Category: DNA General

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

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

Here is the tree Karen has at Ancestry:

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

More on Karen and Ruby’s Genealogy

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

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

 

Minnie Gilbert

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

This shows that Minnie was living with:

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

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

 

Malcolm Hollett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Was Jessie Katie Upshall?

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

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

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

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

Karen’s Upshall DNA

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

Karen’s Match with Esther

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

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

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

Karen and Joan’s Matching DNA Segments from Gedmatch

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

Karen and Elaine’s Matching DNA Segments from Gedmatch

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

Upshall Triangulation Groups (TGs)

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

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

The proposed relationships are below:

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

TG09 was the one that pulled the two families together:

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

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

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

TG05 with Karen and Bob

 

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

Upshall or Dicks DNA?

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

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

Summary and Conclusions

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

Over the years, there have not been too many Upshall matches. So when an Upshall descendant, Bob, contacted me about a DNA match recently, that was good news. Upshall is my mother in law’s mother’s name. I had my mother in law Joan tested, her sister Elaine tested and their half Aunt Esther tested. They all descend from Upshalls.

Bob’s Family Tree

Bob tested on Family Tree DNA where I found his tree.

Bob has Upshall on his paternal side. I see a Peter and Jane A Upshall in Harbour Buffett in 1945:

Based on this couples’ age, they should have been born around 1883. This cannot be the right couple because Margaret or Maggie Upshall was born around then. I found Maggie’s 1898 wedding record and it appears that her mother’s name could have been Emma:

As Emma was 18 in 1898, that would means she was born about 1880. I do note that there was a widow Emma Upshall who married in 1894 in Harbour Buffett:

This widow would have been born about 1850. Could this be Emma Masters?

I built out Bob’s tree much like he did, except with an Emma instead of a Jenny:

Bob’s DNA at Gedmatch

Bob tested at FTDNA. Esther tested at AncestryDNA, but I uploaded her results to FTDNA where Bob found her. Bob wonders if Peter Upshall could be Henry Upshall’s brother. Henry is Esther’s grandfather. Here is a tree showing that possible scenario:

Martha’s family was highlighted in my previous Blog. The above tree is my fabrication, but in my previous Blog I gave a lot of reasons why Martha’s tree should be joined with Esther’s. In th above tree, Bob and Esther are 2nd cousins, twice removed. That means the Esther is 2nd cousins with Bob’s grandfather, but Bob is removed twice from his grandfather

I was happy to hear that Bob was willing and able to upload his results to Gedmatch for comparison. My wife’s Great Aunt Esther has a lot of new matches at gedmatch. These new matches appear in green. Bob is Esther’s 10th green match on her ‘one to many’ list of matches. Bob is about 42nd overall on Esther’s list. Here are the details of the match between Bob and Esther:

An important number is the Estimated number of generations to MRCA. At 4.0, this would be equivalent to a 3rd cousin. Above, I mentioned that Bob and Esther are 2nd cousins, twice removed. Genetically speaking, that is equivalent to a 3rd cousin relationship. So, on that level, that makes my hypothetical tree look good.

Bob’s DNA Compared to Joan and Elaine

Bob has no match with Joan. By my hypothetical tree above, Joan and Bob would be third cousins once removed. FTDNA has had this chart out for a while:

 

That tells me that there is a 70% chance that Bob and Joan should match. Or a 30% chance that they would not match.

Here is Bob’s match with Elaine:

They match, but the DNA match makes it look like a distant match.

Bob’s DNA Compared to Martha’s Family

Under my hypothetical tree, Bob and Martha would be 4th cousins. He would be third cousin once removed with Martha’s Aunt. Here is Bob’s match with Martha’s Aunt:

Based on just the MRCA, this would be close to a 3rd cousin, once removed. However, it would have been nice if there were shared matches on the same segments where Bob and Esther matched.

Bob’s Match with Martha’s Brother

Bob’s Match with Martha

What Does All This Tell Us?

To me, the evidence is inconclusive. The levels of matches between Bob, Elaine and Joan are below average for a 3rd cousin once removed relationship. However they would be within the possible ranges. Bob’s level of DNA matches with Elaine and Martha’s family are about average for what we had proposed. I feel like the person on the stand who said, “I will neither confirm nor deny…”.

Triangulation Groups (TGs)

Triangulation is when three non-siblings match on the same segment of DNA. A TG indicates a common ancestor or ancestral couple. There is triangulation between Bob and Martha’s family. There is also triangulation between Elaine, Bob and Esther at a low level. However, there is no triangulation between the three groups. This does disprove a common ancestor. However, this does not prove a common ancestor between the three families.

TG with Bob and Martha’s Family: Chromosome 19

 

This indicates a common Upshall ancestor (or with Peter’s spouse). Or with another common ancestor.

TG with Bob and Esther’s Side: Chromosome 12

 

 

This also indicates a common Upshall ancestor (or with Peter’s spouse). Or with another common ancestor.

Gedmatch Full Features

It took a while for Bob’s DNA to ‘tokenize’ at Gedmatch. Now everthing is up and running. I can see Bob’s list of ‘one to many’ matches. Bob’s first match has a Masters surname. He may want to follow up there.

Bob’s Matches in Common with Esther

A favorite utility at Gedmatch is awkwardly named, “People who match one or both of 2 kits”.  This should show on what lines Bob and Esther could be related.

Here are common matches Esther has with Bob on Chromosome 8:

The area I’m interested in is in the top right of this Chromosome Browser. Here Bob is #4. #1 is JoJo at Ancestry, but I don’t know much about her. Numbers 2 and 3 I know from a Dicks DNA project. These two are Marilyn and Howie. They are actually in two Dicks Lines. One is Dicks/Joyce and one is Dicks/Crann. I would not be surprised if this TG represents a Crann common ancestor. I have hypothesized that Esther has a Crann ancestor in previous Blogs. In my theory a Crann marries an Upshall. Confusing, isnt’ it?

Bob and Esther: Shared Matches on Chromosome 10

This represents Esther and Bob’s large match on Chromosome 10. Here Esther’s match with Bob is shown as #6. #7 could be a TG with someone named Dave. I don’t know a lot about him.

Bob and Esther: Shared Matches on Chromosome 12

This represents the TG I had mentioned above. Esther’s match to Martha is #2. Bob is #6. This is the Chromosome that ties things together. However, it is difficult to tell if this TG harks back to Peter Upshall or a more distant ancestor.

Here is my TG summary from my previous post:

At that time, TG12 was the large TG. Here Bob would piggy back onto TG12 but only from about 89 to 93M.

Summary and Conclusions

• Bob’s genealogy appears to point to a common Upshall ancestor
• This common ancestor could be at the level of Peter Upshall or even an ancestor of Peter
• The DNA connection between Bob, Martha’s family and Esther’s family does not seem to be quite as strong as the connection between Martha’s family and Esther’s family. That may because there are three each in Martha’s and Esther’s families
• At this point, it is inconclusive as to whether the DNA matches point to Peter Upshall, an ancestor of Peter Upshall or another surname.
• More research on the DNA connections between Upshall, Crann and Masters may sort things out in the future.
• The DNA connections may also bring a clearer shared genealogical ancestry to light.

 

A lot has been going on with Harbour Buffett DNA and genealogy lately. My wife’s great Aunt Esther’s gedmatch list has had a lot of green numbers showing up lately near the top of her Gedmatch list. Green means new entries of people that have had their DNA tested and uploaded to Gedmatch. Esther’s ancestors are all from Harbour Buffett. Martha has come up as one of Esther’s recent matches at Gedmatch along with Martha’s brother and her maternal Aunt. Also there is a new Facebook Page called Harbour Buffett DNA.

Martha’s Genealogy

It is actually Martha’s mother’s genealogy that I am interested in.

I have a new tool where I can blur things for privacy. I don’t know if I need to, but I blurred out Martha’s mom from Martha’s genealogy tree. This is the side from Harbour Buffett. I’m even more interested in Martha’s Aunt’s genealogy. Martha has a separate tree for that line.

This line goes back further to Upshall which is interesting. My wife’s Great Aunt Esther is an Upshall. Another important aspect in comparing Martha to Elaine, Joan and Esther is that Martha shows no Dicks family in her direct ancestry. If she had Dicks ancestors, that would clould the DNA comparisons.

Esther’s Genealogy Compared to M.B. (Martha’s Maternal Aunt)

What is interesting to me is that Jane Upshall in Martha’s tree could be a sister to Henry Upshall in Esther’s tree. As this is Harbour Buffett, Newfoundland, there are other connections. AncestryDNA makes the obvious connection between Martha’s Aunt (M.B.) and Esther:

Here Esther and M.B. show as 3rd cousins. The graphic shows Esther and M.B.’s common ancestor of Kirby/Emberley. These are ancestors that my wife’s family do not share as they are only related on Esther’s Upshall side.  AncestryDNA thinks that Esther and M.B. should be 2nd cousins by DNA. There is at least one reason for that. That could be the Upshall connection.

The Upshall Connection

Here, I would like to work on the assumption that Martha’s ancestor Jane is Henry Upshall’s sister.

This shows that under this scenario, M.B. and Esther would be 2nd cousins once removed. To me, this is a likely guess and would explain AncestryDNA’s designation of 2nd cousin (along with the actual 3rd cousin Kirby/Emberley connection.)

Peter Upshall: A Common Ancestor?

Much of DNA matching is looking for Common Ancestors. One way to look at the Upshall connection is through Esther’s two 1/2 nieces: Joan and Elaine. Joan is my mother in law and Elaine is her sister. Joan and Elaine are only related on Esther’s paternal side and not her maternal Kirby/Emberley side. In autosomal DNA, it is all about separating between maternal and paternal sides.

Here is a look at Esther’s tree where she would match Elaine and Joan:

Further, Martha’s family does not show direct Dicks ancestors, so that would force the connection to be on the Upshall side.

Here is how Joan and Elaine fit in coming down from my proposed common ancestor:

 

Florence is Esther’s older half sister. Under this scenario, Joan and Elaine would be M.B.’s 3rd cousin. I had Elaine tested at AncestryDNA where she and M.B. show as possible 4th cousins by DNA. However, in my opinion 3rd cousin would work also. I would like to show that Upshall is a common ancestor between M.B., Joan, Elaine and Esther by comparing DNA matches.

AncestryDNA Shared Matches

AncestryDNA has a helpful utility called Shared Matches. Elaine has shared matches with M.B. AS Elaine and M.B. have a likely shared Upshall ancestor, the shared matches of Elaine and M.B. should also have a shared Upshall ancestor.

The first shared ancestor of M.B. and Elaine is Karen. She has a short tree.

Karen’s Newfoundland Ancestry

Karen shows both her parents as coming from Newfoundland. I recognize the names of Hollett and Gilbert. It would be a little work to try to build Karen’s tree back. Fortunately, FamilySearch.org has the 1935 Newfoundland Census. I see Clyde there with his parents Isaac and Mary in New Harbour Trinity District. There was a Malcolm Hollett in the 1921 Census for Spencer’s Cove, Placentia that might be the right person. I was ready to give up on this tree, but rememebered I sometimes have good luck searching for obituaries. I found this one:

This certainly fits with New Harbour. This also tells me that Clyde and Geraldine married around 1949. I sent a message off the Karen to see if she coiuld tell me any more. I’ll try another Shared match.

John’s Harbour Buffett Ancestry

John’s family tree at Ancestry looks like this:

John shows that his father, Jack was born and died in Harbour Buffett. That is a good sign. Here is the 1905 marriage record for Joseph Manning and Elizabeth Dicks:

Here are some other familiar names of Upshall and Kirby. This gives us birth dates for Joseph and Elizabeth. This tree at least got me back to Harbour Buffett. However, there was no clear connection to the Upshall Family.

Back to M.B.’s DNA

First, I’ll make one more adjustment to the family tree. I want to include Martha and her brother in the tree:

 

I will now look at all the matches between Martha, D.E., M.B., Joan, Elaine and Esther and see if anything pops out I am especially interested in matches with Joan and Elaine as that narrows down the ancestors to Upshall.

Time to Triangulate

A Triangulation Group (TG) is when three non-siblings match each other. When this happens there should be a common ancestor or ancestral couple. I compared all the above bottom row people to each other. I made Joan and Elaine yellow and Martha and her brother and Aunt green. That way, I can see where there is a green next to a yellow easily. Those are the matches that I am looking for.

 

On Chromosome 6, there is a TG between Elaine, Joan, MLB, DTE, and Martha. Interestingly, Esther is not in the TG (or she is in the TG below the 7 cM threshold). In my hypothetical Upshall tree, the TG would look like this:

I am assuming that Peter Upshall and his unknown wife are the common ancestors. Or put another way, if they aren’t then who is?

 

Two TGs on Chromosome 8

The first TG seems to have everyone in it: Esther, Joan, Elaine, Martha, DTE and MLB. The second TG just has Elaine, DTE and MLB.

An Upshall(?) TG Summary

Rather than go through every TG, here is a summary:

 

Based on this summary, Martha wins the prize. She is in 5 out of the 6 TGs. Everyone else is in 4 TGs. The first column names the TG based on the Chromosome. The second column is position where the TG is on the Chromosome (in Millions). The green indicates who that person is in the TG. I hope that this chart will be the baseline in case we come upon other Upshall descendants.

Summary and Conclusions

• Due to the genealogy between Martha’s family and my wife’s family, shared DNA matches should lead to the Upshall line
• A comparison of Ancestry DNA shared matches between Elaine and Martha’s Aunt didn’t lead to any obvious new leads.
• Martha’s addition of her DNA as well as her brother and Aunt’s DNA to Gedmatch has been a big help in figuring out relationships.
• I mapped out several Triangulation Groups between Elaine, Joan, Esther and Martha’s family. These TGs seem to point to either Peter Upshall or an ancestor along the Upshall Line.
• The Summary of “Upshall” TGs could be a baseline for further Upshall descendant matches.

 

I had a question recently from Marilyn. Could I look at her brother’s YDNA? Marilyn knew of some family lore that their Brown surname could have originally been Smith. That would be confusing as both Brown and Smith are very common names.

Looking at Howie’s YNDA

Howie had the 37 STR marker test done. That is the entry level test for YDNA. Based on Howie’s DNA results, FTDNA has classified him as R-M239. R-M239 is a very basic and old clade. A clade is a YDNA type or classification. According to the FTDNA Project, “R1b All Subclades”, R-M239 “…is the most common Y chromosome clade of paternal lineages across much of Europe.”

R-M239 Map

Eupedia has a map showing a likely progression of R-M239 and it’s offspring:

Based on this map, R-M239 moved to the NE of Greece where it split off. One branch moved to around the area of current eastern Germany and made more splits. The L21 branch is associated with the early setters of the British Isles. Another branch, U106 went up into Scandinavia or stayed in the NW of Germany. This branch is also associated with the Saxons which later came to England as the Anglo Saxons. Anglo is associated with England. The eariler L21’s were aslo known as the Britons which is where we get Great Britain from. So within Great Britain or England, there are the Britain’s (L21 aslo associated with Celtic culture) and the English (U102 or Anglo Saxons).

Is Howie L21 or U102?

FTDNA does not go out on a limb in predicting clades or subclades. However, the administrators of the FTDNA projects are good at looking at the STRs and making predictions. That is why I suggested that Howie join the R1b and all subclades FTDNA group. R1b is roughly associated with R-M239.  However, I believe that strictly speaking, R1b is even more basic (probably the M343 in the map above).

Here is a R-M239 tree at the R1b and all Subclades Project website:

 

This graphic shows R-M239 as a Basal (early) branch. My Hartley branch is under L21 which is to the bottom left. Below that I am in L513 and there is a whole large tree just for L513 (not shown above). This shows that L21 and U102 are not the only choice for Howie, but they would be popular choices.

R1b and All Subclades Project

There are over 16,000 people in the R1b Project. They are all in a table that begins like this:

These are the first 3 names of 16,000+ entries. The numbers are the STR valuues. The header above the numbers gives the name of the STRs. The maroon STRs are the faster moving STRs. This is important as these are the STRs that are more likely to change. The change in the color of blue indicates different STR panels. Howie took the 37 panel STR. On the right side of the header, the STR name goes from blue to a lighter blue. The lighter blue on the right is the start of the 67 panel STR test.

The third column is Haplogroup. If the value is green, it means that person has tested for that haplogroup. If the value is red, it means that the haplogroup is assumed from the STR test. Howie hasn’t tested for a haplogroup, so his R-M239 would be red. These 16,000+ names and results are organized into different categories. The first group is for people that are M343+ M269-. That means that they are have a very old type of DNA. The M269- means that they are not R-M269, so they predate that split.

When I look for Howie in the R1b All Subclades, he is in this category:

That is not good news. That means that the administrators don’t want to bother figuring out where Howie is with only 37 STRs.

Making My Own Guess For Howie’s Subclade

That means that I have to make my own guess. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to do that. I have an old spreadsheet from 2014 which is a bit outdated. However, I can plug in some of Howie’s STRs into that and see what comes out.

This spreadsheet has 67 STRs, but I’ll just use Howie’s 37. The STRs I want to concentrate on first are the ones with the orange numbers. These are the low numbers.  For example, STR 426 is 0.09. That means that there is a 0.09 chance in 1,000 generations that this STR will change. My spreadsheet had already chosen 12, 12, and 11. 11 for the orange STRs. Those were Howie’s numbers also.

However, that doesn’t narrow things down far enough. Next I will choose Howie’s yellow rate STRs. I’ll start with STR 392 which has a rate of 0.52 in 1,000 generations. Howie has a 13 for that, which I had also previously chosen. I continued this process down to the STRs with the gray-rated STRs. I found that Howie had an unusual number for YCAiib. There was only one person on the speadsheet that I had with a combination of 18-18 for YCAiia & b. That was a Weber with roots in Switzerland. And he is not in the current R1b All Subclades list. That puts me at a bit of a stalemate. I don’t know if Howie is in the U152 subclade or if Howie and Weber are outliers in their own respective subclades.

One tact would be to ignore YCAiia & b and move on. Another odd thing that I note on my spreadsheet is that the only values for YCAiib are 18, 22, and 23. What happened to 19, 20 and 21? I followed Howie’s grey STRs while ignoring the YCAii’s and got this group of people. These are people that share Howie’s slower moving STRs that I plugged into the spreadsheet:

Basically, I don’t like the results as I had to ignore YCAii. This shows possible results all over the place. However, at least most of them are in hte British Isles.

At this point, I would say that Howie would have to do the BigY test or a 67 STR test to find out more. In the long run, the BigY is better, but it can be a bit pricey. That should get Howie down to the surname level and likely nail down a location. Note from the list above, I don’t see any Browns or Smiths, but again this is old information. A lot of testing has happened since 2014.

 

 

 

Tracey is on my first page of matches at FTDNA. She also has a partial tree shown at FTDNA. She lists an ancestor as Finlay and an ancestor in County Sligo, Ireland. This is interesting as one of my brick wall lines married into the Finlay family and was from County Sligo. Perhaps there is a connection. My idea is to use Ancestry to see if I can build out Tracey’s tree to find a match or more of a match.

Tracey’s Genealogy at FTDNA

Tracey shows her father’s line at FTDNA:

Tracey gives some more information on her profile that should help build out her tree.

My Sligo Ancestors

My grandmother’s parents were both from Sligo. However, my guess is that I match Tracey on my grandmother’s mother’s side:

My Grandmother’s mother was Margaret Clarke. Both Margaret and her mother Jane Spratt died young.

Confirming the DNA Match is from County Sligo

Tracey matches me on Chromosome 11:

FTDNA shows that that she has matches in common with my sisters Lori, Heidi and Sharon, but not in common with my brother Jonathan.

Here is how I mapped out Chromosome 11:

I am J on the map. S and H are my sisters Sharon and Heidi. F is for my brother Jonathan. My match with Tracey is at about position 11 to 36M on the map. Jonathan shows Hartley DNA in that area which is why he doesn’t match Tracey there. I didn’t get around to mapping Lori yet. This confirms that the match with Tracey is on our Frazer grandparent line. As I mentioned above, this line leads back to County Sligo.

Building Out Tracey’s Tree

Tracey may have already done this, but if I come up with the same thing as she did, that would be a good thing. Here is my first shot at Tracey’s tree at Ancestry:

Ancestry shows green leaves on Tracey’s paternal side. This means that Ancestry thinks it may know about her paternal side, but doesn’t have any easy clues about her mother’s side. This makes sense as Tracey only showed her paternal side at FTDNA.

It looks like Joseph Parr was living with his parents and a large family in Toronto Gore in 1921:

This Census seems to indicate that Joseph was born much earlier than 1895. So that makes me wonder if this is the right Joseph E, son of Samuel and Sarah.

This death record is more consistent with what Tracey has:

 

And as a check, I see that Nashville is not far from Brampton where Tracey says Joseph was born. While I was snooping around Ancestry, I even found a photo of Joe and Clara Parr:

Hi Joe. Hi Clara. Are we related? Assuming the match is on Tracey’s paternal side, I’d say that Clara looks more familiar than Joe. That is, if looks count for anything.

Going After the Morrisons

Tracey says at FTDNA that the Morrisons are from Sligo. So it makes sense to look at this line first.

This looks like Clara in Toronto Gore in 1901:

Come to find out Toronto Gore and Gore no longer exist. There is still a Gore Road which I found to the West of Nashville, Ont. This is one of the remnants of the old Township of Gore. The 1901 Census is helpful as it gives birth dates. Here I am diverging from the script a bit. Tracey’s tree had Robert as the father of Clara and the census has William and Alice.

When I add in William, I get many Ancestry ‘Hints’. The Marriage record for William is very vertical:

This says that William was from born in Gore but lived in Toronto Township when they married. Alice was born in Euphrasia, where she also lived at the time of her marriage (the same place that they married).

Here are the witnesses and wedding date:

William was from the Church of England and Alice was a Methodist. Alice’s last name looks like Lougheed, but someone at Ancestry has it as Loughead.

In 1861, the Morrison family had been in Canada at least for 23 years. So they likely were in Upper Canada in 1838

The 1851 Census seems to put the family in Canada as early as 1836:

There is some nominal information on a Robert Morrison in the 1825 Census of Lower Canada. At this point, it is difficult to trace this family back to Ireland.

However, there appeared to be two different Robert Morrison’s around, so care is needed when reviewing the records. Tracey’s Robert was in Canada fairly early, so this may be the one.

The Lougheed/Loughead Line

Time to look at the bottom side of the Parr Tree:

I’ll start with Alice’s death. It is good to start with the end in genealogy.

It took me a little bit to figure out this record as it didn’t line up quite right. The first entry is a baby, so no occupation. The 2nd is a priest. The third is Alice Emeline (Lougheed) Morrison, the farmer’s wife.

Here is Alice in 1871 with a family of 12:

This is more clearly Loughead. I am doubting the birthplace of Ireland for all the children, but will keep an open mind.

Let’s roll back the clock 10 years to 1861:

Here there is a different spelling for the last name. I’m guessing that this was a more phonetic spelling as a ‘gh’ can have a ‘ch’ or ‘ck’ sound as in the Irish lough for lake. This couple was married in 1846. My guess is that E.M is Episcopal Methodist.

It looks like John re-married a relative by marriage in 1882 [Edit: This is actually a different (though related) John Lougheed as shown later in the Blog. The parents of the right John Lougheed are Huge and Alice.]

:

Seems the spelling is back to Lougheed.

The best I can tell, this is Thornbury:

The family was a bit smaller in 1851 [Note, this is back to the right John as seen by his first son named after his father Hugh.]

It looks like this couple made their way to Canada sometime before 1846 when Mary was born.

Lougheed, AncestryDNA and the Sligo Connection

For some reason, I associate Lougheed with Sligo. At Ancestry, I can look for my DNA matches that also have Lougheed ancestors. My top DNA match at AncestryDNA with a Lougheed ancestor appears to be named Lawrence. Lawrence has this ancestor:

This man has quite a unique middle name. He also was born in Sligo and ended up in Bolton, Peel, Ontario. When I look up Bolton, I find it is near Nashville, Ontario:

Remember Nashville is where Joseph and Clara Parr were buried. Clara was a Morrison but her mom was a Lougheed. It seems like these connections are almost but not quite made.

Another Lougheed: Hugh

The same tree above had another Lougheed ancestor named Hugh.

This Hugh seems to be a better fit. I have ancestors in the Boyle area on my Frazer side. Note that Hugh died in Euphrasia where Alice Lougheed lived. Also Hugh had a son John born in 1827. Could this be the same John I found born 1827 in Ireland? I would say they have to be the same person.

My Mistake

It turns out that there were two John Lougheeds. One died in Thornbury and one died in Euphrasia. The death record I had above was apparently for the wrong John. Here is the correct one as reflected in an Ancestry Family Tree:

Here is a corrected Morrison tree:

The Ballymote/Boyle Area of Sligo

The creator of the great Lougheed Tree on Ancestry notes that Hugh was from the Ballymote/Boyle area of Sligo. Is that a help? For me, yes and no.

My Clarke family brick wall lived near Coolaney which is nearer to Ballymote. My McMaster ancestors were from the Kilmactranny area. My Frazer ancestors were in the area to the South of Kilmactranny originally in North Roscommon County – not far from Boyle.

Another of My AncestryDNA Matches with Lougheed Ancestry

Summing up:

• I found a pretty close DNA match with Tracey at FTDNA
• Tracey has a tree with a Morrison from Sligo. I built the tree out to find a Lougheed also from Sligo.
• I went to my AncestryDNA matches and searched for matches that had Lougheed ancestors. My match with Lawrence is a predicted 4th cousin by DNA. This person has two Lougheed ancestors. One is Hugh Lougheed who is also an ancestor of Tracey.

This gets to notes I read recently from a genetic genealogy conference. The speaker mentioned the importance of triangulating on genealogy as well as DNA. I think what was meant by this is that if three people all match by DNA and all three have the same ancestor, there may be something there.

The Third DNA/Lougheed Ancestor Match

The third DNA Lougheed ancestor match is with Jonathan. Jonathan shows on my AncestryDNA as a possible 4th cousin by DNA. His tree looks like this:

This tree goes back a ways. This Hugh Lougheed, born 1750 is likely the same Hugh Lougheed I see in many trees as being born 1754. If I have it right, Jane Margery Lougheed b. 1793 would be the younger sister of Hugh Lougheed born 1789.

That means between Tracey, Lawrence and Jonathan there appears to be a genealogical triangulation on Hugh Lougheed, born 1754.

A Shared AncestryDNA Match between Me and Lawrence

When I look at shared matches at AncestryDNA that Lawrence and I both have, the first person I find with a tree is Donna. She has a short tree, but her father’s name is Loughead. This leads me to try to build her tree back to see if there is an easy connection with the other Sligo Lougheeds.

I’ll start on the paternal side. Donna had Loughead as the spelling of the last name. But I looked at Israel’s marriage record and he clearly signed his name Lougheed. The marriage for William Henry Lougheed is helpful as it gives dates and parents:

All Roads Lead to Euphrasia

Here is the 1861 Census for Euphrasia, Ontario with the William Lougheed family:

The fact that William has a son named Hugh makes me think I’m on the right track. That and Euphrasia.

Lougheeds from the Top Down

What Next?

As far as I know I match all these Lougheed descendants.

• Lawrence – predicted relationship 4th cousin at AncestryDNA
• Tracey – relationship range 2nd to 4th cousins at FTDNA
• Donna – predicted relationship 4th cousin at AncestryDNA
• Jonathan – predicted relationship 4th cousin at AncestryDNA

And they likely match each other. I could make an argument that I could be descended from Hugh Lougheed b. 1754. He had other children. Perhaps one of his daughters married one of my ancestors. I do have missing wives for some of my ancestors. I also have whole missing lines on my Clarke side.

Perhaps some new information will come to light. Perhaps these testers will upload their results to gedmatch.com where the DNA can be compared to other matches.

 

Jan is my wife’s Great Aunt Esther’s third closest match at AncestryDNA. The first is from a family we know and shows as a 1st cousin. Esther’s second DNA match shows as a second cousin. I wrote to this person in 2015 and never heard back. This person also last logged in to Ancestry in 2015. The third person was Jan.

I wrote to Jan in October 2016. She says her paternal grandmother was a Jessie Dicks born in Newfoundland and wonders if Jessie is related to Esther’s Dicks? I noticed that Jan’s DNA kit was administered by someone else. There was a tree associated with the administrator, but no Dicks in the tree. Perhaps I can create a tree to answer Jan’s question:

Here is Jan’s tree based on what she has told me so far. I wrote to Jan to try to find out some more and to see if she would be interested in uploading her DNA results to Gedmatch.com. I assume that her ancestor was from Harbour Buffett where Esther’s ancestors lived.

Looking for Jessie Dicks in Newfoundland

First I went to this site:

They have some pretty good information. I then searched for Jessie Dicks, but the results were not specific enough. Then I tried Jessie Dicks, Harbour Buffett. The first person I found was married. I assume that the Jessie Dicks I’m looking for is a Dicks by birth. The second person I found was here:

Jessie Dicks was born in 1913 as shown in the 1921 Census of Harbour Buffett. However, according to the Census, she and all of her family were born outside of Harbour Buffett.

Esther’s Tree

In order to see if Jan is connected to Esther’s ancestry by the Dicks family, I’ll need to look at Esther’s tree:

On Esther’s tree the connection would have to go back to the father of Catherine Dicks, who I have as Christopher Dicks. Another possibility would be the father of Jane Ann Dicks. I’m not positive about either of these Dicks lines at the level of Christopher and Joseph. The Christopher line seems somewhat confirmed by DNA (see below under the Dicks DNA Project).

Back to Jan’s Tree

Assuming, I have Jan’s Jessie in Harbour Buffett in in 1921, I now have this tree:

This tells me that Jan’s possible great grandfather was born around Esther’s dad’s time or Esther’s maternal grandparent’s time. That means that there could be a difference of between 2 or three generations between Esther and Jan.

A search for Henry Dicks at Ancestry leads to a birth record at FamilySearch.org which gives Henry’s parents:

The Dicks Family DNA Project

This is where I pull out the trees of the people that have uploaded their DNA results to gedmatch.com. I have a tree in it with John Dicks and Elizabeth Reid.

I assume that this John Dicks who married Elizabeth Reid is the same as the couple that I have as Jan’s 2nd great grandparents. If my guesses are right, then that would put Jan on a level with Hayley who is a 2nd cousin twice removed to Esther. Now Barry and Hayley both show as shared matches to Esther and Jan at AncestryDNA, so that is further evidence that I am on the right track. Joan is my mother in law. She didn’t test at AncestryDNA. Edward also did not test at AncestryDNA.

Questions Brought Up by the DNA

• Jan shows up as a predicted 2nd cousin by DNA at Ancestry. She shares 423 cM across 26 segments
• Barry who on the chart is an actual 2nd cousin once removed shows 196 centimorgans shared across 16 DNA segments with Esther
• Hayley who on the chart above is an actual 2nd cousin twice removed like Jan shows 93 centimorgans shared across 6 DNA segments.
• Barry and Hayley’s match results with Esther seem to be more in line with the image below.

Here are the ISOGG web page numbers for cousin statistics:

This tells me that 423 cM is off the charts for a 2nd Cousin, twice removed. The previously reported high for this was 261 cM. That means that there is more than meets the eye between Jan and Esther. Assuming I have the genealogy right (which is a big assumption) that means that Jan and Esther likely have at least one other common ancestor.

Perhaps if Jan uploads her DNA results to Gedmatch.com and I find out more about her ancestry, this mystery will be solved.