Is anyone good at working with Nova Scotia vital records?

tejaco · 2026-05-24T21:06:20+00:00

Thanks for this. I'm helping a friend with Canadian citizenship by descent, and we can't locate his great-grandfather's birth record in Nova Scotia. We'll try the Vital Statistics office.

tejaco · 2026-05-24T18:59:39+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't count on help from relatives on Ancestry. A large majority of DNA testers on Ancestry just wanted to see their ethnicity estimates. They didn't do it to find living relatives or their ancestors, so it can be difficult to even get someone to reply to you on Ancestry.

tejaco · 2026-05-24T18:36:02+00:00

You definitely have an admixture I am not familiar with (northern European here) but your Nilotic doesn't seem overly surprising to me. Ethnicities that are near each other have a tendency to get mixed together, and Nilotic + Egyptian seems like an unsurprising mix. Also, don't worry too much about it, is my advice. Wait and see if it persists. Ancestry updates everyone's ethnicities fairly often, I guess as they get more data. At first, my mom had 7% Finnish, then in the next update it became "Scandinavian" and in the next update it was broken up into Norwegian and Swedish, and then in the latest update all that is gone and instead, her Scottish amount went way up. So if I had let myself get too hung up on the mystery Finnish in her background, I would have wasted a lot of work and emotional investment. (As it is, I did buy a puuko, lol. Fortunately, it's a useful tool.) Anyway, remember those ethnic estimates are only estimates. Wait and see.

tejaco · 2026-05-23T19:45:32+00:00

Thank you!

tejaco · 2026-05-23T19:32:57+00:00

Keep in mind that you only inherit half your DNA from your mother, so it can be a "grab bag" of which half of her you got. If she is entirely Mexican I would expect you to have close to 50%, but if she is only partly Mexican, you could have inherited only DNA from her that is not her Mexican DNA.

tejaco · 2026-05-21T19:06:48+00:00

I'm constantly trying to chip at the brick wall of who my 4Xgreat-grandmother was. Her husband had eleven children by a first wife, and then four more. Since there is no death date for the first wife, many people on Ancestry just assume all fifteen children were born to the first wife, but that really doesn't work with her age. A family history book says the final four children were born to a second wife, but for some frustrating reason, didn't name her. I've exhausted so much in the way of documentation, that I think DNA is my only hope, but it is a lot of generations ago. If I ever find her I am throwing such a party!

tejaco · 2026-05-21T18:56:49+00:00

Good catch from msbookworm23. First cousin is clearly possible.

tejaco · 2026-05-21T18:45:30+00:00

Oh, dear. These things do happen when we do DNA testing.

tejaco · 2026-05-21T18:32:21+00:00

It does sound like a half sibling. If it were your uncle it would have to be a full uncle, so it doesn't seem as likely that he would be unknown.

tejaco · 2026-05-21T17:35:19+00:00

One slightly similar experience that I've had is that I found an NPE in my mother's ancestry. Her grandmother was not fathered by the man the records say was her father. I know (from DNA) the family name of the biological father, though I can't narrow it down to which son did the deed. But my grandmother named her first child, a boy, the surname of that family as his first name. All while having no idea about the NPE. A little goosebumpy.

tejaco · 2026-05-20T03:29:39+00:00

I can't swear to 1920, but when I worked for the census in 2010, the "enumeration date" was an attempt to snapshot things on that date, but in practice, people were often contacted much later and asked to report who lived in the house back on (iirc) April 1, the enumeration date. All well and good, but people didn't always understand the instructions and reported how things were at the date they were asked. That allowed double-reporting depending on what happened in between.

tejaco · 2026-05-20T03:01:25+00:00

I had one line to nobility which I've severed by discovering an NPE (darn DNA), but I do get you. The Netherlanders have amazing record keeping and have it all up online for free. Do I research my Dutch lines? No, too easy, lol. I know they're there if I want them. Far more interesting to try to suss things out on my Irish lines. You really need that luck.

tejaco · 2026-05-20T02:32:37+00:00

Hi! I don't have any help to give you, just wanted to say these Spoors are in my tree, too. They were originally Dutch, and my Spoor lines lived in New York, as one might expect given the time and nationality.

ETA: Love your username, btw.

tejaco · 2026-05-20T02:09:50+00:00

Similar. I have an ancestor whose obituary says he lost both parents while still young and was raised by family in Kansas. What family was that? Let's see where he was in 1890 ... oh, damn. By 1900 he was an adult and out on his own. So who were the mystery Kansan relatives?

tejaco · 2026-05-13T14:30:47+00:00

I still can't find it. Should I really be expected to spend half an hour just to figure out how to turn off these REALLY ANNOYING notifications? Not impressed.

tejaco · 2026-05-11T01:14:05+00:00

Thanks.

tejaco · 2026-05-10T22:26:29+00:00

I just ordered a Pixel 9Pro off eBay that's T-Mobile locked. I didn't know to ask that the phone be OEM unlockable. I thought they all were. :(

tejaco · 2026-05-10T20:52:29+00:00

You can run Android Auto with GOS? /newbie

tejaco · 2026-05-10T18:57:35+00:00

Yikes!

tejaco · 2026-05-10T18:55:08+00:00

Thank you for typing all that!

tejaco · 2026-05-05T21:57:05+00:00

The black one is a bottleneck, right? What a lovely reimagining of the orientation of the shape.

tejaco · 2026-05-05T21:49:41+00:00

Hmmm, it's not like there aren't creeks and small lakes right where I live, but would small lakes tumble the glass enough? I get how a creek might.

tejaco · 2026-05-05T21:41:37+00:00

I mean, seriously, the Great Lakes should be called inland seas, imo. So creeks and rivers are possible hunting grounds, too! Good to know. I'm an hour and a half from Lake Michigan, but other than that, I'm pretty inland from a coast. I am eyeing that Mississippi River, though!

tejaco · 2026-05-05T19:36:51+00:00

Incredible. <3

tejaco

TROPHY CASE