Category: Frazer Autosomal DNA

Recently, Kathy from the James Line of our Frazer DNA Project notified me that her Aunt Madeline had been tested for DNA and would I look at the results? I will take a look at the results in this Blog. Here is where Madeline fits in on the James Line Tree. She is on the second row from the bottom and the 3rd box from the left.

Above, the James Line Descendants that tested their DNA are in red. So now there are 14 people that have tested. There is one person below Clyde on the bottom left that I don’t show. I don’t analyze the children of people that have tested their DNA because they got all their DNA from their parents. Betty hasn’t uploaded her results to Gematch.  As a result, I am comparing 11 people to each other on the James Line.

Let’s Triangulate

First, I’ll say that I won’t bother triangulating Charlotte, Madeline and Mary. That triangulation would only point to the parents of Charlotte and Madeline and they already know who their parent are. Plus one of their parents is not a Frazer.

Chromosome 2

Here are the matches that Madeline has on Chromosome 2:

Madeline’s sister Charlotte is #1 in red. Notice a large match. Madeline’s niece Mary is #2. As expected, the matches are smaller and more broken up, but still fairly large. #3 is my 2nd cousin, Paul. He is actually on the Archibald line, but I believe that he and I have some James Line ancestors that haven’t been identified. Paul has a very small pink match with Madeline and Charlotte and another fairly small blue match with Madeline, Charlotte, and Mary.

I won’t go down to the pink level at this time but will look at Paul’s blue match. Even that is below the normal gedmatch.com threshold of 7 cM. In order for this to be a true triangulation group, Paul would also have to match Charlotte and Mary. And Charlotte and Mary would have to match each other. Paul’s blue match is at position 174 to 178M on the image above. We already know that Charlotte and Mary match each other in that region.

Here are Paul’s matches with Charlotte:

Note that on Chromosome 2 where we wanted him to match Charlotte (around 175M). he doesn’t. At least not down to 4 cM and 400 SNPs. This match does appear to be in Paul’s pink match area that we didn’t consider.

Just to make sure, I will see if Paul matches Mary.

Here there are no matches at Chromosome 2, so I would say there is not a triangulation group there and Paul’s match with Madeline was by chance. Let’s move on to another Chromosome.

chromosome 4

Again, the top 2 matches to Madeline are her sister Charlotte and her niece. #3 is Clydie (also known as Clyde). #4 is my sister Heidi, but we won’t consider that match right now. Here is how Cyldie matches Charlotte:

Unfortunately, there is no match on Chromosome 4. Again, there is no match between Clydie and Charlotte’s niece, so no triangulation at Chromosome 4:

chromosome 5 – Two TGs

1. Mary
2. Charlotte
3. Bonnie
4. Judith
5. Jane (from the Archibald Line. I’ll ignore this small match for now.)

Here is more TG potential with Bonnie and Judith, both of whom have a paper trail on the James Frazer Line. From previous testing, Charlotte and Bonnie match in the area of Chromosome 5 that we are interested in:

Here we have our first James Line only TG. This means that Madeline, Charlotte and Bonnie all have a common ancestor. It would be tempting to think that this DNA comes from James Frazer:

However, there are other possibilities. We don’t know the spouse of Archibald Frazer born around 1792. That could be area of the match. Alternatively, one of the genealogies could be wrong.

Next, let’s look at Judith’s small match. Here is where she matches Charlotte:

Here is how our new Chromosome 5 TG could look:

Again, there are other possibilities. Note that Charlotte and Madeline are 5th cousins to Judith – assuming we have the chart right. Also, taken together, these 2 TGs infer a common ancestor between Charlotte, Madeline, Mary, Bonnie and Judith.

Chromosome 6

1. Charlotte
2. Mary
3. Jonathan
4. Janet

Here is the comparison between Jonathan and Charlotte:

So this does not look promising for triangulating. I compared Mary and Jonathan – no match there either. As Jonathan and Janet are siblings, there should be no match between Janet and Charlotte or Janet and Mary.

Chromosome 7 – a non-James Line TG?

Above are Madeline’s matches with Charlotte, Mary and Bill from the Archibald Line. It appears that Madeline, Charlotte and Bill are in a small TG. Bill has a small match with Madeline right at the area that he needs to (from position 127 to 130M) in order to form a TG.

TG at Chromosome 10

Here are Madeline’s matches with her close relatives Mary and Charlotte, and her matches with her more distant relatives Jonathan and Janet. It looks like there should be a TG between Madeline, Mary, Jonathan and Janet.

Here I don’t even have to lower the Gedmatch thresholds for the match between Mary and Jonathan:

The match between Mary and Janet is slightly smaller at 9.0 cM. This is another case where Madeline has tipped the scales and resulted in another TG.

Chromosome 12

Above is the representation of Madeline’s matches with Mary, Charlotte and Prudence. Let’s look for a match between Charlotte and Prudence:

They do have a good match right where we need them to to form a TG. This is an important TG as it adds a new line:

On paper, Charlotte and Madeline are 4th cousins with Prudence. The Edward Frazer Line is well documented, so this supports the genealogy that links Charlotte and Madeline up through Archibald Frazer and Catherine Peyton.

Chromosome 15

 

As usual, Madeline is matching with Charlotte and Mary. The next 2 blue segments represent Madeline matching siblings Jonathan and Joanna. If Joanna and Charlotte match, that will be one TG. They do:

Now, we need to check if Jonathan matches Charlotte and Mary. He doesn’t match Charlotte on Chromosome 15:

Chances are, he won’t match Mary here either. I checked and he didn’t. This is why it pays to check each connection. From the Chromosome Browser above, it looked like Jonathan could be in a TG, but only his sister Joanna was.

Chromosomes 16-22 only have matches between Madeline, Charlotte and Mary.

The X Chromosome

The X Chromosome can be confusing as the male only inherits an X Chromosome from his mother. The female inherits and X from both parents. That means where there are 2 male Frazers in a line of inheritance, the X cannot represent a Frazer match. That is, unless there is intermarriage of the Frazers. Just to show I’m not afraid of being confused, here are Madeline’s matches on the X Chromosome:

As above, I’ll ignore the small pink matches. The first 2 of Madeline’s matches are again Charlotte and Mary. The 2 yellow matches belong to my sisters Sharon and Heidi. In the past, I have explained these by an unknown Frazer in my ancestry that is likely in the James Line. #8 is Bonnie. #10 is Clydie. This is an interesting match because it is almost 20 cM. Also Clydie does not have 2 Frazers in a row in her ancestry until before William Fitzgerald Frazer and Margaret Graham. This means that Madeline, Charlotte and Clydie could have a Graham in common or perhaps an ancestor of Margaret Graham in common.

Summary of the Five New TGs

Here is the summary of the new James Line TGs not including the X Chromosome:

The numbers in the top right are the Chromosomes where the James Line TGs are. The names in the bottom left indicate the likely common ancestor(s) for the TGs. For simplicity, I left out the new TGs that had James and Archibald Line people in them.

Summary and Conclusions

• The addition of Madeline to the James Line DNA Test Group tipped the scales and resulted in previously unknown TGs for the James Line.
• Out of the 11 people, considered, 9 were in James Line TGs.
• The newest member of our James Line DNA Group, Madeline, was in the most TGs: four
• Charlotte helped form 3 new TGs
• Even though Mary is a niece of Madeline and Charlotte, she also helped form 3 new TGs
• Bonnie, Judith, Jonathan, Janet, Prudence and Joanna were each in one new TG
• The 2 that weren’t in TGs were Clydie and Beverly. However, Clydie was in an X Chromosome TG. Beverly shows as a 3rd cousin to Bonnie and Judith. As a result, her relationships can be inferred through them.
• These new TGs add certainty to the relatedness of those on the James Line.

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

Summary of the Previous Frazer TG Summary

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

New and Improved Frazer TG Analysis

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

archibald Line testees

1. Bill
2. Pat
3. Gladys
4. Heidi
5. Joel
6. Sharon
7. Paul
8. Michael
9. Jane
10. Ros
11. Cathy
12. Doug
13. Vivien
14. David

James Line Testees

1. Prudence
2. Charlotte
3. Mary
4. Jonathan
5. Janet
6. Joanna
7. Judith
8. Bonnie
9. Beverly
10. Clyde

Testees unsure of their frazer ancestry

1. Karen
2. CA
3. Jenn
4. Melissa
5. Stephanie

The Ground Rules For the Frazer Triangulation Groups

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

And the answer is:

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

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

Highlighting Some James Line TGs

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

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

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

TG15B – Charlotte, Mary, and Paul

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

TG17 – Doug, Bonnie and Beverly

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

Richard 1777 or Archibald 1778?

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

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

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

And Finally, the Puzzling TG09A-D

TG09A & B don’t look too complicated:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is how it could look mapped out on Chromosome 9

Notes:

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

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

 

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

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

A brief note on the importance of triangulation groups

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

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

Summary and Conclusions

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

 

 

I’m so happy that my cousin Paul’s autosomal DNA results are in. He is my second cousin once removed. He is also a generation closer to my Frazer 2nd great grandparents. That means his DNA results should be better than mine in matching others. Here are my 2nd great grandparents (Paul’s great grandparents) at the farm in Ballindoon, County Sligo. Both Paul and I descend from the first 2 people in the photo: George Frazer b. about 1838 and Margaret McMaster.

I like this photo, but I can’t help but think the family looks a bit sad. Perhaps they missed my great grandfather who moved to Boston. There were 9 children and at least one additional child that appeared to have died young. Out of those surviving 9 children, there are only 3 in this photo taken at the family farm in Ballindoon.

Meanwhile, in Boston, here are 5 of the 7 Frazer brothers.

Let me introduce you to my great grandfather who is sitting down on the left. He is the oldest in the family. Hubert is Paul’s grandfather standing on the far right.

Paul’s DNA

So let’s look at some of Paul’s DNA matches. Here is how Paul matches my 2 sisters and myself. Also for reference, I have his 2 other largest Frazer matches at Family Tree DNA (FTDNA)

On the browser below Paul matches the following relatives:

• Sharon is orange
• Heidi is blue
• I am green
• Michael is pink
• Jane is yellow

There are some places where I don’t match other Frazers in the project. These would be good candidates for McMaster matches as Paul and I both share Margaret McMaster as an ancestor. For example, look at Chromosome #9. Paul matches my sister Sharon for a large stretch shown in orange. There is a large match there where neither Paul nor my family match other Frazer testers in the DNA project. My guess is that is where Sharon and Paul share DNA with Margaret McMaster.

But, there is more going on at Chromosome #9 and it ties into a previous blog I wrote on the X Chromosome called The X Factor – Part 2. I’ll try to explain what Paul and Sharon’s match on Chromosome #9 has to do with the X Chromosome. First a word on triangulation.

A Possible Frazer DNA Triangle?

Paul’s testing resulted in an additional Triangulation Group (or TG). These are good things because they are DNA’s way of telling us that those in the TG come from a common ancestor.  However, is this common ancestor from a Frazer or a McMaster? This new TG looks like this.

This is the classic 3 person TG where Paul (PF) matches Sharon (SH), Sharon matches Karen (KS) and Paul matches Karen. Now this is where I’ll tie it all together in an amazing or unbelievable way (depending on your point of view). Karen is the karen I mentioned on my X Chromosome blog. She had a huge X match with Sharon. My guess at the time was that karen’s X match went through Margaret McMaster back past her grandmother who was Margaret Frazer. Then back to Margaret’s unknown father as the likely common ancestor. It’s a little easier to see here:

So in this scenario, Paul and Sharon’s large match represent Margaret McMaster above b. 1846. But the TG of Paul, Sharon and Karen represents (probably) the father of Margaret Frazer above. I had been thinking that Karen may be related on the McMaster side. That is another option. However, Karen isn’t aware of McMaster ancestors, but she is aware of one Frazer/Frazier ancestor from the area. Actually, if Karen’s TG ancestor is the same as her X Match ancestor, I suppose the match could be anyone in pink or blue to the right of Margaret McMaster on the chart above. I just thought the Frazer scenario fit in with what Karen knew about her ancestry. Another note is that the X match and the Chromosome 9 match don’t have to represent the same ancestor. One could be a Frazer and one could be a McMaster. At any rate, it is a case where genealogy, triangulation group and X Chromosome match appear to work together.

Paul’s Gedmatch Results on the Archibald Line

Paul and I are on the Archibald line which goes back to the early 1700’s. Here is how he matches up with those on that line by gedmatch. In this analysis gedmatch lowers their match results a bit to 5 cM.

Going across the top line, Paul matches the first 6 who have a common ancestor of Richard Frazer b. 1777. The last 3 people have as their ancestor another Archibald who was the brother of Richard. He has either no matches or small ones with them.

And the James Gang

The way the project has been split up we have looked at the Archibald Line and the James Line. These 2 likely brothers have a whole bunch of descendants. Here is how Paul matches James Line descendants.

Interestingly, Paul’s largest match here is with Judith. Judith is related to Bonnie, but Paul has no match with her. Also I did something different here. I deleted all the cM values for the close relations. Those are up to second cousins shown in pink. Then I added a column to the right. This adds up everyone’s matches (minus the close relations). At the bottom I took the average summed cM value for the James relations. What this tells me is that Paul is likely as related to the James Line testers as the James lines testers are related to each other. This report doesn’t seem to be the most accurate as Paul actually does have a match with Janet which doesn’t show here.

More On Archibald Line TGs

Aside from the new TG Paul is in (which may not be a Frazer TG), we had 3 Archibald Line TGs. The third, discovered after Doug tested, was in the Archibald-Ann Stinson Line that Paul is not in. That leaves 2 other TGs. I had previously thought both these TGs went back to Richard Frazer b. 1777 and his unknown wife. Now I’m not as sure.

The first of the 2 TGs is in Chromosome 1. Here is what it looks like.

Note that in this TG are Michael (MFA), Jane, Paul (PF) and Heidi (HHM) with huge matches. Then there is Bill (BR) and Mike (MB) with smaller matches. Mike is someone who isn’t in the project but appears to be in the TG. Note that my sister Sharon and I are not in this TG due to the random way we inherited our parent’s DNA.

The second TG is on Chromosome #12

In this TG is Dave from Canada. EG and RWT are other people not in the project but appear to triangulate with our group. This means they should share common ancestors. My sisters Heidi and Sharon as well as I are in this TG. Jane is here and Bill.

Why I doubted both these TGs were from Richard b. 1777 and his unknown wife.

• DF is only in the second group. We’ll call that TG12
• Paul is only in the first group. That would be TG01
• Michael is only in TG01

Why I am staying with these 2 TGs both representing Richard Frazer and wife:

• DF didn’t match Paul by DNA, so that makes sense that Paul wouldn’t be in a TG that DF (David) was in.
• Paul is unquestionably related to me and my family. The link we have goes back to George Frazer who was born about 1838. That means before that time we share the same ancestry. Paul isn’t in TG 12 with my sisters and me, but he would share the same ancestors we have from that TG by genealogy.
• I think I can extend the same logic to Michael (MFA). He can’t share a different genealogy with Paul separate from my family. This is because Paul and my genealogy are locked in from 1838 and before.

I think that makes sense. It’s a good brain teaser at any rate.

In Summary

• Paul’s DNA results appear to solidify rather than question 2 existing TGs leading back to Richard Frazer b. 1777. As a side note, I don’t know if it’s normal to have 2 TGs for one couple – especially that far back. Something to look into, perhaps.
• Paul’s DNA also netted a new TG. This one involves karen who had a mysterious huge X Chromosome match with my sister. The apparent common ancestor appears to go back on my McMaster line. However, this line had another Frazer in it.
• Paul is related to the James as well as the Archibald line. This is likely due to the Margaret Frazer who married one of our McMaster ancestors.
• Places where Paul match my family but not other Frazer DNA Project testers will likely represent our shared McMaster ancestors. These McMaster ancestors lived somewhat parallel lives to the Frazers. They started out farming in South Sligo and the Frazers started out farming in bordering North Roscommon.

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.

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

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.

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