A Harbour Buffett Upshall Found Through DNA

In a previous Blog, I looked at Martha and her family’s DNA and the connection that had to my wife’s family through the Upshall Line. Martha had a great great grandmother Jane Upshall. I found that by comparing Martha’s family to my wife’s mother Joan and Aunt Elaine, I could narrow down DNA the connections to the Upshall line. This also worked when I compared my wife’s Aunt Elaine to her great Aunt Esther at AncestryDNA.

When I did that I came up with some shared matches. The first relevant Shared Match to Elaine and Esther was Karen. Karen shows as a potential 3rd cousin to my wife’s Aunt Elaine. She also shows up as a potential 2nd cousin to my wife’s great Aunt Esther by DNA at Ancestry. That is pretty close. That means that Karen and Aunt Esther could have shared great grandparents.

Here is the tree Karen has at Ancestry:

This was not a lot to work on, but the names of Hollett and Gilbert sounded like Newfoundland names that I had heard before in my research on my wife’s Great Aunt Esther’s Lines. I tried building a new tree of my own tree for Karen at Ancestry.com. I found a father for Clyde, but got stuck and sent a message out to Karen. Karen was very friendly and wanted me to get in touch with her sister Ruby who knew more about the family history. As a result of getting in touch with Ruby, this family tree went from a flat, dead-end tree to a living three dimensional family history that jumped off the page.

More on Karen and Ruby’s Genealogy

Ruby wrote back and gave me some important information. Her mom was born at Haystack where she was raised by her mom Minnie Gilbert. Ruby’s mom’s dad was probably Malcolm Hollett from Marasheen Island. I’m not an expert on Newfoundland geography, so I looked up these places:

The red indicator is Haystack. Great Aunt Esther’s parents were both from Harbour Buffett and Merasheen Island was nearby. Here is a photo of Haystack in 1915:

 

Minnie Gilbert

I then set out to look for Minnie. The first Minnie I found was in Harbour Buffett on the same Census page as a Hollett and Upshall family. This sounded promising, but was the wrong Minnie. It turned out that Ruby’s tip on Haystack was important. Here is Ruby and Karen’s grandmother Minnie in Haystack in 1921:

This shows that Minnie was living with:

• Her grandfather Samuel Gilbert
• Samuel’s wife
• Her sister Norah
• Melanda Upshall who I guess would be Minnie’s Aunt. I assume Melanda was originally Melanda Gilbert. She must have married an Upshall who died. By 1921, she was a young widow.

Here is a photo of Minnie at age 93 a year before she passed away, sent to my by Ruby her granddaughter Ruby:

 

Malcolm Hollett

I should have looked further down on the 1921 Census of Haystack. If I had, then I would have found this entry:

Here was Malcolm Hollett who was Karen and Ruby’s mother’s purported father. He was living just a few houses away. Malcolm and his sister Effie were adopted by George Pike and his wife. George was listed on the census as a ‘genl’ merchant. I’m not sure what that meant. Perhaps he was the owner of the local general store.

Ruby had initially told me she thought that the Upshall connection could be through Malcolm Hollett. At first I doubted how she could know that the connection would be Hollett rather than Gilbert. But after seeing that Malcolm and Effie were born in Harbour Buffett, I came around to Ruby’s way of thinking.

I had trouble finding information on Malcolm, so I decided to try to look for his sister Effie. That was another breakthrough:

Apparently Effie needed a birth certificate and one was missing. Malcolm had a delayed Registration made up in 1969.  This was great as it gave a lot more information on names and dates. The important name I found was Jessie Upshall. I had now found the Upshall connection that was suggested by the Karen’ws DNA matches with Esther and Elaine at AncestryDNA.

I had actually found an Upshall marriage earlier, but had no way of knowing if it was the right marriage. I had found this at a great web site called Newfoundland’s Grand Banks:

This couple got married at Harbour Buffett and were both living there at the time of their marriage in 1903. As Ruby had known, this couple died which is why their children Malcolm and Effie were adopted. Albert Chesley died in 1909 of pulmonary tuberculosis. Jessie died in 1913 of Tuberculosis. It looks like from the death records that both Chesley and Jessie were born in Harbour Buffett. At the time of her death, Jessie was listed as Katie.

Who Was Jessie Katie Upshall?

The records are not so good in Harbour Buffett around the time when Jessie Kate was born around 1886. One thought I had was that Katie could have even been an Aunt of Esther. Here is the genealogy that I have for Esther’s grandfather Henry Upshall’s family:

Perhaps Jessie was the youngest daugther of this family. I have seen Catherine Dicks name recorded as Kate. If this guess were right, that would make Karen and Esther… Well I have to chart it out.

There it is. They would be 1st cousins, twice removed. This would be equivalent to the potential 2nd cousins that Ancestry shows them as by DNA.

Speaking of DNA, let’s see if Karen’s DNA matches shed any light on the topic.

Karen’s Upshall DNA

I had asked Karen to upload her AncestryDNA results to Gedmatch for comparison and she kindly did that. Karen shows up as match #6 on Esther’s list of DNA matches at Gedmatch. That is pretty good as Esther has a lot of close DNA matches due to the fact that her dad was borm in 1879. Also due to the fact of intermarriage in Harbour Buffett. On Karen’s DNA match list. Esther is her 1st match. Elaine is her 3rd match and Joan is her fourth. So far, the DNA evidence seems to support my guess that Karen and Esther could be 1st cousins twice removed.

Karen’s Match with Esther

The MRCA or Most Recent Common Ancestor estimate by Gedmatch is 2.9. That would be equivalent to a 2nd cousin (or what I proposed, a 1st cousin, twice removed). One thing that is intersting is that there are not any matches under 10 cM. The lowest match is 11.9. This would tend to represent a closer relationship. If the relationship were with several different distant ancestors, there could be more small cM matches.

Here are some statistics for cousin matching from the International Society of Genetetic Genealogy (ISOGG) web page:

An average for 1C2R is 229M. Esther and Karen are above average for that relationship.

Karen and Joan’s Matching DNA Segments from Gedmatch

Here Joan is a litttle below average of the above report. However, she is right on at 3.5 MRCA which whould be equivalent to second cousin once removed to Karen.

Karen and Elaine’s Matching DNA Segments from Gedmatch

Due to the randomness of DNA, Elaine apparently inherited more Upshall DNA. This puts Karen and Elaine’s DNA match at above average for 2nd cousins once removed.

Upshall Triangulation Groups (TGs)

Triangulation Groups are groups of three people or more. All three people match each other on the same segment of the same chromosome. A TG indicates a common ancestor.  Rather than go through each TG, I have summarized them in a table:

This table is interesting as it shows that Karen is in most (5/7) of her TGs with Esther’s side of the family. The other side is Martha’s side that I blogged about here. Then Karen is in another TG with Bob who I wrote about here. His tree comes up later in the Blog.

The proposed relationships are below:

Somehow, I lost Bob’s line. I wasn’t so sure about him before, but he does apear to be in two small TGs.

TG09 was the one that pulled the two families together:

In TG09, Karen matches Joan, Esther, DTE and Martha. She matches Mandy also, but Mandy (5) doesn’t line up with the other matches. Here is how the TG would look graphically:

Assuming that I drew the family tree correctly, this could be considered two TGs. One would be between Joan, Esther and Karen and the second would be all five people:

Note in the browser above that Karen’s matches with Joan and Esther are larger than her matches with Martha and D.E. The would be consistent with the way the tree is drawn above. Karen would be a 1st cousin twice removed to Esther but a 4th cousin to Martha and D.E.

TG05 with Karen and Bob

 

The above representation of this TG assumes that these people don’t also have another common ancestor. However, I would rather go with what I know than what I don’t know. This is an interesting TG as it includes what would appear to be three children of Peter Upshall b. around 1800.

Upshall or Dicks DNA?

The way I drew the Upshall tree above, Karen’s common ancestor with Esther, Elaine, and Joan would be Henry Upshall. However, Henry was married to Catherine Dicks. That means that the common ancestor would be either Henry or Catherine. Fortunately, I have been working on a Dicks DNA Project for quite a whilte. I should be able to sort out the Upshalls form the Dicks in a future Blog. Also the presence of Dicks DNA in Karen would further solidify my proposed tree. Here are the TGs (in pink) where Karen could have Dicks DNA:

The pink TGs are those where the members of the TG are just Karen, Elaine, Joan and/or Esther. I’m not aware of Dicks ancestry with MLB, Martha, DTE, Mandy or Bob, so those TGs likely represent just Upshall DNA (or the unknown wife of Peter Upshall).

Summary and Conclusions

• Karen was a great find
• It has been fun looking at Karen and her sister Ruby’s family history and getting to know them a bit in the process
• Karen and Ruby most likely descend from Malcolm Hollett, son of Jessie Kate Upshall b. about 1886
• The DNA, genealogical evidence and information that Ruby has support this
• Jessie Kate Upshall who is Malcolm Hollett’s mom is most likely Esther’s Aunt. Jessie’s birth year of 1886 would fit into the family of Henry Upshall b. about 1841 and his wife Catherine Dicks. The proposed Upshall Tree also fits well with DNA averages for relationships. Further, the Triangulation Groups appear to support the Upshall connections between Karen’s family and my wife’s family.
• It would be nice now to find some genealogical evidence that the Jessie Kate Upshall who died at the young age of 27 was part of the Upshall family that I have been researching. Perhaps the family Bible will show up somewhere.
• Assuming my Upshall Tree is correct, then Karen should have a good deal of Dicks DNA as well as Upshall DNA. Identifying Karen’s Dicks DNA will further solidlfy the proposed tree where I have Karen as Esther’s 1st cousin twice removed.