In my previous Blog, I started to look at some aspects of my Philip Frazer Line. I had a request to look into matches of the Taylor Line from Jeannette.
Here is Mary Taylor in my Ancestry Tree:
I believe that she married Philip who was the son of my 4th great-grandfather Philip Frazer born some time in the 1700’s. That means that Taylor is not known to be one of my own ancestors.
Here is Jeannette’s Tree:
It looks possible that the Mary in my tree could be the daughter of Edward Taylor and Catharine. In fact, Ancestry is suggesting that couple. Here is a screen shot from that Jeannette’s tree:
If my dates are correct, then Catharine would have been 14 when she had Mary. That is not likely. Another possibility is that Edward had a wife before Catharine? Or Mary could be a cousin of the family above. Or some of the dates could be wrong.
Looking at the DNA
I think that I am better at the DNA than the genealogy – though both can be confusing. Jeannette had contacted me two years ago about a match that she had with my brother Jon. Actually, the match was between my brother Jon and Jeannette’s mother Dora. Here is what that looks like at Gedmatch:
These are two small matches. The matches are about 7 generations away. That would probably be in the mid 1700’s. Next, I can look at Jon’s DNA Painter Profile:
Unfortunately, I only have Hartley DNA painted on Chromosomes 3 and 15 for Jon. That means I would have to do some work to add some Frazer side matches for Jon. I do have an outdated spreadsheet of Jon’s DNA matches from 2018:
On Chromosome 3, Jon matches me on the paternal (blue) side, Jason on the maternal (pink) side and someone named Gloria. I couldn’t find Gloria at Ancestry. Perhaps the match did not make the cut.
Jon has some larger matches on Chromosome 15:
Unfortunately, none of these names sound familiar.
I can run at report at Gedmatch to find matches that are in common with Jon and Dora :
I recognize the first two people at least.
Barry and Ken both descend from Philip born in the 1700’s. I think that that Barry descends from Philip Frazer born about 1800. Barry’s brother Richard thinks that the elder Philip’s wife was a MacDonald. I am not so sure about that. However, it may be that Dora, Barry, Ken and Jon are related through the wife of the elder Philip.
However, there is a complicating factor in this in that Barry and I are also related on another Line:
This goes back even further to Archibald Frazer born 1720 and Mary Lilley. So that is possible, though less likely as a common ancestor couple.
I can add Jon’s match with Barry to DNA Painter:
I put the match in under Philip Frazer as the more likely common ancestor. Also, this match is to the right of Chromosome 15 where the match with Dora was on the left side of my match with Beth who matches me on my paternal side. .
Next, I add Ken’s match to Jon’s profile:
This match goes back to James Frazer born about 1804:
The fact that these matches do not overlap with the DNA match Jon has with Dora says we cannot prove a particular common ancestor.
My Sister Sharon and Clusters at Ancestry
Last year, I wrote a Blog on my sisters’ DNA Clusters. Here are some clusters between my sister Sharon and one of her Frazer cousins:
The second arrow is pointing to a small cluster. The second person in that Cluster is Alannah. She shows ancestry with a Johnston who married a Taylor. However, as I have many Johnston matches, the connection may be on that side. This is from Alannah’s Ancestry Tree:
Alannah shows Mary Frances Taylor born in Ireland and died in Perth. One shared match with Sharon and Allanah goes back to my McMaster Ancestry in the Kilmactranny, County Sligo area. So the connection may be on my McMaster side.
More on Richard
Here are Richard’s ThruLines up through the Philip who married Mary Taylor:
I have access to Richard’s DNA results at Ancestry which make me able to do this comparison. These matches are just Richard’s brother and his third cousin twice removed. Actually, when I expand the ThruLines, I see more connections:
When I create cluster between Richard and Fraser, I get this:
Here I see two major clusters. Then I see two clusters perhaps, within the first cluster. So what we are seeing here (in my opinion) is the double Frazer relationship that Richard and Fraser have.
Here is an old basic Frazer DNA Tree:
Richard and Fraser descend from what I can tell from the Philip and Archibald Frazer LInes. I descend from Philip and Richard Frazer. Archibald married Ann Stinson.
Interestingly, Patricia who is in the Cluster above has a Stinson from Roscommon in the maternal part of her tree:
That means that the Cluster 1a is likely Archibald Frazer, Cluster 1b is Stinson and Cluster 2 is Phlip Frazer.
Richard and His Taylor ThruLines
It would make more sense to look at these:
Richard has a nice network of Taylor descendant matches coming down from John Taylor.
Of course, this is based on Richard’s genealogy. Richard has that Mary was born when Edward Taylor was 36 and Edward would have been 52 when John was born.
For some reason, I get more ThruLines for Richard when I choose Edward’s wife Catharine:
This could be due to the way that Richard has his family tree set up. Here is what Richard has for Edward Taylor:
Usually when I evaluate ThruLines, I am evaluating them against my own tree. However, in this case, I would need to evaluate both trees.
Richard’s largest DNA match is with Cheryl. Richard and Cheryl have many shared matches. Other than Richard’s brother, there are 6 shared matches that have common ancestors:
- Judith – shows as descending from John Taylor
- Gerry – shows as descending from John Taylor
- Jenna – shows as descending from John Taylor
- Judy – shows as descending from John Taylor
- Dana – Dana, child of Judith
- Christina – shows as descending from Rebecca Taylor
Without doing all the genealogy, the DNA appears to tie this famiy together with Richard.
Pros and Cons
While it looks like Richard’s ThruLines connnects him with the Edward Taylor family, consider this. At the 5th cousin level, there are many possibilities for ancestors:
- 1st cousins represent 4 ancestors
- 2nd cousins – 8 ancestors
- 3rd cousins – 16 ancestors
- 4th cousins – 32 ancestors
- 5th cousins – 64 ancestors
Edward Taylor and Catharine represent an ancestral pair, so at the 5th cousin level, Richard would have 32 ancestral pairs to consider. Here is Richard’s Family Tree from Ancestry:
Here are 16 ancestors, so this is at the third cousin level. Third cousins to Richard should have one of these 8 couples as common ancestors.
In Richard’s next generation out, the paternal side appears to be primarily or all Swedish:
That makes sense with what Ancestry has for Richard:
I see that Richard matchs Cheryl at the 4th cousin level:
So Cheryl would be Richard’s closest match on his ThruLines. Cheryl’s paternal side is Ireland and Englnad. Her maternal side looks to be Russian:
I do not see any Swedish sounding names.
Here is Richard’s maternal side at the fourth cousin level:
A cursory review seems to show that the best match is on the Taylor Line. However, Cheryl does not have her family tree past John Taylor, born 1821 in County Sligo, Ireland.
Erin from the Rebecca Taylor Line
Erin’s tree shows that she believes her ancestor to come from County Sligo also:
This is from Erin’s maternal side.
All this to say that it appears that Richard’s ThruLines for his Taylor side seems to be right:
Here is David’s Ancestry information on Catharine and the Taylor family:
He has Catharine giving birth to children when she was between the ages of 17 and 43. I believe that Richard has matches to distant relative descendants of Edward Taylor due to the fact that it was a successful family. By that I mean that there were a lot of descendants for Richard to match DNA with.
Summary and Conclusions
- Based on Richard’s ThruLines, it would appear that he descends from the Taylor family.
- Richard has proposed a reasonable timeline for Edward Taylor’s wife Catharine in which she could be giving birth to children.
- My proposed genealogy does not show that I am descended from the Taylor family. I do have a match with Dora. That means that I could descend from a Taylor further back that I know of or that I am related to Dora somehow on another common line (also pretty long ago).
- Unfortunately, I do not think that I she much light on Jeannette’s question. I suppose that there are two issues. One is whether Jeannette can show that she is related to the Taylors that Richard shows in his ThruLines. The other is whether Jeannette is related to the Frazers. I think that the answer in both cases could be yes. Unfortunately, the further one goes back, the more difficult it is to sort out the autosomal DNA. In addition, the effect of Protestants marrying within a relatively small gene pool in Ireland makes the DNA and genealogy confusing.