joel@jmhartley.com – Page 72 – Hartley DNA & Genealogy

July 31, 2016April 13, 2017

My German DNA Success Story

I recently had a breakthrough on my mother’s side with an autosomal DNA match. It was on her Rathfelder side which is the rarest as far as DNA matches go. Apparently there aren’t many Rathfelders around and very few that have taken DNA tests.

Here is the summary of my success:

My mom’s Rathfelder ancestors lived in Riga, Latvia. Based on this I did a search under my mom’s results at AncestryDNA for matches from Riga, Latvia.
I was fortunate to find someone with a large match.
I got in touch with the match and asked the administrator to put the results on gedmatch.com.
The administrator of the match put the results up on gedmatch.com. This is the step that happens rarely – to me at least.
I checked the results against a Rathfelder 2nd cousin’s DNA I had tested and there was a good match there also.
I did some genealogy and found where the match likely was.

The Ancestry DNA Riga Search

When I put in Riga, Latvia, under the AncestryDNA search criteria for my mom’s kit, I found the match. It was the largest Riga match she had after my my 2 sisters and myself. Here is a screen shot of the match with cM’s shared and my note that the match was in Riga.

I was a little surprised that AncestryDNA had the relationship at 4th cousin, based on the 6 segments shared. I would think that it would be closer than that.

The Match in Gedmatch

Here is the same match at gedmatch:

Note that Gedmatch shows fewer segments (4) but a higher total cMs. Gedmatch estimates 3.8 generations to a common ancestor. That sounds like a 3rd cousin to me.

All Roads Lead to Hirschenhof

My mom’s match had as the most distant Riga ancestor someone by the name of Spengel. I knew that all my mom’s ancestors lived in Hirschenhof, Latvia, prior to moving to Riga. That meant that the match was likely in Hirschenhof. I did a quick Google search for Spengel and Hirschenhof and came up with some results. I tried the match’s other ancestors with Hirchenhof and found no results. Here are my mom’s Hirschenhof 1st and 2nd great grandparents. They would represent 2nd and 3rd cousin matches:

Time for Some Hirschenhof Genealogy

Here is the Linden Evangelical Lutheran Church outside Hirschenhof where my mom’s ancestors got baptized, confirmed, married and had their funerals.

I like the photo because it appears to show people sledding down the hill by the Church. Also because it looks like this picture could have been taken in New England where I live as well as Hirschenhof, Latvia.

http://www.lvva-raduraksti.lv/

Raduraksti is the website I like to use for Latvian genealogy. That is where I was able to find the Linden Church records. They are listed under Draudzes, Liepkalnes. I had to look up draudzes. It means congregations. Liepkalnes is apparently the Latvian name for Linden. My mom’s match’s grandfather was Friedrich Spengel. I was able to find his birth and baptismal record here:

I could tell that Friedrich, Bernhard was born in 1859 based on the index and note at the top of the page. I could tell that his dad was Johanne Georg [something] Spengel married to a Rathfelder. However, I had no idea what the first name of Friedrich’s Rathfelder mother. I wrote to a Rathfelder relative in Germany named Inge for help. In the meantime, I discovered that there was a Wilhelmine Rathfelder in the index to the church records. Here is her birth record in 1844.

Now that I know it says Wilhelmine, I can read it. Before that, the ‘W’ looked like a ‘Dr’ or ‘Lr’ to me! Here I recognized Wilhelmine’s parents as my mother’s great grandparents: Johann Rathfelder and Rosine Schwechheimer. Here from my web page is the family:

This shows that in my research, I was missing Wilhelmine. However, there was plenty of time for her to be born between February 1843 and 1844. It seemed clear that my mom and her match had as their common ancestors Johannes Rathfelder and Rosine Schwechheimer. However there were a few problems.

the problems with WILHELMIne

There were 2 Wilhelmine Rathfelders
With the above scenario, my mom and her match would be 2nd cousins. Ancestry showed them as 4th cousins and gedmatch seemed to indicate that they would be closer to 3rd cousins, but not 2nd cousins.
If Friedrich Spengel’s father married this Wilhemine, then this Wilhelmine would have been 15 when Friedrich was born.

Two Wilhelmine Rathfelders

I’ve heard it said that you learn something new every day. In looking up information on Lutheran Church records, I discovered that it would be normal for a child to be named after the godparent. This was certainly true here. Friedrich Spengel was named for his godfather Friedrich Niclas.

Here is what Inge tells me concerning her reading of Wilhelmine’s baptismal record:

You found out yourself, that no. 58 of the Linden churchbook is an entry like follows

I am sure, you still are knowing:

Wilhelmine Rathfelder,(born July, 2nd, baptized July, third (dritten)

Vater Tischler Joh(ann) Rathfelder, M(utter) Rosina geb. Schwechheimer

Taufzeugen Jungfer Wilhelmine Rathfelder, Tischler Heinr(ich) Lütken und Fr(au) Philippine geborene Rathfelder

A Jungfer is an unmarried female.

So what I get out of this is that Wilhelmine Rathfelder had an unmarried godparent with the same first and last names that she had.

So Who was Friedrich Spengel’s Mother?

Prior to writing this blog, I was leaning toward the younger Wilhelmine as being Friedrich’s mother. Now I am leaning toward the older godmother. This is based partly on the DNA results. I am guessing that the godmother could have been Wilhelmine’s Aunt. Here is what I have for Johannes’ family. I think that he actually had other siblings that I don’t yet know about. Perhaps he had a sister named Wilhemine.

That’s as far as I got on the genealogy. There is more work to do.

The Spengel Match Helps With My Chromosome Mapping

I have mapped most of my chromosomes and my 2 sisters’ chromosomes to my 4 grandparents. This shows for each chromosome the portion of DNA my sisters and I received from each grandparent represented in 4 different colors. I used a method developed by Kathy Johnston. For example, here is how I had mapped out Chromosome 17:

My sisters are S and H. I am J. Note on my mother’s side (on the top of each bar) I have maternal grandparent 1 and 2 because I could not tell who was who. Now with the known Spengel descendant match, I can tell which is Rathfelder (my mother’s father’s line) and which is Lentz (my mother’s mother’s line). Here is how gedmatch shows the Spengel match. Remember that Spengel had a Rathfelder mother, so will indicate the Rathfelder line.

Above, #1 corresponds to my sister Heidi (H) and #2 corresponds to my sister Sharon (S). My mom is #3. Note that The green matches for daughters #1 and #2 shouldn’t be larger than the mother #3, but they are. I show no match to my mother’s match on this Chromosome. Due to the the location of the Spengel matches above, this tells me that MG2 above has to be Rathfelder. That leaves MG1 as Lentz. Now I can add the real names of the grandparents that my sisters and I got our maternal DNA from on Chromosome 17.

That means if my 2 sisters have a maternal match with anyone after 9 or 11 on their Chromosome 17, it would be with someone who is a Rathfelder or Rathfelder ancestor. If I have a maternal match with anyone in that area, it would be with a Lentz or Lentz ancestor. This is quite helpful to know.

My mom’s Spengel descendant match will also help in updating my family’s Kitty Munson Chromosome Map. However, before I do that, I will want to confirm which Rathfelder is the common ancestor between my mom and her new match.

Summary and Conclusions

I’m grateful that this Rathfelder match showed up as one of AncestryDNA’s 2 million customers
I may have been able to find out the same information in the first part of the blog leading up to the Rathfelder common ancestor without using gedmatch.
Gedmatch gave me more confidence in where to look. I knew I needed to look for Rathfelder ancestors in Hirschenhof.
I wouldn’t be able to map any DNA without gedmatch. AncestryDNA does not tell me on what Chromosomes that I match. For me, this is where a lot of the fun is in genetic genealogy.
This genetic match has pointed out a some holes in my genealogy. In order to nail down these DNA matches, one has to also nail down the genealogy and include many siblings.
I didn’t have either Wilhelmina Rathfelder in my genealogy, so this helped improve my Rathfelder genealogy.
The Spengel descendant didn’t know of any Rathfelder or Hirschenhof ancestry, so that has helped my mom’s match learn more about their genealogy.
I am grateful for AncestryDNA in supplying the match; I am grateful for the match in posting to gedmatch; I am grateful for gedmatch; I am grateful for the Raduraksti web site; and lastly I am grateful for my German cousin with Hirschenhof Rathfelder roots for helping me to understand the Church Registers.

June 15, 2016April 13, 2017

Nicholson DNA

Great news. My 3rd cousin, Joan, who is a Nicholson, posted her 1st cousin once removed, Carol’s DNA to Gedmatch.com. Carol is also a Nicholson descendant and my mother’s 2nd cousin.

This does 3 things:

Improves my Chromosome mapping a la Kitty Munson
Identifies my DNA by grandparent that I have mapped as per the Kathy Johnston method
Creates a great link to the Nicholson side of the family that has been lost over the years.

In addition, these matches between Carol and my family are all higher than average. So even though my sisters and I are 2nd cousins once removed to Carol, we have about the amount of shared DNA to make us look like 2nd cousins.

William Nicholson born 1836 Sheffield England and Martha Ellis His Wife: Our Common Ancestors

The common ancestors between Joan, Carol, my mother Gladys, me and my 2 sisters are William Nicholson and Martha Ellis.

Judy and Joshua have tested also, but they are from both the Lentz and Nicholson side. Joan and Carol are helpful in that our only connection is Nicholson. That is the advantage of testing 2nd cousins. They usually can limit your matches to one of your 4 grandparents – or in this case, one of my mother’s 4 grandparents.

A Brief Sketch of William Nicholson

I am happy to have a photo of William. William was born in Sheffield, England in 1836. Working conditions were deplorable in Sheffield at this time. William’s father died in 1840 when William was 4. According to the newspaper, “On Thursday the 30th April, after a severe indisposition, aged 41, Mr. Matthew Nicholson, late of Suffolk road, leaving a numerous family to lament their loss.” The family was numerous with 12 children. William was number ten. William’s mother Martha made some money operating a beerhouse. Beerhouses were promoted at this time in England to counteract the effects of drunkenness due to gin consumption. This article was written about a year and a half after William’s father Matthew died:

William married Martha Ellis in 1854. William didn’t manufacture pen knives like the older generation but manufactured saws. He had 4 children in Sheffield, England between 1860 and 1869. After the Nicholson’s made the big move, he had 3 more children born in Philadelphia between 1871 and 1879. In Philadelphia he continued with his saw making skills. William’s wife Martha died in 1887. William married Emma Gardiner and had 2 more daughters. William died in 1919 in Philadelphia at age 83 – more than twice the age of his father when he died in Sheffield. I think William made a good decision to leave those unhealthy work conditions in Sheffield.

Updating My Chromosome Map

Here is what the DNA of my ancestors looks like mapped out:

My mother’s side is on the bottom of each chromosome bar. The DNA I got from the Nicholsons only is in light yellow. The light yellow also represents the DNA matches I have with Joan and her first cousin once removed Carol. Note on Chromosome 18 that the color goes from orange to yellow. There, the DNA I got is switching from my mother’s father’s side (Rathfelder) to my mother’s mother’s side (Nicholson).

Mapping My Chromosomes a la Kathy Johnston

I have also mapped my chromosomes using a method developed by Kathy Johnston. This method compares the matches that I have with my 2 sisters. From this, I can figure out how I inherited each of my 4 grandparents’ DNA. However, to distinguish the 4 grandparents, I need to have reference points. Carol’s DNA matches with me and my sisters provided many of those reference points for my mother’s mother’s side of the family. Where before on many chromosomes, I only knew I had maternal grandparent 1 or 2, now I know that they are Rathfelder or Lentz. [My Lentz grandmother’s mother was a Nicholson.]

For example, here is the same Chromosome 18:

My Chromosome is the bottom one. The other two are for my sisters. I match Carol from 71-74. So that confirms that the orange segment on the bottom right is from my mother’s Lentz side. And then more specifically through my mother’s mother’s Lentz mother’s Nicholson side. This change at positions 71 from green to orange on my mother’s father’s side to my mother’s mother’s side corresponds to the actual previous Kitty Munson DNA map where the color went from orange to light yellow.

There will be more time to look at Nicholson DNA in the future. For right now, I am glad that DNA has brought back together a family that settled in the Philadelphia area from Sheffield, England in 1870. My mom has only mentioned fond memories of her Nicholson grandmother. Those included Annie Nicholson Lentz’ cooking abilities and bringing my mom to church as a child. I expect other Nicholson branches have similar great memories.

June 13, 2016April 13, 2017

My Hartley Big Y Results: Part One

Back before I got my Big Y results, I wrote an article called My Hartley YDNA. This covered issues relating to Hartley SNPs and STRs. As many know, the Big Y is the ultimate Family Tree DNA product for testing the YDNA that is passed down from father to son since the beginning of such passing down of YDNA. While other YDNA tests identify existing STR and SNP markers, it is the purpose of the Big Y to look at one’s DNA and discover new SNPs.

Hartley Big Y Testees

As far as I know there are a total of 3 Hartley Big Y testees – including me. I am correctly but awkwardly saying testees as the testers are those in the lab testing the DNA. I may slip back to the more comfortable ‘tester’ at some point.

William on the I Line

The first Hartley to have the Big Y is William who is the Hartley DNA administrator. He is in the I Haplogroup. In the old nomenclature, he would be along the line of I1a2a1a2. I1 and I2 are the main I branches and are extremely distantly related to other known Hartleys – at least by YDNA. Other Hartleys so far tested have been R1b. I agree with what William says about his connection to other Hartleys:

My last common [I1] ancestor was about 1,800 years ago and also likely an Angle [Anglo-Swedish Angle]. So that commonality may be why we both later adopted the Hartley surname and both our ancestries are found around Yorkshire and Lancashire.

I added the I1 in brackets for clarification.

The second Hartley Testee: James Hartley ancestor – R1b-S1051

The second Hartley testee was more closely related than the I1 Haplogroup. We are both in the R1b group. Further, we are both in the L21 group. This group has sometimes been associated with the Celts. L21 is also associated with the older peoples that lived in the British Isles prior to the arrival of Vikings, Anglo Saxons and Normans. However, our common ancestor was likely 1,000’s of years ago. The second Hartley testee is in a tiny branch called S1051 which I have pointed out with a red arrow. I am in the gold regions of L513 a few steps up from S1051

This chart is from July 2015. I believe that it is no longer updated as it has gotten so crowded due to Big Y testing. There are 151 people in the R-S1051 Project. According to the R-S1051 Project web page:

Recently many new SNP’s have been discovered for this unique haplogroup which is located below DF13.

The majority of this family group have 5 main Patriarch SNP’s (S1051, FGC9655, FGC9661, FGC9658 and FGC9657). The current age estimate for these Patriarch SNP’s is approximately 3,200 to 4,500 years old and likely originated within what is known as the Bell Beaker culture. When examining other haplogroups of a similar age the S1051 people are very few by comparison.

Evidence suggests that the geographic origin of this family group could have been from what is now modern Scotland.

Our fellow Hartley Big Y testee #2 is on the FGC9655 Line. Here is my attempt to spray paint out the IDs below on the Alex Williamson Big Tree:

It looks like our Hartley has the most Big Y company in the R-S1051 Group. The belief is also that the Hartleys came from the North of England originally. This theory that this S1051 group was from Scotland originally would tend to support the Northern UK origins of the Hartleys. Brewer in the reddish color has not been analyzed yet, so things are still developing in the FGC9655 SNP Group.

That is a good segue into my results. I called this blog Part One because, like Mr. Brewer, my results have not been analyzed yet either. Due to all the Big Y testing recently, there has been a bit of a backlog in analyzing the results.

The Third Testee (Me) – R-L513

I already knew where I was on the L513 Chart. Now, due to the fact that I have taken the Big Y test, I am listed on the top part of the tree. This is like being elevated to YDNA Heaven.

Here is a closer up shot:

I am hoping that other Hartleys will test and find to be positive for Z17911. Like Hartley Big Y Tester #2, I am in the Big Tree. Unlike Tester #2, my data has not been analyzed by Alex Williamson, so I am still shown in a reddish color. This time I’ll erase the kit numbers for privacy:

Way at the top, there is Smith. He is positive for a SNP named Z16357. All the other names share the Z16357 SNP with Smith. Smith does not share Z16343 and the block of other SNPs listed below with Hay(e)s, Pillsbury, Merrick, Thomas and Hartley. The tree portion above shows that Hay(e)s is down from the Pillsbury Line. Merrick, Thomas and Hartley have only 2 named SNPs: Z17911 and Z17912. A few other observations:

If one is positive for Z16343, then they are likely positive for most or all of the other SNPs listed in the Z16343 block
There is no one currently that is positive for Z16343 that isn’t also either Z17911 or Z16855
If we maintain the 150 years per SNP, then the block of about 25 SNPs in the Z16343 block could represent 3,750 years. There are some detailed reasons why that number of years could be less. However, it is still a long amount of time.

Public SNPs, Private SNPs, Terminal SNPs

But wait, there’s more. There are different categories of SNPs with different names. The terminology can get confusing. A terminal SNP means the last SNP on your line that you could be based on current knowledge. For me, that is Z17911. However, what was terminal in the past, what is terminal now and what may be a terminal SNP in the future are different things.

Public SNPs are those SNPs with listed names such as Z17911 or those in the block under Z16343. These are also a moving target. At one time, these SNPs were just position numbers.

Private SNPs are those that are not yet public SNPs or may be family SNPs. Family SNPs are those that just belong to a single family name – probably within a genealogical time frame. So, if your genealogy goes back 350 years, there could be on average 3 SNPs during that time. Those would be considered family SNPs.

Novel Variants and unique SNPs

FTDNA reports Novel Variants. In my Big Y test, I have 30 Novel Variants listed. Those that are not shared by anyone else would be considered my unique or private SNPs. Note that this definition of Private SNPs bumps up against the Private SNP definition that I had above which was a family SNP. This means that either I have it wrong or there are 2 different ways of looking at Private SNPs.

Here is a screen shot from an excellent video called,

Building a Family Tree with SNPs, STRs, & Named People (Maurice Gleeson)

Hopefully the above diagram simplifies my complicated explanation.

The Mike Walsh L513 Discovery Spreadsheet

I am fortunate to be in the R-L513 Haplogroup with Mike Walsh as an administrator. He is very active in that group looking for new people to further test and for people who aren’t in the group already but perhaps should be due to the signature of their STR tests. He has developed a Discovery spreadsheet based on the Big Y results – specifically from the VCF files. VCF stands for Variant Call Format. Here is part of his file for my little piece of the YDNA world which includes Hay(e)s, Pillsbury, Thomas, Merrick and Hartley.

Here we have the SNP position number. The H is the YDNA group based on STRs. The status looks to be Public consistent, public semi-consistent, multi-family surname or single family surname. These statuses are analogous to the public and private SNPs that I was mentioning above. Grade is how good the SNP is. Frequency is how many times it occurs – in this case out of the 6 people in the test group. Then the results are colored according to the grade and other factors for Hayes, Pillsbury, Hartley, Merrick and Thomas. Note that the SNPs with poor grades were never named. They are just position numbers.

Z17911

Here is the second page of the Discovery Spreadsheet:

The blanks are no-reads. These would be inconclusive. Red means that there was a read, but the SNP was not present. This shows that for the Z17911 and Z17912 SNPs, Hayes and Pillsbury were negative and Hartley, Merrick and Thomas were positive. That is how these two groups separated ways and are on different branches of the L513 SNP Tree.

Does the Spreadsheet tell us anything new?

When Mike first added me to his spreadsheet, he noted the following:

This isn’t on the Big Tree but Merrick and Thomas have this which you do not have:
19581481-G-A

Here is the unnamed SNP Mike mentioned that I don’t have:

Note that Hayes, Pillsbury and Hartley are negative for 19581481 and Thomas and Merrick are positive for it. This was a little different than the Z17911 above. It appears that 1951481 at the bottom of my screen capture may become a named SNP for Merrick and Thomas and put them in a branch below me. So perhaps my Big Y has helped someone else after all. Perhaps the next Big Y tester will in this region will help me out.

The YFull Analysis

While I am waiting for Alex Williamson’s analysis, I am also waiting for a YFull analysis. This is a company in Russia that will look at the BAM file from the Big Y test. They will add my results to their YFull tree. They also give estimated dates to my SNPs. Finally, they will, as a lesser priority, find STRs that they can extract from the Big Y test. The only downside is a small fee and that I will only be compared to others that are in the YFull system.

June 6, 2016April 13, 2017

Looking for Frazer DNA in All the Right Places

In my last Blog on Frazer DNA, I summarized all the Frazer Triangulation Groups (TGs) that I knew about. Since that time, I ordered a Big Y test for myself. I also wrote some blogs on the DNA of my wife’s Dicks family from Newfoundland. I used a more methodical way of looking for TGs with the Dicks family. Also I was able to conclude more about the TGs that I did find. As a result, I thought that I would take a fresh look at the Frazer TGs.

Summary of the Previous Frazer TG Summary

There were 11 TGs
14 people were in those 11 TGs
Those 11 TGs represented 7 groups. Those 7 groups were 7 different Frazer ancestors – or ancestral couples that were born between about 1690 and 1803. These Frazer ancestors were mostly on the Archibald Line. However, one TG was believed to represent the founding father of the Frazers in Ireland. He was Archibald Frazer born about 1690.

New and Improved Frazer TG Analysis

This time I looked at some of the extra people that have been shown to match our group, but aren’t sure where their Frazer ancestors fit in. I compared all the project Frazer descendants in a Gedmatch utility called Multiple Kit Analysis. I downloaded those results into a spreadsheet. That resulted in 1280 segment matches between all those that tested. I have 27 testees in the current study. I left out daughters as their mothers (Charlotte, Vivien and Clyde) had the better DNA for analysis.

archibald Line testees

Bill
Pat
Gladys
Heidi
Joel
Sharon
Paul
Michael
Jane
Ros
Cathy
Doug
Vivien
David

James Line Testees

Prudence
Charlotte
Mary
Jonathan
Janet
Joanna
Judith
Bonnie
Beverly
Clyde

Testees unsure of their frazer ancestry

Karen
CA
Jenn
Melissa
Stephanie

The Ground Rules For the Frazer Triangulation Groups

As I mentioned above, I didn’t include any children where the parent would provide as good or better DNA
I didn’t include siblings in a Triangulation Group. I used them individually, but not together. So for example, there are 2 sets of 3 siblings in the project. They would obviously triangulate with their own parents as common ancestors. Or if 2 siblings’ DNA matched another person in the group, I would not count that as a TG. The reasoning is that siblings all get their DNA from their parents and they are treated collectively as one person for the purposes of triangulating.
I did use niece/nephew to aunt/uncle relationships in triangulating. The reasoning here is that they are getting their DNA from different sources. I found in the previous study that I did, very often the niece would be in the TG and the aunt wouldn’t, for example.

And the answer is:

Rather than go through every TG individually, I will just give the final answer.

Now I’m up to 29 TGs from a previous 11 TGs
Due to overlapping TGs in different generations of ancestors, there were 2 TGs that I counted in my previous analysis that I didn’t count here.
There are 24 People in these TGs
The Frazer TGs are indicated in green
Blue could be McMaster TGs – which is confusing as my McMaster ancestor had a Frazer grandmother
Pink could be Price TGs. The only people in these TGs descend from George Frazer b. 1858 and Susanna Price.
There are 5 groups of people.
- The first descend from Richard Frazer b. 1777 (or from his brother Philip, but for simplicity, I left him out)
- The second group descend from Richard Frazer b. 1777 or from Archibald Frazer b. 1778. These people have ancestors in both groups.
- The 3rd group descends from Archibald Frazer b. 1778
- The 4th group are not sure of their Frazer descent
- The 5th group descend from the James Line of Frazers.
Note that TG01A is probably an Archibald/Stinson TG. This is because Vivien descends from Archibald and not Richard. That brings Michael and Jane (who descend from either Richard or Archibald) into Vivien’s Archibald camp.
TG01B is probably a Richard 1777 TG. This uses the same logic. Heidi and Paul descend from Richard and not Archibald, so they pull Michael and Jane into the Richard camp.
Other TGs’ ancestors can be guessed at using the same reasoning
Where there are people in a Richard 1777 TG there are not people in an Archibald 1778 TG and vice versa. This makes sense as people in those 2 groups descend from either Richard or Archibald.
TG12 is popular with 7 people in this group.

Highlighting Some James Line TGs

tg02A & TG02B – Paul, Heidi, Sharon, Jonathan and Stephanie

Jonathan had a small match that put him in the first of these 2 TGs:

Here there are 2 TGs, but they are difficult to see. The first one I didn’t have before as it required me to lower the thresholds for Jonathan’s match to Paul. So the first TG includes Paul, Heidi, Sharon and Jonathan. The second TG, I didn’t have in my previous TGs, because I didn’t include Stephanie. She is in the second Triangulation Group and Paul is out. On my first chart, I have these 2 TGs in blue as they may go back to my McMaster ancestor (whose grandmother was a Frazer)

TG15B – Charlotte, Mary, and Paul

Here, I noticed that Charlotte and Mary matched. This was not surprising as they are aunt and niece. Also Charlotte and Paul matched. However, I wasn’t showing a match between Mary and Paul which would make the last link of the TG. I lowered the thresholds between Mary and Paul and found the missing link. In my master chart, I show this TG in blue as this could also be a McMaster match. This is combined with the fact that Charlotte has an X match with my 2 sisters. The X cannot travel from a father to a son, so is not a good indication of a male line (in this case the Frazer Line). However, as shown in the Ancestry tree of my grandmother above, there could be an X connection between my sisters and Charlotte to a Frazer via the McMaster Line. Paul would not have this same X match as he got his X Chromosome from his non-Frazer mother and no X from his Frazer father.

TG17 – Doug, Bonnie and Beverly

Here, again, I lowered the threshold and found that Beverly and Doug did match, forming a TG. I don’t know if Doug has any ancestors along the Knott line, but there are many other possibilities where these 2 families could match up including Archibald Frazer born about 1690.

Richard 1777 or Archibald 1778?

Here is an interesting TG. It is made up of Bill, Gladys and Jane. As far as we know, these 3 are both descended from both Richard and Archibald. However, look at the details:

Here it is important to note who isn’t in the TG as well as who is. Cathy and Michael match, but are not in the TG – even though they match on a segment where they could be in the TG. Cathy is the only one out of the 5 above that does not potentially descend from Richard Frazer born 1777. This means that the Michael/Cathy match would be on the Archibald/Stinson Line. This further means that the TG with Bill, Gladys and Jane is more likely to be on the Richard Frazer Line.

In a less likely scenario, perhaps Michael and Cathy only got the Stinson DNA and Bill/Gladys/Jane and Michael got only Frazer DNA. Or vice versa. The last scenario would be difficult to prove unless one group matched a Stinson who wasn’t related to a Frazer. Nothing is easy.

And Finally, the Puzzling TG09A-D

TG09A & B don’t look too complicated:

They look like the standard Bill/Gladys/Pat [Frazer/Price] TGs. However, adding in TG09 C & D:

It looks like there is a blue TG nested inside the gold TG. Then inside them both is a non-TG match between Ros and Vivien which is on a different line – the John Parker Frazer (born 1827) Line.

A closer look at Chromosome 9: Sharon, Paul, Pat and Gladys

Here is Sharon’s Chromosome 9 map. She is on the first row. I am on the second row and my other sister Heidi is on the third.

Sharon’s DNA is represented by the top orange/purple bar. I show her with no crossovers. I also show that she received her paternal (top bar) and maternal (bottom bar) grandmothers’ DNA intact. Now Sharon’s Frazer grandmother got her DNA from her 4 grandparents. These would be: Frazer, McMaster, Clarke, and Spratt. Paul only matches with Frazer and McMaster. Bill, Gladys and Pat only match with Frazer.

Note that Bill and Gladys and Pat and Gladys match from about 1-90. This would indicate a large chunk of DNA that they inherited from George Frazer, born 1858. Then out of that large chunk, George got his DNA from his 4 grandparents. In this case, two of his 4 grandparents were first cousins, Violet and James Frazer.

Let’s follow Sharon’s matches down the list.

From 4-9, she matches Paul and is not in the TG with Bill, Gladys and Pat
From 38-78, she is in a TG with Paul and Karen. These 2 matches could be a McMaster match as Sharon, Paul, Karen are not matching Bill, Gladys or Pat in this segment
From 18-23, she matches her sister Heidi, but this is a non-Frazer maternal match
From 85-90, she is in a TG with Pat and Gladys. Their common ancestors are James Frazer and Violet Frazer.
So, even though Sharon could have matched Bill, Gladys and Pat from 0-90 where they had a large match with each other, she didn’t. She only matched them starting at location 85. Something happened there. This is the precise point where I surmise that she went from matching on the McMaster Line to the Frazer Line.

This is how it could look mapped out on Chromosome 9

Notes:

Sharon appears to have all her Chromosome 9 from her Frazer grandmother
Pat and Gladys match from 12-90. They are also in a TG which would indicate by itself a common ancestor of either George Frazer b. 1858 or his wife Susanna Price. As Bill and Gladys also match between 1-90, I could have shown the purple segment as going further to the left.
However, Sharon is in a a TG on a portion of this same DNA segment (see the red above). That red TG identifies Gladys’ purple segment above as being Frazer and not Price. The common ancestors between Gladys and Sharon in red are James Frazer or Violet Frazer. I drew the red to the 100 mark as Gladys and Sharon match each other from 85 to 100.
Sharon matches Paul from 22-86. However, this match does not match with Gladys in the same area of her Chromosome 9 where we have established she has a long Frazer DNA segment. Sharon and Paul have as common ancestors George Frazer b. 1838 and Margaret McMaster. As Sharon and Paul don’t match Gladys in this Frazer region of Gladys’ DNA segment, the match between Paul and Sharon must be through the McMaster side. There aren’t any other options left. [See the chart below.]
Violet Frazer descends from Richard Frazer. As there are no other matches of Richard Frazer descendants in this [red] TG, it would be more likely that the common ancestor is James Frazer, Violet’s first cousin.

Here is how the red TG09D looks like on the Frazer Chart:

I don’t have any photos of James and Violet Frazer, but here is their house in Derrycastle (or Derrycashel) Roscommon:

My cousin, James Frazer and my wife were checking out the front doorway in 2004. Without the help of my Frazer relatives in Ireland, I would not have been able to locate this house.

A brief note on the importance of triangulation groups

In my blogs, I tend to put a lot of emphasis on Triangulation Groups. They are important, but especially so for relationships where we have little to no paper documentation. When I first found Bill as a relative, I had to convince him that we were related. I was only really guessing as I didn’t have definitive proof myself. Now, with DNA, we see that my guesses were accurate.

TGs have less importance where the relationships are known and documented. It is interesting that Bill, Gladys and Pat are in TGs, but whether they are or if they just match singly, they already know how they are related to each other. The same is true of Vivien and Ros in my last example. They are not in a TG with each other on Chromosome 9, but they know that they are related and who their common ancestors are.

Summary and Conclusions

My recent work with my wife’s Newfoundland side of the family resulted in many more TGs than I had found in the Frazer DNA Project. Many of those TGs resulted from Aunt and Uncle relationships. Armed with that information and looking at the Frazer Project matches in a more methodical way, I found many more TGs
I also found some TGs where there were 2 people in a triangle and a third didn’t match. By lowering the thresholds at gedmatch.com, it became clear whether the third person would match the other 2 or not.
By looking at who is and isn’t in the TGs, as well as looking at nested TGs, it is possible to make educated guesses of which ancestors a TG represents. This comes in especially handy when a TG that could be from more than one Frazer Line.
Only 4 people in the project did not triangulate. They are Judith, Joanna, Prudence and Clyde – all from the James Line. That may be due to the fact that the relationships tend to be more distant in that Line. Also there are no known Frazer cousin marriages in that line. One other person in the unknown group, Melissa, did not triangulate.

May 26, 2016April 13, 2017

More on the DNA of the Dicks/Burton Line of Newfoundland

The Dicks Family DNA Project has a new person who has uploaded her DNA results to gedmatch. Her name is Kirsten. Kirsten is part of the Dicks/Burton Line. In this Blog, I would like to look at how her DNA compares to the other Dicks descendants that have tested their DNA. I am also interested in her Burton Line as my wife’s great Aunt Esther had a great grandmother named Margaret Burton. Then I would like to sum up the Triangulation Groups (TGs) found so far. These TGs are important as they indicate common ancestors.

Kirsten and Denise

I looked at Denise’s DNA in a previous Blog: DNA from the Dicks/Burton Line of Newfoundland

The above chart shows that Denise and Kirsten are 4th cousins once removed on the Burton Line. Here is a brother of one of Kirsten’s ancestors. Meet Heber Burton, brother of Martha Burton who was born 1878.

I am grateful that Martha was willing to share this photo taken 90 years ago by her grandfather at Harbour Buffet, Newfoundland.

Here is what Family Tree DNA uses for the chances that Kirsten and Denise will match each other. It looks like their chances of matching are only a little better than 30% as a 4th cousin once removed would be halfway between 4th and 5th cousin.

When I compare Denise to Kirsten at Gedmatch at the default settings, I get no match. This is no cause to worry, as they have a two in three chance of not matching.

Comparing Kirsten to All the Descendants of Christopher Dicks b. 1784

Next, I will look at how Kirsten compares to the other 10 Christopher Dicks Descendants in this DNA Project. So far all the project members have been in at least one TG. Will Kirsten be any different?

When I put all the names in my favorite DNA utility, Gedmatch, these 11 people match each other 446 times. These are not all Dicks matches, but as we have pre-selected Dicks descendants, a majority of these matches should represent DNA passed down from Christopher Dicks and his wife Margaret to their many descendants.

Kirsten matches Christopher Dicks descendants 9 times. She matches:

Sandra on the Dicks/Thomas Line
Molly who is on both the Dicks/Joyce and Dicks/Cran Lines
Joan and Esther are on the Christopher Dicks b. 1812 Line
Judy and Wallace are on the Dicks/Joyce Line

So Kirsten matches on a good number of Dicks Lines.

Next I’ll look at each of the above Chromosomes individually.

Chromosome 2 – A new TG found

This is interesting. See that Kirsten matches Sandra and Molly. If Sandra and Molly matched each other, we would have a TG. I’ll check Gedmatch again using the one to one utility between Molly and Sandra.

In order to find the match between Molly and Sandra that I was looking for, I had to go way below Gedmatch thresholds – down to 3 cM and 300 SNPs. This is not always advised, but in this situation it worked out. It may be difficult to see in the previous chart, but Sandra and Molly only had a small opening where they could match between 145 and 151 and that is where they matched each other.

Notice above that Wallace and Kenneth are not in the TG. This means they match on a non-Dicks Line which is their George Miller ancestor. Here is a somewhat complicated view of the matches:

Here the TG is shown in circles and lines. Wallace and Kenneth are in the blue circles with their Miller common ancestor. Marilyn doesn’t match Wallace and Kenneth here, but she wouldn’t anyway as she does not descend from the Miller line. That means that her part of the TG could be from the pink line or the red line on the right. If Marilyn had matched Wallace and Kenneth, that would prove that she matched on the Dicks/Joyce Line. The fact that she doesn’t match means that she matches Sandra and Kirsten either on the Dicks/Joyce Line or the Dicks/Cran Line. It gets complicated, so that is why I chart these matches where I can see them.

Chromosome 9 – A new TG found

I’m ready for an easier Chromosome after the previous one.

Yes, it is simple. Here Kirsten is in a TG with my mother in law Joan and Joan’s 1/2 Aunt Esther. As Joan has no known descent from the Burton Line, this would be the Dicks DNA coming down from Christopher Dicks b. 1784 and his wife Margaret. I went below the TG to show that Joan also matches Kirsten at a higher position [124-133]. This is one of the many cases where Joan has inherited more of the known Dicks DNA than her Aunt has. At position 123 or 124 Esther switches off from matching Joan to matching Nelson. That match is likely on Esther’s maternal side where she doesn’t match Joan but has another Dicks ancestor.

There are 2 Chromosomes to go.

chromosome 15 – Another new tg

Here, Kirsten is in a TG with Wallace and Judy from position 69 to 88. Wallace and Judy are in another TG described in a previous Blog with Joan from 88 to 93. There were actually 2 other Chromosome 15 TGs mentioned in that Blog. Here is the third TG with Kirsten at Chromosome 15:

chromosome 21 – Using dicks NOn-TGs to find non-dicks matches

Here there are no TGs and probably no Dicks DNA. These are all the matches of people in the Dicks DNA Project at Chromosome 21.

I will give my guesses on these matches:

Sandra/Nelson – their Adams Line
Judy/Wallace – their Lewis Line
Kirsten/Esther – this would be Esther’s maternal line which has Dicks and Burton. Esther’s maternal great grandmothers are Margaret Burton and Jane Ann Dicks b. about 1841. As other Dicks descendants aren’t jumping in on this match, my first guess would be that this is a Burton match.
Esther/Joan – probably on the Upshall Line
Judy/Wallace – more of their Lewis Line

Summary of All the TGs Found So Far

I mentioned that I found 3 new TGs in this Blog alone. I would like to sum up all the TGs to date. The dark green are for Henry Dicks b. 1774. Raspberry is the non-Dicks TG.

May 25, 2016April 13, 2017

Another Dicks in the Mix

So far, we have 10 people that have genealogies descending from Christopher Dicks b. 1784. They all triangulate in one way or another which is a good indication that their genealogies are correct and that their common ancestors are Christopher Dicks and his wife Margaret. That has gone so well, why not get a little wild and try something more difficult?

Henry or Harold Dicks born around 1774

As I was traipsing around the internet, I came upon another Dicks who was born around the time of Christopher Dicks. His name was entered in genealogies as a Henry and/or Harold Dicks b. around 1774. I took some of these genealogies of people that had tested their DNA and mushed them together and got the 4 lines on the left below:

In my chart, I assumed that Henry was Christopher’s older brother and that they both had a father named Christopher. The names in pink I thought might be worth looking into as they looked so similar. There are 4 lines of people that have tested their DNA descending from this Henry Dicks line. One of them appears to be on Gedmatch, though I have not had further contact with this person. Her name is Crystal and she descends from the 2nd Crewe Line above.

Further, I have been in touch with Eric who believes that he descends from this line, but is not sure how. His ancestors were from Lamaline.

Eric said that Henry Dicks moved his family to Burgeo in 1820. I noticed a lot of the Henry Dicks descendants mentioned Burgeo in their ancestry.

Dicks DNA Goals for This Blog

In this blog I’ll try to answer the following questions:

Does Eric’s DNA show that he descends from the Dicks family?
Does DNA show that Harold and Christopher Dicks were brothers?

eric and crystal

First, I’ll compare Crystal to Eric at Gedmath. Crystal is the one who I think also has a tree on Ancestry showing descent from Henry Dicks. Eric thinks he likely descends from the same person. Here is how Crystal and Eric’s DNA compare:

They have a small match out at almost 8 generations which is a long way out.

Crystal and the Christopher Dicks descendants

Next, I’ll compare Crystal to all the people that descend from Christopher Dicks at Gedmatch. These are the people that I have already compared in the Dicks DNA Project. Here is where Crystal matches those people:

She has single matches with Molly, Wallace and Kenneth. Perhaps more importantly, she matches both Esther and Joan, forming a Triangulation Group. Here is a diagram of her matches.

The single matches are shown as circles without lines. Marilyn had 2 chances of matches as she descends from 2 Dicks Lines. I have her 2 possible matches to Crystal in light purple. The Triangulation Group on Chromosome 5 indicates a common ancestor which appears to be the father of Henry and Christopher Dicks. Out of the 10 Christopher Dicks descendants with DNA results, Crystal matches half. The relationships are pretty far out. They range from 4th cousin, 3 times removed to 6th cousin, once removed.

More on Crystal’s tg

Even though Crystal does not descend from Christopher Dicks, her TG seems to tell us something about 2 Christopher Dicks descendants: Molly and Kenneth.

Notice that Molly and Kenneth match each other in the area of Crystal’s TG 5 [at position 76 to 122]. But they aren’t part of TG 5 which indicates a Dicks ancestor. That means that the DNA Molly and Kenneth share is likely from their common ancestor James Joyce and not his wife Rachel Dicks b. 1817. Conversely, if Molly and Kenneth were in TG 5 that would mean that the DNA that they shared would be Dicks DNA through Rachel Dicks.

eric and the Christopher Dicks descendants

Now to get to Eric’s question. Let’s see how he compares to known Dicks descendants and Crystal. I’ll compare everyone to everyone else that I’ve compared so far. This is analogous to ordering an everything pizza.

Again, there are singleton matches with Molly and Esther on Chromosomes 1, 4 and 18. In addition, there are multiple matches at Chromosomes 1 and 4 which could indicate Triangulation Groups. Those are the pots of gold that we are looking for.

eric’s TG 1with joan and esther

Here the part in gold is the TG. The other matches of Sandra, Nelson, Wallace, Judy and Molly likely represent non-Dicks Line ancestors.

Is there a tg 4?

It would seem like a TG at Chromosome 4 would tie everything together between Eric and Crystal.

Unfortunately, to have a TG here, Crystal and Sandra would have to match each other and they don’t. However, this looks close to a TG.

What Did I Just Do? Did I Prove What I Set Out To?

Does Eric’s DNA show that he descends from the Dicks family? PROBABLY
Does DNA show that Henry and Christopher Dicks were brothers? MORE PROBABLY

Let’s look at Eric. From what I understand, he believes that he may descend from Henry Dicks, due to Henry’s living in Lamaline prior to 1820. This is tied to the fact that Eric’s family was also from Lamaline at the same period. Eric is in a TG with my mother in law Joan and her 1/2 Aunt Esther. Eric also matches others from the Dicks DNA project. In addition, he matches Crystal who has posted that she descends from Henry Dicks. Perhaps I should have rated this “MORE PROBABLY”. The other option is that all the matches are from other unknown relatives, or a mixture of unknown relatives.

I feel like Henry and Christopher Dicks were brothers. We have triangulation with Crystal who descends from Henry Dicks. Again, there is a possibility that the triangulation is with an unknown ancestor. However, I would like to think that the triangulation is with the known Dicks family. I would like to see others that have tested their DNA with paper trails leading to Henry Dicks upload to Gedmatch. That would give me more confidence in proving the connection with the 2 brothers.

May 24, 2016April 13, 2017

DNA from the Dicks/Burton Line of Newfoundland

Dicks DNA Project Background

The purpose of the Dicks DNA Project, so far, has been to find descendants of the Dicks Family of Newfoundland that have tested for DNA and uploaded their results to Gedmatch. These results have been compared to confirm the genealogical research that has been done by the different Dicks families. So far those in the Study Group are:

Esther – my wife’s great Aunt from the Christopher Dicks Line b. 1812. She also descends from another Dicks Line but the lineage isn’t known for that line.
Joan – my mother in law – same line. [I didn’t include my wife as she got all of her Dicks DNA from her mom.
Sandra – from the Elizabeth Dicks/Adams Line. Elizabeth was b. 1809
Nelson – Sandra’s Uncle
Judy – from the Rachel Dicks/Joyce Line. Rachel was b. 1817
Wallace – Judy’s Uncle
Kenneth – Wallace’s 2nd cousin also from the Dicks/Joyce Line
Marilyn – She descends from the Dicks/Joyce Line and the Robert Dicks/Cran Line. Robert was b. 1824.
Forrest – She also descends from the Robert Dicks/Cran Line

All these lines mentioned above are children of Christopher Dicks who married Margaret and was b. about 1784.

The Dicks/Burton Line

To add to the above 9 Dicks descendants that come from these 4 Lines, we have another descendant named Denise whose ancestor is Frances Dicks b. 1811. Frances married Charles Burton. To complicate things, my wife’s great Aunt Esther descends from a Burton and my mother in law does not. But I may be able to sort all that out. I can almost squeeze everyone in below. I left out the Robert Dicks/Cran Line on the right of the chart.

Denise is a bit lower on the totem pole, so her DNA matches with the others may be a bit weaker. However, note that she has an extra Dicks named David that married into the Burton line. I’m not sure what Dicks family David descended from. Kirsten who is also on the Dicks/Burton Line is not yet in the project.

Let’s Compare Everyone’s DNA

Next I take everyone’s DNA and compare it with each other. The goal is to find Triangulation Groups (TGs). These are where 3 people match each other on the same part of the same Chromosome. A TG indicates a common ancestor. Usually, in this case, the common ancestor should be Christopher Dicks b. 1784 and his wife Margaret.

chromosome 2 triangulation group (TG)

Denise fits into an existing TG with Sandra, Joan and Nelson here:

For whatever reason, a lot of the Dicks DNA came down on Chromosome 2. Denise and Sandra share much more DNA than average considering they are 4th cousins twice removed. Here is what Denise’s TG looks like on the left hand side of the Dicks family Chart:

This is a great TG as it includes 3 different Dicks Lines: Elizabeth, Frances, and Christopher Dicks Lines.

a new brain teaser from an older tg

In a previous Blog, I had mentioned that there were 2 TGs in this area. The first had Joan, Sandra and Nelson. The second had Molly, Sandra and Nelson.

But in the TG with Denise above, her match with Nelson and Sandra are in the area where she should be matching with Molly (173-218). So why doesn’t she match with Molly here at 201-209?

The answer found in changing the gedmatch defaults

Usually it is not a good idea to change the defaults at Gedmatch. There are some situations where it is necessary. This is one of those situations. I lowered the thresholds at Gematch, because it didn’t make sense that Molly and Denise were not matching in this specific area of Chromosome 2. I lowered the cMs from 7 to 5 and the SNPs from 700 to 500 and here is what I found – they did match from 201 to 208:

This means that we can look at this as either one TG or two. I’ll look at it as one as that makes more sense to me right now. Joan and Molly didn’t inherit enough Dicks DNA to match each other. Joan matched at the beginning of the TG and Molly matched at the higher locations on Chromosome 2 TG. Now to draw this out:

Here I gave Joan and Marilyn lighter shades as they are on opposite ends of this larger TG. Sandra, Nelson and Denise have darker orange showing they are in the whole TG. I also have question marks on Marilyn’s lines as she is descended from 2 Dicks lines and we know that she got her Dicks DNA from one of the lines, but we don’t know which. There is an equal chance of her DNA being inherited from the Rachel or Robert Line.

Possible Burton Match

I had mentioned that Esther and Denise share Burton ancestors. I notice also that Esther and Denise have a match on Chromosome 5:

This is likely to be from the Burton family – or at least not the Dicks family – as I don’t see any of the other Dicks descendants matching in this area of Chromosome 5. In addition, even though Joan is a niece of Esther, she is a half niece and not descended from the Burton Family. I note that she also does not match Denise on Chromosome 5.

The X Factor: Dicks or Burton?

Here is a shot of Esther’s DNA match spreadsheet:

It shows that Esther has a good match with Denise on the X Chromosome. On Denise’s side this could be from the Dicks Line. The X Chromosome does not travel from father to son. Denise is descended from Christopher Dicks and in that descent, the lineage alternates between male and female. However, Esther, descends from two Christopher Dicks. This means that the X chromosome that they share could not be shared with Christopher Dicks as no X Chromosome was transferred from father to son. This leaves a good chance that the X Chromosome match could also represent the Burton line. Esther’s mother’s father’s mother was a Burton. This is the likely way that Esther got the X Chromosome that matches with Denise.

Summary and Conclusions

Denise is a great addition to the Dicks DNA Study Group and has fit into a TG like all the others in the Project even though she is further down on the Dicks Family Tree
Denise’s Chromosome 2 TG results added some confusion until I lowered the Gedmatch thresholds. Then it was clear that Denise matched Molly as she should have.
There are two areas that could have caused problems: 1) two Dicks Lines for Marilyn and; 2) Denise and Esther likely having ancestry in the Dicks and Burton Lines. However, these issues did not cause a problem here.
It is likely that the single match on Chromosome 5 that Denise and Esther share apart from the other Dicks descendants is likely from the Burton family.
X Chromosome matches give good clues to family inter-contentedness as they are only inherited in specific ways.

May 18, 2016April 13, 2017

One More Dicks Descendant; One More Triangulation Group

Recently Marilyn from the Dicks DNA Group mentioned a new person from the Dicks Line. It took me a little while to realize that this person was already on Gedmatch.com. Based on her gedmatch name, I will call her Forrest. She descends from the Robert Dicks Line. Robert Dicks was born in 1824 and married Jane Cran.

Here is a chart with Forrest on the bottom right.

The above chart shows only 2 of the children of Christopher Dicks b. 1784. There are 3 other lines represented by this DNA project.

The New TG at Chromosome 2

Chromosome 2 seems to be a Dicks DNA hot spot. In my previous Blog, I had noted 3 TGs on that Chromosome. It looks like this TG makes 4:

This TG, shown in gold, is spread out. It consists of Esther, Joan and Forrest. In between is one of the other TGs with Esther, Joan, Nelson and Sandy. Judy and Wallace are in there also, but not as a part of the TGs. As they are not matching in the TG, the DNA that they share should be from their [non-Dicks] Smith Line.

What’s going on at chromosome 2?

Here is a summary of all the Dicks TGs at Chromosome 2.

TG 2A – Esther, Joan, Nelson and Sandra
TG 2B – Esther, Joan, and Forrest
TG 2C – Joan, Sandra and Nelson
TG 2D – Nelson, Sandra and Molly (Note that Molly could be in one of two different Dicks Lines)

Chromosome 2 is quite a long one. Apparently there is room at this Chromosome for several TGs. Here are TG 2C and TG 2D from my previous Blog:

Now I will try to show the 4 TGs at Chromosome 2 with colored lines and circles:

I didn’t think that would be easy. The takeaway from this chart is:

The 2 nieces (Sandra and Joan) share a lot of DNA with their Uncle and Aunt on the left side of the chart. Two of the TGs (TG 2A and 2C) are made up of these 4 people.
For TG 2D, we can’t know for sure if this TG Marilyn that is in is from the Rachel Dicks/Joyce Line or the Robert Dicks/Cran Line. It would be one or the other, but not both.
There is always a small chance that the TG 2B could be with a non-Dicks Line. This is because we don’t know the maiden name of Esther’s great grandmother. However, as we do know that Forrest, Esther and Joan all share the same Dicks ancestor, I tend to believe that Christopher Dicks b. 1784 is the common ancestor.

Relationships and Shared DNA

Based on each relationship in the chart, there is a certain amount of expected DNA that would be shared. As these relationships go further out, there is a chance that there will be no DNA shared between, say, 5th cousins. Another way to express your relationships is in the generations to your Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCAs). For example 2nd cousins will share the same grandparents. Your grandparent is 2 generations away from you. For your aunt or uncle, they are one generation from the common ancestor and you are two generations away, so that averages out to 1.5 generations. Here is a chart from gedmatch that guesses how far away to a MRCA based on the amount of DNA shared between two people. After that number, I added the actual number of generations to the MRCA for people in the Dicks DNA Project.

I added some purple for Esther and Molly as they both have more than one known Dicks ancestor. For them, their generations to MRCA based on their gedmatch predicted DNA shared is always less than the actual relationship. One exception to this is between Esther and Joan. Esther is Joan’s half Aunt. That is where the analogy would break down as Joan would only share the DNA from Esther’s paternal side.

The darker salmon colored boxes are where there was no DNA shared at normal gedmatch defaults. This is expected at 5 generations to MRCA or more. In the chart below, a MRCA of 5 generations is equivalent to a 4th cousin.

What all this tells me is that the Dicks Ancestry Chart compared to the amount of DNA shared looks pretty good. Nothing looks out of line with what would be expected.

May 15, 2016April 13, 2017

Dicks DNA Triangulation Explosion

In my last Blog, Unraveling Some of the Dicks Family DNA from Newfoundland, I looked at several things:

I found many descending from Christopher Dicks b. 1784 from Newfoundland
These people had also tested their DNA
6 of these had also uploaded their results to gedmatch where I was able to analyze their DNA
Out of these 6 all were found to be in Triangulation Groups (TGs)
TGs are good things as they indicate a common ancestor
As all these people descended from Christopher Dicks b. 1784, I took him to be that common ancestor that the triangulated DNA pointed to.

I was a bit surprised at how successful the exercise was. Christopher Dicks helped me out a bit by fathering so many children. This has resulted in the spread of his DNA through many descendants to triangulate with each other.

Two of my goals in the previous Blog, were:

to find other Dicks descendants who had uploaded their DNA to gedmatch that I may have missed, and;
to find other Dicks descendants who hadn’t uploaded their DNA to gedmatch, but would be interested in doing so.

Within one day of writing my blog, I have easily found one person in each category above. The person in the first category is Judy. Another goal I had was to try to find more Dicks Family Genealogies for those that had uploaded to gedmatch. That happened also when I heard from Marilyn.

This study group works best for people in both these categories:

Those who have an ancestry going back to the early Newfoundland Dicks family
Those who have tested their DNA and have uploaded their results to gedmatch.com.

Judy and Marilyn’s Dicks Genealogies

Judy is someone I missed in the last Blog. She is a little further down on the Dicks Relationship Chart and further down on my Aunt Esther’s DNA match list at gedmatch.com. However, her results are important nonetheless. I was surprised that the 6 Dicks descendants from the last blog all triangulated. I was equally surprised that I found Judy to be in 4 triangulation groups. In the previous blog, I only found 5 triangulation groups with the 6 people I looked at. This speaks to the importance of having many in a DNA study group.

First, here is one of my favorite photos of Harbour Buffet, Newfoundland where some of my wife’s ancestors came from and where many in the Dicks family lived. It looks quite peaceful, but I know that many hearty souls lived there and many drowned at sea.

Here is the tree for Judy and Marilyn. The tree is starting to get bigger, so I only have the Rachel Dicks and Robert Dicks Lines. Note that Marilyn is in twice. This is because she had Dicks relatives that married. This is not that unusual. For my Frazer family in Ireland, there were many in this situation. Marilyn and I wondered why the match between her and my wife’s Aunt Esther was so high. This is because Marilyn and Esther both have Dicks in their ancestry more than once. I wrote a blog on this subject for my own Frazer family here.

Judy and Marilyn are 4th cousins, once removed to my mother in law Joan and 3rd cousins twice removed to my wife’s Aunt Esther. That means that through their common ancestor of Christopher Dicks, Judy and Marilyn have a better than 30% chance of matching with the people on Joan’s row and a 50% chance or better of matching those on Esther’s row. They are 5th cousins to each other. This usually indicates about a 10% chance of matching each other. Here are the match probabilities as posted by FTDNA:

Here is the whole chart with Marilyn added:

Let’s Re-Triangulate – Chromosome 2 TG

This one is a bit tricky. It looks like 2 TGs.

Sandra and Nelson are in both TGs. Joan is in TG 2A and Molly is in TG 2B. Kenneth and Judy didn’t make the cut. They likely match on a non-Dicks Line – probably the Miller line.

I hope that the chart above looks sufficiently confusing! Judy and Kenneth don’t triangulate but both descend from George Miller in blue above.

tg – chromosome 4

2 TG’s – chromosome 12 – Hold on to your seats

Here at Chromosome 12, a few interesting things are going on.

First, there are 2 TGs: TG 12A and 12B. Sandra and Nelson don’t match the 1st TG. That means that they must have gotten that segment of their DNA from their non-Dicks side.
Secondly, note that these 2 TGs overlap each other from about position 107 to 120.
Even though these 2 TGs, overlap, they have different people in each. That means that they must both have separate common ancestors.
Wallace, Judy and Kenneth are in a TG, but the common ancestor would be George Miller. The reason I say this is that as mentioned above, the 2 TGs overlap. In the Miller Line TG 12A, there is no match with Esther, Joan and Molly in TG 12B. If there was a match, then TG 12A would have Rebecca Joyce as a common ancestor.
Esther, Joan and Molly are in TG 12B. But does this TG go through Molly’s Dicks/Joyce Line or Dicks/Cran Line? This is assumed to be a Dicks TG.

I was actually looking for a TG between Judy, Wallace, and Kenneth and here is where it showed itself.

TG 14

This TG had Marilyn, Joan and Esther again. This would be expected due to the double Dicks ancestry that Marilyn and Esther both have. See the above diagram with the pink lines.

2 TG’s – Chromosome 15

Here again, there are 2 TGs. However, they are not overlapping TGs like the ones at Chromosome 12. The first one, TG 15A has Nelson, Kenneth and Judy. TG 15B Has Judy, Wallace and Joan. Esther is not in either TG. Where she matches with Joan likely represents Upshall DNA.

TG 16

Here is a 4 person TG.

Some of the ambiguity of Marilyn’s TGs may be resolved by finding other Dicks descendants that have tested for DNA and comparing their results to these TGs.

Finally TG 19

This TG was mentioned in the previous blog. Now it is bigger with 4 people – including Wallace’s niece Judy.

Summary of the New and Augmented TGs

It turned out that this update was longer than the original Blog – at least for the triangulating part. In the previous blog, there were 5 TGs indicating Christopher Dicks b. 1784 and his wife Margaret. Now there are 13 TGs. This gets to the triangulation explosion that I mentioned in the title.

TG12A likely represents a non-Dicks ancestor on the Joyce Line: George Miller. This is represented in a different color. However, this is good to know for those in this TG as matches in this area of Chromosome 12 will be along Miller ancestry and not Dicks ancestry.
Marilyn is represented in a different shade of green as we don’t know which line her TG’s are from. All the TGs that Marilyn are in appear to indicate her common ancestor of Christopher Dicks. We just aren’t sure which path the DNA took at this time.
This is also an issue for Esther where she is in a TG that her 1/2 niece Joan is not in. For the 2 TGs that Esther is in and Joan is not, the TG is with descendants of Elizabeth b. 1809, so that would be a possibility for the line of the Dicks ancestor with the unknown parents on Esther’s maternal side. As Esther’s maternal Dicks ancestor’s ancestry is not known, that line is not represented on the Dicks family tree chart.
Joan is in the most TGs which is a bit surprising as she is a 1/2 niece of Esther. based on this I would think she would have 1/2 or less of the matches of Esther as Esther has 2 known Dicks ancestors and Joan has one.

So far, triangulating the Dicks descendants DNA has been hugely successful. With the results of only 8 descendants, we have 13 TGs. All but one of these TGs point back to Christopher Dicks b. 1784 or his wife Margaret.

For comparison, I head up another DNA project with 27 that have tested their DNA. 9 of them have multiple Frazer ancestors and there are fewer TGs in that project than in this one. Part of the reason for that is that many of the Frazer relationships are more distant than what we have with the Dicks family.

May 12, 2016April 13, 2017

Unraveling Some of the Dicks Family DNA from Newfoundland

In my first Blog on Upshall DNA, I gave some background and made some guesses on where the related ancestors were in my wife’s Upshall Newfoundland ancestors. At that time, I came up with a family diagram that looked like this:

My wife’s grandmother Florence is represented by the lower left circle, her great Aunt Esther is the circle to the right of Florence. Florence and Esther have the same father, but different mothers. This turns out to be useful knowledge to have. That means that my mother in law, who is the daughter of Florence, will be related to Esther on the Upshall/Dicks lines but not on the Shave/Kirby lines. This is a bit complicated due to the fact, that Esther’s parents were related to each other. Gedmatch estimates that Esther had a common ancestor 4.0 generations before her. Note that, assuming my drawing above is correct, she could have a Dicks ancestor 4 generations before her. I added the question marks above as I am not positive of the relationships.

After visiting my wife’s Aunt Esther recently, I came upon an ancestry chart that she wrote up in the 1990’s.

I asked her about the father of Catherine Dicks who Esther had as Christopher Dicks, b. 1781 as that seemed old for that generation. That would put the average generations between Christopher Dicks and Esther at 49 years. She mentioned that it was possible as she knew of a man in his 60’s in Newfoundland marrying an 18 year old. Esther’s father was 49 when he had her. I also believe that this Christopher Dicks had a son Christopher, so there are other possibilities. I was ready to go with Aunt Esther’s results until I found a blog I had saved from Heather Lynn that she wrote in 2011:

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Puzzle of the Day: Christopher DICKS of Newfoundland

Christopher DICKS was born (likely in February, 1784) somewhere in England. There are competing theories concerning his origins.
He and his wife Margaret (born 1789) had at least 11 children over the course of 24 years between 1808 and 1832, born in various places around Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, including Trinny Cove, Jean de Baie, & Hay Cove.

William (1808-1894) married Mary Ann Sheave
**Elizabeth (1809 – 1892) married Thomas ADAMS in Burin 1839 (my 3rd Great-Grandmother)
Joseph (1810-abt 1857) married Mary Griffith
Frances (1811 – ) married Charles Burton
Christopher (1812- ) married Elizabeth
Henry (1815- )
Rachel (1817-1893) married James Joyce
Robert (1824-1903) married Jane Crann
Susan (1827- )
James (1830- )
George (1832-1892)

Christopher DICKS died October 24, 1845 in Harbour Buffett, Newfoundland. His wife Margaret lived until February 1867. Here is an excerpt from his will:

Secondly, All my money whether in cash or credits in Merchants Accounts as also such money as shall be and remain in the British Funds at the time of my decease, I hereby give and bequeath to my dear wife for her sole use and benefit and afterwards to be disposed of at her death as she may be inclined ~ Subject nevertheless to the following deductions, that she my said wife shall pay unto our sons James Dicks and George Dicks the sum of thirty pounds currency each at the time of my decease.
Thirdly, My fishing room situate in Harbor Beaufet with all buildings and appurtenances there unto belonging together with all boats, skiffs, punts, seines nets and all kinds of fishing craft, I hereby give and bequeath unto my four sons Christopher Dicks Junior, William Dicks, Henry Dicks, and Robert Dicks to be equally divided share and share alike in value among them.

Let’s see how this information fits in with my chart above. Based on Esther’s and Heather Lynn’s research, I come up with this chart:

Based on the chart above, it appears that Jane Ann Dicks b. 1841 (top right) could likely be the grand daughter of Christopher Dicks b. 1784 (top left).

Here is Fred Upshall in 1920 wearing a straw hat:

Here is a map of Harbour Buffet and vicinity where my wife’s Newfie ancestors hailed from. Living there, it was important to have a boat or access to one. Many living in these parts of Placentia Bay were fishermen.

More Dicks DNA

Now that I know how Aunt Esther is descended from the Dicks family, I have tried to piece together a Dicks Chart based on the blog above and family trees I’ve found at Ancestry and FTDNA. I left out one line of the Dicks line for now to simplify things. That would be the Henry/Harold Dicks Line. I think the Henry/Harold is a parallel line to the Christopher Dicks Line (perhaps a brother).

The green boxes are those that have taken DNA tests. However, not everyone has uploaded their DNA to gedmatch.com which would make comparisons easy. There are 10 DNA testers in the green boxes, but I will be looking at the 6 that have uploaded their results to Gedmatch.com.These 6 are:

Sandra
Nelson
Joan
Esther
Wallace
Kenneth

My wife’s great Aunt Esther is on the row 4 generations down from Christopher Dicks, b. 1784. So is Nelson. We already know that those 2 have high matches of DNA between them. In fact, gedmatch.com estimates that Nelson and Esther should have a common ancestor back 3.2 generations instead of 4. This is likely due to the past intermarrying on Newfoundland, which increased the amount of DNA shared.

Triangulation of Dicks DNA

The goal is to find triangulation groups. If three people all match each other on the same segment of a chromosome, that is an indication that the 3 got that DNA from a common ancestor. Actually, the real goal is to confirm that the genealogy shown in the chart above is correct [using triangulation], and that these people do indeed descend from Christopher Dicks b. 1784.

Let’s Triangulate

First I entered the 6 of the 10 testers in green above and compared them in Gedmatch.com using a utility called Multiple Kit Analysis. Then I downloaded all those matching segments into a spreadsheet and sorted them. It wasn’t long before I found a triangulation group. The first one was at Chromosome 2.

In the table above, the 2 in the first column is the Chromosome number. The next column is the start of the match. Then the end of the match location and the cM value for the match. The above is actually a triangulation group of 3 people: Esther, Joan and Nelson. Sandra didn’t match with Joan or Esther. Note also that the gedmatch utility puts in every match twice. So the first match is Joan/Esther. The second match is Esther/Joan.

I almost missed this Triangulation Group (TG) because Esther and Joan had such a large match. Here is what Esther’s Chromosome Browser looks like at Chromosome 2:

The large red line is the match between Esther and Joan. This has to represent Esther’s father Fred Upshall who descended from the Dicks family. Fred is Esther and Joan’s common ancestor. Fred had 2 wives and Esther and Joan descend from different wives. The smaller green match is between Esther and Nelson. The pink match is between Esther and Sandra but is too tiny to consider. Plus, it is out of range of the DNA match that Esther has with Nelson.

Here are the 3 that triangulated on Chromosome 2 shown on the Dicks Chart:

Five Dicks Triangulation groups

All in all, I found five Dicks triangulation groups. The second TG was also in Chromosome 2:

Note that this TG is similar to the first one except that this time Sandra is in and Esther is out.

What happened to Esther? Esther got her DNA from her 4 grandparents. That fact that Joan matches two Dicks descendants and Esther doesn’t must mean that Esther must have gotten her DNA in this part of her Chromosome 2 from her grandfather Henry Upshall and Joan got her DNA at that location from Catherine Dicks b. 1851. This is all good to know. So any paternal matches Esther has in this area of Chromosome 2 (location 171-192) where she is not matching Sandra, Nelson, and Joan would be a match along the Uphsall Line. I would like to add that Cheryl in the chart above is not counted as she tested at AncestryDNA and I don’t think that she has uploaded her results to Gedmatch.com. That means we don’t know if she triangulates with the others or not. The same is true for the person below Elizabeth that doesn’t show.

The third TG at chromosome 9

The TG at Chromosome 9 has a different apparent Dicks descendant: Kenneth.

Here I note:

This TG is from 3 different children of Christopher Dicks: Elizabeth, Christopher and Rachel.
Note that Joan is not in this TG. This could mean one of 2 things
1. She just didn’t inherit that segment of DNA or;
2. Esther’s part in the TG is through her mother’s side where she has another Dicks ancestor. I didn’t show that Dicks ancestor in the chart as I don’t know which Dicks that ancestor descended from.
Sandra and Kenneth are 4th cousins by way of their common ancestor Christopher Dicks b. 1784. There is a little better than 50% chance that they would show as a DNA match. However, having Newfoundland ancestors means that they may match on more than one line.
As Wallace is a known 2nd cousin to Kenneth, his descent from the same Dicks ancestor is inferred. Wallace just didn’t inherit the same segment of DNA that Kenneth did.

TG 11

This is just another permutation of the first TG. Note that Sandra inherited the Dicks DNA in Chromosome 11 while this same segment bypassed her uncle Nelson.

And finally, the TG at crhomosome 19

This final TG includes the last Dicks descendant who uploaded his results to Gedmatch.com: Wallace.

This group includes Christopher Dicks b. 1812 and Rachel Dicks b. 1817. Note that for any TG that Joan is in, Esther’s Dicks relationship is through her father and not her mother. This is because Joan is only a half niece to Esther on her paternal side.

Summary of TGs

Green in the box below a name means that the person is in the TG to the left:

Here is how they are related:

Disclaimer

There is always a small chance that the triangulation represents an unknown family. For example, the last name of Esther’s great grandmother Elizabeth is unknown. Also Elizabeth’s mother Margaret’s maiden name is unknown. It is possible that Wallace, for example, is actually triangulating with one of those families. However, as it is the Dicks that are in common in all these TGs, it is most likely that the Dicks are the common ancestors.

Summary, Comments and Conclusions

I am very happy to see that all 6 of the Dicks descendants that uploaded their DNA results to Gedmatch triangulated with other Dicks descendants, zeroing in on Christopher Dicks b. 1784.
Triangulation gives weight to genealogy showing common ancestors.
It is likely that other Dicks descendants are already at Gedmatch or could upload their DNA results there.
Having more Dicks descendants in the study group would improve the results and further solidify genealogies and lines of descent from common Dicks ancestors.
It should be possible to use this same triangulation technique to unravel the ancestry of other Newfoundland families.
The Dicks family was a good choice to look at as there are so many descendants from Newfoundland. Many descendants can make the genealogy confusing, but it is a plus in DNA analysis as they provide more potential to look at shared DNA and Triangulation Groups.
TGs that both Joan and Esther are in show that the Dicks DNA that Esther inherited was from her paternal side – not her maternal side. This information may be helpful in further DNA analysis.
Next step:
1. Look for more descendants that are at gedmatch or who could upload their results there;
2. Expand the triangulation to other Dicks Lines.