WikiTree & DNA

Ever since this post back in 2011 I've continued to sporadically use WikiTree.
Mainly as I "finish" a particular line and want to see what pops out, but also for research I've done for others, where they can then continue the tree on their own.

Over the last week that has been a concerted effort as my interest went up several notches.

Yes, it has always been a great collaborative site for a One World Tree,  ie everyone connected, and only appearing once (all going well!);
Yes it has always been Free;
Yes it has great privacy controls;
Yes it has a great range of navigation options - with dinky little icons for pedigrees, descendant lists etc;

Now however it has completely grabbed my attention as some tools have been added that help those of us trying to find our DNA matches.

If you've ventured into genetic genealogy and don't know where to find your matches, convince them to upload at least their pedigree to WikiTree AND enter which DNA test they've taken in the place provided (you can enter your name as Anonymous and restrict who can see what, but without a visible tree the main benefit of this may be a little compromised).

All the people impacted by the test will get a link posted against their profile (= page = person) saying It may be possible to confirm family relationships with (person x) by comparing against (link to test taker's name) (link to the test taken) test.

Read this article about which of the affected relations get the note added to them.

With the randomness of autosomal dna inheritance being explored using tests such as FamilyFinder (Family Tree DNA) or 23andme, anything that helps find where a match might be is most welcome.
None of this shows actual DNA results, only family tree connections with links to test taker and those impacted. It is up to you how much more you wish to share, eg in the free text biography section.

Even if you aren't interested in the DNA results, the note draws attention to possible newfound relations on a branch one or other of you may not have.

PS if thinking about venturing into genetic genealogy, now's a great time, Family Tree DNA are having a summer sale - details on my DNASurnames Blog.

Must be 4 or 5 years since ...

Somehow my McADIE branch always seems to get attention every 4 or 5 years.
Time's up.
I've been having fun checking out loose ends, merging duplicates in my database and seeing what else might now be around to identify who belongs to whom.
Only some 140 without an identified family to go (if I don't add more strays whilst digging)!

Along the way I have managed to finally connect up the James, married to Isabella BRUCE, living in Victoria (AUS) as definitely being the son of George & Elizabeth (ROSIE) McADIE.
As he was living "near"  Robert, who would be his brother,  it seemed likely, but now the proof has been found.
As were the necessary dots  to join up the Western Australian branch who had moved there from Victoria.

Need to figure out who William in Ararat  in 1874 is now - is he another brother? Or is their brother William the Customs Officer in London?
Or does he belong to Donald & Janet (MURRAY) McADIE, at least one of whose sons was also in Victoria (AUS)?

This time round I'm trying harder to find others who may be interested enough to help find direct male line McADIEs interested enough in the jigsaw to represent their line in the McADIE (and variants, which are legion) Surname DNA project to prove that all those lines from Watten are indeed closely related, even if we wont necessarily learn exactly how. Some of the other Caithness lines have descendant charts on my McADIE page (still under development).
Any direct male line McADIEs out there interested in seeing if they're a match to the representatives so far?
Failing a direct line male, how about a descendant willing to try a Family Finder test to see if we get a match to those of us who have tested?
Love to hear from you - see any of the above pages for contact info.

How lucky can you get?

Genetic genealogy, aka using DNA testing to (dis)prove theories and relationships between family trees, can be the luck of the draw.

Does anyone actually still exist that would be eligible for the appropriate test?
Has anyone with the right surname and genes tested yet?
Were the any mishaps down the generations between the shared ancestors?

You may recall the story of what happened when I voted at our local body elections a year or two back.

There is now a sequel.

Since then John has been back to England and met up with some of his newfound maternal grandmother's relations, but the GOVIER connection was still unproven/unsolved.  Was he actually a GOVIER by descent or in name only?

DNA testing, and a match to a GOVIER descendant of the Pitminster (Somerset) GOVIERs would be a great start to confirming that his step-grandfather was his actual grandfather despite the grandparents marrying in the year following his father's birth..

Along came a suitable price reduction in the entry level test for Y-DNA. This was enough for John to venture forth, with a bit of prompting. We had even found a couple of potential candidates from the Pitminster line to contact if necessary.

He was cautioned that at 12 markers it was more likely that he would get a number of matches from a variety of surnames, and that it really was only the start of the process, unlikely to be at all definitive given that such matches share an ancestor hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, rather than within genealogical time frames.

The Y-DNA12 results arrived today.
How many matches - one.
Surname - his.
Most distant ancestor - the same William GOVIER of Pitminster Somerset.

I'm not sure I want to suggest further testing and see this match fade away as the markers increase!

 

ANDREWS of Martock

The publication of Jane GIBSON yesterday led me to dig out my 20 year old research (mine and others) in/on Martock (Somerset), the haunts of the ANDREWS.
Some of the results may be seen in the new page for The ANDREWS (which bears an uncanny resemblance to the recently introduced one for the DAWEs).
Some year we may find out whether or not the John & Susannah (CULLIFORD) ANDREWS family are related to the suggested tree for my John & Rebekah (WINES) ANDREWS - but I suspect we'll have to resort to Y-DNA testing to do so - direct male line ANDREWS welcome to enrol in the ANDREWS Surname DNA project - but please let know you've done so, as this isn't one of my projects.

My Beautiful Chromosomes ...

... with apologies to the author of My Beautiful Genome.
Ralph's Family Finder results have arrived as an early xmas present for us both, and show that a small genetic segment of our shared ancestry back at Robert RICHARDSON and Margaret RUNCIMAN has indeed made it down through the generations unscathed to Ralph, me, and to my HENDERSON 2nd cousin who shares his WIGHT/RICHARDSON/RUNCIMAN ancestry with me.
Regardless of whether we can assign this to the RICHARDSON or the RUNCIMAN ancestry, it is a good confirmation that the Scottish naming pattern sometimes works, as that was how I found Robert & Margaret (RUNCIMAN) RICHARDSON all those years ago.
Here's an update to the earlier picture of my chromosome - restricted just to my paternal side's matches this time:

Australian DAWEs

Their time has obviously come, again.
A descendant of Isaac DAWE, miller in Tasmania, had popped out of the woodwork a few weeks ago and some updates eventuated to that line, that from second wife Emily GREEN.

Just last week a MyHeritage SmartMatch popped up a TREMBATH/BROTHERAS researcher claiming another of my Isaac DAWs in Australia as marrying Elizabeth Ann BROTHERAS, nee TREMBATH in Cue, Western Australia.
This Isaac was one down the line from my Isaac, miller of Lumburn, Tavistock's brother William (married Mary WAY).
Two surprises here for me,  marriage and Western Australia!
Other researchers may  be well ahead of me here, but I had him has unmarried, born and dying in Victoria!
The information checks out, so Isaac has been included on my webpages for others to see the connections.
The wonderful newspapers online at Trove hint that maybe  Isaac's parents and some siblings also headed for Western Australia at some stage - not yet confirmed that "DAW and family" on the same voyage as Isaac is them however.

And then yesterday another heap of MyHeritage DAWE SmartMatches popped out of the woodwork, from yet another DAWE in Australia, Western Australia even.
These DAWE matches however turned out to be for the descendants of Joseph DAWE & Elizabeth CROSSMAN of Buckland Monachorum, no connection currently proven to my DAWEs above, but the trees are interconnected several times over via other families, such as my BARTERs and WILLCOCKs.

The DAWE DNA project would love to explore whether or not there is a connection between these South West Devon families, so are still looking for any direct male line DAWE descendants of any of these families willing to give it a try.

As a result of the above I've updated my DAWE page and added pages for:

• John DAW of North Lew (to document the erroneous link that several trees make between the two above DAWE trees)
• John DAWE of Yeoland, the John some trees give as the father of my Isaac DAWE, and is where at least one of my connections to his DAWE line begins, and
• Elizabeth KING, wife of John DAWE of Yeoland

And Henry too?

The growing RICHARDSON page has been updated to include the family of Henry and Ann (PRESTON) RICHARDSON, where Henry appears to track back to James RICHARDSON & Isabel PRINGLE of Over Roxburgh.
Henry and Ann were also eschewing the established curch for the Morebattle Gateshaw sessions around the same time as James and Margaret (MABON) RICHARDSON, and had emigrated to Quebec by 1832, as had James and Christian (OUTERSON) RICHARDSON, which James may, or may not, be one and the same.

Usual plea - any direct male RICHARDSON of Henry and Ann out there interested enough in their family history who would be willing to join the RICHARDSON DNA project to see if there's a match to John and Ralph?

Also added to the page is a timeline of relevant events to the above RICHARDSON families against the lifespans of some of the main characters. Suggestions of significant events to be added welcome.

With all this RICHARDSON activity, especially the repeating use of Andrew as a family name, and the extension from Morebattle to Roxburgh, the family of Andrew and Mary (WATSON) RICHARDSON also came back into view. They've been lurking in my database LornaPotential for many years as this tree inter-connects many times over with assorted lines in mine. So a brief descendant list for them as been added as well - the connection to the above being Roxburgh rather than Morebattle however, with Crailing thrown in.

Bermuda!

Some time ago we found a dna match between Ralph and John RICHARDSON.
John's family knowledge started in New York with the birth of an Adam in 1835, but without any knowledge of his parents.
John has been back in touch, having found a snippet that indicates Adam father was a James, tailor, who emigrated to Bermuda with a brother (also a tailor, unnamed, but probably Thomas as his Oneida death is reported in a Bermuda paper and states the relationship to James ).

So, the prior suggestion that his family might be Adam and Margaret (BROWN) RICHARDSON has taken a new turn of events.

James' 1879 obit. brings in a brother John of North Georgetown, and a sister Mrs Samuel MOFFAT of Beechridge, (Beauharnais, Quebec), which most definitely leads to the family of James RICHARDSON & Margaret MABON of Morebattle.
When reading the Gateshaw Session records I had noted this family as being of potential interest, so it just goes to show that all little snippets squirrelled away usually come in handy sooner or later!

John is now on a hunt to definitively link his Adam to James, but there is indeed circumstantial evidence in that he did know that Adam's three sons had a photography studio in Bermuda before returning to their birthplace of Wisconsin.
And I've found that Thomas, a tailor, died 1880 in Oneida, NY, had a son William Thomas, or Thomas William, born Bermuda around 1850, who was a photographer.

Investigations proceed. 

Sintons, Fairbairns and Hendersons

Family Tree DNA recently "invited" assorted dna participants to add Family Finder to their DNA knowledge, at a considerable discount.
This tests chronicles your autosomal dna, ie that you inherit from all of your direct ancestors, as compared to the Y-DNA used for Surname dna projects which is only passed on from father to son, or the mtDNA similarly only from a mother to her children, but only passed on by the female line.
Should you be lucky enough for Family Finder to find a match with someone else in their database, you get to see which bits of your chromosome you match on.
As this test is really only most useful for the closer generations, up to 5-6 generations, ie back to 2-3*great grandparents, to find matches, it was a bit of a long shot to expect Peter and Michael to show up with the distant ancestry that we shared, but we decided to proceed anyway.
Peter and I have Peter SINTON and Jane WIGHT as common ancestors, my 3*great grandparents.
Michael and I share  Walter FAIRBAIRN & Agnes ROBINSON, also my 3* great grandparents, but Michael's 4*greats.

As you can see above, the blue portions are far more prominent.
They reflect my shared ancestry with Bill. We share William HENDERSON & Helen Sinton WIGHT, my great grandparents.
I guess we can conclude that the overlapping pink and blue lines are shared SINTON ancestry (unless of course there is an undocumented relationship between Jane WIGHT, Peter SINTON's wife, and Helen Sinton WIGHT's ancestry).

Robert & Jane (WIGHT) SINTON

An email from Morley asking if I could quantify the rumoured connection between the families of Elizabeth MABON, whose son John married Jane ELLIOT, and the SINTONs, Jane ELLIOT's sister Betsy having married William son of Robert & Jane (WIGHT) SINTON.
This SINTON family had children baptized in Ancrum, ROX before emigrating to Beauharnois County, Quebec around 1831.
It had been rather a long time since I last looked at this SINTON family, well before easier access to census data online.
Haven't answered his question, but have updated my knowledge of the family, and realised that they weren't included on my SINTONs page - now remedied,with more updates on the chart included yet to come.
Should any SINTON descendants read this, please pop along to the SINTON Surname DNA project to join it and see if there's any connection to my SINTONs!

3 months of updates

Quite an impressively long list of recent changes - but don't be fooled.
Many are minor changes to citations, or the last edit date changed because a scanned certificate has been added (which wont be visible on the family tree pages, but may be if included on the Originals subsite - not yet updated).
Another reason for inclusion in the recent change index is the addition of links to a hopefully relevant dna page for those belonging to dna tested lines (some of which links may still not yet work).
 
At least two new people now have pages, probably others:
Grace MEIKLE nee ROBERTSON, mentioned recently
Elizabeth HAMLEY nee ROWE, although the impetus for her publication eludes me at the moment.

Now that more of the FAIRBAIRN trees are included on the One Name Study pages, the FAIRBAIRN page has been cut back to only include trees for the more closely related FAIRBAIRNs.

Many updates probably don't feature in the recent changes index but only in the updated descendancy charts.

Fast lady

Hope that the actual image of this entry shows a different picture than the transcripts.
A 1901 census in Troqueer shows what look like twins in a SHORTREED family:
James 9 mos b Galashiels, Selkirk; Andrew 9 mos b Maxwelltown, Kirkcudbright
Mum Annie nee HOOD must have had to move rather fast to achieve that!
This HOOD activity being prompted by Harry bringing a RootsChat posting to my attention.


 He's a good relative finder.

An interesting set of DNA results in the FAIRBAIRN project in the last couple of days. Completely unexpected.

28th: Cleugh Burnfoot

My main Family Tree web pages have been updated - only 4 months since the last update!
I think that all of the descendant charts are now in the new interactive format, ie lines able to be opened/closed in order to get a better picture of where someone "fits".

Took the opportunity to include the before/after images of Cleugh Burnfoot, home to James & Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON and family from at least 1841 to 1847.
These come courtesy of cousin Bill (for which many thanks) who visited Scotland recently and obediently went to Forth and knocked on the door of the only house along the B7016 that could be the place I saw back in 1994/5. Good to be proven right, and also many thanks to the current owners for welcoming Bill & Cheryl into their home and supplying the "before" photos.
What a marvellous transformation.
These can be found in the Places link - scroll down to SCT > Forth and click on the little information icon (the individual place pages can be renumbered when I rebuild the web site, so I'm only including the overall link here).

Also took the opportunity to include a page for David FAIRBAIRN of Hawkesbury in order to share the wonderful photo Gordon sent me some time ago.
My FAIRBAIRN surname page has also been updated and now includes a few more skeleton descendant charts for the lines now showing as a "match" thanks to the participants in the DNA project.

Several broken links have also been fixed.

26th: New DNA link

Courtesy of Dick Eastman's newsletter, anyone contemplating dna testing may care to visit this site.
It contains a newly written 12 page guide "How to Identify Ancestors and Confirm Relationships through DNA Testing."
The link has been added to Lorna's Links.

22nd: Well travelled

Normally Fairbairn DNA project news appears in the blog related to the project.
This exception is because the latest kit order is for a line that should show up on my side of Lineage 1 - a descendant of Walter & Clarissa (FAIRBAIRN) FAIRBAIRN.
The contact has of course led to some updates to the tree.
Walter must have led an interesting life - certainly peripatetic, as I've found him traveling to/from California and Shanghai, Hong Kong, Burma, India in the 1930s. One passenger list shows him as an oil well driller.

16th: John or Albert?

Thought I was onto a lead for some modern day descendants of my rather distant FAMILTON forebears.
One branch had ended up in Racine, Wisconsin, and I'd found what looked like the son John of the family living in Minneapolis in the 1920 census with a wife Margaret, and children Mabel and Winston. Age right, birth state right, father shown as born Scotland, occupation not out of the question.
But no. Tracking back on Winston, the 1900 census had the family as Albert B & Margaret HAMILTON instead of John and Margaret!
Sure enough, FamilySearch Minnesota BDM indexes show Albert as his name, and a family tree on ancestry that cited sources, agreed, and gave his pedigree - not the John I was looking for after all.

This activity being driven by a phone call from Val nee FAMILTON a few days ago to introduce herself.
Her call had prompted me to review where I'd got to with the FAMILTON DNA project, and a few hurried additions to the patriarchs page and a bit of a tidy up led me to add a post to that project diary, and cast around for likely new candidates to prove the assorted lines (my Earlston weavers, the Ancrum weavers, and the Northumberland based families) were related, despite the lack of paper trail.
Love to hear from any direct male line FAMILTONs who may be willing to participate.

14th: Back to the FAIRBAIRNs

Given the recent DNA results show that the family of James & Agnes (LINDSAY) FAIRBAIRN belongs in Lineage 1 (as does my Archibald FAIRBAIRN), and their closeness to the modal for all of the matching FAIRBAIRNs, the neverending story has been updated to include an overview of their family tree, and a few links for those wishing to follow this story through.

13th: Not so Black Friday

It really is the time for the McGREGOR branch of the HENDERSONs to be updated.
Must be something in the air. Three contacts in as many weeks on different twigs of Margaret HENDERSON's descendants.
The latest appears to be a descendant of Charlotte BETT.
In checking where I'd got to for this line, I noticed that William, son of Margaret HENDERSON, who had emigrated to Canada in the 1850s, could probably have more information found for him these days.
And so it proved.
I thought I was merely going to be adding a census or two and ended up finding and documenting a first wife, two children, and some descendants as well. Check out William's updated page. (William, son of William married a Helen DRONE, their dtr Charlotte Jean married a James Elsner CRONIN, but as yet I've not figured out what happened to William's sister Mary, nor Jean's sister Elizabeth Swinton McGREGOR).

In addition to all the above, the RUNCIMAN DNA project has turned up trumps. The preliminary results mentioned back on the 6th did indeed end up being an excellent match at 67 markers as well.
On the strength of that I've updated my RUNCIMAN surname page to include some of the descendants of Thomas and Alison (GRIEVE) RUNCIMAN as well.
By no means all, just some I've documented in passing.

All I need now is for my computer to be fixed! I'm somewhat hampered at the moment as I was silly enough to download a supposedly 'critical' microsoft security patch, KB2286198.
More fool me. My desktop went into a boot loop which I'm still fighting.
There's always a silver lining though, as a result I was forced to resolve a couple of things I'd not bothered about on my laptop, and at the end of the fix, I will end up with a backup server on a spare older slow machine, which task has been on the to-do list for rather too long.

11th: G(ee) Whiz

The FAMILTON dna results for the descendant of Robert and Mary (McDOUGALL) FAMILTON are indeed for a predicted haplogroup of G.
Would be really good to get a direct male line descendant of a FAMILTON or HAMILTON from William and Bessie (WILSON) FAMILTON.
Any takers?

6th: RUNCIMANs & FAIRBAIRNs

DNA results are beginning to filter in from the activity generated by the last Family Tree DNA sale, and with excellent results.
The two RUNCIMAN participants have both turned out as a match to my RUNCIMAN line (somewhere! it is too early to tell how closely at only 25 markers so far).
Likewise the recruited FAIRBAIRN has also, thankfully, matched the rest of the Scottish Borders Lineage 1.
See the Supplmentary pages for these projects for further information.