Hartley DNA & Genealogy

August 10, 2015April 13, 2017

Frazer DNA – Celebrity Edition!

In this Blog, I’d like to write about the other Frazer line. I’m in the Archibald line. The other line is the James line. These were 2 Frazer brothers born in Northern Roscommon, Ireland before 1750. Well, we think they were brothers. We’d like to prove that somehow. I had thought that we’d have to prove this by Y (male line only) DNA. I think we can show quite a few matches between the Archibald and James Frazer Lines with autosomal (every ancestor line) DNA.

Below I’ll mention:

Celebrities from the James Line
James Line DNA and Matches
Matches between the James Line DNA and my own Archibald Line

First, A Few James Line People You May Recognize

Does Mia Farrow ring a bell?

Or perhaps her mother Maureen O’Sullivan who starred in Tarzan movies? I used to watch Tarzan movies on TV when I was young. I wonder if the Jane I saw was her. I know there were different versions, but I bet I’ve seen Maureen in a Tarzan movie or two. Well, her mother was a Frazer from the James line.

Maureen O'Sullivan with Father and Frazer mother — Maureen O’Sullivan with Father and Frazer mother

I can imagine this conversation between my teenage father and his mother: “Ma, I’m going to see a Tarzan Movie”. “What, and see that woman Jane with hardly any clothes on?”. “Aw, c’mon ma.” All this with my grandmother not knowing she was related to Maureen O’Sullivan. Here are some photos of Maureen who played Jane from about 1934 to 1942.

You probably know about Maureen’s daughters. One was Mia Farrow. Before I knew I was related to this branch, I was traveling in the area of my ancestors and saw a sign mentioning that Mia’s family was from the area. So don’t mention Woody Allen, the sign warned. Then Mia has a younger sister named Prudence. The two Farrow sisters visited the Maharishi with the Beatles. The Beatles wrote Prudence into one of their songs, “Dear Prudence”. Here’s Prudence (lower left in the photo).

How closely am I related? If I have it right, I’m a 6th cousin twice removed to the Farrow sisters. Is that far? I’m nine generations away from a common ancestor. The Farrow sisters are only 7 generations away – that gets to how I’m twice removed. But I’m not from the James Line. [Actually I have 3 Frazer ancestors. Two are probably from the Archibald line and one may be from the James line. So I may be more closely related.] Other of my fellow testers who can show they descend from the James Line by their paper trails would be as close to the Farrow sisters as 4th cousins.

James Line DNA

Here is what a portion of the James line looks like starting with James himself from the early 1700’s at the top. I have the bottom generations cut off.

On the left is the Minnie Frazer Line (#1). There are 3 DNA testers there (CJK, KK and MHB in the spreadsheet below). Next is the Edward Fitzgerald Line (#2). 3 testers here, all siblings (Joanna, Janet and Jonathan). The 3rd Line is the O’Sullivan (Famous) Line (#3). One tester (PB). On the far right is the Michael Line (#4). There is one lonely tester out there (JFS). I like these tester’s DNA for the same reason I liked Ros’ on my line. They don’t appear to have multiple Frazer ancestors like most on my line do.

We would expect that if Line #1 matches Line #2, then the most likely common ancestors would be Archibald of 1792 (or spouse). If line #1 or #2 match with Line #3, the common ancestors would be Archibald Frazer and Catherine Peyton. If Line #4 matches with any of the other lines, the common ancestors should be at the top with James Frazer (and unknown spouse). That means that the 3 boxes above representing most likely common ancestors of our James Line matches would represent 6 people (2 per box)

Now for the James Line DNA – Drum roll, please.

Actually, it’s not all that exciting. The matches in pink are iffy according to Gedmatch. I color the matches above 15 cM in green, because those are pretty strong matches. Our famous O’Sullivan Line tester has one large match with CJK on the Minnie Frazer Line. Then 2 medium matches with sisters Joanna and Janet on the Edward Fitzgerald Line. They all appear to be 4th cousins which makes sense and have as a common ancestor Archibald b. about 1792 (and his wife whom we know nothing of). Notice there is no triangulation as the matches are on different chromosomes (#6 and #12).

Then of note are 2 large matches in green between brother and sister Jonathan and Janet and JFS who was out on the lonely Michael Line. The DNA has given us a bit of a backwards trick. The DNA match is high at the 5th cousin level for Jonathan and Janet. You would think it would be low there. But at the 3rd cousin level where we would expect a large match, there is only a small one. Joanna, the other sister matches 3rd cousin CJK on the Minnie Frazer Line at only 7.9 cM, not much above the Gedmatch cutoff level of 7.0 cM. However, all these families match as expected, but not at the levels expected perhaps.

I used a Gedmatch utility to look at the number of matches between the James Line testers. This is what I got.

The large numbers in the middle are due to mother, daughter, aunt, niece, cousin, brother and sister relationships. I ignored these when I added the segment matches on the side and bottom. This takes out the actual cM numbers which can be confusing. What this tells me is that everybody matches everyone else in the James Line which is what we would suspect and bolsters our paper trail research. Also notice that the celebrity line (PB) has one match for everybody (on the top row above). This is what the above Gedmatch chart looks like with Total Shared cM’s:

For this utility, Gedmatch uses a lower cM value of 5. Note that here, MHB doesn’t show any shared cM’s with the O’Sullivan Line. I’m not sure why when she shows a shared segment above. However, not to worry. She is the cousin of KK and the niece of CJK. That means that MHB should be related also.

How the James Line DNA Matches the Archibald Line DNA

When the Frazer cousins first started DNA testing, it was a bit discouraging as no one was matching at good levels as expected. However, after more people tested, I was surprised at the number and level of matches we had. There were also matches between the James Line and the Archibald line – the one I’m in. So apparently there is no need to have the Y test done on a male from each line to prove the lines are related.

Here we see my family (Hartleys), Bill, and MFA from the Archibald Line matching Joanna’s family, the O’Sullivan Line and CJK from the James Line. Missing are Jane (who had large matches within the Archibald line) and Ros who didn’t have cousin marrying ancestors from the Archibald Line. Missing from the James line is mostly JFS if I take CJK to be representative of MGB and KK from the Minnie Frazer Line. However, her match is small and therefore suspect. Then my sister matches on the X Chromosome to CJK. The X matches follow interesting patterns. So that means my sister’s interesting pattern has to match CJK’s interesting pattern. My sister’s X inheritance includes a Frazer way back who married into my McMaster ancestors. This Frazer could have been in the James Line. That may eliminate my sister’s match as going back as far as Widow Mary the Cottier and joining the 2 lines. Mary is the supposed mother of the Archibald and James Lines. Here is the Census that shows all 3 Frazer families in 1749.

Any Flies in the Ointment?

Sure, plenty. Let’s look at our chart again.

In this chart we are focusing on Frazers. However, the DNA doesn’t know that. Can we assume that because the testers are all Frazers, then the matches must represent Frazers? No. To do this right, we would have to flesh out the ancestors for each of the DNA matchers. We have that Bill and Joanna match. From our charts, it looks like the match could be with Mary the Cottier, the mother of James. But that may not be the case. Let’s look at Archibald b. 1792 who is on Joanna’s line. He had a wife. She had 2 parents in the above generation; 4 grandparents in the James Frazer generation and 8 grandparents in Mary the Cottier’s generation. That adds up to 15 people we don’t know about. If we had started the exercise in a later generation, there would be many more ancestors. On Bill’s side there would be the same amount of unknown people. Plus, Bill appears to have 3 Frazers in his ancestry which would make for a potential 3 times the unknowns.

10 Generations of Frazer DNA: Combining the Two Lines

Here is the master chart of the Archibald and James Lines combined. This represents 10 generations but shows 6. I took off 2 to 4 generations on the bottom. Mary is at the top. Archibald and James are her 2 likely sons. This is actually a simplified chart, showing only the lines where we have DNA testers. The goal is to make sure our genealogy is correct and to show the 2 Lines really are connected as we suppose.

Conclusions

The Frazers have some interesting relatives – especially in the James Line
Triangulation is the gold standard and shows common ancestors. The James Line hasn’t shown a triangulation yet. This may be because there are 4 lines and 4 testing families. However, as everyone matches everyone else by DNA that is good evidence to me that these people are in the same Frazer family. However, there is still a chance that some of these matches may be non-Frazer matches. It would take a lot of work to figure all that out.
Does the DNA testing show that the very early Archibald and James Frazer were brothers? Definitely not. It may show they are related, but that is not even clear. DNA matches between the 2 lines seems more likely to show inter-relationships between the 2 lines at some later date than Mary the Cottier. There is a good chance that in my own family, I have a James line ancestor who was born probably 2 generations after James.
Let’s keep open the option of Y DNA testing. That is the surest way to link the Archibald and James lines.
I seem to be developing a knack for proving myself wrong

August 3, 2015April 11, 2019

How I Added 2 Frazer Lines by DNA

Well, it looks like I’ve given away the blog in the title. I think I can add 2 more Frazer lines using DNA. Not just by DNA, but DNA helped greatly.

In my first 2 blogs I mentioned how I triangulated two Irish Frazer groups. These 2 triangulation groups I assumed, based on the people involved, had as their common ancestors Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly. That couple would be the parents of the 4 brothers shown below: John, Philip, Richard and Archibald.

In this blog I will disprove my previous blogs and show that those common ancestors of Frazer/Lilly were probably off by a generation. What an idiot I was in my earlier blogs. Actually, as more DNA testing information came in from my generous Frazer relatives, the smarter I look now!

In my 4th blog, I mentioned endogamy and how many couples below the 4 brothers married 1st cousins with Frazer surnames. However, some of the triangulation matches were huge numbers considering the age of Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly. This couple lived in the late 1700’s but I had a match in one case that was over 50 cM

When I compare the DNA of MFA (Michael) and Jane at Gedmatch, they look like this:

That shows that Gedmatch thinks that Jane and Michael are 4 generations to common ancestors. That’s not far. We are 1 generation from our parents, 2 to our grand parents, and 4 to our great great grandparents.

I know, the chart is small. You will have to click on it to make it bigger. Jane is on the green line. 4 generations only takes her up to the white box that has Archibald c. 1802=Catherine Parker. That is 2 generations closer than the top box where I previously thought her common ancestors were. In my Blog #4, I supposed that this discrepancy was due to endogamy. Ann Turner, who knows a lot more than I, saw my blog and commented that she thought endogamy should give you more matches, not necessarily higher matches. OK, I’m willing to be wrong if I can learn by it. I did check and the endogamous Frazers did have twice the matches as the non-endogamous ones (on another line). But I needed some common ancestors for Jane, Bill, Michael, my sister Heidi and me that weren’t so far away.

Ros to the Rescue

To tell you the end first, what I did was move Jane to the 3rd brother Richard Frazer on the second row above. Well, I didn’t move all of her, just half. What? And what does Ros have to do with it? Well Ros tested very recently. She is from Australia and her line is represented by the purple box. What I like about Ros’ DNA is that it appears that she doesn’t have 1st cousins who married each other in her Frazer ancestry. So her results are, let’s say, more specific. She matches Ros, but only through Archibald Frazer (the brother on the far right of the second row) and Catherine Parker. Now these 2 are the parents of Richard Paton Parker Lilly Frazer (Jane’s ancestor). However, Richard blah blah blah Frazer (Jane’s ancestor) had a wife named Jane Frazer. Her descendent (also Jane) has had a difficult time figuring out where Jane Frazer fits in. This Jane Frazer certainly isn’t a sister of her husband Richard blah blah, so she must descend from somewhere else. I put this Jane Frazer goes under Richard who is brother #3 in the chart. How and why did I decide to do that?

Aunt Mabel and Triangulation

Aunt Mabel didn’t know much about DNA if anything. Our cousin Doug from England had an Aunt Mabel (family legend says) who scoured the Irish countryside for Frazer family history in order to get her brother a coat of arms around the year 1950. We think her information before about 1700 was pretty dicey, but after that, it seems pretty good and much better than what we can figure out from Irish records (or rather the lack thereof). She was likely the one responsible for the handwritten genealogy, part of which is at the top of this blog. She mentions an Archibald who was the son of Richard (brother #3). I have no other information on this Archibald and Jane Frazer had a father named Archibald. The dates also fit in well for Jane Frazer to be Archibald’s daughter and Richard’s granddaughter.

I’ve already mentioned the triangulation (above). Jane triangulates with 3 other people who are descended from Richard. DNA-wise, it would make sense if Jane through her ancestor Jane Frazer were also in that group of Richard-descendents. With large cMs, you want the triangulation group to be as recent as possible. It’s still off by a generation according to Gedmatch, but I don’t think that’s too unusual. Here is the revised Richard Line with Jane’s ancestor Jane Frazer added.

The Second Frazer Add to the Line of Richard

The second add to the line of Richard is David from Canada. Early on, before I talked Bill into testing and then the other Frazers, there was David. I noticed at FTDNA, he had a Frazer ancestor from Ireland. That was interesting. The earliest ancestor he could trace was a James Frazer who had a son in Enniskillen, Ireland. That son changed the spelling to Fraser and moved to Canada. My Frazer ancestors lived to the North of the Loch (Lake) above Boyle in the bottom left of the map below. It is about 40 miles from there to Enniskillen at the top right of the map.

Boyle to Enniskillen Map — Boyle to Enniskillen

So my 4 reasons for adding David to the line of Richard are the same for adding Jane; namely:

The genealogy done by David (and Jane’s research in her case)
My own genealogy research
DNA Triangulation
My secret weapon: Aunt Mabel

I wish I had a photo of Aunt Mabel. She was a classy looking lady. There was a picture of her on Doug from England’s web site, but that site is down as far as I can tell. Anyway, Aunt Mabel’s chart showed a James as a son of Richard. We have no other information on this James. Can we say this James took off to Enniskillen from North Roscommon and that his son moved to Canada? I say the evidence supports that theory.

Here is David (shown as DF) and how he triangulates.

Well look at that. Have you ever seen a more perfect triangulation? Well perhaps you have, but it’s still pretty good. And unlike the Chromosome #1 triangulation above, it includes David. Note that everyone matches with everyone else. That’s what triangulation is, and it means these people have a common ancestor or ancestral couple. I didn’t include the matches between me (JH) and my sister Heidi (HHM) as that is too obvious. I hope that David doesn’t mind me plopping his family into mine.

So What Have I Learned From All This?

If you blog, you may get an expert opinion that is helpful
It helps to have an Aunt Mabel doing research in the past when people remembered who was related to whom
The relationships for Endogamous families are tricky to figure out; but the DNA helps sort out some of the problems solved my the first cousins who married in the early 1800’s
The more relatives that test their DNA, the less I look like an idiot

July 25, 2015April 13, 2017

Higamus, Hogamous: Frazers Engogamous

I have written previously about the Frazers from Ireland and those who have tested their DNA who are descended from those ancestors. In 1749 this Northern County Roscommon Frazer family looked like this:

If you click to make this larger, you will see the 2 Frazer lines which our testers are descended from (Archibald and James). As an added bonus, you see their likely mother, a widow Mary. So far, I’ve written about the Archibald line. This blog will be more on that line.

Recently, Michael’s autosomal DNA test results have come in from England. I would have thought that his results would clear everything up. Well, they did enforce previous conclusions, but have also created some more questions. As I tried to map out the relationships for the various testers, I think I see the reason why. There were a lot of Frazers cousins who married each other back in the day. There was a famous poem I’d like to modify to: Higamus, Hogamous, Frazers endogamous. What is endgamous? These are groups of people who married relatives due to several reasons. Some examples are the Ashkenazi Jews, the Amish, Colonial Americans and others. The Frazers as a protestant minority had few marriage choices in their area of Ireland if they wanted to marry other protestants. Some Frazers did get around this by marrying Roman Catholics (called Papists in the 1749 Survey).

This is what my Archibald line looks like. For simplicity, I’ve left out a few lines.

The relationships on the above chart range from 3rd cousin, once removed to 6th cousins. I’ve lopped off 3 or 4 of the more recent generations for privacy. My line is blue, but the way I have it, James Frazer married Violet Frazer. They are first cousins, so I could’ve had 2 sets of blue boxes. I have Bill from Canada in the same group on the left in yellow as being descended from James and Violet Frazer. He also is descended from another cousin, Ann Frazer born about 1807, shown on the right in yellow. This means our best guess at his genealogy has him with 3 Frazer ancestors. Jane from Colorado is in the green line but has an extra Frazer/Fraser ancestor also named Jane born 1846. We can’t quite place this extra Jane, but my guess is that she is descended from the John on the far left. We are still waiting for the DNA from Ros from Australia. Her line is in purple above and seems to be the only one so far who doesn’t have multiple Frazer ancestors.

Here is what the DNA tester’s Chromosome 1 results look like in a spreadsheet:

These 4 people form a super Triangulation Group. I mentioned in a previous blog where 3 or more match each other they form a Triangulation Group. This triangulation will represent a common ancestor or likely a common ancestral couple. In this case that couple is at the top of the chart above. That is the place where all these people merge. The couple is Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilley (or Lilly, I can never remember which). The numbers in green are pretty huge. I wonder if other families have such a large match representing a couple that far back (mid 1700’s). HHM is my sister Heidi. This same Chromosome 1 DNA didn’t make it to me. Also Bill got less of this extra dose of DNA.

Sorry, More Numbers

Above are where the Archibald Line DNA testers match each other on other Chromosomes. Chromosome #12 in purple is the other Triangulation Group. Notice that Michael (MFA) didn’t make it to this group. He should have, but that DNA dropped out like mine did for Chromosome #1. The other Chromosome matches don’t have Triangulation groups, so these are less certain as to predicting common ancestors. I tried to guess what these matches may represent as far as common ancestors on the right side of the spreadsheet above.

What Did I Learn and What Are My Further Questions?

I need to read up more on endogamy and how that effects DNA
The Archibald Line has 2 Triangulation Groups so far that represent a couple from the mid 1700’s. There are no Triangulation Groups from more recent Frazer ancestral couples. This is likely because we have more descendants from the earlier couple to triangulate on than on the more recent couples.
Usually matches representing more recent ancestors should have higher cM numbers. Here the older ones are higher. Is this due to endogamy?
The other line (James Line) testers don’t have the same high number matches but also don’t have any Triangulation Groups yet. I assume this is due to a lack of intermarrying.

More will be revealed and I plan to write more blogs as more DNA testing results come in.

July 15, 2015April 13, 2017

How I Lazarus’ed My Dad

According to the Gospels, Lazarus was a man who died and Jesus raised him from the dead.

Lazarus is also a program on Gedmatch to recreate the DNA of those who are no longer with us. You won’t see this unless you kick in $10 for the Tier 1 Utilities. The Link says, “Lazarus, Create surrogate kits to create close ancestors.”

How I did it: first I practiced on my wife’s family.

Fortunately, my wife’s dad has 2 first cousins and one second cousin on his mother’s side who have had their DNA tested. This came in handy. So I went about to create my father in law’s mom, Estelle LeFevre. Lazarus takes Group 1 people who are descendants of the target person to be Lazarus’ed, Estelle. In my case, the descendant was my father in law. I had him tested a while back at FTDNA. Then the program takes relatives who are not descended from Estelle. In this case, Pat and Joe who were the 1st cousins and Fred the 2nd cousin of my father in law. Those three are Group 2. Lazarus takes Group 1 and Group 2 and mushes them together to recreate Estelle. Actually only a part of Estelle is recreated. That is the part of Estelle that was mushed together from Group 1 and Group 2. If I had all of Estelle’s children and all of her relatives, I would’ve had a much more complete result. The trick is to get a Lazarus result that is over 1500 cMs. Then you can use some of the other utilities at Gedmatch with that kit such as the One to Many. It’s OK to create a Lazarus kit with less than 1500 cMs but it’s not as useful. Well, Estelle came out at about 1700 cMs, so that was good news. Buoyed with these results, I thought it would be a good idea to try to recreate my dad’s DNA.

A Slight Detour

I followed the Gedmatch directions. I took two Group 1 people. That was me and my sister. Then I took for Group 2, the only relative of my father that I had tested, his 1st cousin. I ran the program and came up with only about 700 cMs. Very disappointing. Then, as I’ve been working on my father’s mother line, the Frazers, I thought, ‘my father’s cousin isn’t related to the Frazers. He’s only related to my Hartley side’. Duh. What I had created was a Lazarus of my father’s dad, my Grandfather.

Sometimes I don’t mind making mistakes. Especially when they lead to the right answer.

How I did it the right way

Well, how was I to get up to 1500 cMs, when all I had was 700 cMs from my grandfather’s side? I only had 2 people for Group 1. I’m too cheap to have other siblings test. I noticed that Gedmatch had room for 100 people. Hmm, where to get 100 people? From working with my distant Frazer relatives, I knew I had their results, but this wouldn’t get me the numbers I needed. So I decided to use the phased matches of my sister and I. What is phasing, you may ask? Phasing is another utility that Gedmatch has. If you know the results of one parent, Gedmatch will subtract those out from your whole results and create 2 kits. One is a maternally phased kit of matches on your mom’s side. The other is a phased paternal kit of your matches on your dad’s side. Fortunately my mom is still alive at 93 and I had her tested. Based on her testing, I had already created phased maternal and paternal kits for myself and my sister. Now all the gedmatch matches are marked either P for Paternal or M for Maternal on a spreadsheet that I keep. I have one spreadsheet for myself and one for my sister. So I took a bunch of the top paternally phased matches from my matches and my sisters matches. I put in 100 of those top matches into the Gedmatch Lazarus Utility under Group 2. I ran the Lazarus program and got just over 1500 cMs for my dad.

Is This the Best Way to Create a Lazarus Kit?

I don’t know. It was certainly much more difficult than when I Lazarus’ed my father in law’s mom. For her, I only used 4 people and got better results. However, if you are cheap like me, or aren’t, but just don’t have the people to test, you might want to try this method and see if it works for you.

Joel Hartley

July 14, 2015April 13, 2017

The DNA of Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly

The Recap

This blog follows up on my first blog about the autosomal DNA of the Frazers of Ireland. In that blog, I established that there were 2 Triangulation groups of Irish Frazer descendants. These matching groups were at Chromosome 1 and 12 and they represented the common ancestors of Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly. Now, from what I’ve been able to gather, Archibald was born about 1743. My sister Heidi and Jane Fraser share a whopping 43.7 cM of DNA on Chromosome 1 from one of this 18th century couple who lived in Northern County Roscommon. That is a lot of DNA to come down through all that time.

Next I looked at Chromosome 12 Triangulation Group. Below is my sister’s chromosome browser. I put myself in for fun. It shows the large match I have with her. Below me is David who has an Irish Frazer ancestor named James that we showed must have a common ancestor with the rest of us due to Triangulation. Below him are Jane Fraser and Bill Richards.

What Did We Learn?

We learned that the 2 triangulation groups lead us to 2 different ancestors. We don’t know that they are Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly for sure, but as they are the 2 closest common ancestors for this group, they are a good guess. The triangulation can’t tell us who the ancestors are. The paper research can, but we aren’t always sure we got the right information with missing vital records going back that far. Together, we have a good case that we are on the right track. And we have learned that Heidi and Jane are carrying around a lot of DNA around from 18th century Ireland people!

By the way, my genealogy web pages are at the link below. See under PART II: THE FRAZERS AND IRISH ANCESTORS; then look under the Archibald Line for Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilly:

http://jmhartley.com/Gendex.htm

We also learned that there are matches to these Triangulation Groups that don’t know that they are related to the Groups, but the DNA is showing that they are related in some way and share a common ancestor or ancestral pair. This should help others if they are looking for places to direct their family history research.

A Few Side Notes

You may have noticed that I didn’t inherit the Frazer DNA on Chromosome 1. Where did it go? I don’t know. That DNA lasted 200 years and then decided to drop out while my parents’ DNA was combining to form me. My father had that same DNA and gave it to my sister. That is a good reason why it helps to have more than one person in the family tested for DNA.

Other side note: See the red line above that represents my match with my sister. Does this mean that all the people I match from the beginning of the red line to the end are Frazer matches? Or are my Frazer matches only in the region at the right side of Chromosome 12 where the green is? I think that the entire red area are Frazer matches. I don’t mean that they all match Archibald and Mary. I mean that they should all match my Frazer Grandmother. I should have inherited roughly 25% of my DNA from her. In order to check this, I looked at a match I have with my father’s non-Frazer cousin – related on my Hartley side.

Well, look at that. Chromosome 12 shows no Hartley DNA in common with my father’s cousin and me. That leaves room for Frazer DNA. Also note that my match with my sister in red above was all one large segment. I will have to test it out, but it appears that all the matches I have that are on my father’s side where I also match my sister on Chromosome 12 should be related to my Frazer grandmother and her ancestors.

Well I think this blog has taught me something. I hope that it has been helpful to you.

Joel Hartley

July 13, 2015April 13, 2017

Frazers in Ireland Autosomal DNA

Research for the family history of the Frazers in Ireland has been going on for at least 60 years. Recently DNA testing has been used to supplement that paper research. Documented Frazers in my line brings us back to 1749 where 3 Frazers were living in the northern part of County Roscommon in Aghrafinigan.

Down Survey Map Roscommon - Late 1650's — Down Survey Map Roscommon – Late 1650’s

The 3 Frazers were heads of households and their names were Archibald, James and the widow Mary. In the map above, the Townland is called Agharafinigan. In the Census of 1749, the Townland is called Ahrefinican.

My goals in using autosomal DNA are the following:

Verify whether the 2 Frazer lines of Archibald and James are related
Verify the existing paper genealogy
Find new Irish Frazer relatives and confirm existing ones

I had originally thought that goal number 1 would require the use of YDNA testing which tests only the male line. I believe that the autosomal testing has already answered that question.

Goal #2 involves the analysis of the autosomal DNA using a process called triangulation. If there are 3 people who have tested who are not closely related and they all match each other on the same segment of a Chromosome, then they would have a common ancestor or ancestral couple. Here is an example of triangulation shown on a spreadsheet on Chromosome 1.

Chr	Start Location	End Location	Centimorgans (cM)	SNPs	Match
1	205,319,654	237,417,351	43.7	8,565	HHM/Jane
1	222,994,591	230,852,310	8.4	2165	HHM/BR
1	223,053,736	230,852,310	8.4	2,140	BR/Jane

Here is what the Chromosome 1 match looks like from my sisters perspective as per gedmatch.com:

On the right in yellow is my sister’s match to Jane and the blue on the right is her match to BR who is Bill Richards.

This represents 3 people who match each other on Chromosome #1. These 3 people all have traced their ancestry through the Archibald line. From what we can tell, they all have as a common couple:

Archibald Frazer b. about 1743 and

Mary Lilley

Now the interesting thing is that this couple is 7 generations away from my sister Heidi. However, based on the size of the match she has with Jane Fraser, gematch.com interprets her common ancestors as being about 4 generations away. This could be because my sister and I have 3 different Frazers in our lineage. This would make the relationship seem closer than it really is. Also I don’t know for sure if this match represents Archibald Frazer or Mary Lilley.

Another Triangulation Group

There is a similar Triangulation Group found in Chromosome 12. I sometimes find these Triangulation Groups in pairs. This makes sense as each one could represent one of the analogous ancestral couple. I expect this match represents the half of the couple that wasn’t represented in Chromosome 1, namely Archibald Frazer or Mary Lilley. It looks a lot like the Chromosome 1 Group except it has a few more people in it. It has as before, my sister Heidi, Jane Fraser and Bill Richards. In addition there is myself, an Irish Frazer descendant from Canada and at least 2 other people who likely don’t know they are related. I had contacted the Irish Frazer descendant from Canada early on. He has an ancestor named James Frazer who gave birth to a John Fraser in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh in 1832. So who is this James Frazer of Enniskillen?

Above is a representation of research that was done over 60 years ago. These are the sons of the the Archibald Frazer and Mary Lilley. Under Richard, there is a James with no other information. He would be a candidate for this James of Enniskillen.

Well I’m tired of writing. There is much more that can be addressed in future blogs. This represents 4 known Frazer descendants from the Archibald line that have tested. Plus one person who is unsure that he is from this line – although DNA shows he is related in some way. There are many others who have tested who are also from the James line and others who have had their DNA tested who may not know they are even related.

Joel Hartley