Maternal side Chromosome Map update

I see that my Paternal side chromosome map was last published Dec 2016.
The intention was for the companion Maternal side map to follow shortly thereafter, but 2017 had other plans.

Click to enlarge

A quick reminder for myself of the maternal brickwall ancestors that I hope DNA will one day aid in cracking (see embedded WikiTree Widgets below for each of my maternal grandparent's pedigrees):

• Jane GIBSON: supposedly born Martock, Somerset in 1812, married Simon ANDREWS in Martock, 1840 and emigrates to New Zealand on the "Timandra", arriving 1842.
• William AUSTIN: husband of Emma Parker CLINTON - disappears after arrival in Australia;  Emma remarries as a spinster with no children!
• William CLINTON: married Jemima PARKER in London, 1810 - and had the above daughter Emma Parker CLINTON

Way too many unknown grandparent segments as yet - but I hope that visual phasing* of my 3 first cousins' DNA will reduce that.
*Visual phasing links:

• https://isogg.org/wiki/Visual_phasing
• http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2016/11/21/visual-phasing-an-example-part-1-of-5/
• https://genealogylady.net/2017/05/02/down-the-dna-rabbit-hole-visual-phasing-with-two-siblings/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neB4oFlwJHA
  a hint: to mark who owns each crossover instead of the technique shown I used the owner's letter in a simple right justified cell which positioned the owner right next to the line.

My maternal grandfather's pedigree (WikiTree) - if you are a descendant of any of these PLEASE upload your autosomal DNA file (eg FamilyFinder from FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23andme) to GEDMatch.com and contact me.
Every little clue helps.

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

 My maternal grandmother's pedigree (WikiTree)

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

Oral family tradition?

Had a bit of a chuckle at the birthplace recorded for the ancestor of a newfound DNA rellie when I went looking to see what other family trees were out there
Birth:July 25 1811 - Scotland
Birth: July 25 1811 - Forgetbrainhead, Dunfriesshire, Scotland

The actual entry shows

Born 22 Jul 1810 - Forgebraehead (which is how my match shows it in his tree as well)

Love to hear from any descendants of Christopher GRAHAM and Jannet GRIEVE of Forgebraehead who may have ventured into DNA testing for genealogy - this is the most likely looking line of my match's ancestry to find a connection on.
Although this only leads to the morass of GRAHAMs and related names in the Dumfries/Cumberland areas without any obvious actual family to connect us up at the moment, it would be good to narrow down the match to this line if at all possible.

Gone fishing.

I've added a new database to my WorldConnect account - LornaFishing.
It joins:

• LornaHenderson - the known relations (mostly those) no longer with us, and their connections and inter-connections
• LornaPotential - those researched for potential connections
• and some RUNCIMAN data there.

LornaFishing consists only of families I have researched because of DNA matches in the hope of finding yet another descendant of the family who has tested and whose absence or presence of a match will help pinpoint that the researched line is indeed where the match belongs.

Of particular interest:

• Elizabeth CHRYSTAL of Kippen's family - because of a dna match to a descendant of Duncan ROBERTSON and Margaret MILLAR
• John MITCHELL & Elizabeth WILSON of Edinburgh - because of the triangulated dna match to a segment I've inherited from Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN - see prior post
• Some descendants of Matilda Edmonstone TURNER nee McKENZIE - to see if this pinpoints the match to the LEOV extended family - having seemingly ruled out the earlier LEOV/SULLIVAN family  
• The GRAHAMs of Botetourt (VA) - see even earlier posts
• the family of John LOCKHART and Elizabeth JOHNSON marr. 1828 St Ninians, STI

I've still to transfer into LornaFishing some of the families previously researched and published in  LornaPotential as I've decided to separate out general research from DNA match targetted research.

Identically named trees exist on both Ancestry.com and on MyHeritage, for exactly the same purpose, and I make no pretence that the three trees contain the same set of people, but the purpose is identical in all instances.
Fishing.
So if you spot an ancestor in any of the above trees and  have tested your autosomal DNA, do let me know, I'd love to swap notes and compare DNA to see if a match holds up on the lines suspected.

REA of light

Looking at the Cumberland GRAHAMs sparked a search to see what might be available for Abigail REA, wife of Stephen GRAHAM.
Father David of Crosby upon Eden has been added to my web pages - but with a caveat on the accuracy of the family noted as belonging to him.

GRAHAMs galore

The GRAHAM families of colonial Delaware/Virginia/North Carolina continue to provide interesting research opportunities as we explore the connection to my Cumberland (ENG) GRAHAMs  indicated by our autosomal dna matches (refer earlier post here).

Contact with each match is gradually eliciting responses with further information - at least for those without impossible-to-get-past spam filters on their email.
Thankfully the latter are rare but if someone posts an email address on a dna site expecting contact from matches, it would be nice if you could actually contact them.

The most interesting discovery/lead is the addition of the family of Archibald & Margaret (SHED?) GRAHAM of Augusta Co., Virginia > Patterson Springs, Cleveland Co., North Carolina into the growing, well triangulated group.

As a result of all of this activity, I've promoted the GRAHAMs from the Surname chart section of my website to the Surname pages section.

Check out the GRAHAM page which attempts to pull this information together.
Included here, as well as there, is the current state of knowledge of dna identifiable as belonging to whomsoever is the shared ancestor of:

• Andrew GRAHAM of Fauld, Longtown, Cumberland, England
• James & Elizabeth (?ARSKIN/?ADAIR or ??, later OGLE) GRAHAM of New Castle, Delaware, America
• Archibald & Margaret (?SHED) GRAHAM of Augusta Co., Virginia, America > Patterson Springs, Cleveland Co., North Carolina, America

In the interests of accuracy I do have to acknowledge that Andrew is just one of the GRAHAM lines in this ancestry, the actual link could well be back up an as yet undocumented history of any of the GRAHAMs who married into this GRAHAM tree, of which there are several. He is just the earliest I know of, the rest being to young to be the ancestor of James and/or Archibald.

My WorldConnect Database LornaPotential has been updated to include some of the above Archibald and James GRAHAM families as research proceeds (Archibald, James).

If anyone from these families has tested their autosomal dna from any of ancestry, 23andme and FamilyTreeDNA and we've not been in touch recently about any matches, please do make yourselves known - preferably with a GEDMatch id if you have one - and we may be able to add a few more segments to the above.

GRAHAMs of Cumberland (ENG) and Virginia (USA)

On the DNA lists, posts sometimes bemoan the lack of participants with UK ancestry, as, it has to be admitted, a lot of the test takers do indeed appear to have what is called deep US ancestry.

Which needs a lot of luck (translates to hard work) to determine where your match might be.

Recent re-examination of my maternal aunts' FamilyFinder results has led to an interesting set of matches, both having what looked like a piece of "sticky" DNA* on chromosome 5 with a heap of matches.  With two matches to one aunt predicted as 2nd to 4th cousins it seemed worth pursuing at least a little further.

Contact with both matches and examination of the shared trees made that relationship seem a tad optimistic, but we fairly quickly homed in on a particular GRAHAM family of Overton, TN (1820s+) via Augusta/Botetourt, VA (1750ish).

The progenitors were likely to have arrived by at least 1720, possibly via Delaware, from either Ireland or Cumberland, England or Canonbie, Dumfries-shire, Scotland  [...take your pick from a variety of trees here..].

My earliest Cumberland GRAHAM ancestor is an Andrew of Fauld, born abt 1660 - one of the earlier lines I've managed to trace.

Expanding my match searches beyond the 2nd to 4th cousins to find those shows as both In Common With (ICW) and on the chr 5 match list, I found another set on the same chr 5 spot predicted as 4th and 5th to remote, a niece/aunt combo descending from the same family.

We have not yet found the exact connection between the families either side of the pond so as to link them up in a family tree, and may never do so, but the message for those FamilyFinder test takers with UK ancestry, don't ignore those deep US ancestry trees, finds can be made, and an interest in early American emigration developed!

It would be great to explore further, so I would love to hear from any distant cousin in my tree who  shares my GRAHAM ancestral line to see what else we may learn.

Any descendants of Stephen GRAHAM and Jane BATY of Arthuret who might be interested? 
Say someone down from Andrew GRAHAM and Jane MOFFET,  Andrew's brother William, or sister Mary's son David?

On the US side, I'd love to hear from researchers of the following GRAHAM families:
William and Priscilla (ROBINSON) GRAHAM probably of Buffalo Creek, Roanake
and their children (or other lines) born Augusta Co., Virginia > Jefferson Co., Tennessee
Priscilla GRAHAM and Walter GREER
George & Elizabeth (TURNLEY) GRAHAM
and any other lines from the same families or any other GRAHAM families from these areas who may turn up as FamilyFinder matches.

I'm in heavy research catch up here to see which of the GRAHAM families in the areas involved are actually connected to each other, given trees online can be ever so slightly contradictory, so help would be apprectated.
It does look like dna might be able to help sort some of those tangles out.

-----

* a segment of DNA that has passed down unchanged through rather more generations than is usual

Chromosome map update

The above is an update on my earlier Chromosome picture, but using a more comprehensive tool, thanks to Kitty Cooper's ChromosomeMapper.
The reason for this update is the small orange segment of dna on chromosome 15, a newly detected, triangulated match* between myself, two maternal aunts and Richard, my 6th cousin once removed.
I and the aunts descend from Elizabeth ALGAR and Richard PEEK, Richard descends from Elizabeth's brother Samuel ALGAR of Yealmpton, Devon.
Their parents, Samuel ALGAR & Sarah LOWRY married in 1720, at Yealmpton.

There aren't quite as many unmapped areas as all the grey indicates on the above, I've simply left off the match segments from the very close relations where there is insufficient information on matches to enable segments to be tied to specific earlier ancestors.

To identify more of the grey bits, and thus help break through some of the brick walls, I would particularly love to hear from descendants of the following of my ancestral lines who may be interested in exploring their genetic heritage, and thus help pinpoint where some of the many  matches "fit":
- William CLINTON & Jemima PARKER
- Robert TURNBULL & Eleanor SCOTT
- Andrew GRAHAM & Jane GRAHAM
- William BATY & Sarah BATY
- John DAVIDSON & Agnes FAIRBAIRN
Check out my FamilyFinder project FFLornaHen, and the FAQs about FamilyTree DNA's  FamilyFinder test, and if willing to help, please contact me (details on footer of most of my webpages)

* for an explanation on mapping and triangulation, see this article in Roberta Estes' DNAeXplained blog

Black Mail

Found this in "The Kingdom of Kippen, its History and Traditions" (1903, William CHRYSTAL) on the Internet Archive.

BLACK MAIL 

FEW ancient customs are so generally, yet so imperfectly, known as that of black mail. 

It was, however, simply a lawful and beneficial service to the public which now falls 

to be performed by the police, or, in other words, money paid voluntarily by contract 

for the protection of property against the depredations of migratory freebooters who 

lurked on the borders of the Highlands. 
One of the original documents still in the possession of the descendants of 

Mr. Dunmore of Ballikinrain is drawn up as a contract between James and John Graham, 
elder and younger, of Glengyle, and gentlemen, heritors and tenants, within the 

shires of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton. The latter put themselves under the 

protection of the Grahams for an annual payment of £4 per £100 of rental. 

For this sum, the cattle, sheep, and horses were practically insured against loss, 

as the Grahams agreed either to return the cattle stolen within six months or make 

payment of their true value. Pickerey, such as the lifting of cattle or sheep in 

small numbers, was not to be considered as coming under the agreement, but any 

number above six was; and horses and cattle carried to the south, if not recoverable, 

were paid for by the Grahams at the discretion of the owners ; the contract to be 

nullified in the event of war. 

I was looking for any hints as to the origin of my mysterious 3* great grandmother 

Miss CHRYSTAL, presumed to be a Margaret from the naming pattern of her daughter's 

children and presumed to be married to a James MILLAR from Kippen, again from naming 

patterns.

Lot's of assumptions yet to be confirmed in any way. 

The closest we've come is the baptism of an Emilia MILLAR to a John & Margaret MILLAR 

in 1817.

We do know that she belongs to mtDNA haplogroup T2 though. That narrows the field !!

FamilySearch

Although I am not a Mormon, I have many, daily, reasons to be thankful for their diligence in preserving  genealogical records.
Every so often I fossick around and add sources to the growing tree that I've started there.
A find yesterday was a previously unknown to me daughter in the family of Stephen GRAHAM and Jane BATY.
Poor mite died shortly after birth but the addition of a Sarah into the family reinforces the identification of Jane's parents as William & Sarah BATY of Hornick Hill over the Slealands Jane to William & Mary.

Cumberland to Oz

Another Guestbook posting from a rellie.
This one shows that at least one more branch of my GRAHAM family ended up in Australia (from Longtown).  Relatively recently in this case, a branch of the MONKHOUSE line.
Updates yet to happen.

William GRAHAM or CARRUTHERS

Yesterday's post re Eleanor MURRAY, marr. to the William GRAHAM who died at Firbank

(thank you David for the photo), did of course lead me to re-examining the alternatives for their grandson William GRAHAM or CARRUTHERS, born 1791 to George GRAHAM of Firbank and Easet CARRUTHERS of Stagmire (who put off marrying until 1795).
David has added a third contender into the mix briefly discussed back in these posts.
He adds his William CARRUTHERS and Hannah DUERS.

I'm still leaning towards the William GRAHAM who married Jane FERGUSON in 1816, mainly because of the predominance of Easet as a forename in the family.
In the process I have added a Sarah GRAHAM into the mix, eldest daughter of William GRAHAM and Jane FERGUSON that I ddin't have before, but whose existance does rather explain the LITTLE grandchildren with William and Jane in some of the censuses - and yes, she also has a dtr Easet.

Right Eleanor after all

I was obviously being too cautious back when I posted on William GRAHAM's page that the only marriage to an Eleanor that I could find was in Carlisle, and it didn't "feel" right for a Kirklinton couple.
David has very kindly posted the marriage bonds in my Guestbook, so William's page, and the GRAHAM tree have been updated to show Eleanor as a MURRAY.
Ignore the entries for RUNCIMAN in the recent changes index - I've been revamping the One Name Study pages to more easily generate them, so an awful lot of RUNCIMAN data has been edited, but mainly only to set assorted flags in my database to show which data goes where.

Revamp

SecondSite, the program I use to generate my web pages from my Genealogy database (TMG), has come out with some interesting new features.
It was a good time to review bits of my main website.
As always, when testing, I find things that are missing, have incorrect links etc etc, so a few of those have been tidied up, some snippets added to timelines and so on.

However, the main change will be added gradually as I review all the charts.

What is now possible, is to produce a dynamic descendant chart that can be expanded/collapsed to help you get the feel for where the person of interest on the chart "fits".
I've defaulted them to "open collapsed", so that the initial view you will see is that of your person of interest, and their relationship to the subject of the chart they appear on, but you can then either open/close individual branches, or nip up to the top of the chart and expand or collapse the whole chart.
I started with the FAIRBAIRN chart for my Archibald, but several others have already been converted.
One thing that was always missing from the existing descendant charts was the spouse at the lowest level of the chart. These now show.
In addition there's an alternate view of a pedigree chart with much the same expand/collapse dynamic view, but instead of being presented in the more normal flying geese formation, this one shows the parents immediately beneath each ancestor on the chart, AND has the ability to show where a person has more than one set of "parents", eg adoptive parents, foster parents, or simply alternates from research where conclusions have not yet been reached.
As yet there's only one of these charts available, and that's my own pedigree on the charts page of my main web site, but it is highly likely that this will be used in the One Name Study pages, where alternates exist on where someone "fits".

Quite apart from the above changes, there may well be some extra snippets on the GRAHAM chart from the branch in Sth Australia (see posting in my Guestbook, 12 Jan), and one or two more snippets on the WIGHT branch in Sunderland, the family of Hector Cowans GRAY and Elizabeth WIGHT on the WIGHT chart, but whether or not anything appears there depends on how many generations down the tree the changes are, as the charts may cut off a generation or two too early.

29th: Back to Swordale, ROC and SINTONs

I'm back fossicking around Ross & Cromarty again.
Prompted this time by a posting the other day against my prior posting re the John SINTON and Catherine CROSS family mentioned back in Feb 2009.
This time round I also followed another apparent 1851 SINTON family, from Roxburghshire but living in Lochbroom, around for a while, before, this time, convincing myself that they were misindexed in 1851 as SINTON and are really LINTONs.
John and Catherine however remain firmly as SINTON with a few more details now being found.
Those with ancestry access can see where I've got too adding sources to the family as I've included John on my tree there until such time the rest of my published data catches up with this branch of the SINTONs.
Farrell, the poster of the comment, is a descendant from John and Catherine's daughter Janet/Jessie via her son John GRAHAM (b. 1867 Swordale).

William found, and possibly James

Some work on the FAIRBAIRN entries in the Washington State vital records found me the missing death entry for William, son of David FAIRBAIRN and Jane HERD (HURD to them).  Which led me to updating some of the descendants of David and Jane, and finding another researcher on descendants of Mary FAIRCHILD dtr of Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Catherine KEMPS (Archibald being the son of David's brother James).
I think I've probably also found James son of Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Margaret GRAHAM, living in Stillwater, Minnesota by 1880, and by 1930 in Thurston Co, Washington State. In which case he could explain how John (married Sarah DAUGHTERTY) was living there, John being Archibald's brother, I think.

10th: What do you make of this?

What would you interpret the forenames of the above squiggle as?

He is enumerated in the 1852 Hull, Quebec census, a few entries below Jane FAIRBURN (aka FAIRBAIRN) with her assumed sons James (later married Mary SMITH, Jane's niece via her sister Agnes SMITH nee WILLIAMSON) and John (married Sarah DAUGHTERTY and moved to Stillwater, Washington).

We'd like to prove that he is Jane's son, hopefully with an extant death cert or obit. that conclusively states whether Jane was married to John or David FAIRBAIRN.

New information found (see re John's son John) has led to a re-evaluation of supposedly known information for this family.

With records indicating that there was both a John and a David in the area, and assorted records assigning their assumed families indiscriminately between the two, and often with the wife for both being Jane WILLIAMSON, it's been an interesting exercise.

The jury is most definitely still out, but tending to Jane being married to a John, who seems to have died in 1847, from a fall from a horse if newly received information is accurate.

Children Agnes, James and John rather look like they belong to John and Jane, with possibly Archibald (marr. Margaret GRAHAM) and William George (marr. Sarah FARRELL) belonging to David and wife unknown..

David marr. to Charity WALKER could belong to either, but I'm currently leaning towards him being John and Jane's!

Anyone with hard facts about these families? The family information is rather contradictory, one even throwing an Archie in as married to Jane WILLIAMSON.

Cumberland to Clerkenwell

Great to hear from Bridget again re assorted TURNBULL/GRAHAM snippets.
She kindly sent me both a photo of the Canonbie headstone of Robert & Helen TURNBULL, and the obit of my 2*great grandfather James TURNBULL, which had appeared in the Carlisle Patriot - and very fulsome it was too. (I've now remedied the oversight that he had missed being published on my web pages).
The obit completely confirms that I've correctly identified his brother John as the one married to Isabella MARTIN, as the copy of the "Huirangi papers" obit has an addenda: "Mr Turnbull was a native of Haithwaitegate near this city and brother of the late Mr John Turnbull of White Close Gate".
In addition Bridget sent a transcript of the death notice for Frances SCAIFE (nee GRAHAM) which confirmed my suspicion that she was the 1856 death registration in Penrith.
Fossicking around as a result of these I've now found the original of the marriage of Jane GRAHAM and John SCAIFE (parents of the above Frances' husband William SCAIFE) in St Bennet Grace Church, London, and see not only was the date different to that I had entered (15th March not Sep), but that the witnesses included a Jane BATY and Richard GRAHAM.
I assume the latter is her brother, but who is Jane BATY, presumably also so far from her Cumberland home?

Bit of this, lot of that

Main changes of late:
Meavy DAWE families had a bit of a looksee for a reason which now escapes me. I can now see why I couldn't find a lot of them in the UK census records - a lot of them emigrated to America!
My main interest is how they may or may not inter-connect with the Buckland Monachorum DAWE families and assorted WILLCOCKS.
Some of those connected to people already showing up on my LornaHenderson db on Rootsweb will be added there next update to try and illustrate some inter-connections.

Forgot to mention a SCAIFE update a wee while ago.
Geoff contacted me via Curious Fox with info on the GRAHAM/SCAIFE connections from his SCAIFE perspective. This enabled me to merge two previously separate people in my db, one the son of Jane GRAHAM (whose husband I now know was called John), and the other the William who married Frances GRAHAM, Jane's niece.

Continued working on the family of John and Elisabeth(MILLER) FAIRBAIRN, where this John's father Walter may, or may not, be my Walter FAIRBAIRN. Would really love to find a representative of this line for the FAIRBAIRN Surname DNA project, particularly before the great discounts run out at the end of Sept (or one each from different branches in case there isn't a match first off)!
The other FAIRBAIRN sidetrack mentioned on the 21st (Bowmanville Robert F.)has been slotted into his rightful place as one of the John FAIRBAIRN/Elizabeth YULE line. I'll update the FAIRBAIRN DNA project Patriarch's page accordingly sometime soon.

"Easet"-ing it on the GRAHAMs

Today was a GRAHAM day as a bunch of certificates turned up. Some hits, one miss that turned out a near miss.
Can't seem to find the marriage of David and Jane, both GRAHAM. I therefore ordered the marr. cert of a Jane GRAHAM around the right time and place, but she turns out to have married a Joseph SINTON instead, son of James SINTON, gamekeeper (currently eluding me, although he's probably the one married to Ann IRVING).
Also in the batch was the marriage of John GRAHAM to Elizabeth GRAHAM, so I have pleasure in welcoming their family in from my LornaPotential database as John was indeed the son of George GRAHAM, farmer, and therefore assumed to be the one married to Easet CARRUTHERS (this id being aided by John & Elizabeth's first dtr being Mary Easet GRAHAM).
Elizabeth was the dtr of an Edward and there's probably another connection there as that looks like the family of Edward GRAHAM and Elizabeth BAXTER, with children William, Elizabeth, Andrew, Mary, this latter lady shows up as the inn keeper at the Graham's Arms in West Linton with niece Elizabeth as barmaid (dtr of John & Elizabeth above).
Back to identifying photos and attaching them to the right RICHARDSONs....

Rabbiting on

Lovely story from the newfound GRAHAM cousins.
Gary's great uncle Willy told him a story about his dad Walter. At Christmas the Netherby GRAHAMs would send by train two rabbits for each family. One Christmas the men were all lined up on the platform, Walter was last in line. They all received their rabbits except Walter who was told he had had more than his fair share over the year from poaching.
Also intriguing that it may well be complete happenstance that this connection has been made in that there are two versions of how come the modern Grimston acquired his name. One was that there was a long ago relation who was a stagecoach driver in the 1700s, the more recent, from the same great uncle Willy above, is that when he was born a name wasn't forthcoming, and Jane saw Grimston on a headstone in the Arthuret churchyard, liked it and used it.
I don't know if it was the headstone of Grimston GRAHAM, or that of Stephen GRIMSTON (but would like to know if either are still visible), so all in all, it may well be complete chance that the unusual name has actually put relations in contact with each other!