The ANDREWS DNA matches ctd

The grid below is on the DNASurnames site linked in the prior post but is included here to highlight the vagaries of atDNA inheritance.

The people listed are all descendants, or believed to be, of John ANDREWS and Rebekah WINES who married in 1808 at Martock, Somerset, England. 

One has yet to be confirmed, but matches so many of the others that they have to fit somewhere.

It only includes those who have uploaded to GEDMatch.com as it uses their wonderful tools to produce the grid.

The predicted generations to a common ancestor range from 1.4 to 6.9, where the 6.9 prediction is between 3rd cousins once removed.

The actual relationships range from 1st cousins to 4th cousins.

This family group has done much better than another I've done this exercise for.  Fewer blank cells where there was no detectable shared DNA over 7cMs than another family, so well done for the Andrews/Wines DNA.

 

Click to enlarge

With FamilyFinder on sale at the lowest price I've ever seen, now would be a great time for others to test and see where they "fit" and provide more data for the chromosome map of Andrews/Wines DNA - which is the next item to be updated.

Who's Harry?

I believe I now know the answer to this one, and an exciting journey it was too - well to those of us who are Genie and DNA addicts anyway, and of course those interested in our ANDREWS of Martock (Somerset, England) ancestry - which is rather giving the game away at the beginning.

March 2016 - cue an excellent set of DNA matches, reasonably close, between a newly loaded kit on GEDMatch.com, and several descendants of Simon and Jane (GIBSON) ANDREWS.
So why?

Correspondence with the match determined that her family tree did have an ANDREWS, deceased by 1958, father possibly Harry born about 1865. No place information provided. Was this a clue?
As yet, no indication that the DNA was definitely from her ANDREWS line, but definitely an indication from our side, thanks to all the matches to descendants of Simon and Jane.

Apr 2016 a kit from ancestry (another descendant of Simon and Jane) also uploaded to GEDMatch, and yet more matches

July 2016 sees yet another descendant of Simon and Jane tested, and yes, more matches.

Interest on where the match might fit has obviously grown. Time to explore the tree more.
What can we find out about Harry?

Harry proves remarkably record shy to date, even once we knew he lived in Michigan.Yes, there are census records which show him as born Canada - and his parents as born England (mostly, one says Canada) - so far so good. The records also show he was born abt 1861 or Jun 1862.
Then his death cert. threw a 1 Jan 1866 birth date into the works, with the very unhelpful information that his parents were unknown, as were their birth places, but that Harry himself was born "Goodrick, Ontario".

Were there any ANDREWS families with a son Harry born around 1861-1866, living in Goderich?
Possibly.

A William and Eliza/Elizabeth ANDREWS did indeed show up in the 1871 census of Ontario: born England, son Henry aged 12, so born about 1859 - but not with the family in the 1861 census!
What is it about Henry/Harry that causes so much age confusion?
Did any of the trees online have anything about Henry son of William and Eliza after the 1871 census?
No.
But the family did indeed look promising, particularly when one of the trees not only showed William and Eliza as both born in Somerset, but also that they married in Martock.

This just had to be the right family.
But can we prove that William is a relation of Simon's and that their Henry is indeed Harry?
It was looking increasingly likely, particularly given that Simon has a brother William of the right age that we didn't have any sight of beyond the 1841 census.
Census information for William and Eliza in Ontario showed they emigrated about 1844/5 so were easily missed when searching English records, and as yet no death cert. can be found to provide a link back to his parents, just a headstone with his dates.

The first step was easy enough, although it took time - why oh why does England not have electronic BDM certficates? Postage is so S L O W, particularly now that our postal service is down to every second day delivery.

William and Eliz's marriage cert. did indeed show his father was a John ANDREWS, weaver, and threw in a pair of witnesses that belonged to the family, William and Simon's brother Abraham and his wife Mary Ann (nee CHANT), to clinch the identification.

How was this missed when previous researchers had combed the Martock parish registers?
Easy really, they were married at the Ebenezer Chapel in Bower Hinton, not the established church.
It's still exists.

So far so good.
But can we prove the link from Henry born about 1859, or possibly 1861/2 ish, or even 1866, in Goderich, to Harry in Harbor Beach, Michigan by 1910?

If anyone can find Harry's marriage cert. to Barbara SWACKHAMER, or where he was in either the 1880 US census or the 1881 Canadian one, or anything/anywhere after the Canadian 1871 census and prior to the 1900 Michigan census, please do share!

In the meantime, ancestry trees came up trumps yet again.
One in particular had little notes that indicated family information, as opposed to straight research, might be available.
The tree however showed Henry, fate unknown.
But what's more important, the poster actually replied to a message.
Although Bill said he didn't think he could help with my quest, he did enclose his grandmother's notes on the family.
His grandmother was the granddaughter of William and Eliza via their son Walter, and had written up notes on the assorted children of William and Eliza, along with their children.
The notes started with the information that William was from a family of weavers, and that two of his older siblings had left England, one to New Zealand (that has to be Simon) and one to Australia (bit puzzled by that one, but this is currently assumed to actually be Eliza's sister and her husband who emigrated to Australia - which I only happen to know via one of those little coincidences of genie life in that the sister's husband's brother is the ancestor of a friend of mine - and we've only just figured this out thanks to this investigation!).
Reading on, the following jumped out at me:

"Harry had a family in Harbor Beach. He is dead"

I'm convinced. 

Are you?

Thank you newfound cousin Bill.

My ANDREWS page will be undergoing an update, and DNASurnames now also includes an ANDREWS DNA section to show some of the predicted atDNA relationships compared to the actual distance from John and Rebecca ANDREWS along with the utter variability of who actually shows up as matches.

Enjoy, this journey has been fun. Now to explore the rest of the Canadian and Michigan branches of the ANDREWS/WINES family.

Maternal chromosome map

While I'm in dna snapshot mode, here's an updated picture of my maternal chromosome map.
Lots of gaps, but an increasing amount of information that will allow identification of likely areas to focus on for matches.

Click to enlarge

Henderson brick wall

One of my reasons for venturing into DNA testing for genealogy back in 2007 was to break through several brick walls.

Yes, there have been some successes, many intriguing finds, and a lot of new correspondents to share with.

No, I still have no more idea about where Archibald HENDERSON, or Amelia MILLAR for that matter, came from.

Here's the current state of play of mapped chromosome segments inherited/shared by the tested participants, along with those where their matches also match each other forming a triangulated group. The caveat however is that we do NOT know the segments are from the HENDERSON side of the ancestral couples shown, and for those marked as ... anc., the link can be back up either side of the couple, somewhere, somewhen.

In theory, one day a WOW moment will arrive when one of these matches holds the key in their trees and dna to break through that wall.

Click to enlarge

This picture, and any subsequent updates to it, may be found on both:

• the DNA Surnames HENDERSON pages

and

• the HENDERSON surname page on my personal family tree pages.

Any descendants of Archibald and Margaret interested in exploring this further would be most welcome to join my autosomal dna (atDNA) project FFLornaHen.
The inheritance of atDNA is such that even siblings can show up different segments, and thus more matches, to add into the mix to triangulate.

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

Parents with a sense of humour?

Who needs them?
Having found yet another Family Finder DNA match amongst my Devonshire DAWEs, I've been checking off my data to upload a few more of my DAWE family to WikiTree.
Checking the marriage of Charles FLOOD I found his father was one Noah FLOOD.
Back at the  turn of the 19th Century when Noah would have been growing up, I wonder if he was teased unmercifully?

The newly identified Family Finder DNA match is the second descendant of Isaac & Sarah (SMITH) DAWE's son William DAWE who is a match to 3 of the descendants of William's brother Isaac Smith DAWE so we have some DAWE, or SMITH, autosomal DNA that has survived down to present day over 6 generations.

All power to DNA!

New FamilyFinder DNA results are being received all the time, but it is often hard to see where the connection might be between respective trees, although there has to be a link, given the dna evidence.

There was an exception this week, which, once again, highlighted the random nature of autosomal dna inheritance.
But more importantly, they brought attention back to the Mary McEWAN that had been sitting in my database for many years potentially marked as being  the daughter of James McEWAN and Mary McLAREN, and thus niece of my 3*great grandmother Margaret McEWAN.
This potential duplicate for Mary had married a William DUNCANSON and emigrated to Tasmania in 1855. Others have long ago connected the families up as one and the same, but her age didn't quite match, although census data did place her in the right places about the right times, among other candidates.

This time around I found her death entry, which squashed my qualms about her age, although no parents were indexed.
This, coupled with a dna match between a descendant of Mary's and myself, and to my third cousin once removed, both of us descendants of Margaret McEWAN, Mary's aunt, means that she has been connected up to the family and a heap of new McEWAN descendants formally welcomed to the database.

For those interested in further technical detail:
Autosomal dna (atDNA) is the part of our genetic heritage that we inherit randomly from all of our ancestors, as compared to the mitochondrial dna everyone inherits from their mothers but only daughters can pass on to their children, or to the Y-DNA that sons inherit from their fathers, passing that inheritance on to their sons in turn. Both of the latter are far more certain at surviving the transmission process from parent to child more or less intact, but the former is a bit of a lottery as to what survives from which ancestor.

We now have autosomal dna (Family Finder) results from four descendants of Archibald  & Margaret (McEWAN) HENDERSON, and now one from a descendant of Margaret's brother James.

The only match that showed initially on Family Tree DNA, at the default settings, was between myself and my second cousin.  Disappointingly no match shows up between myself and another descendant of our shared James and Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON, nor between any of us to the descendant of James' sister Margaret, although the latter was not entirely unexpected. This sort of test is really only expected to detect significant matches back to a shared 4-6 generations ago, so it's always a bonus to find a match further back.

Further exploration via GedMatch, where the parameters may be tweaked, revealed that there are several matches slightly below the matching threshold used by FamilyTree DNA between at least three of us after all. Mostly between the descendant of the two Margarets, one the daughter of Archibald and Margaret (McEWAN) HENDERSON and the other the daughter of James & Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON. Could be completely random coincidence (called Identical by State, rather than the Identical by Descent that we are after) of course, but I prefer not to think so.

We now have this growing scientific evidence that supports our paper trails, and provides a good solid base for future matches to pinpoint where they might be from.
But it would be even better to get representatives to join the fun and add to the evidence for the less defined paper trails, those for Margaret and James' siblings William, Archibald, and John, who either emigrated themselves, or many descendants did, to Australia, America, and Canada respectively.  
I'm pinning my hopes on FamilyFinder evidence for William and John as both lines are rather short on direct male line HENDERSONs able to represent them. A Y-DNA representative  may eventually be able to be found for Archibald's line, but a FamilyFinder match would also be very welcome!