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.