Where Did My Frazer Cluster Go at Ancestry?

I sort of know the answer but would like to tease it out. Ancestry has a standard Cluster that you can run. This is mine:

My impression is that the standard clusters are meant to show you your DNA matches from your four grandparents sides.

Those sides are:

Hartley
Frazer
Rathfelder
Lentz

Hartley Cluster – Orange

I can tell by the match names that the orange cluster represents Hartley matches in the range of 2nd cousins. It makes sense that there are a lot of matches because my great-grandfather James Hartley had 18 children. However,

The second child Herbert died before age 1
My grandfather was the fourth born
The 6th child did not marry -Aunt Nellie
8th born Henry married but had no children
9th born William died as an infant.

That means that 14 of the children had offspring leaving me a lot of relatives.

Two Maternal Clusters

Cluster 2 – Rathfelder and Nicholson

Some of these matches are on the level of 1st cousin, so they would technically be both Rathfelder and Nicholson. Of the last three matches, two are Rathfelder only and one match is Nicholson only.

My mother’s father was one of 10 Rathfelder Children. However, he was born in Latvia and the DNA testing for Latvians tends to be more with MyHeritage. Carolyn who is from Nicholson and not Lentz has no Rathfelder connection but has connection with those in my first cousin range, so she is added in that Cluster.

Cluster 3 – Nicholson/Lentz

Carolyn from Cluster 2 descends from Nicholson. The other matches in Cluster 3 appear to all descend from Lentz and Nicholso

This is from my Nicholson DNA tree where Carolyn is on the right hand side. My Lentz grandmother was one of only four Lentz children:

I should in a photo of Agnes as I recall her visiting the house. Here is an old photo with a lot of the family:

Stanley is top left. Agnes is in the middle and Emma, my grandmother is on the right. It looks like my mom right below Emma. My mom was born in December 1921, so you can judge the photo as being around 1927 or so. Perhaps Gladys, my mom is 5 0r 6 in the photo.

The Missing Frazer Cluster

I have already established that my Hartley grandfather was one of 14 children who had offspring. My Rathfelder grandfather was one of 10. However, I do not know where all the children ended up (maybe a research project). I know of at least one family that stayed in Latvia and one that moved to England. The Latvian relatives tend to test their DNA at MyHeritage.

My grandmother was one of only two children:

Marion had two children and George had two children. I guess that it never occured to me that George William Frazer was named for James A Frazer’s father.

My point is to say that as far as second cousins go, the Frazer side was not very prolific. I think that I may find some Frazer clusters in my four siblings who tested at Ancestry.

Before I leave George Frazer, it seems strange that I don’t have a photo of him other than a child photo:

Also, he had two daughter, Jeanne and Shirley. Yet his 1960 obituary only mentions his step-children:

Some More on George Frazer

I don’t remember my grandmother ever saying anything about her brother. Perhaps that was partially due to the fact that he died when I was 4 years old. I do recall my grandmother mentioning Cousin Jeaane and Cousin Shirley. Of course, they weren’t her cousins but my father’s cousins.

George married Helena Victoria Marcell in North Carolina though both of them say they were from Norfolk, Virginia. I see now that Elizabeth City, where they married, was not far from Norfolk:

Did they elope?

In 1934, the couple are shown living in Quincy, Massachusetts:

They were also living there in 1930:

The couple apparently marry as George is married to a Margaret Edginton in 1940:

They are at 17 Wendover Street in Boston:

Here is Margaret’s obituary from the Boston Globe on February 14, 1999:

Again, Jeanne and Shirley are left out.

Cousin Jeanne and Shirley

It looks like Jeanne married later in life at age 56. Here is a photo of Jeanne’s husband:

I also see that someone posted this yearbook picture under Jeanne Frazer:

As this is better thana the nothing I have, it will have to do. I cannot verify it. So my bio on ‘Cousin’ Jeanne is a little sketchy. It is unclear how she met her husband as he lived quite far away.

I see that I have even less on ‘Cousin’ Shirley:

I assume that she has passed away. I don’t know if she ever married.

Heidi’s Standard Clusters

The point I wanted to make above is that should be a correlation between clusters and DNA testing descendants.

Hartley grandfather – one of 14 child bearing siblings
Rathfelder grandfather – one of 10 siblings
Lentz grandmother – one of 4 siblings
Frazer grandmother – one of 2 children of my Frazer great-grandfather

However, I wll also look at my sister Heidi’s standart clusters at Ancestry. Her standard cluster has expired, so I will refresh it:

Heidi’s standard clusters seem more detailed than mine. I had 3 clusters and Heidi has 6.

Clusters one and two are on my Hartley side. I can only assume that as my grandfather’s parents were Hartley and Snell, one cluster is for Hartley and one for Snell. I see at least one match in the first cluster that I know is related on the Snell side and not the Hartley side:

The other four clusters are maternal clusters. I had written a Blog on Ancestry’s Standard Clusters in August of last year.

Lori’s Clusters

I’ll skip to Lori’s clusters as she was the only place where I found Frazer Clusters in the standard Ancestry Cluster last year:

The first person in the last cluster is Aimee. She is my first cousing once removed. Another reason perhaps, that there are so few standard Frazer clusters. My Frazer grandmother had only two children: my father and my Aunt. Aimee is my Aunt’s granddaughter.

Summary and Conclusions

I had recently looked at my standard Clusters at Ancestry and was reminded that I had no Frazer Cluster.
My assumption was that had to do with the fact that there were fewer Frazer descendants on that side to test from
I looked at the descendants and found that as the case. My Frazer grandmother was one of two and she only had two children
Along the way, I looked into my Frazer grandmother’s brother as I do not know a lot about him. I also tried to find out more about his two daughters: Shirley and Jeanne.