Felice. Bedford, University of Arizona
GENEALOGY
For “very old” genetic genealogy Click Here
For paper and pen genealogy, scroll down.
Flora
Allalouf, circa 1922, NYC
I have investigated ancestry for several
branches of my family. The research started in December 1999 when I sent for my
father’s records from the Mount Loretto Home for Boys
in Staten Island, N.Y. He was sent there after he was orphaned at age 13. He
later became the Chief Detective Investigator for the District Attorney’s
office in Brooklyn, NY, but I digress. Previously, we did not have any
information on that side of the family. On my mother's side, starting points
were what my mother remembered and information contained in a sprial-bound notebook. The notebook was from when I was 11
years old and entered answers to questions I asked my beloved mother's mother,
an immigrant from Salonica who spoke 7 languages. She
was never thrilled about discussing the past – in any language.
I have been able to construct extended family
trees for several branches. I used to post them on the web but had to take them
down because of a few suspicious individuals.
I need more information on:
For discussion on any of these branches, contact bedford@u.arizona.edu
Information came from birth, death, and
marriage certificates, citizenship applications, social security applications,
ships passengers' lists, census records, newspapers, burial records, and
libraries. I have discovered and
contacted more than a dozen cousins throughout the world.
Then my attention turned to genetic genealogy
followed by population genetics. Next will be medical genealogy and genetics.
Here’s an analysis from what I first started
the genetic quest: Who's
your mama?. I leave
it up for historical reasons - so much has advanced in so short a time. For the
modern work, see the journal articles in the Publication section of my main
page.
Further Information:
For your ancestry through DNA there are two
main sources: familytreedna.com and 23andme.com. You can have yourself and/or
your family tested. Family tree dna remains the
leader in deep maternal side (mitochondrial DNA) and deep paternal side (Y
chromosome for men only) while 23andme can’t be beat for the rest of your DNA
with more than half a million positions along the genome tested for pennies.
For Sephardic Genealogy, try my brother’s site:
Foundation for the Advancement of
Sephardic Studies and Culture
Did your ancestors come through Ellis Island?
Go to Ellis Island and search by surname for ship's passenger lists.
There's also an Italian Genealogical group
(good info for New York of any ethnicity), obitsarchive
(though it costs a few bucks to read an obit), the Mormon site (www.lds.org, good
for England, South America, especially baptism records), the rootsweb site (good for free SSDI searches) and many
others.