The Truth is Out There

This is a colorized picture of my paternal great-grandmother – Frances – that a cousin sent earlier this year. It is the first and only photo I have seen of her. This woman who I’ve written about before in this post from several years ago. Ever since my AncestryDNA results arrived two years ago, I’ve been hopeful about finding Frances’ birth family – humans – not the aliens I believed she was dropped by as no records are found prior to her being fostered by Evan and Susannah (Fritter) Ogan in 1850. In fact, as I had written in the post referenced above, I did check Evan’s will to see if Frances was included as a “child” or “grandchild” or even as a “daughter” that he had raised. Sadly, she was left out of her foster father’s will even though the birth daughter – Maria – was included which leaves one to wonder what type of relationship Frances had with her foster parents.

Fast forward, and I have been studying genetic genealogy and how to apply it to solving at least two of my brick walls: one is my paternal great-great-grandfather’s parentage, and the other would be the parentage of Frances. It has taken some time, but after reviewing the results of all of my House cousins’ DNA results, along with our shared matches, and verifying their House lines, I’ve come to some preliminary conclusions. One of my techniques has been to disregard those matches that come from my great-grandfather’s (James House) parents’ lines as well as those who descend from James and his first wife, Barbara. Looking at the shared matches that were left, I discovered an unknown to me family those matches were descended from.

Suddenly, it was as if the fog lifted on my DNA matches across all the platforms (AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, and Gedmatch), and I could see where these “mystery” people fit in – on Frances’ birth line! Using DNA Painter, I added these folks and the following graphic shows that we match on chromosones 14 and 19.

But see that red arrow pointing to the segment on my X chromosone? That is the very first segment that I’ve found that came from Frances via her daughter Ella via her son (my dad) Gene and then to my sister and me – as I’ve also passed that segment on to my three daughters and son.

I have not pinpointed Frances’ parents but I have narrowed down the family lines. Solving mysteries such as these – especially difficult without having ANY information about parentage – aren’t easy. It takes a good deal of time and patience.

My advice for others dealing with brick walls or seeking birth parents due to adoption is to keep moving forward and take it one day at a time. Keep records – Excel, a scratch pad, family tree database, or some other way – so you can keep family lines straight. Someday you too may see the same type of chart I have. For now, I will keep working on the lines and my matches to get to Frances’ parents.

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Family Tree DNA Project

In April of this year, one of my distant relatives (by blood – close by choice!), sent me an email to let me know that she had ordered a 67-marker DNA test from Family Tree so that her first cousin (again, a distant cousin to me) could take it in order to get some information on the ancestors of our ancestor – Jacob Johnson born December 11, 1787 in New Jersey.  Johnson, according to Wikipedia, is the 2nd most common surname in the United States.  Good Grief! At least it’s not Smith!  My cousin told me that the Johnson project had 1000 members!

At the end of May, I received another communication from my cousin. She reported that the common 12 marker test showed that we belonged in Hapologroup R1b1a2 – common to Europe, the United Kingdom. That didn’t surprise me. The variation showed R1b1a2a1a1a – the country is “unidentified.” Good Grief!

Fast forward another month and a half to July, and more information came back – including the names of some other men who “matched” my distant cousin.  Several emails have been traded back and forth and family information has been shared. However, there aren’t any known relationship between their ancestors and our Jacob Johnson. We did see that there are a lot of the same given names: Jacob, John, James, and William. But then again, those names are almost as commonplace as Johnson!  Good Grief!

I have tons of information to try to sort out – I think I have finally straightened out all the emails so I have a way to read all of them without resorting to different folders in my email. Now, I just need to decide on a good way to sort out all of this information.

I do feel that I’m not “pulling my weight” as far as research right now.  The gal who started the ball rolling on this DNA project and one of our other cousins, have been digging into tax lists, land records, and other types of documents to glean as much as they can out of them while I have been reading and feeling pretty overwhelmed!  Perhaps once I am able to sort names, places, and dates, I’ll have a better handle on what still needs to be done!

Source: Family Tree DNA image from www.familytreedna.com, 2001-2012 Genealogy by Genetics, Ltd. 28 July 2012.

Source: Emails from Virginia Nuta: April 10, 2012; May 24, 2012; July 2, 2012. 

Source: Johnson surname rank – Wikipedia.

Blog post copyright 2012 Wendy J Littrell.
No part of this blog post may be used or reproduced without explicit permission from the author and must be linked back to this blog.

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