Posts

Posted on

A 23andMe DNA Match with My Daughter’s Namesake

I recently was contacted by a DNA match at 23andMe and she had the same name as my daughter. As 23andMe gives birth dates, I knew it was not my daughter but a second cousin of mine who was born before my daughter. As my great grandparents had 13 surviving children, I have a lot of 2nd cousins.

Heather’s DNA Match

Heather and I have a large DNA match. Heather shot to the top of my 23andMe match list:

Heather shares more than twice the amount of DNA with me compared to my other 2nd cousins at 23andMe. This had me concerned at first as I originally thought that Heather was a 2nd cousin once removed. At that level, her DNA match with me would have been off the scale. This had me going back to my online genealogy to check where Heather was on the family tree:

This tree shows my Hartley second cousins who have tested for DNA at different companies. I am missing some testers. I know there are more under Grace Hartley and I didn’t include my children or nieces and nephews. There are also other lines I have missed, so I should update this tree.

Heather is on the Greenwood line:

That brings me to a match with Heather who is two generations closer to Greenwood Hartley compared to Charles.

Heather Shares About as Much as DNA with Me as Possible:

The 7.84% DNA that we share is 584 cM. Blaine Bettinger has a shared DNA project. He gets people to tell him how much DNA they share with each relationship and he puts that in a chart:

When I thought that Heather was my 2nd cousin, once removed, I thought that something was wrong as our match would be off that chart. As it is, our match of 584 cM is very near the top reported 2nd cousin match.

23andMe Thought That Heather and I Were 1st Cousins

That was a bit of surprise. I suppose that was based on average shared DNA. But your mileage may vary as the saying goes. Here are some more numbers from the Shared cM Project:

Based on that study, our DNA match would indicate that we would be closer to 1st cousins once removed. Here are my two first cousins and three first cousins once removed at Gedmatch.com:

The first two in the orange box are 1st cousins on my mother’s side. The second three are 1st cousins once removed on my father’s (Hartley) side. The last is the highest 2nd cousin match at Gedmatch. That means that Heather at 584 cM has a higher match than my three 1st Hartley cousins once removed. These are my father’s cousins. I find that interesting.

The DNA that Heather and I share is from our two great grandparents. They are James Hartley and Annie Snell. Here they are with some of their children:

In fact, roughly half  of Heather and my shared DNA is from James Hartley and half is from Annie Snell. It is possible to figure out exactly which is which, but it takes matches with descendants of older common ancestors to figure that out. I’ll give a few examples later in the Blog.

23andMe Family Tree

23andMe has a Family Tree. They try to figure out your tree by the DNA, but that isn’t always precise. So they want you to add known relatives to that tree. Here is my tree:

Normally a family tree would have the paternal ancestors on the left, but this one does not. My Hartley ancestors are in blue on the right. Here is more of a close-up of the Hartley side:

One, person, DL, I don’t have matched up to a named line. Heather is on the Greenwood line and her father is Sonny’s brother. You don’t know the players without a program. My line goes off to the left where it matches up with my mother’s ancestors. It took a bit of trial and error to get Heather into the tree correctly at 23andMe, but I have her now:

This shows that Heather is 1st cousin to my 2nd cousin Woody.

DNA Painter

I have my Chromosomes painted or mapped by my various matches. I’d like to see if Heather adds any new information to that map. I already have a lot of Hartley 2nd cousins mapped. Here is what I have mapped so far:

My paternal DNA is on the top row of every chromosome and my maternal DNA is on the bottom row of each chromosome. The predominant green is where I would match Heather as that color represents James Hartley and Annie Snell our common 2nd great grandparents.

This shows up better when I choose my paternal-only side on the Painter:

It would be easier to say which chromosomes that Heather and I share no Hartley matches on. Those are Chromosomes:

  • 6
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 21
  • 22
  • X

Part of the reason that I may not have Hartley on a chromosome is that my chromosomes may have recombined or not recombined more likely to exclude Hartley on a certain Chromosome. The only two choices on my paternal side are Hartley or my father’s mother who was a Frazer. So if I got all Frazer DNA on a particular Chromosome, I will not have any Hartley matches on that Chromosome. I would not match Heather on the X Chromosome because men only recieve one copy of that Chromosome from their mother. That means I have no Hartley X Chromosome DNA. Heather doesn’t really have any Hartley X Chromosome DNA either. She did get an X Chromosome from her father, but that X Chromosome was the same that he got from his Gifford mother. So she got Gifford DNA from her father on the X Chromosome, not Hartley.

Right now I am 45% painted overall and 53% painted on my paternal side. I’ll see if Heather adds anything or if I am already maxed out. Here is the data I need for DNA Painter:

One interesting thing I see already is that my match with Heather starts at position 1 for Chromosomes 2, 4, 13 and 15. That would be right at the start of these chromosomes. I already have a match painted at or close to the beginning of Chromosome 2, but not at the beginnings of Chromosome 4, 13, and 15. That is encouraging.

I choose, “Paint a New Match”.

I refreshed my percent painted:

This shows that I am up to 47% painted now overall or an increase of 2%. I also added 17 segments from my match with Heather. However, I’m sure a lot of those segements are overlapping other Hartley/Snell matches.

On my paternal side I am now at 56%. That is a increase of 3 percentage points or quite a bit at this point in my mapping.

Here is my new green Hartley/Snell mapped DNA:

One interesting thing is that the Hartley side is filled up now on Chromosome 13. Here are my second cousin matches on Chromosome 13:

I kept the names out for privacy, but Heather is the match at the top. I have also mapped my DNA to my 4 grandparents. My guess is that my Chromosome 13 is all Hartley. I need to find my Blog on Chromosome 13. Back in November 2018, I mapped out my Chromosome 13 and that of my 5 siblings:

This was one of the easiest chromosomes to map because there were not many crossovers. The crossovers are when you change in your chromosome from the DNA you got from one grandparent to the spouse of that grandparent. I am in the third row above and I have all the same paternal grandparent (Hartley) and the same maternal grandparent (Rathfelder). That means that it was not unexpected to have my Chromosome filled in with green Hartley DNA on the DNA Painter that I mentioned earllier.

So in the example above, if Heather uploaded her DNA to gedmatch where I have my siblings’ DNA, she would not match my brother Jim on Chromosome 13. That is because Jim got Frazer DNA in the first part of his Chromosome 13 where Heather matched me. Heather would match Jon and Heidi as much as she matches me. For Lori and Sharon, Heather would match on Chromosome 13, but not as much as she matches me as she would be matching in different/fewer regions.

Heather’s Older DNA

The DNA that Heather and I share came down from James Hartley born in 1862 and Annie Snell born in 1866. I mentioned earlier in the Blog that it should be possible to identify some older DNA. That can be seen at DNA Painter. The first example I see of this is in Chromosome 4:

On this Chromosome, Heather matches me at the beginning and end of the Chromosome. In the middle, I have some matches from my Frazer side. In yellow, I have a match with Anne whose ancestry goes all the way back to Abraham Howorth (or so we believe). This DNA goes all the way back to 1768. The Howorth family lived in Bacup, Lancahsire, England:

 

Beth, Jim and Joyce didn’t match Ann on Chromosome 4, but they did on Chromosome 8. When that happens, we call that triangulation which is a sort of check that the DNA really did come from where we think it did. In this case, Heather would extend that triangulation to Chromosome 4. If Heather  uploads her DNA to Gedmatch, she would likely match Ann through their common 4th great-grandparents.

Chromosome 9

An example of identified Snell DNA is on Chromosome 9:

I left out the names, but my match in blue is Celeste. Her ancestors were Otis Snell and Mary Parker. My match with Heather is right above the blue match. That means that Heather likely matches Celelste also.

Here are Mary and Otis:

Those are the only two examples I have right now of older DNA. I would like to find more examples. This would require getting some of my AncestryDNA matches to upload to Gedmatch. AncestryDNA has a lot of matches but they do not use a Chromosome Browser. That means I can tell how much DNA I share with a match there, but I cannot tell on what chromosomes I match them nor can I tell on what portion of the chromosome I match them.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I was glad to hear from Heather
  • I was surprised at how much DNA we shared with each other. The amount is right near the top of the scale of likely DNA matching
  • Because Heather and I share so much common DNA that came down from James Hartley and Annie Snell born in the 1860’s, I was able to add a lot of DNA to my DNA Map using DNA Painter.
  • I showed a few cases where I could identify older DNA matches that Heather and I shared going back to Howorth, Snell and Parker.
Posted on

Frazer YDNA Loose Ends and Private Variants

In my previous Blog, I was caught a little off guard as I didn’t know that Rodney had tested for the BigY 700. However, that was good news as now we have a BigY 700 in both the James and Archibald Lines of the Frazer YDNA Tree. One confusing thing about FTDNA is that it is difficult to know when your BigY test has been completed. Here is Rodney’s order history:

This seems to indicate that his BigY was completed on January 14. However there are still more tests ordered by FTDNA. Another way to check is if Rodney’s Private Variants match up with the average Private Variants shown on the Block Tree. [Note: Later in the Blog I show that is not a good way to see if your BigY has completed.]

Here are Rodney’s Private Variants:

Rodney now has 7 Private Variants. These are described by their position numbers to distinguish them from SNP which need to have a match with someone. To get the average number of Private Variants for the James Frazer Line, we need to know the number of Jonathan’s Private Variants:

Jonathan has two. This averages out to 4.5. The Block tree shows an average of 4:

4 is close to 4.5, so I would say that the BigY analysis is complete – except for the Backbone Tests. The number of Average Private Variants went up from 2 to four probably on January 11th when the backbone test was ordered or on on January 14th when FTDNA shows the BigY was completed.

Rick’s Results

Rick shows that his BigY completed in December:

However, Rick has nine Private Variants:

Paul who is on Rick’s Branch has one Private Variant.

That is a total of 10 for Rick and Paul’s Frazer Branch for an average of five Private Variants. The Rick and Paul Branch of the Block Tree shows an average of three Private Variants. That means that FTDNA’s manual review must not be completed yet.

The James Line Private Variants

These should be the variants that have formed since Rodney’s and Jonathan’s common ancestor.

That common ancestor was Thomas Henry Frazer. Thomas Henry Frazer had, for sure, these two SNPs – Y151390 and FT421607:

I say, for sure, but the backbone tests seem to be confirming these. The point is that Rodney and Jonathan’s Private SNPs formed after Thomas Henry Frazer in 1836. By the way, I made a mistake in dating the Block Tree in a previous Blog, so I’l correct that here:

The slightly confusing part is that the 1836 is higher on the tree than the 1804. I think that could change as the average number of Private Variants right now appears to be 5 between Paul and Rick under the R-Y85652 part of the Tree. Say that some of the testers were born around 1950. That would mean that this Tree represents 750 years of Frazer YDNA history.

Jonathan’s Private Variants

Here is Martin’s take on Rick’s initial results. Martin is the FTNDA administrator for the portion of the R1a YDNA Tree that our Frazers are on. These have since changed since Rodney’s BigY 700 upgrade came in.

This shows Rick with a BigY-700, but doesn’t show Rodney in that category yet. I mention above, that Rodney has 7 Private Variants. The BigY 700 is more comprehensive and finds more variants. Before Rodney’s BigY 700 results came in, he only had one Private Variant. Jonathan has two Private Variants. They are the last two in the yellow box aove.

Jonathan’s first formerly Private SNP became part of the new James Line Haplogroup:

I don’t see BY84935 on the Block Tree, so if it isn’t there and isn’t on Jonathan’s Private Variant list, where did it go?

Here are Jonathan’t test results:

The mutation should be G to A, but Jonathan shows at least two reads that are G to T.

Let’s see how Rodney tested for this. This is now a named SNP, so no longer a Private Variant for Jonathan. I don’t see Rodney having BY84935:

Based on these two test results, this should still be a Private SNP for Jonathan.

Rick and Paul Have a ? for BY84935

Rick is sometimes positive for this SNP and sometimes not. Also, he seems to have a lot of similar results in this region of the Y Chromosome. Now I see why they took away this Private Variant from Jonathan.

Let’s check out Paul’s results:

Very similar to Rick’s results:

Based on these results, I’m a bit surprised that Jonathan ever had a Private Variant at this position. For Jonathan’s other two Private Variants, I will assume that they are correct. The bottom line is that Jonathan has two Private Variants. These are:

  • 11718822 and
  • 11720223

These had to have formed in Jonathan’s line in either Edward, Walter, or Jonathan:

In a sense, these Private Variants are not important from a genealogical point of view. Jonathan already knew he was a second cousin to Rodney. However, if anyone else ever tests positive for these Variants in the future, it will show that they are from this same Edward Fitzgerald Frazer Line.

Rodney’s Seven Private Variants

There is another use of Private Variants. These can be used to date the common ancestor between two people. A number between 83 and 144 years is generally used. However, that time-frame does not work well in the case of Rodney and Jonathan. Their ancestor is believed to be Thomas Henry Frazer born 1836. Even if we take that date from 2021, that is 185 years ago. That means that, at most, there should have been an average of three private variants between Jonathan and Rodney where there are 4 (and actually 4.5). That means that these Variants were forming about every 40 years or about twice as fast as would be expected, on average.

Here are Jonathan and Rodney’s average of 4 Private Variants:

Rodney’s Private Variant at Position # 11830989

I don’t want to go through each of Rodney’s Private Variants, but I will at least look at one:

I don’t think that FTDNA shows test results in the browser for Private Variants if you are not positive for them. Here is Jonathan’s downloaded results for this position:

It looks like Jonathan’s results were less than conclusive.

Next, I’ll look at Paul’s results:

Paul was not tested at that position.

Let’s see what Rick has. I need to download his ‘csv’ file. I would expect that Rick would have good results as he has tested for the BigY700:

Here is a surprise. This shows that Rick has this Private Variant. That means that it can no longer be Private. That is good because it means that Rodney has one less Private Variant. I don’t know why FTDNA didn’t pick this up:

That means that this should be a new SNP included in the umbrella SNP group of Frazer. At YBrowse Position # 11830989 is FT420438:

The good news is that this will take away one of Rick’s Private Variants as he has too many already.

Rodney’s Private Variant at Position # 5987829

I did a comparison of Rodney’s and Rick’s Private Variants and found one more match:

This brings up another reason that Private Variants are important. If they match with someone else’s Private Variant, they form a new SNP. Usually FTDNA will catch that. In this case, they are still in the middle of some of their reviews and have ordered backbone tests for Rodney and Jonathan. It is possible that FTDNA is not sure where to put these new SNPs. This seems to indicate that they are Frazer SNPs, but perhaps they go back even further?

Here is what YBrowse shows:

These two SNPs are interesting as YBrowse shows that they are from an unknown Haplogroup. That seems to support my theory that FTDNA doesn’t know where these SNPs belong. Here are Rodney’s test results for the position:

Here are Rick’s results:

If Rodney and Rick are positive at this Position, then Paul and Jonathan should also be positive.

Paul’s results above were inconclusive.

How about Jonathan’s?

Jonathan’s test results were also inconclusive.

FT420438 and FT420010 Frazer SNPs?

If it was up to me, I would add these two SNPs to this area:

That means that there would be 8 SNPs in this area instead of the current six. So far, everyone how has tested for these SNPs have been Frazers. However, the six or eight SNPs represent four or five hundred years of history. It would be great to fill in some of the blanks for this time period. It may be that FTDNA hasn’t finished their review or are awaiting the results of the two backbone tests they are doing.

Changes to Frazer Testers’ Private Variants

The other change that should be happening is that Rick and Paul’s Average Private variants under R-Y85652 should be going up. They show 3 currently. Rick has 9 but two of these are shared with Rodney. Rick should have 7 Private Variants and Paul has one Private Variant. That should result in an average of four Private Variants under the Archibald Frazer LIne of R-Y85652.

Rodney currently has 7 Private Variants, but two of those are shared with Rick. That should results in 5 Private Variants for Rodney. Jonathan has two Private Variants. If FTDNA rounds down, that will result in an average of 3 Private Variants for the James Line Branch under R-Y151390.

Further, I note this under FTDNA:

This says it could be that the two matches I found between Rodney and Rick could be there because they haven’t properly been properly validated yet. Hence the backbone test which is in process.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I started out trying to figure out if Rodney and Rick’s BigY reviews were done or not.
  • I thought that perhaps Rodney’s review was done because the Block tree average number of Private Variants matched with his and Jonathan’s Private Variants.
  • Then, when I started comparing Rodney and Rick’s Private Variants, I saw that they had two in common. That means that if Rodney’s review was over, there was still two SNPs to be assigned to the Frazer Block Tree.
  • I guessed that perhaps FTDNA had trouble placing these new SNPs and that is why they ordered the Backbone tests for Rodney and Jonathan
  • I had thought that if your Private Variants matched with what the average Private Variants were on the Block Tree, then that meant that your BigY manual review was over. But then I found something at FTDNA that said that may not be true.
  • I had thought that the Backbone tests ordered for Rodney and Jonathan were to confirm their new Haplogroup of R-Y151390. Now it appears more likely that the Backbone test is for the two matching Private Variants that Rodney and Rick have with each other.
  • It could be a month or more before the dust settles for Rick’s new BigY 700 test and Rodney’s upgrade from BigY 500 to BigY 700. By then, we will probably have the results from the new Frazier/Frasher BigY 700 test which has been delayed.
Posted on

Update on Frazer YDNA: Rodney’s Upgrade from BigY 500 to BigY 700

I have been writing quite a bit lately on Frazer YDNA. There are few reasons for this. One is that the information has been changing gradually as the two new Frazer Haplogroups are rolling out. The second is because the discovery of these two new Haplogroups is important. It is important not only for the four testers, but also for all the hundreds of the Frazer “Clan” who descend from Archibald Frazer who lived in Roscommon, Ireland in the early 1700’s. These new YDNA developments are equivalent to a major genealogical find. However, YDNA results are more written in stone than genealogifcal finds. Once you have your YDNA results, it is very clear that if you have these SNPs you are from these Frazer Lines and if you don’t, you are not from thse Lines.

Dating the New Frazer Haplogroups

There are a few ways to date a YDNA tree. I’ll use the dates that we think are right with Frazer genealogy where we know that.

The important dates are for the common ancestors of the four YDNA testers shown at the bottom of the tree above. Those dates are 1690, 1804 and 1836. Here I’ve put the dates on Rick’s Block Tree:

[Edit: The 1792 in the image above should be 1836.]

The tree is reversed from the genealogical tree. Rick is on the right Branch with Paul. From what we can tell, YP6489 was formed about 1200 AD. YP6489 is representative of the three SNPs in the Block. We don’t know which SNP was formed first, but we may assume that these three SNPs formed equally between the time period of 1200 and 1545. Next is the new subgroup of FT421618. This Haplogroup seems to be explained by the Frazier/Frasher test results that we are waiting for. There were quality issues, so his sample is being retested. Perhaps FTDNA had enough information to say he would be FT421618. Again, we don’t know when these three SNPs formed – just that they formed between around 1545 and 1690.

1690 is an important date as that is the date we are using for the birth of our common Roscommon Ireland Frazer ancestor – Archibald Frazer. On the James Frazer Branch, SNPs Y151390 and FT421607 had to form between Archibald Frazer born 1690 and Rodney and Jonathan’s common ancestor. That common ancestor was Thomas Henry Frazer born about 1792. On the Archibald Line, three SNPs in the Haplogroup Y85652 formed between 1690 and 1804. The bottom of the chart brings us down to the birth dates of the three testers. The private variants were formed in the James line between 1792 and the birth dates of the Rodney and Jonathan. The private variants in the Archibald line were formed between 1804 and the birth dates of Paul and Rick.

R-Y85652 – The Archibald Line

Y85652 consists of a group of three SNPs. These were previously Private Variants for Paul. In order for Paul’s three Private Variants to become SNPs, Rick had to test positive for these Private Variants and Rodney and Jonathan had to be negative for these.

Y85652

Here are Rick’s results for Y85652:

The pink column is at the position on the Y Chromosome of 8162400 which is now Y85652. The T in that column shows that Rick had the mutation from A to T.

Paul had similar results:

Every horizontal line is called a read. Paul’s results go off the screen. That means that he had more reads than Rick which just means he had a higher confirmation than Rick of Y85652.

Next, I’ll look at Jonathan’s results. We expect the results to be negative:

Right at the position of 8162400, Jonathan shows no mutations from T to C. That means that he doesn’t have SNP Y85652. To satify curiosity, here are Rodney’s results:

Rodney had fewer reads, but is clearly negative for Y85652 at the position in the middle of the image above under the down arrow. If I went through this exercise for Y102792 and Y112046, I should get the same results.

Y151390 – The James Line

Here are Rodney’s test results:

He is clearly positive. Jonathan has a question mark for this position:

Jonathan didn’t have enough reads at this location. However, for all of his 7 reads, he shos the mutation from C to T at this position.

Paul aslo had a question mark at this position. Here are Paul’s results:

This was a bit of surprise. Let’s look at Rick’s results. He will have to be negative for this position for the James Line to get the Haplogroup of Y151390:

Fortunately, Rick has good results showing that he is negative for Y151390. Because Paul is in a group with Rick, Paul is presumed negative for Y151390 also.

FT421607 on the James Frazer Line

I’m curious about this SNP also. Rodney has good results:

Jonathan has only one read at this position:

But it is positive. That makes it important for Paul and Rodney to be negative for FT421607. Here are Paul’s results:

Paul’s read didn’t make it over to position #7788709.

Rick has much better results:

That means that Paul is again presumed negative based on Rick’s negative results and we end up with the James Line SNP of FT421607. FT421607 is based on only one good positive test and one good negative test. But because the negative test was already in a sold group consisting of Paul and Rick, that meant that Rodney and Jonathan had to be in the other group. The bottom line is that the James Line and Archibald Line Haplogroup results are dependent on each other.

Here is FT421607 which now appears at YBrowse listed as a new 2021 SNP:

This gives the location of FT421607 on the Y Chromosome and what the mutation was (G to T). It also gives the location of the SNP under the Frazer Haplogroup of YP6489 and the James Line Haplogroup of Y151390.

Private Variants

If it weren’t for the Private Variants, I would think that FTDNA’s manual review has been completed. However, the numer of Private Variants of the testers don’t match up with the Private Variants shown on the Block Tree. For example, Rick shows that he has nine Private Variants:

Paul shows one Private Variant:

I’m not sure why Rick has so many Private Variants. It may be because his BigY 700 covered more than the older BigY 500 tests. Their average numer of SNPs should be five. The average number of Private Variants shows three:

Rodney and Jonathan’s Private Variants (James Frazer Line)

The Block Tree above shows that Jonthan and Rodney have an average of 4 Private Variants. Jonathan shows that he has two Private Variants:

Rodney has 7 Private Variants:

This makes me wonder if Rodney actually had the BigY 700. A review of Rodney’s FTNDA history is interesting:

Rodney did have the BigY 700 done. This makes sense. However, it says that his BigY-700 was ordered 8/26/2020 and completed just 1/14/2021. I talked to Rodney’s niece who said that she did order the BigY 700. Mystery solved.

Y-HAP-Backbone Tests for Rodney and Jonathan

In addition, it looks like two Y-HAP-Backbone tests were ordered and one was completed. The one ordered on 1/11/2021 has not yet completed. Here is Rodney’s Order Status:

Here is Jonathan’s order history:

I’m not sure how to interpret what FTDNA is saying. It appears that more tests were ordered for Rodney than for Jonathan. Here is some information from FTDNA. I don’t know if itis up to date:

I checked Paul and Rick’s order history and no backbone SNP Tests were ordered there. That is interesting because it tells me a few things:

  • FTDNA is sure of Paul and Rick’s new Haplogroup of Y85652
  • FTDNA came up with Rodney and Jonathan’s Haplogroup based on one positive test from the James Line and one negative test from the Archibald Line
  • FTDNA would like more positive testing for Rodney and Jonathan to confirm their Haplogroup of Y151390, so they ordered Y-HAP-Backbone tests.

This should mean that we will have a pretty good Haplogroup for Rodney and Jonathan, that will be proven once the backbone tests have been completed.

This shows Jonathan’s pending results:

Here are Rodney’s pending results:

This seems to indicate that Rodney’s BigY700 is not yet complete. However, these are Rodney’s matches:

This seems to indicate that as Rodney matches Rick (who has taken the BigY 700) in the 800,000 level (under Shared Variants above) and Jonathan (who has taken the BigY 500) at the 600,000 level that perhaps Rodney’s BigY 700 is completed except for the Backbone test.

Another Thought on the Backbone Test and the Frazier/Frasher Results

It is possible that the need for these backbone tests came about due to the pending results of the Frazier/Frasher BigY 700 tests. At least, the tests were ordered around the time that a new Haplogroup appeared on the Frazer Tree:

This new Haplogroup which seems to be a result of the pending
Frazier/Frasher BigY results. This new Haplogroup appeared around the time of the backbone tests were ordered for Rodney and Jonathan. So these backbone tests may have been ordered to back up the new Frazier/Frasher results, to verify the James Line Haplogroup of Y151390, or both.

Summary and Conclusions

  • While looking at Rick’s new test results and the resulting new Haplogroups for the James and Archibald Frazer Lines, I was surprised to see that backbone tests had been ordered for Jonathan and Rodney from the James Line
  • Also I was surprised that Rodney had a BigY test that was only recently completed (or is being completed).
  • Now that I can see the SNP test results and the SNP results at YBrowse, it makes it easier to see how FTDNA has made/is making their decisions.
  • I can probably see the results of the testing because Rodney’s BigY 700 seems to be completed. That testing in conjunction with Rick’s recent BigY 700 testing is likely the reason why there is a new James Frazer Line Haplogroup.
  • It appears that the results of Jonathan’s and Rodney’s backbone tests should come out around the time that the Frasher/Frazier BigY 700 test results are due.
  • The result of all this testing is that we will have a really good Frazer YDNA Tree solidly documented by BigY testing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

A New Proposed James Frazer Line YDNA Haplogroup

In my previous Blog, I mentioned how Rick’s new BigY 700 test results created a sort of tipping point. His test in conjunction with the previous three BigY tests resulted in three changes in the Frazer YDNA Tree. One of those changes was the likely creation of a new James Line YDNA Haplogroup of R-Y151390. I say likely, because FTDNA’s manual review has not yet been completed.

However, when I look at the Frazer Block Tree today, I see that there is already another change from yesterday:

For some reason, FTDNA has split the old Frazer umbrella group of R-YP6489 into two. YP6489 is now the older group with a younger group of R-FT421618 under it. This is very unusual, because without an additional tester, there should be no way to know that FT421618 is younger than Y6489.

Some Speculation on R-FT421618

This is another mystery, as I don’t know how FTDNA could know that there were two groups unless someone else has tested. The only thing I can think of is that they may have access to other information such as the initial Frazier/Frasher BigY results that we have been waiting for. This test had quality issues and the results are now due around the end of February.

Let’s assume that FTDNA is looking at initial Frasher/Frazier results. Previous dating by the FTDNA YDNA administrator for our Frazer group had set YP6489 at around 1200 AD. The two Frazer Lines (Archibald and James) had to have started around 1720. This is about the date we are guessing Archibald and James were born, though we believe that Archibald was older. From looking at the two groups of Y6489 and FT421618, they both have three SNPs in each. That means that FT421618 could have formed about halfway between between Y6489 and the James Frazer and Archibald Frazer Haplogroups. 1200 to 1720 is 520 years. That means hat we should be able to date FT421618 at the halfway point between 1200 and 1720 or at 1460.

R-Y151390: The New James Frazer Line YDNA Haplogroup

This is what I set out to look at but got side-tracked. In my previous Blog, I was struggling to see how FTDNA had arrived at the conclusion that this would be the new Haplogroup for the James Frazer Line based on my inability to find test results for certain SNPs or Private Variants. I brought my questions to the FTDNA – BigY Facebook Group and got some great results. This was the bottom line answer after much discussion from David Vance who is very accomplished and respected in the field of YDNA:

ok so YFull thinks Paul is positive for Y151390; FTDNA thinks not. That’s something you’d probably have to delve into the BAM file to figure out, but the only difference would be that Y151390 might belong above as an equivalent in the R-YP6489 block rather than only above Rodney and Jonathan. Based on their negative results for the R-Y85652 block and equivalents, the basic branching structure either way is still as shown on the Block Tree.

Here is some more background. Here is Jonathan’s results show in the non-block tree diagram:

FT421618, which I discussed above, is in yellow because Jonathan was Presumed Positive for this SNP. That means that his test results were not as thorough as needed for Jonathan to be positive for this SNP. However, based on others being positive for this SNP, he had to be positive for it also. Although I can’t find Jonathan’s detailed test results for Y151390 (the new James Frazer Line Haplogroup), the green dot means that Jonathan tested positive for this SNP. FT421607 is much more confusing as the grey dot means Presumed Negative. If Jonathan is showing as having this SNP, why wouldn’t he be Presumed Positive for it? Furthermore Jonathan is showing Presumed Negative for Y85652, Y102972 and Y112046. I know that is not the case, as I have looked at his results for these three SNPs and he shows as Tested Negative. Here is Jonathan’s results for Y85652:

I had to shrink my screen to show all of Jonathan’s reads that show he tested negative for Y85652. If he had tested positive, there would be a letter T in the column under the tiny arrow above. That tells me that, despite what the grey dots say, that Jonathan tested negative for this SNP and the other two under Y85652. This negative testing by Jonathan and Rodney made it very clear that Paul and Rick were in Y85652 and that they were not.

Is Paul Presumed Negative for Y151390?

That appears to be the case, but I showed above that these dots are not always right:

Here Paul shows as Presumed Negative for Y151390 and FT421607. I looked up FTDNA’s definition of Presumed Negative:

Presumed Negative – You are presumed negative for the primary SNP or variant. A person is presumed negative for sibling branches of SNPs for which you have tested positive.

It seems like the definition could have been stated more clearly. David Vance wrote to me:

so presumed negative, but not confirmed negative.
Are Rodney and Jonathan confirmed negative for R-Y5652 and the other two equivalent SNPs in that block? I’m starting to think those are the driving force for this split, and Paul and Rick are presumed negative for Y151390 because they’re positive for those three SNPs and Rodney and Jonathan are negative so that drives the branching decision rather than Y151390.
It seems that what FTDNA is saying is that Rick and Paul are clearly in Y85682 and that Rodney and Jonathan are clearly out of that group. That means that if Jonathan and Rodney are in FT151390, then Paul and Rodney have to be out of that group even though Paul had some indications on his test that he might be positive for FT151390. At least I think that is what happened.
Let’s see what Rick shows for his newer BigY 700:
The results are similar to Paul’s except that Rich test positive for the new Frazer SNP FT421618.

Another help at Facebook was that someone found Y151690 at YBrowse when I could not. I was doing the search wrong. Here it is:

This seemed like an older SNP based on the Y prefix and it is dated at 2018. The Y prefix on the SNP means YFull.

Summary and Conclusions

  • By reaching out to the BigY community on Facebook, I was able to find more resources to answer my Frazer YDNA questions.
  • At the very least, I am documenting the changes as they are happening with the Frazer YDNA tree
  • I tried to explain how the James Frazer Line was formed. However, without seeing the testing data for some of the SNPs, it is difficult to accurately describe the process
  • There was an unusual split in the umbrella Frazer Haplogroup of Y6489. This seems to be only explained by FTDNA using the partial results of the Frazier/Frasher results for which we are waiting.

 

Posted on

Two New Frazer YDNA Haplogroups: R-Y151390 and R-Y85652

Family Tree DNA has issued the Frazer family two new Haplogroups as seen in Rick’s block tree below:

R-Y151390 and R-Y85652

I was only expecting one new Haplogroup for the Archibald Frazer Branch (shown as “Your branch” above. Previously, I was disapointed that Rodney’s previous test did not form a new branch for the James Frazer Line. Apparently Rick’s BigY test also gave FTDNA the confidence to create a James Frazer Branch shown in the bottom left portion of the Block Tree above.

The James Line and the Archibald Lines were previoiusly under R-YP6489 which is now an umbrella group over the two new Frazer subgroups.

R-Y85652

This Archibald Frazer Branch came out as predicted by the R1a – L664 FTDNA Project Administrator Martin. The Archibald Frazer Branch is the one below near the date 1804:

I added the dates in black above from my previous Blog. Apparently the manual review has not completed (or started?) yet. My understanding is that there is a mechanical/automated review first before the manual review. Note that the Private Variants do not line up. Martin has Rick with 10 Private SNPs. The Block tree shows an average number of three private variants between Paul and Rick. Rick’s Private Variant List at FTDNA has gone down to nine pressently:

It’s a puzzle trying to find the difference between Martin’s list and FTDNA’s. Martin has the additional Private Variant numer of 11683336. If Rick had 13 private variants and three went to the new Archibald Frazer Line, then he should have 10 left.

11683336

Here is 11683336 at YBrowse:

This must be a new Private Variant as it has no name yeat at YBrowse. This Private Variant may have gone up to the umbrella group of YP6489. Here is Rick’s previous Block Tree:

The old YP6489 had five SNPs. The new group has six:

FT421618 is the new SNP in that group. That means that Rick’s BigY results ended up changing the umbrella Frazer group of YP6489 as well as creating two new groups (for Archibald and James Frazer) under that group.

More on FT421618

The FT series is FTDNA’s newer SNPs. As seen by the fact that YBrowse is not yet aware of this SNP, this must be a brand new SNP. In order for this position to be a true Private Variant for Rick, it has to show as negative in Rodney, Jonathan and Paul. FTDNA probably looked at their results and saw that Rodney, Jonathan  and Paul tested for this posisiton and it wasn’t clear that they didn’t test positive for this position.

Here is Rick’s results:

What this shows is that Rick is very positive for this SNP. 10 good reads is usually OK. He has many more than 10 good reads.

Here are Paul’s results:

There is a little arrow where the results should be, but there is nothing there. That is probably what is called a no-call.

Here are Jonathan’s results:

Jonathan has four good reads. Remember that for Rick to have this position as a Private Variant, the others have to be negative for this position. Jonathan didn’t have enough reads to give him this SNP on his own, but because Rick tested really well for it, then Rick and Jonathan must both have this SNP. That is how it got added to the Frazer Umbrella Haplogroup.

Finally, we look at Rodney:

Rodney has only one good read for this SNP, so Rick confirms this single read.

Where Does R-Y151390 Come From?

This is the new James Frazer Line Haplogroup that FTDNA is showing on their Block Tree, I am having trouble finding this SNP perhaps because it has not been on a tree before. When I search on YBrowse:

When I search for Y151390 at FTDN, BY151390 shows up which is a different SNP. Without knowing what position Y151390 is, I cannot do further analysis on it. I have one more place to look. Here is Jonathan’s non-Block Tree at FTDNA:

When I hover over the SNPs under R-Y151390:

The first is Positive and the second is presumed negative. However, I still don’t know what position that Y151390 is at. That means that I can’t figure out how FTDNA arrived at their decision.

A Google search for this SNP revealed that I had mentioned Y151390 in at least one of my old Blogs:

The answer appears to be at YFull. After clicking around a while at YFull, this appears to be the position of Y151390:

For some reason, this named SNP was perhaps never uploaded to YBrowse:

So it appears that FTDNA got the name of its SNP for the James Frazer Branch from YFull. I believe that the Y prefix is from YFull. Further it is unclear how my cousin Paul was listed under Y151390 at YFull and is now not in that group at FTDNA.

FT421607

This is the other SNP in the new YDNA Tree for the James Frazer Line. I can’t find it right now listed as being tested for either Jonathan or Rick. That means that it must be still listed under the position number. As I don’t know what the position number was, I can’t find the test results for the position. An FT prefix refers to a new SNP by FTDNA. Here are the search results for Jonathan:

 

Summary and Conclusions

  • Recently FTDNA came out with three important developments for our Frazer group. One was expected and two were not.
  • What was expected was that there would be a new Haplogroup for the Archibald Frazer Line based on three different SNPs
  • The first unexpected thing was that there would be a new SNP added to the now umbrella of R-YP6489. This group is now over the two Frazer Lines of Archibald and James. This new SNP could theoretically make the age of YP6489 older by about 100 years.
  • The second unexpected thing was that a new Haplogroup formed for the James Line. I had expected this to happen when Rodney did a BigY test but it didn’t happen. This new Haplogroup is R-Y151390. I was unable to see how FTDNA arrived at this conclusion. I think that it will be clear as the manual review progresses.
  • Hopefully, subsequent review will confirm this new James Line Haplogroup
  • Rick’s new test results in conjunction with the previous three Frazer BigY tests has resulted in a quantum leap in the Frazer YDNA Tree. These results are helpful in a quite recent timeframe. They cover the time from ancient history up to the 1800’s when the genealogical records became more reliable.

 

Posted on

My Look at an R1a Administor’s Review on Frazer BigY Results

Sorry for the awkward title on the Blog. Things are moving quite quickly after a 4 month wait for Frazer BigY results. I wrote my first review the day the initial results came out on December 29th. Martin’s initial review came out on January 2, 2021. Happy New Year.R1

Martin’s New S2880 Tree

Martin, who live in the Netherlands, is the L664 Project Administrator for FTDNA’s R1a YDNA Project. Here is L664 on the left of the image below:

 

This is from a 2015 R1a Tree.  At that time, L664 was dated around 3,000 BC.  L664 is in blue on the bottom left of the image above. Martin has updated what he calls Section 2b or S2880 as of January 2, 2021. Here is where that is on the bottom left side of the 2015 tree:

 

Here is where S2880 is on Martin’s new tree:

The date for S2880 is about 1800 BC:

Here are the four Frazer BigY testers on the tree:

Here is a more close-up version:

Above YP6489 is the date 1200 AD. Below that box is 1600 AD. That is an important jump as it brings us into more of a genealogical time-frame. It is also important to understand the what these two dates mean. It says that the SNP YP6489 (which is actually a group of SNPs) formed about 1200 AD. The shared group of Frazers go back to 1600 AD (by DNA). This is probably 1690 or so by our genealogy, so a pretty good agreement. However, others outside our group who descend from our 1690 Roscommon Frazer and who share YP6489 could have have an earlier shared date. We are currently awaiting BigY results for a Frazier/Frasher who may fit into this category. His results should show where he fits in.

The last four vertical lines are the Frazers in our group. They are Rodney and Jonathan in the James Frazer Branch. The last two are Paul and Rick in the Archibald Frazer Line. They are the two with all the projected private SNPs.

Martin’s Review

Rick and Paul’s Shared Private SNPs

This is the most important part, because these shared private SNPs willl become a new Frazer YDNA branch. Martin writes:

You have 13 private SNP’s and I found that you share 3 of your private SNP’s with the private SNP’s of Frazer #[number deleted for privacy]. This means you both create a new subclade downstream Subclade YP6489, which I have called Y85652.  

In my first review, I only found two private SNPs that Paul and Rick shared. Martin was able to find three:

These three are shown in the block where the bolded Y85652 is. Here were the two variants that I found:

Positions 8162400 and 21457649

These were the two that I found. Martin has these as SNPs Y85652 and Y112046. In my previous Blog, I had identified that Rick and Paul had matching SNPs Y85652 and Y112046. So that looks like we agree.

Position 16784516 aka Y102972

This is the posiition that Martin found and that I didn’t see in my initial review. Here is my spreadsheet:

I Show that Rick and Rodney have position 16784516 as a non-matching variant but that Rick and Jonathan do not. I may have deleted this entry by mistake. Actually I see this variant above on Jonathan’s list, so I just did not match these correctly:

You have to think backwards with these lists. So if Rick has non-matching variants with both Rodney and Jonathan who are in the James Line. That means that he must have matching variants at those locations with Paul in the Archibald Frazer Line.

Here is Richard Frazer born 1830:

Here is George Frazer born about 1838:

Assuming that this is right (and it appears to be) that means that there was on average one SNP mutation every generation for Archibald Frazer born 1720, Philip Frazer born 1758 and James Frazer born 1804. Also this assumes that we have the genealogy right. We don’t know which ancestor had which mutation. However, it would be possible to find that out if we had descendants from each of these lines test. That is also assuming that there is an unbroken male descendant in each of these lines.

Here is one of Martin’s comments:

Normally we find in the BigY-700 on average a number of 100 years per SNP (or one SNP mutation in every 4-5 generations). So when we assume the Frazer family splits around 1600 AD in 4 branches, then you expect on average for each about 4 private SNP’s. You and #444958 have now about 12-13 SNP’s downstream subclade YP6489 and the other two Frazer’s only 1-3 SNP’s. But sometimes we see large differences in the SNP mutation rate in individual cases.

My opinion is that a male generation was longer between 31 and 38 years so on average 34.5 years. Of course this varies at different times and in different places. Still, with my version, there would be a new SNP every three generations as opposed to the one generation we are seeing here.

The bottom line is that I see my mistake and Martin and I are in agreement on the number of matching private variants that Rick and Paul have in the Archibald Frazer Line.

A Side Thought on Male Frazers

A little ways above, I mentioned the need for an unbroken male line for Frazer YDNA testing. Here is the line of Archibald Frazer born about 1778 and Ann Stinson. This Archibald was the son of Archibald born about 1720 and Mary Lilley:

Out of about 27 or so who tested for autosomal DNA under the Archibald Line born about 1720, I see only about two who would be eligible for YDNA testing. If these two tested, it would confirm this line by YDNA. Their common ancestor would be Archibald born about 1778.

On the James Frazer Line the first two circled on the bottom have taken the BigY test.

There are two others on the left hand side who haven’t taken the YDNA test.

Rick and Paul and Private Variants

To me the private variants are not as important as the shared SNPs. These are variants that should describe a line after the shared ancestor of the two testers.

So Rick’s Private Variants would describe his line starting with Richard Patterson Frazer. Paul’s private variants describe his lineage starting with George Frazer born about 1838. George is my second great-grandfather.

Here is what Martin has to say about Rick’s Private Variants:

You and #444958 have now about 12-13 SNP’s downstream subclade YP6489 and the other two Frazer’s only 1-3 SNP’s. But sometimes we see large differences in the SNP mutation rate in individual cases. I have also checked your 10 private SNP’s in the Yfull results of #444958, but for these 10 private SNP’s of yours, 8 gave a negative result and 2 gave a “no-call” because these two were not tested in his BigY-500 test.  

I am a bit confused by Martin’s use of what he calls downstream SNPs or private SNPs.

These are the numbers in the last yellow boxes for Rodney, Jonathan, Paul and Rick. Paul currently has 4 private SNPs. Because of his three matches with Rick, that will go down to one. However, Martin adds in private eight private SNPs identified by YFull.

Here are some of Paul’s ‘Novel’ Variants at YFull:

I highlighted the first Private SNP that Martin has identified on Paul’s yellow box above. Paul has two more Novel SNPs under his Best quality tab. I see that some on the YFull list say private and some say up to R-YP6489. According to YFull:

The words up to [name of subclade]  after a Novel SNP means that the eventual location of the SNP may be as far in the past as the named subclade or closer to the present than the current Terminal Hg.

That means that they aren’t sure if those SNPs belong in with YP6489 or after it. Just another way to slice and dice things. For the SNPs that say ‘private’, they must be after YP6489 for sure.

Rick then shows 10 private variants. These also don’t make sense in a way. If these are valid, then these would all be in five generations of his Richard Patterson Frazer line. That would mean that there were two mutations per generation. I’ll just depend on Martin’s analysis for now and wait to see if FTDNA’s manual review reduces these SNPs at all.

Dating the YDNA Tree

We can use what we know about Frazer genealogy to get better dates on this tree. The date of ca 1600 is probably a bit early. We think that the father (probably Archibald) of the Archibald and James Lines was born around 1690. Our best bet at dating is from the Elphin Census:

For sake of argument, we’ll say that Archibald Sr was born in 1690 and died at age 50 or so around 1740.  Perhaps Mary was younger and born in 1695. Let’s say she had Archibald in 1718 and James in 1720. We’ll say they both married at age 25. We know that James married in 1745. He had two children by 1749. We’ll say they were only age 1 and 3 at the time. Archibald could have married in 1743 and had children aged 1 3 and 5 in 1749. Just a guess.

All this to say that Archibald Frazer Senior could not have been born 1600. I would stick to 1690 and put that date in where the 1600 is. Then we know that the common ancestor for Rick and Paul is James Frazer who was born about 1804:

Summary and Conclusions

  • I appreciate Martin’s quick and thorough review of Rick’s test results and his incorporation of those results into Setion 2b of his L664 Tree
  • The new name Frazer Branch in the Archibald Frazer line will include three SNPs
  • I was able to identify four people who would qualify for YDNA testing from my charts of Frazers who have already taken autosomal tests. These people are rare because they have to have unbroken male line Frazer ancestry
  • I looked at Rick and Paul’s private variants briefly and will wait for the FTDNA manual review on these.
  • I looked at fine-tuning the dating of the Frazer YDNA BigY Tree based on what we know about our Frazer genealogy.
  • Next on the horizon is the Frazier/Frasher test we are waiting for and Rick’s FTDNA manual review.

Addendum on 16784516 and New Information from David Vance

This is the extra SNP that I missed. Here it is at YBrowse:

This would have been discovered at the time of my cousin Paul’s initial BigY test. David Vance recently posted a chart with the regions of the Y Chromosome:

DaveidVance has this as a good region even though it shows in a darker region on the YBrowse browser.

So SNP Y102972 is a SNP that Rick and Paul share. We’ll have to wait and see which SNP FTDNA calls this portion of the Archibald Frazer Branch.

8162400

David Vance lists this in not the best region:

Here is more from David:

21457649

David doesn’t list this as the greatest either. Based on David’s chart Y102972 would be the best SNP name for this section of the Archibald Frazer Line. Whatever the name, I think that it is interesting that the BigY test has defined a specific area of the Archibald Frazer Branch of the Frazers from Roscommon, Ireland.

 

Posted on

My Children’s Lowell Ancestors in Newspapers

Seeing as I have subscribed to newspapers.com, I am looking to see what is there. They do cover Lowell. I’ll start there and see what I find.

Here is my children’s mother’s genealogy:

The Polish top half came to Lowell later than the bottom half of the genealogy.

Jarek

17 December 1929

The Hartford Courant:

It looks like the coverage for Jarek in the Lowell Sun starts in 1936:

28 October 1938

Jules is Julius – my children’s grandfather. Walter was his brother. Julius was about 27 in 1936.

11 January 1930

15 January 1930

Here’s an interesting Boston Globe story. The newpaper dates before 1936 seem to be mostly from the Boston Globe.

I see that Julius aka Gerald was the top scorer for Lowell.

3 March 1930

28 April 1933

In case you missed seeing this game live:

6 May 1933

11 May 1934

I’m assuming that Julius also played baseball, but perhaps this was his brother Walter. Walter was listed as basketball captain in the Lowell Tech Yearbook in 1934, so this is more likely Walter.

3 January 1931

So this game was brother against brother.

26 October 1940

Draft numbers from the Burlington Daily News:

12 August 1943

The Burlington Free Press:

Cavanaugh

2 January 1974

From the Lowell Sun:

10 March 1945

The Miami News:

11 March 1945

 

Note that Agnes’ sister Helen is listed as Helen Rowbotham. I don’t think that is right.

Helen Cavanaugh Born 1917

11 November 1944

15 November

14 July 1991

Leona M Morrow Born 1891

Here is Leona’s birth record from Lowell. She was actually born in 1890:

It looks like someone may have added her in after the fact.

Her father was a jeweller:

Her mother was said to be born in Canada. I didn’t see any newspaper entries for Laona. Here is Marshall St in Lowell. I don’t know if it is the same as Marshall Place:

Summary and Conclusions

  • I found it interesting reading about Julius Jarek’s basketball games. I recall him being inducted into the hall of fame at Lowell Tech.
  • I got interested in Agnes Cavanaugh’s sister Helen when the Miami newspaper wrongly referred to her has a Rowbotham. I suppose the reporter did not realize that Agnes had been married previously.
  • I was not able to find out anything on the Morrow side. However, I did find Laona Morrow’s birth record in Lowell.
Posted on

The John Williams Family as Seen in Fall River Newspapers

Previously, I have looked at many of the Fall River newpaper entries for Officer Abe Pilling, the jeweler Abel Burrows and his wife Mary Ann Hartley Burrows. Abel and Mary Ann had one daughter out of three who survived and married. She was Elizabeth A Burrows born in 1874 in Fall River. She married John Williams who worked at Abel’s jewelry store. I suppose that a follow-up on the Pilling family will also be in order at some point.

What I found with Mary Ann Hartley Burrows was that most of her newspapers entries were listed under Mrs. Abel Burrows.

4 Sep 1900

I had shown this before, but missed the second part:

I had previously guessed that Joseph Hartley was really 9 year old James Hartley, my grandfather. The other guess is that the two women accompanied the two children back and stayed for a while in Rochester.

5 March 1903

23 February 1907

The Fall River Globe didn’t miss many events:

13 January 1912

I wonder who was there from Rochester. By the way, Orlando or Orleando Draper was the brother of Walter Draper mentioned in my previous Blog. Mary Ann Burrows was listed as Walter’s guardian. I believe that it was also Orelando Draper who traveled to New York with Abel Burrows when Abel got a telegram that his daughter was ill.

25 February 1913

13th and 18th birthdays were big deals for the Williams girls. I wonder who wrote up these stories. Did Fall River Evening Herald have a birthday party reporter?

3 September 1913

Of course, I know this was actually Mary Ann Burrows.

16 October 1913

Listed under Tiverton news:

10 July 1914

Under the heading of Tiverton:

20 January 1915

Elizabeth Burrows Williams’ father-in-law:

29 October 1915

Mary Ann Hartley Burrows is mentioned but as Burroughs. Some entries were mentioned in my previous Blog, so I will omit them here.

23 February 1918

I may have this elsewhere:

According to Google, $18 from 1918 would be worth about $310 today.

17 April 1918

My guess that Mrs. Mary Bellow above was actually Mary Burrows. Quite a few parties were held at this house. This is what Google shows at 585 Cherry Street  currently:

 

6 November 1919

18 October 1920

8 March 1921

14 January 1922

This tells me that John kept on as a jeweller. Mrs. Marion Wilmot sounds familiar.

Marion was the daughter of Marion Ann Pilling.

2 May 1922

I guess that my cousin was a member of the Central Baptist Always Busy Club.

19 Jun 1922

29 June 1922

Looks like the Fall River Evening News got the scoop on this one:

6 July 1922

5 April 1923

I wouldn’t want to miss any 18th birthdays:

12 July 1923

DNA Matches

Here are my matches at Ancestry to this side of the family:

 

Summary and Conclusions

I think that the availability of the Fall River Newspapers at newspapers.com stops about 1923. I have a few reasons for following Elizabeth Burrows Williams. One is that she is the daughter of Mary Ann Hartley Burrows. Mary Ann was the sister of my great-grandfather. Also I have DNA matches to two people through Mildred Williams.

Reading these newspaper articles give some details into the Williams family. Also it is interesting to see the differences between today and then. I can’t imagine a birthday party today including military marches and ending with the Star Spangled Banner. The Williams appeared to have had a less tragi life than the Burrows. The Burrows lost two of their three daughters to illiness. It appeared that all the Williams children survived.

 

Posted on

A New BigY Test for the Archibald Frazer Line

Back in August of 2020 a BigY test was ordered for Rick. I was just notified that his results have started to come in. Rick’s STR results came in last August and I wrote about them here. However, now we have the more important SNP results. SNPs are the part of a man’s YDNA that mutate in a way that give a precise indication of his line back to the earliest men on the planet.

Frazer YDNA

This is the YDNA tree for the Frazers who were from Roscommon, Ireland. They have lived there since the early 1700’s. It is believed that there were two brothers at that time: Archibald and James:

The older brother was Archibald. I am not a Frazer by YDNA as my grandmother was a Frazer, but I had my second cousin once removed Paul take a test. Paul, Rick and I and many others are on the Archibald Line. Rodney and Jonathan and many others are on the James Line. Paul, Rodney and Jonathan already have BigY tests, but they are the older BigY 500 tests. Rick has the newer more accurate and thorough BigY 700 test. Rick was needed to better define the Archibald Line specifically.

Rick’s New Results

Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) will likely perform a manual analysis of Rick’s results which will result in a further wait, but I’ll look at what the results show so far. Based on the tree above, Rick and Paul’s matching SNPs should show what SNPs their common ancestor James Frazer (born about 1804) had.

Rick’s Block Tree

Here is Rick’s Block Tree:

 

Right now, Rick is shown with Frazers from the Archibald Line and James Line. They share the SNP name of R-YP6849. I am hoping that, after FTDNA’s manual review, that Paul and Rick will form a new YDNA line with a new SNP name.

Rick’s BigY Matches

The next step is to look at Rick’s matches. He shows matches to Rodney, Jonathan, Paul and the Grant above. These results can be misleading due to the criteria that FTDNA uses for matching. For example, the Frazers, Stuarts, and Grant testers all share the common SNP of R-YP6488. Rick also matches Hayes with whom he shares the even older SNP of R-YP6480. However, Rick shows as a match to Grant and Hayes, but not to the two Stuart testers. This may be because the Stuarts also took the more expansive BigY 700 and thus have more Variants that don’t match.

Here are some more BigY match details:

 

FTDNA lists non-matching variants between Rick, Rodney and Jonathan. That may seem confusing but it is easier than listing the 600,000 plus matching Variants that go back to genetic Adam. A non-matching variant may be several things which is also confusing. It may be a variant that Rodney has and Rick doesn’t have. It may be a variant that Rick has and Rodney doesn’t have. It may be a variant that Rick’s newer test covered and Rodney’s didn’t. Then there are test results which may be inconclusive that complicate things.

What I should be looking for is a SNP (or Variant) that Rick and Paul share and that Rodney and Jonathan don’t have. That would create the new Archibald Frazer Line that I am looking for. The goal is to get the newest or most recent SNP possible for the Frazer family.

Variant by Variant Analysis

Here are Rick’s non-matches to Rodney, Jonathan and Paul by Variant in a spreadsheet:

This shows why Paul shows as a match that is further away to Rick than he really is. Paul and Rick have the most non-matching Variants. Another point to the exercise, is that Rick will have have Variants that he validly does not share with Rodney, Jonathan and Paul. Those will be the Variants that Rick has that define his own line since James Frazer born about 1804.

Next, I separate out the Variants and compare them.

 

Candidates for a New Archibald Frazer Line

I would like to look at the two variants I have highlighted below:

It stands to reason that for a new branch to formm Rick should have non-matching variants with Rodney and Jonathan but not with Paul. The two highlighted Variants could meet that criteria. In order for these two or one of the two to meet that criteria, Rick and Paul would both have to have tested positive for these Variants and Rodney and Jonathan would have had to be tested negative for thes Variants.

Variants 8162400 and 21457649

Rick currently has 13 Private Variants. I think that these should change after FTDNA’s manual review. I’ll show what they look like now:

On Rick’s second page I see 8162400, so that is a start. 21457649 is on Rick’s first page of Private Variants.

Next, I have to log into Paul’s results:

Paul has 8162400 and 21457649 which mean that they are not really Private Variants after all. Or, they will no longer be Private Variants now that Rick’s results are in. That is because we are looking at preliminary results that will change.

To be really sure, I need to show that Rodney and Jonathan both tested for these two variants and the results showed that they did not have them. However, that is a little difficult. It involves looking at all their results. I know I have access to Jonathan’s results, so I’ll give that a shot. I think that I need to download Jonathan’s results as a csv file. That is a very large file.

Here is 8162400. The reference and Genotype are the same, so I think that means that Jonathan is not positive for mutated DNA at that position. Or in FTDNA terminology it is not derived. I assume that the fact that this Novel Variant is on Jonathan’s list means he was tested for this Variant. That means that 8162400 should form a new branch for the Archibald Frazers.

The same is true for 21457649 on Jonathan’s test list:

This makes sense because if Paul had these two Variants on his Private Variant list, it likely meant that Jonathan and Rodney did not test positive for derived Variants at these two positions. I included a known SNP above in Jonathan’s list to show that FTDNA only shows the derived information for those known SNPs. Both of these Variants show beyond line 600,000 on the spreadsheet for Jonathan’s BigY results.

Here is what my cousin Paul’s results look like for the same Novel Variant:

The reference T has changed to C. That is what should define the new Archibald Frazer Branch.

What Will Be the Name of the New Archibald Frazer Line?

Assuming my analysis is right, we can go to YBrowse to find the names for these two positions that Paul and Rick share. YBrowse is a YDNA Chromosome Browser.

This shows the Y Chromosome with over 50 million positions. The lighter regions are the ones best used for genetic genealogy. I put in the Variant that Rick and Paul share that is around 8,000,000 – where the red vertical line is on the depiction of the Y Chromosome. It turns out that 8162400 has two names:

I”m guessing that this name came out when I first did the BigY 500 for Paul in 2017. Note the derived is from T to C. That is what Paul had at this position:

This is also within the R1a Haplogroup which is where the Frazers are.

Here is the other SNP:

This is BY155971. Here the reference T has changed to G. Aslo the haplogroup is unknown. I would rule out this Haplogroup for the Archibald Frazer Line.

I’ll try the other position:

This only has one SNP associated with it but it is in a dark region. I thought that was not as reliable.

That means that the new branch for the Archibald Frazers (or even more specifically the James Frazer Line of 1804) will be Y85652 and Y112046. One of the two will have to be chosen to be representative of the line.

Anything Else?

Rick also has a bunch of Variants that don’t match with Rodney, Jonathan or Paul:

My guess is that these Variants are mostly due to Rick taking the BigY 700 test and testing regions that were not tested. These Variants may come into play when the results of the other Frazier test come in. Those results should be due any day now.

Rick Solves a Problem

The problem is with the existing R-YP6489. Here is what SNP Tracker shows:

This has R-YP6489 forming in the Middle Ages. That is because there are other SNPs within the group of R-YP6489:

Each one of the SNPs takes time to form. Up to 144 years based on the older BigY 500. Somewhat less with the newer BigY 700. Say it took about 100 years for each SNP in the top block to form. That would be 500 years. Then that is to the common ancestor who may have been born around 1690. That seems to compare well with what the SNP Tracker has:

That brings us to about the year 1200. According to thefraser.com:

The earliest Fraser found on record was Gilbert de Fraser, who, in 1109, witnessed a charter to the monastery at Coldstream, along the southern border. In 1160, Sir Simon Fraser, who possessed half of the territory of Keith in East Lothian, made a gift of the church to the monks of Kelso Abbey. Through marriage the Frasers acquired Castle Oliver on the Tweed and became the Sheriffs of Peebles.

That means that there were Frasers around before the year 1200. The question is, were they our Frasers and were our ancestors Frasers at that time? Some of the early Southern Frasers were interesting as I had thought that the earliest Frasers were from around Inverness. At any rate, the point is that even though our Frazer testers’ common ancestor was from around 1690, the origin of R-YP6489 is around the year 1200. If Rick creates a new Archibald Frazer branch, that should bring the Frazer YDNA ahead about 600 years to 1800.

Having said that, SNP Tracker has a new feature for the ‘British Isle’:

This seems to contradict the previous SNP Tracker Map. However, the legend at the top says ‘SNP Formation Eroas for Descendants of YP6489’. So this SNP Tracker feature has a bit of prediction to it. I can’t say I get how this works but it is interesting.

The problem that Rick solves is that his test should form a Haplogroup for the Frazers that is undoubtably Frazer and even specific to the Archibald Branch and James Frazer Line of 1804.

Paul’s Private Variants

Right now Paul has 4 private variants which is a lot considering the time between his birth and 1690 is about 260 years. It would have been more likely that two SNPs would have formed in that time.

Here are Paul’s current Private SNPs:

As mentioned above, Paul’s private Variants should go down to two. That means that in 140 years, Paul’s line had two SNPs which seems a little more reasonable. On the other hand, the James Frazer Line seems to have had fewer SNPs or Variants, so perhaps it all averages out.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Currently the YDNA defining SNP for Roscommon Ireland Frazers is R-YP6489. This haplogroup is assumed to be unique for these Frazers but that is not known for sure due to the age of its formation.
  • Now that Rick has tested, it appears that there will be two new defining SNPs for the Archibald Frazer line and even more specifically the James Frazer Line of 1804. This gives a concrete date that will define these two SNPs.
  • I think that the FTDNA manual review will confirm my findings.
  • The next BigY 700 test for Frazier that is coming in should further define early Frazer genealogy and history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Mary Ann Hartley Burrows in Fall River Newspapers After 1903

In my previous Blog, I looked at Abel Burrows, the husband of Mary Ann Hartley. He died in 1903, so that was a natural ending for that Blog. I’ll look to see what else the Fall River newspapers have to say about my relatives after 1903 in this Blog. In my previous Blog, by looking at Abel, I found out some more about other relatives, such as the Hartley family who visited him and he visited in Rochester. Also, of course, I learned about his wife, Mary Ann. I’ll look some more at Mary Ann in this Blog.

6 Jun 1904

This article raises some questions. What relatives did she visit? I assume that they were Bacup relatives on the Emmet side.  Mary Ann Hartley was born in Bacup where her mother Ann Emmet was from. She could have also visited Abel Burrows’ relatives. Mary Ann returned on the SS Saxonia on September 8. This was the same ship that Abe Pilling and his family took to England a few years previous. Here the ship is called the RMS Saxonia:

12 Sep 1904

I wonder if Bank St is a typo. I have her at Oak Street in the 1906 Fall River Directory:

22 September 1905

Listed under real estate transactions:

See below for more information. Stetson St goes by the Western side of Oak Grove Cemetery:

3 Apr 1906

This was some kind of infection.

4 August 1909

There is an Island Park Beach and Island Park Cove in Portsmouth, RI not too far from Fall River.

4 July 1912

According to the 1900 Census, Mary Cowgill was a widow living with her son William Marshall at 210 Franklin Street, Fall River.

7 August 1912

From the Fall River Globe under the heading of Tiverton:

There is a Riverside Drive on the current Google Map of Tiverton:

Annie Hartley was born November 1902, so she would be 9. Margaret was born May 1906, so she would be just 6 years old. Florence and Mildred were Mary Ann’s granddaughters. Florence was 12 and 8. That leaves Sadie Edmundson of Providence. Who is she?

Here she is in 1910:

Sarah or Sadie was born in Massachusetts which makes sense. Sadie was actually born in 1897 in Fall River. Her father was a barber. The mother was Elizabeth Barlow. I think that William was from Blackburn, Lancashire so perhaps a friend of the Burrows family?

Actually, this newpaper article from the Fall River Evening News from 8 September 1905 sheds some light:

I assume that means that Mary Ann’s relationship was with Elizabeth Barlow who was a Draper before she was an Edmundson. Here is Orange Street:

More on Walter Draper

Although Walter is said to be born in Rhode Island in the Census above, I find a record of his birth in Fall River on June 22, 1885. His father was Oswald, a weaver. As might be expected, Oswald died in 1894. At that time, he was a restaurant keeper. Elizabeth Barlow Draper then married William Edmundson in 1897. It was William’s second marriage also. One question is why was Mary Ann Walter’s guardian if Elizabeth remarried? As may be guessed, Walter Draper poses more questions than answers.

This could be Walter’s grave stone:

This is interesting unless it is coincidental. My third great-grandmother Mary Pilling’s mother was a Shackleton. I take this to be the same Walter:

Here is a photo that gives some dates of these burial mates:

Edmundson can be explained. He was Walter’s step father. Albert Shackleton married Sarah. The Shakleton name looks like a coincidence. These Shackletons were from Yorkshire, so perhaps distantly related to my Lancashire Shackletons. However, none of this suggests why Mary Ann Hartley Burrows would be the guardian of Walter Draper.

3 Sep 1913

Under the heading of Tiverton:

Here is Quaker Ave., Tiverton:

12 November 1913

23 February 1918

16 April 1918

Here is the Fall River Globe version:

World War I ended November 11, 1918.

30 October 1920

2 December 1920

I have that Mary Ann was born 30 April 1855, so she would be 65 in 1920. Findagrave.com has her birth on 1 December 1854, so that makes more sense.

3 March 1921

I like these pleasant little articles:

Again, I think by Marion is actually meant Rochester. Here is a photo with Mary – possibly from that trip:

 

I believe Mary Ann is to the left of my grandmother. My grandmother is near the middle of the photo and has dark hair and is holding a child – probably my Aunt Sybil. My Aunt Sybil was born 8 September 1920, so the photo may be from 1922. Here is a close-up of Mary Ann:

Eighth Street was not far from Oak Street:

7 July 1921

This was under the heading of Ocean Grove:

15 April 1923

Here is Cherry Street:

That about covers what I could find on Mary Ann Hartley Burrows. Here is her grave stone taken from Ancestry:

I’ll look into the Williams family more in my next Blog.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Between this Blog and the one on Abel Burrows, I have a better picture of who Mary Ann Hartley was and the type of things that she did.
  • At some point, she must have gone from Episcopal to Baptist, perhaps due to Abe?
  • I was disappointed to not find her obituary at newspapers.com. The note said that the obituary had been removed or relocated.
  • The social customs of the day were interesting. Apparently social gatherings were very important and newsworthy
  • Mary Ann had a high regard for her daughter and granddaughter based on parties given for them and the gifts given to them
  • Mary Ann was also brave as she apparently traveled alone to England, Scotland and France.