With the new job, I decided to splurge on a genetic test from Ancestry.com, hoping to see if it matched me up with anyone. As a bonus, they guess what your ethnic ancestry is from the results.
I don’t actually trust those ethic results much, but they still didn’t surprise me to any great degree:
Region
Approximate amount
North Africa
< 1%
Scandinavia
39%
Europe West
24%
Ireland
21%
Europe East
4%
Great Britain
3%
Iberian Peninsula
2%
European Jewish
2%
Finland/Northwest Russia
2%
Italy/Greece
< 1%
Caucasus
< 1%
In map form:
I’m not surprised at all that it predicts my ethnicity is from Scandinavia, Western Europe and Ireland. That’s pretty much what my genealogy says. However, it has a higher percentage of Irish and lower percentage of Western European than my genealogy indicates.
Now, either my genealogy work is wrong, their estimates are imprecise, or the genetic mix of a large portion of my Irish and Western European ancestors is too diverse to accurately classify. Barring an instance of the milkman being my ancestor instead of a documented parent or an unknown adoption, I’m reasonably certain of my tree out to my third great grandparents’ generation. There’s always a possibility of someone schtupping someone they weren’t married to though. I suspect the discrepancy is a combination of items 2 and 3. The 25% of my ancestry that is Swedish can be traced back hundreds of years, and it’s all Swedish. But the Irish, German, and Danish? Well, that could easily be pretty mixed ethnically.
But this analysis isn’t why I took the test. I’ll write about genetically matching people in my family tree in another post. That was far more useful.
It’s been years since I got to participate in a 401(k) retirement plan. Last time was when I worked at Expedia. I put the amount in that would maximize the employer contribution and didn’t pay much more attention.
The first thing I looked at this time was which investment options were index funds. There’s one index fund option for large-cap funds and one for small-cap funds. Out of 24 options, only two are index funds. That’s deplorable. To illustrate why, I dug around to find the expense ratios for the fund options. It wasn’t as easy to find as I would like, but when I did Fidelity showed it quite nicely.
Name
Category
Gross Expense Ratio
Shareholder Fees
COMPANY STOCK
Company Stock
—
Commission on stock trades: $0.029 per share
MAINSTAY LGCP GR R1 (MLRRX)
Large Cap
0.87%
No additional fees apply.
MFS VALUE R4 (MEIJX)
Large Cap
0.68%
No additional fees apply.
SPTN 500 INDEX INST (FXSIX)
Large Cap
0.05%
No additional fees apply.
ARTISAN MID CAP INST (APHMX)
Mid-Cap
1.03%
No additional fees apply.
ARTISAN SM CAP VALUE (ARTVX)
Small Cap
1.24%
No additional fees apply.
VANG SM GR IDX INST (VSGIX)
Small Cap
0.08%
No additional fees apply.
FID DIVERSIFD INTL K (FDIKX)
International
0.81%
Short term trading fees of 1% for shares held less than 30 days.
DODGE & COX BALANCED (DODBX)
Blended Fund
0.53%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2005 (FFKVX)
Blended Fund
0.50%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2010 (FFKCX)
Blended Fund
0.54%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2015 (FKVFX)
Blended Fund
0.57%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2020 (FFKDX)
Blended Fund
0.59%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2025 (FKTWX)
Blended Fund
0.62%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2030 (FFKEX)
Blended Fund
0.67%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2035 (FKTHX)
Blended Fund
0.68%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2040 (FFKFX)
Blended Fund
0.68%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2045 (FFKGX)
Blended Fund
0.69%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2050 (FFKHX)
Blended Fund
0.69%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2055 (FDENX)
Blended Fund
0.69%
No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K INCOME (FFKAX)
Blended Fund
0.45%
No additional fees apply.
MIP II CL 1
Bond Investments
0.56%
No additional fees apply.
PIM TOTAL RT INST (PTTRX)
Bond Investments
0.46%
No additional fees apply.
I’ve highlighted the index fund for large-cap and the option with the next lowest expense ratio, and the same for the small-cap index fund. Those percentages indicate the amount the fund managers skim off the top every year. As a retirement saver, you never even see it because they don’t list this percentage in how much you make. They could do this (examples use a 1% expense ratio for arithmetic convenience):
Investment
$10,000
Increase
$500
Fee
-$105
Total
$10,395
Instead, they do this:
Investment
$10,000
Increase
$395
Total
$10,395
Notice in my example, the fee is a percentage of the total, not of the increase. An average fund manager might make the investor $500. An extraordinary fund manager might make $700. The average fund manager charges $105. The extra-ordinary one charges $107. Now, you might think you are getting a steal of $200 for only $2 more, but the real travesty is that the average manager gets $100 for very little work. To see that, look at an index fund.
The small-cap index fund I highlighted uses CRSP US Small Cap Growth Index to benchmark. Compared against their own benchmark, they lose over the last three months but just barely: return of 1.58% vs. the benchmark return of 1.6%. They compare very closely because all an index fund does is buy exactly what’s in the index.
For comparison, the actively managed fund uses Russell 2000 Value as it’s benchmark index. Compared against that, the managers lost 0.28% vs. the index’s gain of 1.78%. These managers are trying to beat the index by picking better investments than the index, charging for their “expertise”, and losing.
Now, that’s a short period of time and perhaps at other times the actively managed fund does better. But over time, index funds have better returns than actively managed funds. There are exceptions, but those options aren’t pertinent to the broad market investments that are available in a 401(k).
So basically, those investment options I have? I’m giving away $60 (for the large cap fund) to $115 (on the small cap fund) every year for nothing (on a baseline portfolio of $10,000). If I’m saving money every year for retirement, that amount grows every year, and cuts into the compounded interest every year.
All of this stuff is pretty well written about all over, but regular people don’t pay attention for a variety of reasons. I’m not naming my employer here, but they really should be doing better by their employees.
One of the questions I have about Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy is when they emigrated from Canada to the United States. Their family appears in the Canadian census in Blanshard township, Perth county, Canada West on 11 Jan 1852. The next recorded place I have for them is in Glen Haven township, Grant county, Wisconsin on 1 Jun 1860.
I can narrow the time of emigration by looking at his son James Parker. James requested his first papers in January 1859 in the Grant County District Court. James married Ellen Neagle in Jun 1857 in Middlesex county, Canada West, just across the county line from Blanshard township. James has two sons in the 1860 US Census, John Patrick and Napolean. John Patrick’s birth was likely in July 1858 in Wisconsin. If correct, James emigrated to the United States between Jun 1857 and Jul 1858. More likely than not, Patrick emigrated with his son.
One record series I thought might confirm that is the series at the Family History Library, Blanshard township property tax assessment rolls, 1851-1899, specifically the film covering 1851 to 1866. I ordered it back in December, but a new job and other life issues kept me from reviewing it until this past week. Luckily, I remembered to renew the rental before it expired in February.
This is what I found. In 1851, Patrick Parker appears paying taxes on lot 16 in concession 9. This is the same lot and concession where he was recorded in the 1848 Canadian Census.
Blanshard Tax Roll 1851 – Patrick Parker
The microfilm is missing the years 1852 through 1854, but luckily Patrick shows up in 1855, 1856, and 1857, all for the same lot and concession. (Images below don’t include the second page which shows the concession/lot.)
Blanshard Tax Roll 1855 – Patrick ParkerBlanshard Tax Roll 1856 – Patrick ParkerBlanshard Tax Roll 1857 – Patrick Parker
In 1858, Patrick Parker is not to be found on the tax roll. Instead, a James McDonald owns lot 16 on concession 9. And the roll for 1857 has the name J. McDonald to the right of Patrick Parker in a column headed, Owner. I believe this means the land had been sold to James McDonald prior to the time of the assessment, or possibly it was a notation put in after the fact when James McDonald did purchase it. This narrows the sale of the property to late 1856 or 1857. The tax rolls appear to be filed in the spring of each year.
Blanshard Tax Roll 1858 – James McDonald
The sale of his property matches the dates of emigration for his son James, making it even more likely he emigrated about the same time. The next place to look is to see if any records show him purchasing land in Grant county Wisconsin about that time.
Lastly, based on plat maps of Blanshard township, here’s the location of the farm today:
Location of Patrick Parker’s farm in Blanshard on satellite
When I first started using Ancestry.com, I made the mistake of creating one tree for my father’s side of the family, one for my mother’s US family, one for her Swedish family, and one for my step-father’s family. Trust me when I tell you this is a dumb idea. The principle holds for other lineage linked databases as well. If trees are actually unrelated, create separate trees. But in the case above, the trees are related, by me.
Having separate trees means that all sorts of meta-analysis is hard. It also means that I am constantly switching between trees as I research various branches of my family.
So I started merging trees. But Ancestry.com makes it hard to merge trees. In fact, you can’t on their web site. The only thing you can do is copy individuals between trees, one at a time, in a multi-step process for each.
I noticed today that their desktop software, Family Tree Maker, can merge trees. It can also synchronize with Ancestry.com. Combining the two features means I can merge trees. So I forked out the $32 to get it, just for the merging capability. I use GRAMPS as my main database.
It took me all of 3 hours to get my four trees merged into one. There are some issues, but it basically worked.
The main issues I see so far:
Attachments were moved between trees weirdly. For some, the record for the attachment was transferred but the attachment itself was not. Instead, Ancestry shows a place-holder. Attachments with place-holders
Some attachments had originally been contributed by other people. When I attached them to my tree, Ancestry kept the link and attribution to the original contributor. After merging trees, Ancestry now attributes the image to me, and there appears to be no easy and good way to fix it.
Image attribution – Ancestry.com
Image mis-attribution – Ancestry.com
And while sources and citations are copied as part of the merge, links to other people’s member trees are not. I’ve found links to other trees useful as the feature notifies me when another researcher changes something about a person in which I’m interested. I have to re-link all the profiles one by one.
Minor issues that pale in comparison to the time saved. I figure it would have taken me months of work to merge these trees one individual at a time.
This proposition pisses me off for two reasons. The first is that we have to even have to vote for it at all. The Washington State Legislature has failed for years to give King County the authority to fund Metro in a sustainable fashion. So now we’re stuck with two options: cut Metro service by huge amounts or use regressive sales and vehicle taxes to fund it. While the latter option sucks, it’s better than cutting bus service. The second reason is that we aren’t using 100% of the proceeds to pay for bus service. We’re using 40% of it for roads. Theoretically, road maintenance rather than construction. But still, Metro needs the money.
So here’s what happens if we pass it on the revenue side: a sales tax of 0.1% and $60 dollar vehicle tab fee ($20 more than current fees), with a $20 rebate for poor people. On the expense side: $80 million per year for Metro which will stave off cutting 5 dozen routes completely and reducing service on tens of others. $50 million goes toward maintaining roads and road safety.
The anti-proposition 1 side says Metro needs to cut costs first. Metro has already cut $130 million in annual costs. Really what these people are pissed about is that poor people who ride buses are getting a freebie. That’s what they think, that transit riders are getting a subsidy while respectable drivers aren’t etting one. Never mind that they already have huge road subsidies.
I have a car. I am happy to pay the $60, and I won’t get the subsidy. But I also ride the bus. Metro service is more convenient than driving much of the time, and necessary for many people. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions over driving. It reduces congestion for cars. There are all sorts of benefits from bus service. We need Metro. It’s as simple as that.
I successfully made cookies for the first time last week. Every other attempt failed miserably, to the point where I’d given up. Cookies are supposed to be easy, but apparently not for me. I’d been invited to an event where cookies were expected, so I gave it a go.
I found this recipe in an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook called Cookies for Kids. It has photos of kids aged 5 to 10 years old making cookies in it. I figured this would be hard for me to screw up.
I doubled the recipe from the book though. I think it worked out better because there was more stuff for the mixer to work with and so it all got mixed better. Directions below are how I did it, not a copy from the book.
Equipment
Stuff I need to make sure I have cleaned and available.
large mixing bowl
medium mixing bowl
small saucepan
hand mixer
2 cookie sheets
parchment paper
storage bins for finished cookies
bowl for drained cherries
cup to hold cherry juice
Ingredients
butter, 2 sticks, room temperature
sugar, 2 cups
eggs, 2
vanilla extract, 3 teaspoons
all purpose flour, 3 cups
unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 cup
baking soda, ½ teaspoon
baking powder, ½ teaspoon
salt, ½ teaspoon
maraschino cherries, 2 jars (this was overkill, but I used more than 1 jar worth)
semisweet chocolate chips, 12 ounce package
sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup
Instructions
Add butter and sugar to a mixing bowl
Beat with a hand mixer until fluffy and thoroughly mixed
Add eggs and vanilla
Beat well
In another mixing bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt
Add part of flour mixture to butter mixture
Beat until well mixed
Repeat last two steps until all of the flour is combined with the butter
Shape the dough into 1 inch balls, placing each on parchment paper on a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart (made enough to fill about 2½ sheets)
Press thumb into the middle of each cookie, squashing them down
Drain cherries, reserving the juice in a cup
Put a cherry in the indentation in each cookie
Combine chocolate chips and condensed milk in a saucepan
Melt over low heat, stirring occasionally
Stir in enough cherry juice to make the chocolate spoonable
Spoon a dollop of chocolate over each cookie, enough to cover the cherry
Bake at 350° til edges of the cookies are firm (was about 13 minutes for me, book said 10)
Transfer cookies to a cool surface to cool
Gallery of photos at most steps taken below. Forgot to take photos of the finished cookies, which were tasty, by the way.
After a couple of years of little progress mostly due to focusing on other parts of my family tree, I’ve been making huge progress with the Parkers. You’ve probably noticed the multiple posts about them recently.
A few weeks ago, I noticed there was a Find-A-Grave memorial for a Leonard Parker at the church cemetery in Saint Mary, Ontario. Leonard Parker is reputed to be the brother of my ancestor, Patrick Parker. I wrote to the person who put up the memorial, asking if they were related. The answer was yes, and we exchanged some information about our respective family trees. One of the things she clued me in to was that the parish registers for some of the Roman Catholic churches have been scanned and are on FamilySearch. Not indexed, but available.
Which brings me to my great great grandmother, Mary Parker Ryan. She married William Dennis Ryan in 1864, had six children, and died of typhus in 1875, not quite eleven years into her marriage. She had a short and somewhat forgotten life. Every time I mentioned her to one of my relatives, I get blank looks. Apparently my great grandparents and grandparents generations talked so rarely about her that no one in the next generation had heard of her. That sort of reaction is part of why I’ve been drawn to genealogy, to remember the people who haven’t been.
The main source of information I had on Mary was her grave monument in a small cemetery on a hill about a mile east of Patch Grove, Wisconsin. I visited Saint Johns Cemetery in June 2011.
Grave marker for Mary Ryan
It’s quite a nice monument for the time. William Ryan cared enough to spend some dough on it. Here’s a close up of the inscription.
inscription on Mary Ryan’s monument
It reads:
Mary
Wife of Wm. D. Ryan.
Born Jan. 7, 1841. In
Ramsey, Township of Perth.
Canada West. Died
Feb. 20, 1875,
Aged 34 yrs. 1 mo. 13 ds.
The inscription has a number of problems with it. The Parkers lived for a time in Blanshard township in Perth County, Canada West. There is no Ramsey township in Perth County, and as far as I can tell, there never has been. The only Ramsey township I’ve been able to find is in Lanark County, Ontario. That sort of fits with another family legend, that Mary’s mother was one Mary Murphy who was part of the Peter Robinson settlement of Canada. One of those settlements was in Ramsey township. I have doubts as to whether Mary Murphy really was part of that endeavor, but there’s a geographical connection at least. Oh, and the nearest city to Ramsey township is Perth. My working hypothesis was that this particular Ramsey was the one indicated on her grave.
Additionally, her death certificate and other accounts put her date of death as 23 Feb 1875. Three days difference isn’t that big of a deal. Still…
A further problem is that there is a second marker for Mary in front of the monument:
Second marker for Mary Ryan
You’ll notice this one gives a year of birth as 1840, rather than 1841. Rather confusing.
And, as it turns out, both are likely wrong. Going back to the thing above about the Ontario parish registers being online… I looked at the register for Perth’s Saint John the Baptist parish. There was no entry for Mary Parker in 1841. Her brothers Stephen and Patrick were there in 1835 and 1837, but no Mary. On the first perusal, I missed it. But on the second look through, I saw an entry for a Mary Parker in 1839:
Mary Parker baptismal register entry
On the 28th day of February 1839 the undersigned Priest of this Parish
has Baptized Mary seven weeks old of the lawful marriage of Patrick
Parker & Mary Murphy of Ramsey.
Sponsors Nicholas Dison and Emilia Dison
That’s an entry in a contemporaneous journal of parish actions. Unless it’s for a different Mary Parker, it’s pretty convincing evidence she was actually born in January 1839. January 7th fits, so I’m guessing that’s her actual birthday.
However, by the time the monument was erected, people were guessing at her actual age. Maybe she’d shaved off a couple of years. Maybe she forgot or didn’t know. Maybe the monument was erected years after her death. I’ve no idea the reason.
As an added bonus for this post, among the effects found in my great aunt’s house last year when she died was this photograph:
Mary Parker
On the back is the inscription “Mary Park” and the paper is torn. Is it my ancestor or another Mary Parker or did whoever wrote the inscription just guess? I’ve no idea.
Alex King is the creator of the Share Icon. I can’t say whether he still owns the copyright or not, but the the thing about Creative Commons licenses is that they are irrevocable. ShareThis Inc., or whatever their legal name is, cannot revoke the license.
So long as I give credit to Alex King (which I just did) and link to the license (which I just did), I can use this image however I want, per the terms of the license:
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
There was another item in the map I found yesterday that is of interest to me. On one of the other sheets is a city map of Cassville, where my great great grandfather Anton Weiss operated a hardware store for close to 50 years.
Just as I was able to find Patrick Parker in Glen Haven, Anton Weiss store shows up in this map too:
Map of Cassville in 1868 showing Anton Weiss
Here’s what the location looks like today:
Denniston and Amelia, Cassville in 2013 (Google Street View)
I’ve made one visit to Cassville, but at the time I didn’t know the location of the family home.
My genealogy white whale since shortly after I started has been finding Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy. I’ve written about them here multiple times. I’d found pretty solid evidence on what happened to 8 of their 10 children, the only two where I was missing basic information were the sons James and John. Last month I found good evidence for James. Two weeks ago I found John, though I haven’t pursued it much yet.
But as much information as I’ve found on all their children, the evidence I have for the pair themselves is aggravatingly small. I’ve located them together in the 1851 Canada Census, the 1860 US Census, and the 1870 US Census. I have a possible grave site for Patrick in Iowa. And Mary Murphy can be found in the 1885 Iowa Census. That’s the sum total of direct evidence I have for them.
I have indirect evidence for them. I know they arrived in Canada between 1832 and 1835, based on the listed countries of birth for their children. The death records for several children list their names. The grave marker for my great great grandmother Mary Parker Ryan gives a place of birth for her, which places Mary Murphy in that place at least.
Today I was looking through the online maps collection for the Wisconsin Historical Society, and I saw they had added a map for Grant County from 1868, and the description included “shows townships and sections, landownership, …” The earliest landownership map for Grant County that I’ve viewed came from 1878 and the Parkers were not to be found on it. So, I took a peek at the 1868 map:
1868 map of Grant County, Wisconsin showing the Parker and Ryan farms highlighed
Lo and behold, there he is! The P. Parker farm is just southwest of North Andover (a town which is no longer a town). On the map, I also highlighted the location of the farm for Patrick Parker’s son in law, William Dennis Ryan. And with handy Google Maps, I can show you where the Parker farm is on today’s maps.
This is the first direct piece of evidence for their existence that I’ve found in nearly 2 years. You don’t know how thrilled I am about this.
