Publishing Your Family History: Fill & Download for Free

I am [more than] lucky to come from an extraordinary family of insanely smart, unbelievably hard-working and extremely civic-minded people. Going through the whole family tree would be too trying for everyone's patience (my parents have 95 first cousins between the two of them!) but here are some highlights to give you a flavor:One of my great uncles (on my mother's side) came to America at the age of 12 before the turn of the last century, speaking no English. Within four years he had led a successful strike at the suspenders sweatshop in which he was working; within fifteen years, he was the internationally respected leader of a 60,000 member fraternal organization and founder of the Jewish Education Association.Another of my great uncles (on my father's side) was born in Palestine, came to America as a child, left school after the sixth grade, and worked as a peddler, laundry truck driver, clothing buyer and construction foreman. But he was fascinated by science, was an entrepreneurial businessman, and during an extremely successful business career became close friends with everyone from the inventor of television to half a dozen Nobel laureates. He was one of the first 'professional' angel investors in the US (and the angel behind the portable kidney dialysis machine, vascular stapling, hyperbaric operating chambers, and more), and today the main street of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the science labs at Bard College bear his name.Skipping lightly through my grandparents generation (a grandmother who went to law school in the 1910s, a grandfather who never finished high school but taught himself Greek to read Plato in the original, while co-founding a business empire and having exhibitions of his original oil paintings, etc.) we come to my very, very special parents.My father (Yale/Sorbonne) is a businessman and philanthropist. I was a finalist for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year award in New York during the dot com boom; my father won it four years ago, in his late 70's! I go around doing a lot of teaching and giving speeches to many audiences. So does he...except that this year he won not one, but four Cicero Awards (the Oscars of the speechwriting business) from Vital Speeches magazine (which just this month named his latest talk the Speech of the Week.) He founded the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, which for 20 years has given elementary and high school students in Harlem the support they need to excel academically, resulting in a 100% college acceptance rate, and a 95% college graduation rate within six years. And, oh yeah, he is warm and funny and brilliant and a superb father and my primary role model. But if you think that it would be awe-inspiring growing up with that kind of person ahead of you, you ain't heard nothing yet.My mother (Bryn Mawr/Oxford) is generally regarded by everyone who knows about these things to be the single smartest person in New York. With an IQ of something over 170 (who can count that high?), she can write backwards and forwards with both hands simultaneously, compose extemporaneously in iambic pentameter, and tell you the name of every person in her kindergarten class, where they sat, and who they married. She was a radio quiz kid in the days before television, played chess with Humphrey Bogart on set during her time as assistant to film director Joseph Mankiewicz, and was Chairman of Partisan Review magazine for over 30 years. She recently stepped down as one of the top secret nominators for the MacArthur Award 'genius grants', and for her 80th birthday last year she put on a free exhibition of 651 red and white patchwork quilts from her collection, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, that had over 25,000 visitors—breaking the venue's historical record—and has already won half a dozen awards.But what are these two incredible people like now, in their 80's, when most of their age cohort are either dead or hors de combat? Are they still among the leading wine connoisseurs in the US? Experts in scrimshaw, pre-Columbian art, oriental rugs and books? Yes, and yes, yes, yes. But the best answer I can give you is that just this month in Boston, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (the most important honorary society in the US, founded in 1780 by John Adams and John Hancock) inducted its Class of 2012. And alongside Hilary Clinton, Jeff Bezos, Melinda Gates, George Stephanopoulos and Paul McCartney, for the first time in history a married couple was inducted together. Guess who?But while my parents may be without peer, at least they're in good company. My parents' siblings included the chief trial counsel for one of the country's leading insurance companies, the world's leading expert on military mutinies who teaches at West Point, Annapolis and NYU, and the guiding light behind everything from Jazz at Lincoln Center to the Space Center at the American Museum of Natural History."OK", I hear you sniff, "that's all well and good, those were the Days of the Giants. But how about your generation where you're the eldest of four siblings? Huh? You must be at least first among equals, right?" Nope.One brother (Yale/Harvard) was the longest serving Chairman in the history of the New York City Planning Commission, redrawing the landscape of New York for generations to come (including the redevelopment and de-pornification of Times Square), during the administration of Rudy Giuliani. The other brother (also Yale/Harvard), after serving on the White House National Security Council under Bill Clinton and publishing several books, is now the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a regular television pundit. And our sister? Well, after receiving her BA from Yale, BA from Oxford, MBA from Columbia, and PhD from Princeton, she was Lou Dobbs' original producer at CNN (where she worked in ten CNN bureaus around the globe), Chairman of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History, ran the Technology Transfer Office at Hunter College, and has taught history at Hopkins, Villanova and Baruch.Heck, even my first and second cousins put me to shame. One is regarded as the world's leading expert on affordable housing, another is a multi-threat best-selling author/screenwriter/movie star/singer/producer, another heads a New York area hospital. One is a top IP litigator, one is head teacher at the country's top private school, two others head one of New York's largest real estate firms, and one is Bruce Springsteen's drummer and led Conan O'Brien's house band!As if all that wasn't enough to give anyone an inferiority complex, I can tell you that all of our spouses are least as impressive (two of them are or were Chairs of departments at different Ivy League universities, one was Director of Legal Services for the New York City Council and Director of Housing in the South Bronx in New York), as are the kids in the next generation. One of ours is in graduate school in Technology, Policy & Ethics, another is in medical school. And as for the one who has already graduated with multiple MAs from yet another Ivy League institution...well, if pushed to the wall I'd have to admit that she's probably smarter, more energetic and more entrepreneurial than I am, and she has already founded more companies than I have.So, umm, you see what I mean about being "the underachiever in my family"?

Don’t clean this, the cops want to sample everything.Big brother … I wonder if the specific case will be solved, and how GEDMatch got involved.I wonder if other cases get coincidentally included as the database makes it’s way into complete distribution within law enforcement and through the backdoor to the open web through the dark web.It implies that any relative is close enough.I wonder how soon clandestine labs ( in high schools ? ) will make matching synthetic DNA samples of tissues and fluids on demand.Time to send public toilet swab samples under T-Rump’s family names to the DNA companies.C’mon, criminals, swab some public facilities and leave stuff behind for “copper know-nothing” to arrest and prosecute innocent folks over.Thanks, Judge - looking for a higher appointment from T-Rump, are you?- - - - - - - - - -Your DNA Profile is Private? A Florida Judge Just Said Otherwisenytimes.com/2019/11/05/business/dna-database-search-warrant.htmlBy Kashmir Hill and Heather MurphyNovember 5, 2019For police officers around the country, the genetic profiles that 20 million people have uploaded to consumer DNA sites represent a tantalizing resource that could be used to solve cases both new and cold. But for years, the vast majority of the data have been off limits to investigators. The two largest sites, Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records and 23andMe, have long pledged to keep their users’ genetic information private, and a smaller one, GEDmatch, severely restricted police access to its records this year.Last week, however, a Florida detective announced at a police convention that he had obtained a warrant to penetrate GEDmatch and search its full database of nearly one million users. Legal experts said that this appeared to be the first time a judge had approved such a warrant, and that the development could have profound implications for genetic privacy.“That’s a huge game-changer,” said Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University. “The company made a decision to keep law enforcement out, and that’s been overridden by a court. It’s a signal that no genetic information can be safe.”DNA policy experts said the development was likely to encourage other agencies to request similar search warrants from 23andMe, which has 10 million users, and Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records, which has 15 million. If that comes to pass, the Florida judge’s decision will affect not only the users of these sites but huge swaths of the population, including those who have never taken a DNA test. That’s because this emerging forensic technique makes it possible to identify a DNA profile even through distant family relationships.Using public genealogy sites to crack cold cases had its breakthrough moment in April 2018 when the California police used GEDmatch to identify a man they believe is the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo.After his arrest, dozens of law enforcement agencies around the country rushed to apply the method to their own cases. Investigators have since used genetic genealogy to identify suspects and victims in more than 70 cases of murder, sexual assault and burglary, ranging from five decades to just a few months old.Most users of genealogy services have uploaded their genetic information in order to find relatives, learn about ancestors and get insights into their health — not anticipating that the police might one day search for killers and rapists in their family trees. After a revolt by a group of prominent genealogists, GEDmatch changed its policies in May. It required law enforcement agents to identify themselves when searching its database, and it gave them access only to the profiles of users who had explicitly opted in to such queries. (As of last week, according to the GEDmatch co-founder Curtis Rogers, just 185,000 of the site’s 1.3 million users had opted in.)Like many others in law enforcement, Detective Michael Fields of the Orlando Police Department was disappointed by GEDmatch’s policy shift. He had used the site last year to identify a suspect in the 2001 murder of a 25-year-old woman that he had spent six years trying to solve. Today, working with a forensic consulting firm, Parabon, Detective Fields is trying to solve the case of a serial rapist who assaulted a number of women decades ago.In July, he asked a judge in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida to approve a warrant that would let him override the privacy settings of GEDmatch’s users and search the site’s full database of 1.2 million users. After Judge Patricia Strowbridge agreed, Detective Fields said in an interview, the site complied within 24 hours. He said that some leads had emerged, but that he had yet to make an arrest. He declined to share the warrant or say how it was worded.Detective Fields described his methods at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago last week. Logan Koepke, a policy analyst at Upturn, a nonprofit in Washington that studies how technology affects social issues, was in the audience. After the talk, “multiple other detectives and officers approached him asking for a copy of the warrant,” Mr. Koepke said.DNA policy experts said they would closely watch public response to news of the warrant, to see if law enforcement agencies will be emboldened to go after the much larger genetic databases.“I have no question in my mind that if the public isn’t outraged by this, they will go to the mother lode: the 15-million-person Ancestry database,” Professor Murphy said. “Why play in the peanuts when you can go to the big show?”Yaniv Erlich, the chief science officer at MyHeritage, a genealogy database of around 2.5 million people, agreed. “They won’t stop here,” he said.Because of the nature of DNA, every criminal is likely to have multiple relatives in every major genealogy database. Without an outcry, Professor Murphy and others said, warrants like the one obtained by Detective Fields could become the new norm, turning all genetic databases into law enforcement databases.Not all consumer genetics sites are alike. GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA make it possible for anyone to upload his or her DNA information and start looking for relatives. Law enforcement agents began conducting genetic genealogy investigations there not because these sites were the biggest but because they were the most open.Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records and 23andMe are closed systems. Rather than upload an existing genetic profile, users send saliva to the companies’ labs, and then receive information about their ancestry and health. For years, fearful of turning off customers, the companies have been adamant that they would resist giving law enforcement access to their databases.Both sites publish transparency reports with information about subpoenas and search warrants they receive. 23andMe says it has received seven data requests relating to 10 customers and has not released any data. Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records said in its 2018 report that it had received 10 “valid law enforcement requests” that year and complied with seven, but that all the cases involved “credit card misuse, fraud and identity theft,” not requests for genetic information.Genetic genealogy experts said that until now, the law enforcement community had been deliberately cautious about approaching the consumer sites with court orders: If users get spooked and abandon the sites, they will become much less useful to investigators. Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist who works with law enforcement, described the situation as “Don’t rock the boat.”FamilyTreeDNA permits law enforcement searches of its database of two million users for certain types of crimes.Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records did not respond to a request for comment on the Florida search warrant. A spokesman for 23andMe, Christine Pai, said in an emailed statement, “We never share customer data with law enforcement unless we receive a legally valid request such as a search warrant or written court order. Upon receipt of an inquiry from law enforcement, we use all practical legal measures to challenge such requests in order to protect our customers’ privacy.”Detective Fields said he would welcome access to the Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records and 23andMe databases. “You would see hundreds and hundreds of unsolved crimes solved overnight,” he said. “I hope I get a case where I get to try.”- - - - - - - - - -Answer requested by and Question added by Michael Hogan “… What do you think of a Florida judge granting a detective access to GedMatch DNA database despite their privacy policies? (What do you think of a Florida judge granting a detective access to GedMatch DNA database despite their privacy policies?) …” Your DNA Profile is Private? A Florida Judge Just Said Otherwise #894947185 · Thank · Report · 6 Nov 2019 5:35 PM.

In 1992, my father and I went to Finland, to the home of his mother, Ida Masalin, who died when he was fifteen years old, about fourteen years before I was born.I had met just two Finnish relatives in the States. The first was his mother's sister, whom we all knew as Aunt Anna. I remembered her as a kindly old lady who, when she came to visit, would sit at the table after dinner and, while my mother cleaned up, would say, “I feel useless.” The only other relative, who I knew only slightly, was Cousin Elsa, a slightly demented and decidedly eccentric old lady who lived alone in Queens, New York.When we arrived at my grandmother's hometown, Viitasaari, in the state of Central Finland, my father took out a small scrap of paper with the name provided to him by a relative in North Carolina: Sulo Masalin, his first cousin. We stopped our rented Opel at the tourist information kiosk at the town's edge. The young man there looked up the number and placed the call. He hung up after a quick conversation and said: “They live straight up this road.. They are waiting for you.”It was a gorgeous August day. When we arrived at Sulo's home, two of his sons were waiting for us in the yard of a farmhouse, flanked by barns and sitting on a large, wooded parcel of land. The men, both in their forties, spoke excellent English. They led us into the house, where other relatives were waiting in hushed anticipation. My father said something--I can't remember what--that immediately put everyone at their ease. Within minutes, we bonded with this group as though we'd known one another since forever.For me, the best was yet to come. Pauli, one of Sulo's sons who had greeted us in the front yard that first day, was an expert of our family's history. He gave us the genealogy chart of our ancestors going back to 1790, published, it turns out, in an anthology of all the Finnish family lines. He also somehow was in possession of my grandmother's middle school diploma. My father requested and was given it. It hangs in my home today.I went on to study the language so that I could communicate with the relatives who didn't speak English. Therefore, when we found some letters written by my grandmother in the home of another relative, her direct nephew, I was able to read them and immediately felt like I had known her. Her handwriting and her description of events such as a wedding she had recently attended made me feel as though I could hear her voice even though I had never known her alive.With Pauli, a teacher like me, I developed a special bond. We shared wry inside jokes at the expense of the small town, in which he still lived. A fellow musician, he introduced me to other musicians with whom I am in contact to this day.When, in 2012, I joined the family to celebrate the wedding of Pauli's niece, he was complaining about a tremor in his left hand that prevented him from playing guitar. Eight months later, I received the shocking news that he was dead. The tremor in his hand, it turned out, was a symptom of Parkinson's Disease, with which he was diagnosed two months after I had seen him at the wedding.Meeting Pauli was one of the great rewards of our ancestry trip. The photos, documents and stories with which he provided my father and me are priceless. The crofters' contract signed by our ancestors in the nineteenth century, when Finland was still under Russian rule, is a piece of history, nothing less.As my father and I found out on that initial trip and a couple of subsequent ones, our ancestors live on, and through us. A generation that ended with my father and Pauli's father Sulo, once just a name on a scrap of paper, has passed. The passing of Pauli, of my own generation, was premature.And now, I am witness to a new generation. Women who were young girls back in 1992 are having children of their own, new names in the Masalin family tree.For people with sufficient interest, an ancestry trip can yield many rewards. You may not find kings and queens in your backgrounds; ours were tenant farmers, soldiers, and teachers. The first of them to emigrate to the United States was a prison guard by the name of Solomon, who had broken out of jail with a female prisoner with whom he had fallen in love.Every family has a Solomon in their background. And if you are lucky, you find someone like Pauli, a walking and living version of history. Your history.