Wordless Wednesday - Possible Sitzman/Zitzmann friends or relatives

This is one of the many, many photos from one my grandma Blossom's photo albums her mom put together. The only person my grandma recognized in this picture was the woman seated in the middle, who is Mary (Sitzman) Hoffman, her grandmother. The others might be family or friends, but my grandma didn't know them. Given her apparent age, I would put it somewhere around the 1920s.

Genes Day Friday - Lots to see (and not see)

This has been an eventful week for this budding genetic genealogist. First up - new results! My maternal grandmother's results came in this week, and some things that I've learned so far - she has a lot of European DNA, which makes sense, given that I know she has a lot of German ancestry, as well as several lines that probably go back to the United Kingdom. I haven't traced all her lines across the pond yet, but names like Craddock, Fielder, Scribner, Harris, and Martin all seem to point to a UK background. Oddly enough, she only had one match in 23andMe's Ancestry Finder, and that was in Brazil of all places. She also has 636 matches in Relative Finder - more than my paternal grandmother, but less than my paternal grandfather. The cool thing is, one of those matches has the last name Craddock, which was my maternal great-grandmother's maiden name! I emailed him and asked to compare notes, so hopefully he's interested and will write back.
I also learned that my maternal grandma's mtDNA haplogroup is H3. I was just reading about mtDNA haplogroups in DNA and Social Networking literally yesterday, and it said haplogroup H is far and away the most common haplogroup in Europe. I don't know yet if H3 is included in that. I just find it very interesting, mostly because both of my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother have German maternal lines, but from Russia/Poland (grandfather), Bohemia/Czech Republic (p.grandma) and Hessen-Darmstadt (m.grandma). Both my paternal grandparents were in U5, with my grandpa being U5b2a1 and grandma being U5a2b. I kind of expected my m.grandma to be U5 as well, so now I've got two major haplogroups to learn about. Because she's my m.grandma, that means H3 is also my own personal mtDNA haplogroup as well, so that's an added incentive to learn about it.

The most intriguing part of the results was what I didn't find. According to the research we've done on her father's side, one of her great-grandmothers was Lisette Rainier, who was either full or half Native American (the documentation on Lisette isn't very clear, plus she has a French name). According to 23andMe's Ancestry Finder, my grandma is 100% European - no Native American at all. Needless to say, it was a little surprising. There are a lot of tribes out there, and I wonder if there aren't tribes that have no representation in databases like this. It's even more difficult because we don't even know what tribe Lisette was from. I'm going to upload the results to Gedmatch.com and see if anything comes up there. I'm not quite ready to give up on my Indian princess ancestor yet!
Another cool thing I learned about this week was also in Ancestry Finder. Up until now, I thought I had to share genomes with someone to know where exactly on our DNA we matched and how long the match was. It turns out, if you go down to the bottom of the Ancestry Finder screen, there's a link that allows you to download all your Ancestry Finder matches for the person you're looking at. If you haven't shared genomes with a person on your list and they aren't a public match, they will show up in your list as Anonymous. But it gives you the chromosome number/letter, location of the match in megabase pairs (which I'm guessing is in millions, so a DNA segment that begins at 37 megabase pairs and ends at 77.4 megabase pairs would probably start at 37 million and end at 77.4 million. I'll have to look it up somewhere and double check though). But it also tells you where that person declared their parents and grandparents were born, and whether they declared Ashkenazi Jew for that person. That would be very cool to find a Jewish relative/ancestor somewhere, though it would also mean learning about a whole new ethnic group and set of records. I'm open to that though. Anyways, I now have three very large files of DNA matches to sort through and compare. Let the fun begin!

On the FTDNA front, once again, I'm still waiting for my results on my grandpa's mtDNA tests, my dad's mtDNA test, and my m.grandma's mtDNA test. Meanwhile, I still have two autosomal tests outstanding at 23andMe - still waiting to hear back on my mom's autosomal DNA test, hopefully within a week the results will come in. And I've mailed one off to a cousin on my Joseph side, but he's still waiting for the test to arrive. I'm really excited for my mom's test results to come in, as this will be the first known relative of a known relative I'll have tested. It will be fascinating to see how many matches she comes back with, and what segments of her DNA are from my m.grandfather.

I just checked FTDNA, and my grandpa's Y-DNA results are in!! I can't wait to get in and start looking at them! I've read about so many online databases I can plug the numbers into, hopefully one of them will have a match for me.
Lots discovered this week, but we've only scratched the surface of the tip of this iceberg!

Surname Saturday - Harris, Fulkerson, Johnson and more!

I will preface this post by warning you - the family connections I am about to reveal are so convoluted, it may be difficult to wrap your brain around them with just a written explanation. If you get lost in the words, please refer to this detailed diagram I drew just before midnight the night I was working on this:

The other night I had a little free time, so I started working on entering my Harris files. I was working on entering the marriage of Harlan Monroe Fulkerson (a cousin of my great-grandfather, James Harris) and Bertha Johnson, when something on the record seemed to jump out at me and smack me upside the head - the names of the witnesses for the marriage. The witnesses were Charles Scribner and Nettie Pascoe, both of whom were already in my database, but for a different reason - Charles' sister Charlotte Scribner was my great-grandfather James Harris' mother, and Nettie Pascoe was his wife (or future wife, as Harlan and Bertha's marriage preceded theirs by a couple months). At first I was completely puzzled - why would Charles be a witness for the marriage of his sister's nephew by marriage? Maybe they knew each other just by virtue of living in the same town, but that struck me as unlikely for some reason. I thought there had to be a closer connection than that.

Mariah Janette (Beardsley) (Johnson) Scribner

So I took another look at the bride and groom's data. Harlan's info was pretty straightforward - son of Monroe Fulkerson and Lucinda Harris, born in Montana, residing in Montana. Nothing that said "I know the Scribners" there. Ok, on to Bertha Johnson. Daughter of Frank Johnson and Carrie Tuttle Johnson, born in - Minnesota? That was interesting - Charles and Charlotte Scribner were originally from Minnesota, and had some half-siblings surnamed Johnson. Their mother, Mariah Janette Beardsley, had married Norton Johnson and had four kids by him before he died. (She then married widower Zachariah Scribner, and they had four additional children, including Charles and Charlotte.) Could Frank Johnson be related to Mariah and her first batch of children? I went to my files, and found that Mariah and Norton had indeed had a son named Frank, who had married a Carrie, and had six children - including a Bertha that was the perfect age for Harlan's wife! So Frank and Charlotte were related by blood to Harlan and Bertha respectively. Frank was Harlan's uncle, and Charlotte was Bertha's aunt, which made Charles her uncle. Now that I understood that, his presence as a witness for Bertha's marriage made much more sense. But, (as Dr. Seuss said) that was not all, oh no, that was not all.

Frank Johnson had another daughter, named Grace Johnson. This daughter married a guy named John Pascoe, Jr. This John turned out to be the brother of Nettie Pascoe, who married Charles Scribner. In other words, two siblings (Nettie Pascoe and John Pascoe, Jr.) married an uncle and niece (Charles Scribner and Grace Johnson). That means that the children from these marriages are both first cousins (because they share the same grandparents, John Pascoe Sr. and Annie Tonkin), and first cousins once removed (because they share Mariah Beardsley, grandmother of Charles and Nettie's kids, and great-grandmother of Grace and John's kids). How's that for confusing?

And just one more interesting little tidbit that I came across while trying to figure all of this out. Zachariah Scribner and his family, along with his stepson Frank Johnson and his family, were living in Elysian, Minnesota when the 1880 census was taken. They are listed right next to each other. But listed next to Frank was the family of Levi Van Blaricomb. Levi had a son named David, who in 1912 married Harlan Fulkerson's sister Alice (Fulkerson) Mowatt. In short - Bertha Johnson, as a five-year-old girl, lived near the future husband of her future sister-in-law.

Now aren't you glad I included that little diagram?

PS Levi Van Blaricomb's wife's maiden name was Sarah Johnson, and their oldest son was named Norton. But that's just a coincidence, right? Right?

Genes Day Friday - The next big step

Not much to update this Genes Day. The matches I'd found for my grandpa's autosomal DNA have pretty much stopped corresponding. I'm not sure, but I think it's because of a lack of any discernible common relatives. It's tough, because I've traced his mom's side back several more generations than his father's, so I feel like I'm at a disadvantage in looking for relatives on his dad's side. I really need to get going on my Gibson side at some point, and see if I can't extend my pedigree.

My paternal grandma's test turned up fewer matches, so I'm trying a different approach in contacting the matches. I'm looking for people that list the same or similar surnames as I've found in my family history research, and emailing them with some info on who we might be connected to. So far, no one has responded yet, but I'm hopeful. I can see why people usually submit these tests with a common relative or proposed common relative already located. This fishing for relatives is hard work!

On the up side, my dad took an mtDNA test and my mom took an autosomal DNA test this week. I was waiting for my grandma to get back from vacation when I realized - my dad has the exact same mtDNA! So that takes care of all the DNA tests I was going to put my grandparents through. Plus, now that my mom and her mom have both completed autosomal DNA tests, by comparing my mom's autosomal results to my grandma's, I can begin figuring out what my maternal grandfather's DNA looked like. Anyone who matches my mom but doesn't match my grandma is more than likely a relative on my grandfather's side, so I'll (hopefully) be able to start assigning specific parts of her DNA to my mom's dad's side of my family. I'm also interested to see who matches my grandma, and how many of her matches also match my mom, and what the predicted relationship is. I'd like to get my aunt and uncle to test as well, but that can wait for now (especially since those tests are now $300 a pop!).

A relative on my paternal grandfather's Joseph side is going to have his aunt or uncle (my grandpa's 2nd cousin) take an autosomal test as well. This is the first known relative on my grandpa's side to take a test, so I'm excited to see how they match up. I'll be able to assign any common DNA between them to my Joseph side. Plus, anyone that matches the two of them is bound to be a relative on that side as well.

I'm still waiting to hear back from FTDNA on my grandpa's Y-DNA test and my maternal grandma's mtDNA test. Feels like I've been waiting forever! I know the results will come in eventually, but this waiting thing is just killing me.

I'm starting to think that I've just been building the foundation of a very complicated, long-term project. I love long-term projects though - gives me something to work towards, and a purpose for all this DNA testing. Plus it's exciting to see it begin to take shape and come together. What will it be when it's done? Well that depends on two things - how many relatives I can find and convince to get tested, and whether I ever decide that I'm done.

Wordless Wednesday - Frank and Charlotte (Scribner) Harris

This is an undated picture of my 2nd-great-grandparents, Frank Harris and Charlotte Scribner. Charlotte was born in LeSeuer, Minnesota in 1872, and moved to Montana with her family. Frank was born in Stevensville, Montana in 1862, and lived his whole life in Montana. They married in 1891 and had nine children, including my great-grandfather, James Harris. Frank died in 1935, and Charlotte passed away in 1947.

Genes Day Friday - Two for the price of...two

The big news this Genes Day is - my paternal grandmother's test results are in! I now have double the data to go through! I've looked at her maternal haplogroup - U5a2b, similar to my paternal grandfather's U5b2a1 (well, not so similar, I guess). But both of their mothers were German immigrants (a fact which only dawned on me this week, actually), so it makes sense that there should be at least some similarity in their background.

One thing I noticed right away - she only had about 300 some matches, while my grandpa had over 900. I found this very odd, since her family has been in the US much, much longer (on some lines, at least) than his. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw in terms of who's tested, and who comes from where, but I expected my grandma to have many more matches than my grandpa. Just goes to show, you never know what you'll discover when you take these tests.

One thing that was somewhat of a surprise, but also somewhat expected (though I had no way of knowing for sure) was her genetic admixture - 100% European, just like my grandpa. With her mom being a German immigrant from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I figured that side would be European. Her direct paternal line, the Wagners, were also Germans, with her grandfather being born just before or just after the immigration (that line is still kinda fuzzy, a situation I hope to remedy with further DNA testing in the future). It's her paternal grandmother's ancestry, the Shutes, that have deep American roots. Her 2nd-great-grandfather, Alexander Blood Shute, served in the Civil War, and many of the lines look like they go back at least to the 1700s here in America. Being that it goes so far back, I thought it at least possible that there was at least some ancestor who wasn't European. But, at least so far, it doesn't look that way.

One feature I really like on 23andMe is the Ancestry Finder, which tells you where certain segments of your DNA are likely to have originated (based on connections found with other people who have at least parents and usually grandparents from that country). The top two matches were Austria and Slovakia (0.8% and 0.6% respectively), which I thought made total sense, given that my grandma's mother's family came from Rosshaupt/Rozvadov in the Czech Republic. There were plenty of surprises though - Russia tied with Slovkia at 0.6%, Netherlands and Finland tied at third with 0.2%, and coming in fourth with 0.1% were the United Kingdom, Denmark, and - Germany? Wait a minute - my grandma's mom was German, her dad was half German, and Germany gets tied for last place? How does that work? I really expected it to be higher on the list. Again, it could just be a matter of who's tested, and where their ancestry is from, but with German ancestry being so much a part of my grandma's ancestry, I find this more surprising than the presence of Russia, Finland, and Denmark on the list of hits - though those are pretty big surprises on their own. I'm going to have to spend some time with this thing, and figure out exactly how this all works (if that's even possible).

In other genetic news - I've ordered a couple more autosomal tests. You'll probably think I'm crazy for doing so, and I'm inclined to agree with you. But 23andMe kinda forced my hand with their switch in policies this week. They won't be offering subscription based tests anymore - no more $99 and $9 a month. From now on, as of 5pm this Thursday, all autosomal tests are $300 flat (or something like that). That's going to change how and when I do my autosomal testing - so good thing I got my grandparents all done when it was affordable! I bought two more - one for my mom, to try and get an idea of what my maternal grandfather's autosomal DNA looked like, and one for another relative to be determined. All told, I'll have five autosomal tests - three grandparents, one parent, and one other relative somewhere. I'll have to test my mom's siblings down the road somewhere, but there's no rush at present (especially since I now have to figure out whether to keep it at 23andMe, or do it through FTDNA).

I'm still waiting for the results of my grandpa's Y-DNA and mtDNA tests. If I'm reading it correctly, the FTDNA site says the results will be ready at the end of June. I've already been waiting close to a month, and now I've got another 7 weeks to wait! I wonder if they're usually this slow, or just swamped with orders because of their DNA Day sale.

Also, I've finished reading a few books on the subject, that have really helped. In fact, the order I've read them in has turned out perfect for my education. Here they are, in the order I read them:

The Seven Daughters of Eve
Tracing Your Roots With DNA
Deep Ancestry - Inside the Genographic Project
DNA & Genealogy
DNA and Social Networking (currently reading)

CeCe Moore recommended these books to me, and they have been a HUGE help to me in getting my feet grounded in this incredibly complex field. I would heartily recommend them all to anyone looking to get started in this field.

So that's where things stand today. Two test results in, two more in process, and a couple of tests yet to be administered. I can honestly say I LOVE this stuff! It just excites me to no end seeing all the things I can learn from genetic genealogy. I know I made the right decision in jumping into this field when and how I did. I just need to keep learning, and keep researching, and (as money affords) keep testing.

Treasure Chest Thursday - City directories galore!

I went on Ancestry.com the other day, to see if I could find anything about my 2nd-great-grandfather, John Gibson, in Montana. It'd been a while since I just did an open search, and I wasn't sure anything would come up. But it did, and in a big way! Ancestry now has (or maybe has had for a while, and I just never noticed) a huge database of city directories from all over the country, all lumped into one database called U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989. I found him in 18 - yes 18! - separate directories, all giving address, occupation, and limited family info. I also found his father-in-law, Dennis Cain/Kane, listed in several of them, including the one for the year after his death, which listed his death date. I'm very excited to go through them and catalog everything it tells me about him. Hopefully I'll find something that will help me dig up more details on him and his family in Canada.

Then, just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I went and searched for Samuel Joseph, another 2nd-great-grandfather, who spent several years in Anaconda, Montana. I only found him in a couple of them, but found many more (about a dozen) for his son, Elmer/Emil Joseph. They also had info on his wife and several of his kids. I know I just got done with going through all my Joseph files, but I couldn't resist trying to find more clues about Sam and his whereabouts in the 1910s and 1920s.

I know there a LOT more relatives I need to look for in this directories database, but just don't have the time to do so. I've still got a lot of Harris records to search through, DNA tests to analyze, and a new membership at SGGEE to fully utilize (thanks again, Jim!!). One day things will slow down, right? Right?

Genes Day Friday - Same Segment, More Matches

This has been a very enlightening Friday for me! I was disappointed to hear my one of my grandmother's samples had insufficient DNA for testing, and will need to be resubmitted. That means more waiting for the kit to arrive, then to ship back, and then to test. I'm trying to be patient, but it's not easy!

In the mean time, I've been going through my grandfather's autosomal DNA matches, and inviting them to share genome info. It's been really neat to go through and see where on his DNA these possible relatives match up. I haven't had much chance to correspond a lot with anyone yet, so no 'aha' moments or connections via paper trail to any other testers yet. But I have had 15 people so far agree to share data, which I don't think is too bad for only having had access to this for a week or two.


Chromosome 10 matches between
my grandpa and 3 others

I've been compiling a spreadsheet (yes, I track my genealogy data in spreadsheets) and found something very interesting - my grandfather shares the same segment of DNA with three other people! Same chromosome, almost exactly same length. How common is that? What's more the DNA in common has a cM of 12.1, 12.7, or 14.4, depending on the relative. According to FamilyTreeDNA, a cM of 10.0 or higher indicates conclusively that you share ancestry. It looks like there are 4 descendants of the same ancestor here, we just need to figure out where and how we connect. I emailed the three of them tonight, and hopefully we'll be able to start working on this soon. That's one thing I've really enjoyed doing in genealogy - teaming up with other researchers and working out a problem together. It's just fun, exciting, and rewarding all at the same time.

On the other testing fronts - still no results for my grandfather's Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, or my other grandmother's autosomal test. One grandmother submitted her mtDNA test, and I have the kit for the last one, I just need to get my grandma to take it. So for those tests, it's still a waiting game. But as more and more matches to my grandfather's DNA agree to share results, I'm hoping to come across similar situations, and keep building more connections and a larger family tree. That's what this is all about right?

Friend of Friends Friday - the slaves of Lucinda (Berry) Harris

This is my first real look at the details of the slaves owned by my 4th-great-grandmother, Lucinda Harris, while she lived in Platte County, Missouri. She and her children lived there between 1850-1860 at least, but left for Montana sometime between 1860 and 1870, presumably after the Civil War emancipated her slaves.

In the 1850 US Federal Census slave schedule, Lucinda is listed as owning 12 slaves, all black (no mixed/mulattoes). They, along with Lucinda and her seven children (ages 6 to 22) lived on land Lucinda owned in Green Township, Platte County, Missouri. The slaves are known only by ages and gender, as follows:

34 f
32 m
23 f
22 m
8 f
6 m
6 m
5 m
4 f
4 f
3 m
1/12 m (1 month old male)

It looks like she possibly had two families - two adults in their 30s, two adults in their 20s, and eight children, possibly even two sets of twins.

Then, in 1860, Lucinda is found in Weston Township, Platte County, Missouri, with only two of her children still living with her, John and Lewis, as well as Lewis' presumed wife Mary and their (again presumed) son Lewis. There's another man named F. P. Vaughn, but I have no idea who he was, maybe a boarder. At this time, Lucinda owned 14 slaves, but the ages for many of them don't match up to those of the slaves listed in 1850. I'm guessing that those missing were either sold or had died in the interim. Here are the details of the 1860 slaves, again all black:

45 m (possibly same as person 1 in 1850)
21 f
18 f (possibly same as person 5 in 1850)
17 m (possibly same as person 6 in 1850)
17 m (possibly same as person 7 in 1850)
24 f
16 f
14 m
13 m (possibly same as person 11 in 1850)
11 m (possibly same as person 12 in 1850)
7 m
5 f
4 f
2 f

Just going by ages and genders, it looks like only one of the adults listed in 1850 is still listed with Lucinda in 1860. Five of the children in the 1860 list look like they could be some of those listed in 1850, including the possible twin boys. So of the 14 slaves she owned in 1860, it looks like four of them were owned by someone else in 1850, and four of them were not then born. At least the little ones in 1860 would only have five more years before they were freed, and hopefully would not have to remember too much of what it was like being a slave.

At this point, this is all I know about them. I'm hoping to find out whether Woodford County, Kentucky kept a register of slaves received through wills, like I saw on a recent episode of Finding Your Roots. If Lucinda received any of these slaves through her husband's or father's, that register might give some more details. This is important, because we have a family story that some of the emancipated slaves moved to Montana with Lucinda, and I would like to see if I can find record of any of the freed slaves living in Montana. Knowing the names of those slaves owned by Lucinda in Missouri would be a big step towards knowing who to look for in Montana.

Wedding Wednesday - Grace and Mann

Lewis Harris, my great-great-grandfather Frank Benjamin Harris' brother, joined a very complicated family when he married Ella Coleman in 1898. I found their marriage record about a year ago on FamilySearch's Montana marriages database. The marriage record itself was pretty straightforward - Lewis is listed as the son of Thomas and Lizette Harris, which matches my records exactly. It was Ella's parents that threw me - Wash Man and Lucretia Grace. My first thought was that Ella's father might have been Native American - I didn't see where else a name like Wash Man could have come from. Lucretia Grace was a very interesting name as well, and made me wonder if Grace was her last name or a middle name. I figured I'd look more for them later, and moved on. Now that I've started going through my Harris files, I finally came back to them, and began to try to work out the details of this family.

I found Lewis and Ella in the 1910 census, with two step children, Albert and Myrtle Coleman (from a presumed first marriage of Ella's to a Coleman) with Lewis' sister-in-law Grace Click living with them. I figured Grace would have been Ella's sister (as I knew of no Click's marrying any of Lewis' siblings) and, given Grace's marital status was single, thought that meant Ella's maiden name was Click. Case closed, right? That sounded plausible, but just didn't feel right. So, to find more about Ella, I tried looking at the marriage records of her children from her first marriage. They weren't too hard to find, fortunately. Myrtle married twice, first to Tom Miller in 1911, and then to Martin Wallace in 1917. In both records, she said her father was B.W. Coleman, and her mother was Ella Harris (or E. Coleman, now Harris). That told me who her father was, but nothing about her mother's maiden name. Albert's marriage record was about equally as helpful - his father was listed as Ben. W. Coleman, and his mother's maiden name was Ellen Harris. That didn't sit right either - how could her maiden name have been Harris, if her father was "Wash Man", and she only took the Harris name when she married Lewis?

Given that Ella was apparently from Iowa (according to her marriage record and the 1910 census), I went to FamilySearch and just did a search for Lucretia Grace in Iowa. What I found was startling - a marriage record in 1859 between Lucretia Grace and George W. Maun. Suddenly the name Wash Man made much more sense - George Washington Man/Maun! Now I was excited!

I went back to the Montana marriages database, and did a search there for Lucretia Grace, and the records just jumped out at me - I found a marriage for a James Wise and Grace Clark (not Click), daughter of Lucretia Grace and - Ben Coleman? I decided to ignore that anomaly for the time being. In this case, Montana's marriage (and divorce) culture worked in my favor, as Grace married again in 1917 to John Harris (no known relation to my Harrises). Her marriage license for this marriage was actually on the same page as Myrtle Coleman's marriage to Martin Wallace. This time, Grace's parents were listed as Lucy Grace and B. M. Mann. The mom's name fit, and the dad's was halfway there. I was certain I had the right bride, as the witnesses for the marriage were L.A. Harris and Ella Harris - too perfect a fit to be pure coincidence.

I went back to my search results, as there was one more hit for Lucretia Grace, again as the mother, but this time to a Minnie Henderson. Minnie married Sylvester Babbitt in 1899, and her father was none other than Geo. W. Mann. This was beginning to feel pretty good. I went back to Lewis and Ella's marriage license, the one that set this whole thing in motion, and there I noticed something that seemed to wrap the whole thing together, and confirm all I'd found. One of the witnesses for Lewis and Ella's wedding was Mrs. Minnie Babbitt!

So, to sum up - George Washington Mann and Lucretia Grace, married in 1859 in Polk County, Iowa, were the parents of three daughters - Minnie, Grace, and Ella. Minnie married a Henderson, and then Sylvester Babbitt. Grace married a Clark, then James Wise, and then Martin Wallace. Ella married Ben W. Coleman, then Lewis Harris. Sounds pretty simple when you lay it out like that, but it took a lot of work to get to that point. Now I can finally put this family together in my database, and move on to the next challenge.