Being prompted to review very old research is F U N

Our local genealogy society, Kapiti Genealogy's, January meeting asked for attendees to bring Arrival stories.

This prompted me to find, and re-explore, my great grandfather William Henderson's notebook of the voyage from when he boarded the "William Davie" on the 9th of April 1872 through to his arrival in Port Chalmers then on to Dunedin, to end up in the barracks. 

A post script dated 1924 states that they had landed "on the street in front of what is now the Education Board office in Jetty Street"

What I would not have found without this prompt.

When I first read the notebook many years ago with the mention of an onboard newspaper, I idly wondered if any issues survived, particularly given that the notebook mentioned the Sub editor was a W Henderson.

Whether or not my William was the only W Henderson on board I know not, but he is the only one in the index of Assisted Passengers list in the Archives.

This re-read led me to a web search for "Ocean Times" and "William Davie", which brought up several references to my own webpages but also ...

these entries from the National Library of New Zealand.

The description of the manuscript as ... "Written in various hands (with corrections); attributed in part to Thomas Graham who may have been the editor"...

which latter does contradict the information in William's notebook highlighted in red below:

claiming that the editor was one George Menzies from Leadhills in Lanarkshire.

A George Menzies appears on Pg 16 of the Assisted Immigrants in the Archives, further research needed to conclusively identify George.

An "Ask the Librarian" query about the possibility to compare handwriting between the manuscript and the notebook brought a very prompt and helpful response, including scans of a few selected pages for my handwriting comparisons (along with a quote for official copies). Jury still well out on any of the handwriting.

One of the items included in the photocopy scans was the Directions detail included in Issue 2 - reading priorities very clear - it was to be available:

1) in the Cabin Thursday mornings

2) "the girls can have it by going to the Cabin Friday mornings"

3) the Main Hatch got it from the girls on Saturday mornings

4) the Sailors on Sunday

5) the Fore Hatch on Monday mornings

with an exhortation that "All are requested to keep it as clean as possible".

But it did at least survive the distribution instructions.

With many thanks to the National Library.

The notebook.

It's an unpreposessing simple black notebook:

Diary of William Henderson's voyage of the
'William Davie" 9 Apr to Jul 1872

Pgs 1 & 2 9 April 1872

The few names mentioned are transcribed on my web page of the voyage, which includes a link to the map following the Latitude and Longitude values recorded for each day - or at least it did, the actual map and values appear to have vanished - something I would not have noticed without being prompted by the January meeting's theme "Arrival stories".

On my lengthy to-do list is now to get the scanned pages of the notebook into FamilySearch Memories section for William

Check more than one index and read the full page!

A salutory reminder to not just latch onto the first apparently relevant entry on a source page, nor to believe what you find, or don't find, in indices - ie check images thoroughly - and to scroll down! 

Background:

I've been researching deeper into a Miller / Millar family in Kippen, Stirlingshire to try and make sense of the DNA match clusters that have begun appearing. As a result, the mystery of my 2*great grandmother Amelia Millar's parents seems to be inching a little closer to having a chip out of that very long standing brickwall. 

Just this week a new DNA match popped up, a descendant of a Charles Ferguson and Jean Miller, where Charles was shown variously as born Fintry or Gargunnock. Jean had previously been determined to belong to the family of David Millar and Elizabeth Weight of Kippen, so of high interest to me as potential ancestors of my Amelia, where other hints also led to assorted connections to Fintry.*

As I investigated the clusters of shared matches a satisfying number added DNA to the papertrail down from at least two sons of Charles and Jean, but with the very intertwined families in the area, could this be pushed back further to eliminate Charles and leave only Jean's line?

So I set too exploring the records I could find for Charles Freguson born about 1800-1802 Fintry or Gargunnock.

Which is where indices and original images led me on a merry trail of conflicting, and missing, information.

The exploration of records and indices:

ScotlandsPeople searches only netted me a Charles Ferguson baptized 29 Apr 1800 Gargunnock, to a John Ferguson and Janet Morrison, the image showing page 450 of the register, first entry on the page shows John as labourer in the Village, spouse Janet Morrison did indeed have a son Charles baptised. (see below)

FindMyPast, from their Scotland, Parish Births & Baptisms 1564-1929 collrction, however showed two Charles in 1800 in Gargunnock over four entries, only two of which entries had an archive reference.

FamilySearch gets even more confusing:

The source attached to the birth of Charles Ferguson, married to Jean Miller, shows 29 Apr 1800 parents John Ferguson and Margaret Stirling, BUT is indicated as a retired duplicate

where the duplicate referred to is to a baptism the same date and place for a Charles but with parents John Ferguson and Janet Morrison

So why the discrepancy between FindMyPast and FamilySearch as to the date of this baptism, Apr vs May? (The actual entry may have been interpreted in a quick look as May not April, but on balance, it looks like April to me.)

And how come both the references above on FindMyPast refer to the same page of the register but only one appears in ScotlandsPeople?

Scrolling down answered the FindMyPast two entry appearance in the OPR issue. Further down the page, sure enough, there is indeed a separate entry, squashed in between entries for the 3rd and 18th of August, for another Charles baptised the same 29 Apr 1800 date with the parents expected from his 1872 death cert., John Ferguson and Margaret Stirling.

Now to figure out, and report if necessary, how come the second entry does not appear in ScotlandsPeople.

As to why one census shows Charles as born Fintry and another says Gargunnock, from baptism indices alone it looks as if the Margaret Stirling family did shift to Fintry where the birth of the last son is recorded, so a case of apparent accuracy in one census and a "where I was brought up memory" for the other census.

Are they really two separate families?
FindMyPast and ScotlandsPeople do show several baptisms to both couples, with remarkably similar names and dates. But the 1835 Male Heads of Household indices do show both a John Ferguson in Village, Fintry and a John Ferguson, labourer in Village, Gargunnock, so on balance, yes.

* there's also a very intriguing DNA connection between this new match and a descendant of a separate Miller/Millar line who hints at a connection across two separate clusters of interest, potentially linking the families of John Miller and Roseanna McGeoch and the above David Millar and Elizabeth Weight to the  mystery ancestry of our Amelia Millar (b. 1817 Kippen). The slow progress and potentially connected families that are on WikiTree may appear there under my WikiTree Brickwall Category.

The Update

ScotlandsPeople have agreed there is a missing index entry and are remedying it, although it may take a while to make it into what we seen on the site.

For FamilySearch: As there seemed to be no way to unretire the "duplicate" I also contacted the the FamilySearch email to see if I was missing a way to do so as the Edit button was greyed out.

The response: "We suggest you ignore the retired message it may be AI being over efficient. .."

I have put notes on the source but not yet checked where they become visible.

Full circle

 I do so love it when thngs come full circle.

In my genealogical world I don't think they can come more full circle than this.

My starting point for this journey into family history was a set of inherited photos that my father showed me. He had inherited them from his aunt, my Great Aunt Nellie. He showed it to me and wondered who they were.

Off I set on this journey, not having stopped yet. That was in the early 1970s.

Amongst the photos was one of two ladies sitting outside an ivy-clad stone house in a rather stiff pose having a cuppa.

The scrawl underneath I eventually deciphered as "Aunts Isobel Clarke and (Jane?) Middlemas. Edinburgh" These two ladies would therefore be two of my Great Aunt Nellie's mother Helen Sinton WIGHT's sisters.

Over the years I have tried to trace all lines down from great granny Helen's siblings but had not managed to find any living in present day for Jane, or Isobel. My last concerted effort was a while ago now, probably 10 years or more.

And up one popped in my Ancestry DNA ThruLine hints!

Oh well - back to the drawing board

Time for a Henderson / Jenkins investigation update.

Spoiler alert.  

We have to look further afield for where the rascal who "met" Margaret McEwan around hogmanay 1813 belongs in the overall Perthshire Jenkins (Junkins) tree of James Junkin and Janet McGomrey, or even of James' parents, James Junken and Cathren McQueen.

We now know that us Hendersons share the branch R-BY19859 on the tree of mankind with the descendants of the siblings Patrick and Robert Jenkins / Junkin etc but are not descended from either of them. So there's another brother, nephew, uncle, 1st cousin or whatever of theirs who was around at the right time.

So if you know of any Jenkins (or variant) males who can claim direct male line descent from a descendant, or likely descendant, of any Jenkins with Perthshire origins, send them along to me, Lorna.

It's a long, slow slog exploring distant yDNA connections.

The slowest part being tracking down the hopefully relevant people to test.

On top of that, if they are indeed a yDNA match to the right people at y37, waiting for the BigY results to come in - usually around 2 more months on top.

Since the post on the excitement of the initial exact BigY match the results achieved in the interim look few and far between but have indeed told us plenty.

You can always follow the current status of the development of the BigY Perthshire/ Stirlingshire tested branches of the Jenkins (Junkin etc) haplogroup tree via the Family Tree DNA Discover project tool.

Annotated versions, snapshots over time, can also be found under a subset page of the Jenkins surname project on WikiTree. Hint, you can sort the images by ascending or descending date order.

Those magic three words: "New Relative Found"

Intro

When you have a yDNA disconnect in a tree, those three words "New Relative Found" followed by "We found 1 new Big Y match(es) for ..." are indeed magic.

The match was with my very first DNA testing guinea pig, 2nd cousin Bill, helping out to explore our Henderson brickwalls. That was back in 2007. Since which time he had no matches beyond y25 other than our own 2nd cousin roped in to check all was kosher given the lack of yDNA matches. It was, at least as far as our shared great grandfather William.

Below you will find the history of the search, who the new match is, where to from here, and yDNA details as at 9 Apr 2023 (including snapshots of the FamilyTreeDNA Discover TimeTree before and after the match). Along with the takeaways from this journey.

Thank you to all the Henderson and Jenkins descendant testers that have made this journey, and answer, possible. And rest in peace Bill, thank you for doing all those tests I threw at you over the years. We did get some answers in the end.

The History

Roll on from 2007 to 2019 when a spanner was thrown into the works with results from a 4th cousin whose yDNA was meant to prove our yDNA signature back to our papertrail 3* great grandfather Archibald Henderson who sprang to life fully formed to marry in Stirling in 1804.
You've guessed it, not a match.

Hint to self: don't jump straight to BigY without testing y37 first, to test the waters (unless the test is for yourself). A small smattering of autosomal matches to 4th cousins can be from the other 3*great grandparent!

But even worse for our side, James, the 4th cousin did have y67 /y111 Henderson matches to families claiming Henderson from Stirlingshire. We still didn't.
So a 3rd cousin, also sharing Archibald's son James with Bill also tested, and matched our side. James' signature now looked solid with 2 tested descendants of his son William  plus one from son David, all sharing SNP R-BY19859.

By this stage autosomal matches had accumulated showing that one or other (or both) of our 2*great grandparents, James Henderson and Amelia Millar, had connections somehow to many descendants of Robert Buchanan and Janet Monteith, and the extended Doig and Paterson Perthshire families that are all very inter-twined. 
Two very very distant y67 matches had also popped up, not showing at lower levels of testing, to two families claiming Jenkins descent. As a surname this had also featured on our radar from autosomal matches, but the two matches' trees did not look very easy to establish a connection to, being American, with scant information and a Genetic Distance of 6 at y67.

So were we Buchanan or Jenkins?
Buchanan seemed a little unlikely as there are many Buchanan testers with Scottish ancestry, no yDNA matches to us, however distant.
Jenkins seemed much less represented in yDNA testing and needed a tester from the target family, that of Patrick Junkine and Mary Buchanan who married 1781 Port of Menteith, Perthshire.
This family in theory at least enables us to connect to the autosomal matches to both Jenkins and Buchanan et al.
Plenty of descendants to work down for candidates, which is slow, disheartening work as yet another yDNA line is found to have died out, or candidates found have yet to respond. I'd taken a break. 

But wait, yes of course there is more, or this wouldn't be being written.

Who was the match?

A Jenkins, claiming an earliest direct paternal ancestor James Jenkins born about 1680, Scotland.
Sounded very promising. Was this the answer to my question in my Jan 2023 Stocktake, ie Was James Henderson really the son of Archibald Henderson? And also a Wanted! subject of my WikiTree yDNA Tester Wanted page

A very quick, excited email was sent (at 2 in the morning) to the match asking whether or not his James Jenkins was from Perthshire. It also pointed him to the above WikiTree page about the yDNA disconnect.

A reply was promptly received confirming that James Jenkins was indeed the James Junkine from Thornhill that autosomal matches were pointing to as a family "of high interest" and confirmed his connection to Patrick Junkine and Mary Buchanan's grandson Peter Jenkins (married Jane McNee) via Patrick's son John.

It has only taken nigh on 50 years to get further back on the Henderson branch of the tree. Mind you, I've only known that we had a bit of a problem yDNA-wise since 2019.

See below for the yDNA details.

Where to from here?

A sole signature, however solid the match at BigY700 does make me a little nervous, despite the matching haplogroup, and autosomal matches between the respective lines across many testers on both sides.

It would be fantastic to gain further corroboration of this Jenkins yDNA signature from a direct male line descendant of another branch than Patrick Junkine/Jenkins' son John, preferably down from a brother of Patrick's to refine any branching that may occur and the timescale estimates that result. Particularly as the post result review has now occurred and shows that the descendants of my James now have their own SNP,  R-BY19865, a new subgroup formed under R-BY19859, which latter is where the new match remains. awaiting new results. I expect the timescales for the R-BY19859 branch to be updated in this week's review. Again, see below, which includes snapshots of the Discover TimeTree which time estimates have already had a preliminary change now with four testers.

The yDNA details:

Do keep an eye on the FamilyTreeDNA Discover haplogroup tree at Discover haplogroup tree for R-BY19859. Those 4 Scottish flags represent the 3 Henderson and 1 Jenkins BigY testers as at now, Apr 2023. Timeframes and any future progress as other testers refine all this usually appear on Mondays, Houston time.

To get the Discover project display with the self reported earliest known paternal ancestors, showing all these matches, the testers need to be in the same project - either the Jenkins project or my FFLornaHen project - or both :)

At the moment not all four are. The two project views to check for updates are: FFLornaHen and Jenkins 

Discover R-BY19859 TimeTree snapshots 

Note the changing time estimates.

With just the three Henderson kits 29 Mar 2023:
The common ancestor for all three is James Henderson born 1813 Stirlingshire.

Plus the Jenkins kit 9 Apr 2023
ie before the new BigY result review:
My current belief is that the common ancestor is Patrick Junkine born 1751 Perthshire - BUT James' father could actually connect further back - hence the wish for another Junkine / Jenkins branch tester. 

Plus the Jenkins kit 16 Apr 2023
ie after the new BigY result review:
Shows our James Henderson newly created subgroup, the average of the timespan shown is 1822, not bad for a James born 1813!

Block tree

Reviewed (by 9 Apr 2023) creating a new sub branch for James Henderson's descendants, subsequent to the initial match being received.

Dendrogram Jenkins project Group O

Timescales estimated from the STRs alone:

STR Genetic differences

The Takeaways

• Make the DNA work for you - use all the DNA types - autosomal and yDNA in this case but also mtDNA and X chromosome if applicable.
• Work all your DNA hints for as many cousins on the line "of interest" as you can;
• Don't believe those who say there's no point in doing BigY for close mysteries. Without this new match testing BigY I would still be floundering around in autosomal matches and still looking for a yDNA candidate. 
• Use as many of the DNA testing and comparison sites as you can and are comfortable with their terms and conditions.
• Never give up hope.

jan 2023 Stocktake

Firstly, a big thank you to all of you have humoured me over the years by testing your DNA, and those who help this Genealogy & DNA obsessive - yes I'm still obsessed!

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2023.

Time for the snapshots.

Progress over the last couple of years?

Have I actually made any progress on my main goals?

Progress is never as much as hoped but this one takes my prize as most unexpected:
Unexpected half 2nd cousins were added to my rather sparse Davidson tree from the Scottish Borders, and sort of as a result, along with previously unplaced DNA matches, my tree gained some ancestors.

Lurking in (almost) plain sight.

Tree Completeness stats snapshot

Now (Jan 2023) compared with Jan 2021 (left) and March 2020 (right) (from DNAPainter Ancestry Trees).

Brickwall status?

With half of the John Davidson brickwall being demolished, the closest brickwalls are, or remain:

3*great grandparent "holes" or questions

1. Who was John Davidson's father

2. Who were Amelia Millar's parents?

3. Is (Amelia's husband) James Henderson's father really Archibald Henderson?

4* great grandparent "holes"

4. Where did William Clinton spring from?

5. Who was Jemima Parker's father?

6. Anything about John & Ann Robison, parents of the Agnes Robison who married John Fairbairn.

7. Eleanor Scott's parents.

  

ToFR / ThruLines

To the uninitiated, the title of this post:

ToFR / ThruLines

refers to the tools offered by MyHeritage and Ancestry DNA respectively to aid you in exploring how you might be connected to your matches.

ToFR: from MyHeritage - Theory of Family Relativity

ThruLines: From Ancestry

Both take your DNA, your linked tree, and those of your DNA matches, then trawl their respective family tree and record collections to come up with HINTS on how you and your match might be connected.

The stress here is on HINT, and MIGHT.

It is over to you to check the validity of the suggestions.

This blogpost has been prompted because MyHeritage has released an update to their Theory of Family Relativity 

So what have I learnt?

MyHeritage:

Figures shown below are for: Apr 2022 / Nov 2022

Total matches: 10,965 / 11,638

Total matches linked to trees: ? / 10,734 

Number of matches with a Theory of Family Relativity: 74 / 88 ie 0.81% of my matches with trees

Number I have marked confirmed as correct: 41 / 42

Number I have marked as rejected: 12 / 23

Number that end up at the correct result but start on a tree other than my researched tree, and take a rather tortuous route to the conclusion: 18 / 23

Ancestry:

I've not been keeping stats, so cannot get comparable figures, but FWIW, as at 7 Nov 2022:

Total matches: 27356

Total ThruLines hints: 209 ie 0.76%

including 31 hints to potential ancestors.

Only about 4 of the potential ancestors look likely to be real.