How to identify female descendants of a woman

[Susan Freas Rogers]

How can I Find and Mark all the female descendants (only) of a particular woman?

Last year, I was lucky to use mtDNA to break through my matrilineal brick wall (a 4G grandmother) and get the line back to my 10G grandmother, Catharina Van Der Werven, who died before 1702 in New York. Now, I'm trying to help my Zero Genetic Distance matches on FTDNA.com to connect to this woman, who was the earliest immigrant to America on this line.

I've tried but can't figure out how to use the Find tool to create a list of Catharina's female descendants (since mtDNA is passed down only through daughters). There are some very smart people on this forum who have helped others with the Find logic, so I'm hoping there's a way to do this and someone here can tell me.

Once I get them marked, I want to export them into their own Family File so it's easier to identify the possible connections between me and my matches. Thanks in advance.

Susan

[theKiwi]

Mark all of her descendants

Then Do a Find for [Person Marked] = Yes AND Gender = Female

Once you have that list of results, "Unmark Everybody in Family File and Mark Everyone in this List" (or words to that effect.

Now you have marked all of the female descendants of your starting person

Roger

[Susan Freas Rogers]

That works to a point, thank you Roger. What it doesn't do is limit the selection to only daughters and daughters-of-daughters, etc., because sons have daughters and thus those lines are still included in the selection of "female descendants." See attached example of James McDonald.

I exported the records after creating the list from your specs, and then in the new family file, using Tree View, went to each son (including those way down who were sons of daughters), marked that couple and their descendants, then deleted those marked.

This was working well and I was having fun until suddenly I found I'd gotten sloppy and eliminated people I wanted to keep in, including my treetop Catharina Van Der Werven. So, I'll be starting over again, but your instructions have clarified how to get started, so thanks again.

I'm guessing there is not a way to specifying finding only "children who are female" (or the obverse, "children who are male"). If not, then I'd put that on the Wish List, since Y-DNA and mtDNA testing have made us want to be able to easily find those direct male and female lines.

Susan

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

You could mark all descendants, then unmark all who are [1] marked and [2] male. If you then create a tree for "only marked descendants", I think you'll get what you're looking for. Of course, it leaves out all males who also share the same mtDNA as the females listed, and some people will still be marked who do not share that mtDNA and will not show up on the tree.

[Susan Cocker Hopkins]

It may be a minor point here, but if a woman has a son, he also inherits her mitochondrial DNA as he develops from one of her eggs. And it does mean that a male can do a mtDNA test.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Coincidentally, currently the relationships for my family file are showing the relatives of Sebastian Egon Rainier zu Fürstenberg (he was a page boy at the wedding of Princess Grace of Monaco). Lodewyck Hardenbroeck (husband of Catryntje Bodine) shown in your chart above was his first cousin six times removed (by common descent from Johannes Hardenbroeck and his wife Sara Van Laer).

[ttl]

I believe I have found a solution. It is iterative, but I'm pretty sure it converges to the set of people you're interested in. If it doesn't work, there's always the manual route of ID-ing them--you only need to do it once.

1. Mark all descendants of your source person, unmarking everyone first and marking her.
2. Go to Find, choose Person Marked>Yes AND Sex is Female, click the Find Button
3. Click the green checkmark at bottom of results list and choose "Unmark Everyone in File then Mark Everyone in List" from the popup menu--this will mark all female descendants per Roger's solution

- Here's where we iterate

4. Go to Find, choose Person Marked>Yes AND # Marked Parents Equal 1, click the Find button
5. Note the number of people in the Results, shown at top of results list
6. Click the green checkmark at bottom of results list and choose "Unmark Everyone in File then Mark Everyone in List" from the popup menu
7. Go to the Family View and manually Mark the source person (bottom right corner of her box) -- this is important!

8. Repeat Steps 4 - 7 until number of people in the Results list does not change. This process will weed out female descendants of male descendants. If you don't reMark the source person each time, you'll delete her female children, then their female children, etc.

9. What's left should be your desired person set--save the marked set, flag them, and/or color tag them.

[Susan Freas Rogers]

Dennis wrote: "You could mark all descendants, then unmark all who are [1] marked and [2] male."

Dennis, thank you, a nice idea, but then I would lose the husbands of the women descendants (the mtDNA pass-along-ers), and the husbands are important for research purposes (not to mention for avoiding momentary confusion when looking at the daughters, since the daughters of the women bear the husband's last name). It is SONS I'm trying to delete or ignore, not just men.

To Susan Hopkins: yes, for when I'm looking for a living male to test. (Just today I received the mtDNA results for my 97-year-old uncle, the last person alive to have my maternal grandmother's mtDNA. Got a surprising result, so I'm glad I did it.) Thanks for the reminder that I should leave those living males in when that's my purpose for looking for people. Right now, I'm just trying to flesh out my tree so that my mtDNA matches, whose brick walls are usually in the 1800's, can see their female options in my tree (like low-hanging fruit) that they can aim for when trying to connect. These are Dutch people with large families and in a few places, I've found and entered only the one female child who is on my line. I now have to find and enter all the other children, so that additional sisters/daughters (and thus additional possible descendant lines to match mtDNA to) are in my tree.

To Dennis again: what a fun coincidence in our trees!

Unless someone from LeisterPro can tell us there's a way to do what I'm trying to do, then I think it remains a Wish List item that we could specify "children who are only female" or "children who are only male" to create these special trees for DNA-tracing purposes. I'm not a programmer but it doesn't sound difficult to me to implement this.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Dennis wrote: "You could mark all descendants, then unmark all who are [1] marked and [2] male."

Dennis, thank you, a nice idea, but then I would lose the husbands of the women descendants (the mtDNA pass-along-ers), and the husbands are important for research purposes (not to mention for avoiding momentary confusion when looking at the daughters, since the daughters of the women bear the husband's last name). It is SONS I'm trying to delete or ignore, not just men.

Unless someone from LeisterPro can tell us there's a way to do what I'm trying to do, then I think it remains a Wish List item that we could specify "children who are only female" or "children who are only male" to create these special trees for DNA-tracing purposes. I'm not a programmer but it doesn't sound difficult to me to implement this.

My actual wish is "mark all people who should share this person's mt-DNA". That would include sons of daughters and daughters of daughters, but no children of sons. And it should work for ancestors as well as descendants.

BTW, the husbands of women descendants will show up in the charts with them. But as you say, they won't be marked.

[ttl]

FWIW, after further consideration, I'm certain this gets you what you're asking for. (3 posts above.)

[Susan Freas Rogers]

Tim, thanks very much, I will try this.

But I would still like to see the Wish List get Dennis' obvious improvement on mine (minus the "should," but that could be argued) , i.e. "mark all people who share this person's mtDNA" and "mark all people who share this person's Y-DNA."

[ttl]

I agree that a purpose built button is always preferable. This is a bit cumbersome. But! Upon even further consideration, I believe you can get to "everyone with the same mtDNA" by taking the marked set from above, make sure it really is marked and nothing else is, and Find # of Marked Parents Equals 1 (only a single condition, no AND). If you do this as the very last step, this will add all the sons of said women, and you'll get the full entire set of people.

You can then do the "Unmark Everyone in File then Mark Everyone in List" thing again and have a new marked set you can flag/tag.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Take the marked set from above, make sure it really is marked and nothing else is, and Find # of Marked Parents Equals 1 (only a single condition, no AND). If you do this as the very last step, this will add all the sons of said women, and you'll get the full entire set of people. [T]hen do the "Unmark Everyone in File then Mark Everyone in List" thing again and have a new marked set you can flag/tag.

I tried this on Queen Victoria's descendants, and it seems to have worked quite nicely.

[Susan Freas Rogers]

You guys on this Forum who consistently help people with all the ins and out of Reunion are really quite amazing and wonderful. I won't try to name you but you know who you are. Just in the last week I have told two friends who have Reunion that they need to register on here because of those of you who are always so ready and willing to help, and so quickly! (And the Leister staff as well.) We are lucky to have you and it's one of the major strengths of this software, in my opinion. Thank you.

[ttl]

I tried this on Queen Victoria's descendants, and it seems to have worked quite nicely.

Thanks for testing this--I feel a lot better about the method now. (I was spitballing with a small data set.)

The very last step came to me in the shower. Now after sleeping on it, I have one more (last?) refinement for the odd case where a person might have two or more sets of parents with two or more mtDNA specific mothers (eg born of one, adopted by another):

Wherever the condition above says "# of Marked Parents Equals 1," change to "# of Marked Parents More Than 0." This would retain the occasional outlier case that would otherwise be discarded. Of course, the entire method is unable to distinguish a case where a person was born of a non-mtDNA specific mother and adopted by a mtDNA specific mother and linked to both people as parents in Reunion.

I guess I've obsessed enough. Thanks Susan, for a fun logic exercise!