More on the new Ancestry DNA feature

So I am working on Jennie Mae's tree.  Ancestry suggests she is related to Nancy Louisa Brock (1842-1896).

Now Jennie's tree is pretty clean to 1900 so it should be easy to spot this relationship.  Originally I thought the link would have to be through one of Nancy's kids if she descended from her.  However, all of Nancy's children were all born, lived and died in the same area in which they were born, Georgia.

By 1900 Jennie only had family in Oregon and Minnesota. There is no crossover.

Now chatting with a Brock researcher, it appears there is another way to interpret the Ancestry hint.

Nancy Louisa Brock and a child out of wedlock. His name was James Leander Brock. His father is unknown and not really included in Ancestry's database.

My new theory is perhaps Jennie's ancestors, the Ray's who lived in Kentucky, might have been related to the man that Nancy had a child with.  If we cut out all the generations in between, Jennie would be half cousins to this James Leander Brock. Since Ancestry would pick up on this genetic match, and the only person in the database which James Leander Brock was related to was his mother, it would show that Jennie was likely related to her as well.

This is an exciting new way of looking at things and may provide more satisfactory results with my Lee Miller family.

My Surname List

This entry is just about the surnames I am related to. I put it out there in hopes someone does a google search at sometime and comes across it and says, "hey I know that pairing. "  It is amazing how many of these names are unfamiliar to me outside of my genealogical research. To think of all the surnames I do know, that aren't here, and how many surnames went into creating those surnames, well the sheer numbers stagger the imagination. 

Last Names

 

Abbott, Abram, Adams, Anderson, Barbier, Basset, Battle, Blakemore, Blevins, Brusha (Brushka, Brusze),Bunch, Burt, Carr, Dettero (Totherow), Dickerson, Duncan, Elliot. Elwell, Van Etten, Fergus, Gard, Geersen, Gorts , Guider, Harvey, Hoffman, Howard, Huntington, Jans, Johnson, Jones, De Jong, Keener, Kittle, Kortrecht, Van Kuykendall, Van Der Laarsen (Leerse. Lerse), Lee, Lively, Lyfolly, Murdock, Martin(ucci), McDonald, McGehee, Mestemacher, Miller, Nail, Omsted, Pels, Peterson , Rader, Riley, Robertson, Robinson, Roosa, Sanders, Schlick (Sleek), Shetley, Skidmore, Smith, Sousa, Spencer, Spiller, Steinhauer, Stiles, Swafford, Taggart, Taylor, Teter, Vallet, Viemann, Vredenberg, Waggoner, Wallen (Walling), Weddel (Weddle), Westfall

 

DNA problems

Ancestry DNA gave me some nice answers. The proved I was related to my sister and my cousin. They also proved that I had a first-step-cousin I had only discovered this last year.  I will write about the whole discover later. A few other relationships were confirmed, and then there were the questions.

In my last blog, I talked about my great grandfather Sherman Andrew Miller and the possibility that he had a completely unrelated dad that I never had researched or that maybe his dad was actually someone I thought was his brother.

In this blog I want to discuss another conundrum.

What to do when you order DNA tests for your relations?  I had thought this was going to be straight up.  I would test certain relatives who were related to me through certain ancestors which would lead me further back in time by cross matching people who matches us both.

Simple on paper, but in reality there are some real problems with it. These are things you probably will want to discuss with people BEFORE you have them tested.

The biggest problem that turned up was not being related at all. That can only mean the family tree we had drawn for ourselves was incorrect and there was either infidelity, and early pregnancy or adoption involved. How do you tell your relative,  hey sorry, I think you were adopted?  Also, one of my relatives knew there was a problem with her tree, and didn't tell me until after I had ordered the test. Not a huge deal, but if I had been testing her for only one specific thing, or if she had been adopted rather than just a product of and early pregnancy by another man, I might spent money where it didn't do much good.

A confusing DNA story

AncestryDNA has a new feature that links your DNA results to family that are not included in your tree.

This is all well and good for finding your way through brickwalls, but when it affects a portion of your tree you thought you had all mapped out, it is quite upsetting.

This happened to me in the case of Burrell Russell Lee (1804-1877) and Louhaney Paralee Swafford (1800-1863).  AncestryDNA states there is a very good chance I am related to this couple.

First I thought I had a great breakthrough for one of my brick walls. Mary Matilda Robertson (1845-1901) or James Jesse Guider (1849-1909), both of which I have not been able to trace back to their parents. However, this was quickly dashed when I realized two things. The birth dates did not make sense and the location was off. 

My first task was to find out about the Lee family. I saw that they lived in Tennessee where my Miller family was. As I looked closer I saw that they did not have any unaccounted for kids, with birth dates that would link up. I looked at my Miller family and saw that Sherman Andrew Miller was born in 1865.

Digging a little deeper I noticed that the Lee family was not living in Tennessee for the period when Sherman would have been conceived, except for one son, Anderson Lee (1837-1905). He was actually living in Tennessee, and was a traveling preacher.  There is a story posted about him online, going from community to community staying at people's homes. Hmm. Was John Manson Miller away at war during 1864? I know that he was a G.A.R. solider from the same article regarding his 90th birthday.  Perhaps Anderson Lee did a visit to my great grandmother Malissa Ann Stiles (1832-1885).

This seems to make a lot of sense on the surface. Especially considering that Anderson Lee was also know as "Andrew Lee", Andrew being Sherman's middle name.

OK. So that was all a pretty good bit of detective work I thought until I did one more search. I went page by page through the 1860 Census of Bradley County to see if my family was living there at the time. I have never been able to find them on the census before, and it was suggested to me I might find them there.  So indeed, there they were, classified as McMiller.  OK Case made.

But then in cleaning up everything I thought I would go to familysearch.org and make sure that I linked the McMiller census record to my family. As I was doing that, I noticed the oldest son, William had already been linked to someone else, that, get this, had married a Swafford and had a child named Olena Miller (1879-1967).  Olena Miller married Henry S. Randolph.

What could this mean? Well to save the name of Malissa Stiles, it could mean her son, William got a girl pregnant when he was 13 years old and had Sherman Miller in addition to later marrying the Swafford and having Olena. If it is the Swafford previously mentioned, no first name was given, but a birth year of 1856 or 1857 was reported, it would make her about 9 or 10.

Then, Malissa and John would have raised Sherman as their own. This would indeed make the 90th birthday story accurate in the number of children John and Malissa had.

All of this is curious. I hope to find out the answer to it someday. I am hoping to find some of Olena's descendants.