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Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Dahn Cukier
 

A few words about computers.

All the former "matches" are still on the computers as are all
non matches. Unless a person has demanded their DNA be removed,
Ancestry should not be removing any results.

We, the users, see only the data deemed relevant to us. I do not see
any of my uncle's wife's relatives, but did find an 5-8th cousin in
common, or so say statistics.

Since Ancestry removed the ability to jump from page to page, I
have not seen as many matches. I tried to scroll down when the new
display first came out about a year ago, but after an hour, I was
no where near the 150,000 matches I saw before the display change.

I would appreciate Ancestry supplying a utility to request a spreadsheet of
matches as MyHeritage does/did in batch form. "Batch" means it is produced during
slow hours and a file is prepared for the user by request that can be downloaded.

With so much endogamy, the results on any database are less than perfect.
I have access to 7 direct relatives raw data DNA at Ancestry. When a new
1st-3rd cousin shows up, I always look at he person from my mother's data,
my father's brother's data and my sister's data. If only I am a
relative, it is most likely a false positive. By looking at 2nd cousins data,
I can find if the person is related to my mother's father or mother, or
my father's father or mother.

As I write this, I begin to suspect that Ancestry may not be so much about
genealogy as connecting living people. As families started to move around
more and more beginning in the 1960s many have lost touch with
2nd generation relatives. While I knew my aunts and uncles, I have never met
many of their 1st cousins.

Dani Cukier
Cukier/Zucker/Zukrowicz, Brif/Brieff, Sklawir/etc. Lisoecki/Lisobitki/etc.


When you start to read readin,
how do you know the fellow that
wrote the readin,
wrote the readin right?

Festus Hagen
Long Branch Saloon
Dodge City, Kansas
(Gunsmoke)


On Friday, September 4, 2020, 05:27:02 AM GMT+3, Teewinot <teewinot13@...> wrote:


I beg to differ. In all my shared matches until about 7 days ago, I had
matches down to 6.0 cM. So did my cousins I've been working with. If
we didn't, we wouldn't have found some of the links between us. I also
wouldn't have found other critical matches in the shared DNA.

I know what shared matches are. I've been using them for the past two
years, since I tested.

I'm a retired medical professional and know about DNA, genetics and
inheritance. In more distant relationships, DNA is more a guide, not an
absolute. Due to the way DNA is inherited, you can have two siblings
with vastly different DNA inheritance from even great great
grandparents. Also, the estimation of relationship can often be way
off. Someone with 8.0 cM could be as close as a 4th cousin or as
distant as an 8th cousin. It all depends on how the DNA was
inherited/passed down. (Ancestry had two of my 1st cousins once removed
listed as 3rd to 4th cousins.)

I paid for the data I was given (down to 6.0 cM). I did not in the
least appreciate it being taken from me without even asking me. I
worked feverishly for the last week to save as many matches as I could
below 8.0 cM. Obviously, everyone else was, too, because the servers
were sluggish, crashing constantly, and even going down completely for
two hours at a time. They hadn't been prior to that. On Sept. 1st,
they were back to normal. I managed to save just under 7,500 matches.
I dread to think of all the valuable data I lost in the matches I
couldn't save.

I personally believe that Ancestry has done all this because they can't
handle the storage of the massive amount of data that is being generated
as more and more people get tested. I also personally believe that what
Ancestry did was disgraceful and just plain bad business. I have never,
in all my years, seen a business take away something from a customer
that they had paid for. If Ancestry wanted to make changes, they should
have started with the new customers as of Sept. 1st, and left alone all
the data of customers who had paid for the service before that date.
They've just made it far harder now to trace links between families.

I had a long talk with someone in the corporate HQ today. He agreed
with me, and is going to look into returning all matches to the shared
DNA. As for the data below 8.0 cM, it's all been dumped. So now it's
just wait and see.

Jeri Friedman

On 9/3/2020 5:54 PM, Adam Turner wrote:

Only the 8.0 cM cutoff is a recent change. The bit about the shared
matches was never announced because it is how AncestryDNA has /always/
worked, at least since I tested.

Your /main match list/ (the screen you are brought to when you click
"DNA matches", which shows all of your matches) showed, and continues to
show, all matches: everyone from "close family", "2nd-3rd cousins,"
"4th-6th cousins" (3500+ cM down to 20.0 cM) to "Distant Cousins" aka
"5th-8th cousins" (20.0 cM down to 8.0 cM). The change that AncestryDNA
made in August is that the cutoff used to go down to 6 cM, and they took
out all matches between 6.0 and 8.0 cM.

The /shared matches tab/ is what you're brought to when you click on the
profile of one of your matches, and are trying to triangulate the
results and see /other /people who match /both/ you and that match. This
section has /always/ had a cutoff of 20.0 cM; you cannot drill past 20.0
cM from this tab within a match's profile. But you could, and still can,
see matches from 8-20 cM in your main match list.

There's an interesting debate to be had on whether revising the cutoff
from 6 cM to 8 cM was beneficial for users (apparently, until 2016, it
used to go down as low as 5 cM), as well as the degree to which some of
these changes are really motivated by the desire to improve accuracy, as
opposed to AncestryDNA's engineers demanding this from within because
their job of running a gigantic match database while minimizing bugs is
hard. (Seen the "our backend servers are overtaxed at the moment"
message lately? I know I have.) But they didn't take 8-20 cM matches out
of Shared Matches; they were never there in the first place.

Adam Turner
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Re: Postcard or Travel Document - Can you make anything of this? #translation

Dr.Josef ASH
 

It is Russian. and this is some official document
on the photo:
"Shmul Lejb LIPMAN
(I certify) the manual
sign and indentity..."
on the other side
"...of Shmul-Lejb
LIPMAN f.(ormer)
puple
of entrusted me
8th kl(ass) of Commercial college of G.Z.
STANISHEVSKY.
t(own) Kamenets-Pod(olsky)
June 4 1913. #263
acting as the Director
real council of State
Vladimirtsev"
I didn't succeed to read the stamp and the hidden behind word
Josef ASH
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Adam Turner
 

I think I come down somewhere in the middle on the value of these small-segment matches and autosomal DNA research generally. DNA doesn't show how you're connected - but finding patterns among my matches in AncestryDNA has definitely been hugely useful for identifying groups of people who, after these leads are followed up with traditional research, turn out to be in distantly-related branches (those of the siblings of my ggg-grandparents) that can then be joined to my tree.

That said, have the matches below 10 cM or so been vital for accomplishing this? Not especially, in my experience. They're more like gravy: usually, the only way I ever find promising matches in this range in the first place is by using the search bar to mine my match list for a name/surname/ancestral town that I already know is associated with my family. Then, I can compare them to a group I've previously identified - which mostly contains matches above 20 cM. If I turn up a cluster of 9 people among my matches who are all associated with the Greenstein family of Anatevka, and Joe Kloppenberg in that cluster who matches me at 7.2 cM turns out to also have some match to 12 of my known cousins, that is decent supplemental info to have as I investigate the cluster further. But I have yet to come across a case where I would never have been able to identify that cluster of people if it weren't for the people in it who have the most marginal matches to me.

Adam Turner
Re: Paul STRANSKY Vienna to Paris #austria-czech #france

David Lewin
 

At 23:21 03/09/2020, Daniela Torsh wrote:
I'm searching for any information about a distant cousin Paul STRANSKY. He
was born in Vienna 1905 to Else and Emil and somehow managed to leave
Austria and ended up living and working in Paris by 1946. He married a
French woman Catherine and they had two sons Patrice born 1948 and
Michel-Frederic born 1949.
Paul died in 1985 in France.
I am especially interested in the period between him leaving Vienna and
arriving in Paris. I assume he may have been in a camp somewhere?
Daniela Torsh
Sydney, Australia
at
https://www.wien.gv.at/advuew/internet/AdvPrSrv.asp?Layout=stvar&Type=K&st=MA&AUSSEN=Y
you have a list of all Austrian departments
I have often got answers from mag mag 8 - the Vienna state archive

David Lewin
London

Search & Unite attempt to help locate people who, despite the passage
of so many years since World War II, may still exist "out there".
We also assist in the process of re-possession of property in the
Czech Republic and Israel.
See our Web pages at https://remember.org/unite/
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Adam Turner
 

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true.

From this post, dated back in February:

It’s important to know that the list on the Shared tab page is restricted to Ancestry’s chosen CM threshold. The way they put it is that they only show you “fourth-cousins-and-closer”. That translates into above 20 cM.

This post dates back to July, when Ancestry announced the 8.0 cM cutoff:

...However, person A’s sibling, person B, also matches me below 20 cM, but I can’t see that shared match with person A because my shared match with person B is below 20 cM. However, checking my match list for person B’s name shows that they are a match to me. However, there is no way to know that I match person B in common with person A.
 
Then, checking another family member, like an aunt, for example, I see that person A and person B both match her as well, probably also on segments below 20 cM so she can’t see them on her shared match list either, nor can I see either of those matches, person A or person B on my shared match list with my aunt.
 
Reaching out to matches below 20 cM and asking if they have other family members you can check, by name, to see if they are on your match list is important. Many people don’t realize shared matches below 20 cM aren’t shown at Ancestry.
This thread dates to January 2019:
 Looking through my matches, there are no 5th-8th cousins in shared matches i.e. below 20 centimorgans, can't believe I haven't noticed this before! 

Correct - shared matches are only people you share at least 20 cM with and the other person also does.
That thread links to this one from 2018:
I have a third cousin, who I share with 3 others. If I click on the 3rd cousin's shared matches it shows a 4 to 6 cousin - the two 5 to 8 cousins do not show at all. If I look at one of the 5 to 8 cousins it shows the 3rd and 4 to 6 cousins, but not the other 5 to 8 cousin. So, only 4 to 6 cousins, or closer, show in shared matches. This has been the case for me since April when I got my results.
Adam Turner
 
Re: What port when leaving Europe #hungary

Larry Briggs
 

My grandfather (George (Manas) Gottfried) and his mother and 2 sisters, sailed from Rotterdam in 1891.

Larry Briggs
Looking for info about Russian emigres who returned to fight for the Bolsheviks in 1917 #records #russia #canada #usa

temafrank1@...
 

I'm researching the early life of my grandfather (Bennie ADELSON/Baruch IDELZIK), who left Belarus for Montreal in 1913. Once he had his Canadian papers, he went to New York in 1916, and then to Russia in 1917 to fight for the Bolsheviks. He stayed for two years, then stowed away on a ship from Yokahama to Vancouver in 1919. I've been able to get a fair amount of information from public sources, but I'm stymied about how to determine what he actually did during the two years he was back in Russia. Do you have any suggestions as to how I might find information about his activities during that time?
 
A few thoughts I've had:
  1. I am trying (so far with no success) to get ship passenger records of ships LEAVING Seattle/Vancouver/Victoria to Japan or China or Finland in 1917. It is easy to get records of passengers arriving in North America, but not going the other way.
  2. The Bolsheviks (or possibly the Provisional government) were apparently making funds available to people who wanted to return in 1917. Maybe there are records somewhere of who got those funds? 
  3. There were reception committees when they arrived, doing screening to see who was a legitimate supporter of the cause. Maybe there are records of who they vetted?
  4. Would the Red Army of that early period have any types of records of who they assigned to what duties? Other records? He wasn't senior so I suspect the odds are fairly low. On the other hand, he spoke several languages (Russian, Yiddish, English, a bit of French, possibly bits of others) and was intelligent -- maybe he was given some special duties because of that? 
I would be grateful for any advice you can offer. Thank you so much. 

Tema Frank
Polish town Cewck or Cewek #poland

jef barnett
 


On a ship’s manifest the city of birth was noted as Cewck ( could be Cewek) Poland . Any ideas what the town this was referring to? I expected the birth town to be Rozan so it might be very close 
Jef Barnett
BANDRYMER, KRASKA , BULMAN, GROSSMAN, GRUNZPAN, NOWAK,and all spelling variations
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Harvey Kabaker
 

I don't understand what this is all about. I haven't seen any reduction in DNA matching results below a total of 20 cM. Totals under 6 cM are gone, if they ever were there. And I have hundreds of thousands of matches from 6cM on up, including many thousands between 6 and 20.

We could discuss forever whether it's of any value to see so-called matches of say, 3 segments totalling 10 cM. And I take issue with this: ". . . without the ability to see shared matches below 20 cM and without the matches below 8.0 cM, I, and others, have very little hope of being able to find out how more distant cousins are connected." DNA does not show you how you are connected; genealogy research does.

Seems to me, Jeri, you're getting people stirred up over nothing. 

Harvey Kabaker
Silver Spring, MD
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Teewinot
 

I beg to differ. In all my shared matches until about 7 days ago, I had
matches down to 6.0 cM. So did my cousins I've been working with. If
we didn't, we wouldn't have found some of the links between us. I also
wouldn't have found other critical matches in the shared DNA.

I know what shared matches are. I've been using them for the past two
years, since I tested.

I'm a retired medical professional and know about DNA, genetics and
inheritance. In more distant relationships, DNA is more a guide, not an
absolute. Due to the way DNA is inherited, you can have two siblings
with vastly different DNA inheritance from even great great
grandparents. Also, the estimation of relationship can often be way
off. Someone with 8.0 cM could be as close as a 4th cousin or as
distant as an 8th cousin. It all depends on how the DNA was
inherited/passed down. (Ancestry had two of my 1st cousins once removed
listed as 3rd to 4th cousins.)

I paid for the data I was given (down to 6.0 cM). I did not in the
least appreciate it being taken from me without even asking me. I
worked feverishly for the last week to save as many matches as I could
below 8.0 cM. Obviously, everyone else was, too, because the servers
were sluggish, crashing constantly, and even going down completely for
two hours at a time. They hadn't been prior to that. On Sept. 1st,
they were back to normal. I managed to save just under 7,500 matches.
I dread to think of all the valuable data I lost in the matches I
couldn't save.

I personally believe that Ancestry has done all this because they can't
handle the storage of the massive amount of data that is being generated
as more and more people get tested. I also personally believe that what
Ancestry did was disgraceful and just plain bad business. I have never,
in all my years, seen a business take away something from a customer
that they had paid for. If Ancestry wanted to make changes, they should
have started with the new customers as of Sept. 1st, and left alone all
the data of customers who had paid for the service before that date.
They've just made it far harder now to trace links between families.

I had a long talk with someone in the corporate HQ today. He agreed
with me, and is going to look into returning all matches to the shared
DNA. As for the data below 8.0 cM, it's all been dumped. So now it's
just wait and see.

Jeri Friedman


On 9/3/2020 5:54 PM, Adam Turner wrote:

Only the 8.0 cM cutoff is a recent change. The bit about the shared
matches was never announced because it is how AncestryDNA has /always/
worked, at least since I tested.

Your /main match list/ (the screen you are brought to when you click
"DNA matches", which shows all of your matches) showed, and continues to
show, all matches: everyone from "close family", "2nd-3rd cousins,"
"4th-6th cousins" (3500+ cM down to 20.0 cM) to "Distant Cousins" aka
"5th-8th cousins" (20.0 cM down to 8.0 cM). The change that AncestryDNA
made in August is that the cutoff used to go down to 6 cM, and they took
out all matches between 6.0 and 8.0 cM.

The /shared matches tab/ is what you're brought to when you click on the
profile of one of your matches, and are trying to triangulate the
results and see /other /people who match /both/ you and that match. This
section has /always/ had a cutoff of 20.0 cM; you cannot drill past 20.0
cM from this tab within a match's profile. But you could, and still can,
see matches from 8-20 cM in your main match list.

There's an interesting debate to be had on whether revising the cutoff
from 6 cM to 8 cM was beneficial for users (apparently, until 2016, it
used to go down as low as 5 cM), as well as the degree to which some of
these changes are really motivated by the desire to improve accuracy, as
opposed to AncestryDNA's engineers demanding this from within because
their job of running a gigantic match database while minimizing bugs is
hard. (Seen the "our backend servers are overtaxed at the moment"
message lately? I know I have.) But they didn't take 8-20 cM matches out
of Shared Matches; they were never there in the first place.

Adam Turner
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Teewinot
 

I never said that Ancestry gave no notice that they were removing
matches below 8.0 cM. I said that they gave no notice that they were
changing the cut-off in the shared DNA from 6.0 cM (at the time) to 20 cM.

Jeri Friedman


On 9/3/2020 6:46 PM, Jan Meisels Allen wrote:

In response to Jerri Friedman's post about no advance notice about
Ancestry's eliminating DNA matches below a low threshold, I posted the
following to this discussion group and the IAJGS Leadership Forum on
July 31. I have no affiliation with Ancestry but was on a call to
"select" posters/bloggers when they announced this and asked that it be
shared.

I posted to this group on Friday July 31 about the Ancestry changes-
when they delayed for one month from their original date giving people
adequate time to mark those with less than 8.0 cM with notes or adding
notes,  sending messages or adding them to a group.

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Photo for language identification #photographs #translation

neilan1
 

Can someone please I.D. the language. The word Pistrong means "trout", my paternal grandmother's surname. But the word, as written, does not appear with this type of spelling, in my Polish dictionary.
Thank you.
Neilan Stern
tracing Pistrong, Stern - Radomysl Wielki; Schwarz, Black - Nesvizh, Minsk; Aronov/wsky, Entes - Kovno Lithuania.
 
 
 
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
(Australia) Thousands of Prison Portraits Captured in 15 jails Over 50 Years in Digital Archive #announcements #photographs #records

Jan Meisels Allen
 

 

 

 

Tens of thousands of prison portraits captured in 15 jails over a 50-year period are now accessible in a remarkable online database.

 

In recent years the NSW State Archives digitized 46,000 images and collated them in an exhibition titled Captured: Portraits of Crime.

https://www.paperturn-view.com/nsw-state-archives/captured-portraits-of-crime-1870-1930?pid=MTQ14977&p=3

 

The searchable database may be accessed at:

https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/node/1566/browse

 

In trying it out I used the name “Cohen” and a number of hits were received. For Henry Cohen it gave a prisoner’s photo, the jail (gaol) name, given and surname of inmate, date and place of birth, any alias the prisoner might have used and the date of the photo. On the record there is information on the person’s trade and religion as well as hair and eye color. There is also information on previous convictions.

 

 

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

 

 
Postcard or Travel Document - Can you make anything of this? #translation

Daniel Gleek
 

Does anyone know what language this is written in?
..or what the document is
And can anyone translate any of it?
All I can make out is the year 1913!
Thank you,
Daniel Gleek in London
 
 
C L Lipman

Virus-free. www.avast.com

--
Daniel GLEEK in London
daniel@...
Searching for: GLEEK/GLICK (Beisagola, Lithuania), ISOWITSKY/KUPCHIK (Dotchener, Poltava & Vorontzowka),
GLIKMAN/GLUCKMAN, WEITZENSANG & LIDRAL/LEDDA (Warsaw,Poland), MARCUS (Varniai, Lithuania) etc.
Re: Good news for French research: 1931-1948 naturalization decrees online #announcements #france #records

Daniela Torsh
 

Bingo I found that my cousin Paul STRANSKY was a foreign volunteer in the French army under Laval. Marvellous.
Daniela Torsh
Sydney, Australia
Re: Records From Secret Vatican Archive Offer New Clues to Response to Holocaust #holocaust

Ittai Hershman
 

"Holy Silence" an excellent 72 minute documentary that was released earlier this year just before the archives were opened, includes Kertzer among others, and aims to be as dispassionate as one can be.  I saw it two weeks ago as part of the (virtual) Jewish Film Institute.  The trailer can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/377128504.

See also the New York Times reporting on Kertzer's new find: https://nyti.ms/2YKfPjI

Apropos of Susan Gordon's comment, my wife and I happened to visit Rome on our way back from a wedding in Israel in late January, attended the Shabbat services in the Great Synagogue, and ate a lovely kosher dinner at Su'Ghetto on Via del Portico D’Ottavia (Primi: pasta w/ goose meat, and ravioli w/ sea bass and pears; Secondi: sweetbreads, and steak tartare).   In addition to the plaque, there are also several Stolpersteine on side streets.

Ittai Hershman
New York City
Paul STRANSKY Vienna to Paris #austria-czech #france

Daniela Torsh
 

I'm searching for any information about a distant cousin Paul STRANSKY. He
was born in Vienna 1905 to Else and Emil and somehow managed to leave
Austria and ended up living and working in Paris by 1946. He married a
French woman Catherine and they had two sons Patrice born 1948 and
Michel-Frederic born 1949.
Paul died in 1985 in France.
I am especially interested in the period between him leaving Vienna and
arriving in Paris. I assume he may have been in a camp somewhere?
Daniela Torsh
Sydney, Australia
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Jan Meisels Allen
 

In response to Jerri Friedman's post about no advance notice about Ancestry's eliminating DNA matches below a low threshold, I posted the following to this discussion group and the IAJGS Leadership Forum on July 31. I have no affiliation with Ancestry but was on a call to "select" posters/bloggers when they announced this and asked that it be shared.

I posted to this group on Friday July 31 about the Ancestry changes- when they delayed for one month from their original date giving people adequate time to mark those with less than 8.0 cM with notes or adding notes,  sending messages or adding them to a group. 

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

This was my original posting recouped from JewishGen's archives by looking through #DNA and the date.

ul 31   #647733  

 Jan Meisels Allen
Jul 31   #647733  


Recently Ancestry announced they were going to eliminate those “small” DNA matches, less than 6 cM. This caused quite a stir in the broader genealogical community.  As a result, Ancestry announced that they will delay removing the “small” DNA matches until late August.  If you want to save them, you can by adding notes,  sending messages or adding them to a group. Remember those with such small amounts of cM  may be “noise” or endogamy and not worth the time- the reason Ancestry plans to eliminate those matches.

 

Additional updates from Ancestry DNA include:

  • More accurate number of shared segments- available in early August
  • See the length of your longest shared segment—available mid-August
  • Distant DNA matches must share 8.0 cM or higher- available late August

 

For those researching Asia Polynesia, South Africa and Australia, Ancestry has updated their Ancestry DNA communities.  They now have, 20 Southeast Asian, 9 East Asian, 14 South Asian, 31 Oceanian, 2 African and 1 Central Asian & Russian community.

To read more about their update see:

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2020/07/31/ancestry-unveils-updated-communities-for-members-with-ties-to-asia-polynesia-south-africa-australia/

 

I normally would not report on the updated communities but since I was reporting on the change of plan for small DNA matches I included this information.

 

I have no affiliation with Ancestry and am reporting this solely for the information of the reader.

 

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

 

 


 
Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna

Adam Turner
 

Only the 8.0 cM cutoff is a recent change. The bit about the shared matches was never announced because it is how AncestryDNA has always worked, at least since I tested.

Your main match list (the screen you are brought to when you click "DNA matches", which shows all of your matches) showed, and continues to show, all matches: everyone from "close family", "2nd-3rd cousins," "4th-6th cousins" (3500+ cM down to 20.0 cM) to "Distant Cousins" aka "5th-8th cousins" (20.0 cM down to 8.0 cM). The change that AncestryDNA made in August is that the cutoff used to go down to 6 cM, and they took out all matches between 6.0 and 8.0 cM. 

The shared matches tab is what you're brought to when you click on the profile of one of your matches, and are trying to triangulate the results and see other people who match both you and that match. This section has always had a cutoff of 20.0 cM; you cannot drill past 20.0 cM from this tab within a match's profile. But you could, and still can, see matches from 8-20 cM in your main match list. 

There's an interesting debate to be had on whether revising the cutoff from 6 cM to 8 cM was beneficial for users (apparently, until 2016, it used to go down as low as 5 cM), as well as the degree to which some of these changes are really motivated by the desire to improve accuracy, as opposed to AncestryDNA's engineers demanding this from within because their job of running a gigantic match database while minimizing bugs is hard. (Seen the "our backend servers are overtaxed at the moment" message lately? I know I have.) But they didn't take 8-20 cM matches out of Shared Matches; they were never there in the first place.

Adam Turner
Fannie Leibovitz, Goldstein,Kaufer, Stengel, Maiman #subcarpathia

Stuart Kaufer
 

My paternal grandmother was Fannie Leibovitz who came from Kiralyhaza born around 1885.  My cousin David Leibovitz, who was very involved with JewishGen, died several years ago at a much too young age.  He was the repository of much Leibovitz family information.   I am trying to sort out the connection between Jeno Eugene Jake Lebovitz and my GM.  Jake was David's GF and it appears that there were many Leibovitz siblings because there were 2 wives of Fannie's father.  I ahve found some information on Ancestry but there are so many of the same name I find it completely confusing.   If anyone can help I would be grateful.  As you can see, my GM was married 4 times, her first child with someone named Goldstein and my dad with Edward Kaufer.   Thanks much all.

Stuart Kaufer
8501 - 8520 of 658090