Jan Murphy
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packrat74.bsky.social
Jan Murphy
@packrat74.bsky.social
Enthusiastic family historian since 2006; moderator pro tempore at Genealogy & Family History Stack Exchange. http://genealogy.stackexchange.com Fan of F&SF, figure skating, baseball, equestrian sports, cycling. Former bookseller; book junkie.
I know what you meant, but the mother's surname is also a "real surname".

I have a case where a girl was adopted by her uncle (her mother's brother). She's just as entitled to that surname by DNA as she is to her father's surname. 🤷 #AncestryHour
January 20, 2026 at 7:57 PM
#AncestryHour Ah! I can read it online via FamilySearch books.
January 20, 2026 at 7:54 PM
#AncestryHour Apparently there aren't any closer to me than Salt Lake City. I would expect my local FS center library to be in WorldCat because it's one of the bigger centers.
January 20, 2026 at 7:46 PM
#AncestryHour I do have an Ancestry sub. It's a new feature they're rolling out slowly to subscribers.
January 20, 2026 at 7:35 PM
#AncestryHour Your friend has a NPE close by in time? Because in one webinar I saw, the presenter said for Y-DNA projects, his back-of-the-envelope calculation is that maybe 50% of the people will have the surname associated with the project. (Reasons vary & for the others, not all are NPEs.)
January 20, 2026 at 7:34 PM
#AncestryHour I need to decide whether I want to pay extra to have a private tree at American AncesTREES. If so, I could build a do-over tree on that site.
January 20, 2026 at 7:31 PM
#AncestryHour Hooray! I'm still stuck on 18 December for the last will I received.
January 20, 2026 at 7:25 PM
#AncestryHour This is why it helps to have someone to talk to about your #genealogy research. This right here.
January 20, 2026 at 7:24 PM
#AncestryHour Thanks for asking! Because the moment after I hit the reply button after saying "I can't remember" then I did remember.
January 20, 2026 at 7:23 PM
#AncestryHour I just checked and apparently there's no ebook. WorldCat says the closest library to me is the FHL (aka FamilySearch library, but I will always think of it as the FHL, fewer keystrokes, too).
January 20, 2026 at 7:21 PM
#AncestryHour They're rolling it out slowly and I don't have it. I've only seen other people's posts about it. If you pull down the search menu on the Ancestry nav bar, I think it shows up there for the people who have it.
January 20, 2026 at 7:20 PM
#AncestryHour Oh, wait! I remember. The Genealogy Center has a cool database of WW1-era alien registrations. I want to look for the book the database is based on because I want to search by place. www.genealogycenter.info/search_germa...
Genealogical Records of German Families of Allen County, Indiana, 1918 - ACPL Genealogy Center
www.genealogycenter.info
January 20, 2026 at 7:15 PM
#AncestryHour Hi, Cristina! At the moment, I'm trying to remember the research idea I had in the middle of the night about what I wanted to do next. I should have grabbed my phone and written myself a note. 🤦
January 20, 2026 at 7:13 PM
I have played "allergies, cold, or Covid?" and do not recommend that game.

Hope you feel better soon.
January 20, 2026 at 8:41 AM
"Cool" is when the bus drivers are on strike, you decide to walk home, and a driver offers you a free ride on her way back to the bus barn.

This? Not cool.
January 20, 2026 at 8:38 AM
#EuroFigure If there was a "ghost of Dick Button" drinking game, after watching the women's free and the men's free, I'd be completely hammered. Chris Howarth has been pulling out "[that] stands him in good stead" all weekend.
January 19, 2026 at 5:39 AM