers everyone in your family tree going back around 5 generations and therefore picks up on all the people that were missed in the other two tests. With these results companies can compare the various portions of your DNA with others in their databases to determine what regions in the world your ancestors originated from and provide you with the percentage of DNA that you have that originates from those regions.

Personally, I’ve only done the autosomal DNA test, but hope to do both and mitochondrial and yDna test at some time in the future. As you have seen not all of the 3 types of DNA testing used for genealogy may apply to you, however I hope that this brief post helps if you are considering taking a test.

/0 Comments/by
, ,

FamilySearch.org – Where my Caribbean family search really began

It’s 2008 and I graduated from university. My degree is in Computer Science but, after being hyped up on genealogy series, I really wanted to know the names and stories of people in my family tree. I started my family tree on familysearch.org. It’s a free service that is offered by the Church of Latter Day Saints, also know as the Mormon Church. The church collects historical records from all over the world. They do this because they believe that they can pray for the soul of a dead person and that person will gain salvation (http://www.pbs.org/mormons/etc/genealogy.html). I am a Christian, but I do not prescribe to those beliefs. However, the fact that they have this info and offer it for free to anyone wanting to find out about their genealogy is fantastic. I searched for the names of my Grandmother and Grandfather. I found nothing. Back to the drawing board…

How I finally found information

I spoke with my mother to see if she knew the maiden name of her mother. She did, but I still could not find what I was looking for an familysearch.org. I concluded that Jamaica is a third world country and that those records probably don’t exist… feeling dejected I resigned myself to believing that I would never find the information that I needed. Then one day the phone rang. My grandmother’s youngest sister called to speak with my mom. I was able to garner some great information from my grand aunt about her mother. Her name was Miriam McFarlane, and her story was very interesting to say the least, and I’ll be writing a post about her in the near future. Once I got this info I ran to familysearch.org and I met my great grandmother, and some of my grandmother’s siblings for the first time. I also, found my Grandmother and Great Grandmother’s birth certificates and the birth certificates of their siblings. Incredible! I was now hooked.

My great grandmother’s birth certificate via familysearch.org

I found out that my Grandmother’s parents were not married at the time when my Grandma was born. Due to this, she was listed with her mother’s last name. Once I realized this, I used the same method to find my maternal grandfather’s birth certificate and the names of his parents.

My great grandfather’s birth certificate via familysearch.org

I now had a method for searching for people in my family tree:

  1. If the person is not found with the name that you think that they should have, try using the maiden name of the mother as the child’s last name.
  2. If a birth certificate is found look at all of the names in the document. Many times, the witnesses are a member of the mother’s family. In my Grandmother’s case, the witness was listed as Evel Rankine, which in actuality was her father.
  3. Try to also find Church of England christening records. By the time the child is christened point 1 is usually corrected. Also, during those days families were quite large, and more than one child was christened on a specific day. Check the lines above and below your ancestor in the record book, you may find additional family members.
  4. Do an ancestry DNA test and connect with long lost cousins to garner more information. I did mine with MyHeritage.com, but I would recommend doing it with 23andMe or AncestryDNA. Both of those services have larger databases of people which equates to more matches.
  5. Check out the Legacies of British Slave-ownership website. Here you can find out information about slave owners from across the Caribbean.
/1 Comment/by
, ,

Programming While Black

I was the only black person in most of the classes related to computer science. I grew up in Toronto, and if you know anything about this city you know that it is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It is not unusual for someone from Toronto to have friends with backgrounds from at least 4 or 5 different countries. I went to college in this great city and I can’t remember seeing another black person in any of my computer programming classes. From college I decided to go to university. The one that I chose was 2 hours away from Toronto in the beautiful city of Peterborough. I can remember having one other black person in one or two of my classes. Why were there so few of us?

The Digital Divide

While in university I took an interesting course called Computer Ethics. My professor’s name was Dr. Byron Styoles and he lead a discussion about the digital divide that has stuck with me ever since. The lack of representation of people of colour in the industry was result of a lack of access to technology during childhood. This is due to socio-economic class and historic discrimination. Students with lower incomes have lesser access to technology. Now remember I did graduate from university a decade ago. It was before cell phones and tablets were prevalent. Tech, up to this time, was very expensive, and anyone that grew up with access to cell phones, computers, or the internet was very fortunate. The discussion also had  associated readings and they showed that for someone to strive toward a goal they must know that the goal actually exists and is achievable. We need to see people like us in those fields to picture ourselves in them. This sentiment is also echoed in one of my favorite books called The Other Wes Moore. There were some trailblazers in the technology field that we are beginning to hear about now, like the women in Hidden Figures, but none of them had the celebrity of a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

In 2016 Google conducted research among school aged children and their parents to get to the bottom of why Blacks, Hispanics, and women are so grossly under represented in Computer science. You can read about their findings here https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/diversity-gaps-in-computer-science-report.pdf. I thought that the situation had to be getting better now that technology is integrated into society, but the researchers found that things are pretty much the same as they were when I took that class all those years ago. Something that stood out to me is that access to computers and to computer science education is still lacking in black communities.

“Black and Hispanic students are less likely than White students to use a computer at home every day, and Hispanic students are less likely than White students to say they use a computer at school every school day. More than six in 10 students know an adult who works with computers and technology, although fewer Hispanic students know such an adult. Home Computer Access Is Higher Among White Students, With Large Majorities of All Students Reporting Daily Cellphone Usage” Diversity Gaps in Computer Science: Exploring the Underrepresentation of Girls, Blacks and Hispanics p. 12

Prejudice

Due to the lack of black representation, while I was in school I found that my peers and professors treated me differently. I wasn’t abused or anything like that, but prejudice was real. I remember someone calling me “dawg”. I had to explain to him that I don’t refer to myself that way (or speak using black colloquial terms around non-black people). When I would do well on tests, quizzes, or assignments the looks that I would receive from my professors were telling… it was almost as if they were saying “huh, I didn’t think you had it in you”.

Prejudice is as normal as the most normal thing that you can think of. We all pre-judge. It becomes a serious problem when opportunities are taken away or granted due to that prejudice, that’s when it transforms into racism.

Trailblazing

Is this field worth pursuing for Black people? Absolutely! Sometimes we have to put up with negativity in order to promote progress. Black developer and prospective developer, you are a trailblazer. There are still many firsts that we will eventually achieve. Which one of us will be the next Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. Which one of us will be the next Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg. It could be you. You and I are the bridge to the Digital Divide, and with more representation in the industry, my hope is the prejudice will end. We are part of a close-knit family full of shared experiences. I implore you to write code without fear, knowing that you have a place in the development space.

Photo by NESA by Makers

/0 Comments/by
,

5 Steps to becoming a Software Developer

This is not going to be an exhaustive approach to getting your foot in the door of software development. I have heard stories from several developers about how the got their first job, and their education level when they got it. I’ve worked in companies that were small (literally 4 developers), midsized (just around a hundred employees, with 3 developers), and large corporations (ten thousand employees, with a huge development team). Regardless of company size, I have found that most, if not all, of the developers that I worked with had a post secondary diploma or degree in a technical field. Often, they have a degree in computer science, electrical or mechanical engineering, or a diploma in computer programming. If you want to get into the field starting with a degree will only help.

There are many great things said about online or offline code schools, nano-degrees and such, however, personally speaking, I have never worked with anyone that solely had one of these certifications. I have worked with many people who have had a post secondary degree/diploma and have additional certifications. I’ve taken some courses, and this is commonplace in this field. Udacity and Code academy boast of great success stories, so if you did go that route or you are thinking about going that route there are success stories.

However, due to my lack of experience with getting a job without a degree, I’m going to stick with how I became a developer, working consistently and professionally for 10 years. I can’t believe that I’ve been doing this for as long as I have but looking back I’ve learned a few lessons that can help you.

Earn a degree in a technical field

This is the easiest way to get your foot in the door of major and minor corporations. Just about all job descriptions for developers/programmers from companies require the candidate to have a degree in computer science or engineering. Getting around this fact is somewhat difficult, so if you are serious about making a life through development you really should start here.

Humble yourself

Ok, you have the degree now it’s time to show the world what you can do… whoa not so fast. The enthusiasm is great, keep that, but always know that you don’t know everything. After graduation you really don’t know much about writing usable code and writing code that others can edit if you are unavailable. You don’t know about trying to understand and fix problems that are in other developer’s code, or how to refactor code and optimise it. Forget about coding, you probably don’t know how to solve real business problems yet either. These skills all take time to acquire and a lifetime to master. Also, if you think that your .Net, Java, T-SQL, html, CSS, or JavaScript skills are amazing you will meet people that you work with and learn that their years of experience in these languages put your skills to shame. Bosses and developers don’t like to work with conceited people. You will not move ahead in a career in this field with that attitude.

Be honest in your interviews

Normally the hiring process consist of you applying, a phone interview, and one or more interviews in person. Be truthful! If you lie about any of your skills you will be found out. It is okay to not know something. If you don’t know AngularJS but you are familiar with jQuery say that. Developers are constantly learning, and no employer expects you to know everything. What they do want to know is that you are willing and able to learn new technologies. That being said, if the position is for a .Net Developer and you don’t know a .Net language you should not be applying for that job.

Practice Practice Practice

If you’ve done all of the above you will probably get a job. Hurray! Now take some time when you’re not working to practice. The more you program the better programmer you will become. Is there a little application that will be beneficial to you or a friend? Code it up. Is there a new framework that you want to learn? Take a weekend and learn it. Is there a technology course that you want to take to broaden your programming skills in a certain area? Take it! Get certifications if you can. Build up your personal skills, resume, and LinkedIn profile.

Be on LinkedIn

Take a look at the skills that other people in your position have acquired. This can give you an outlook of some steps to take in your career. In addition to this, another reason to be on LinkedIn is for searching out new opportunities. Head hunters are constantly patrolling LinkedIn for people like you. If you are thinking about leaving your position a head hunter may be helpful. However, be careful some will call your work line or try to contact you at all hours to get you be their client. Be cautious when you are picking one to work with.

These 5 steps will help you to not only get a job is the development field but keep a job in this field. Longevity in any career is hard to attain, especially in a every changing industry like ours, but it is possible. I been doing this professionally for the past decade and I know that you can do it to.

Photo by Jefferson Santos

/0 Comments/by

Working on Stuff…

I have a couple of projects on the go. I should be spinning off a few sites in the upcoming weeks. So I’ll have some projects to add to my personal portfolio. I can’t wait until they are up and running!

/0 Comments/by