Family Tree DNA held a webinar meeting today to explain the new Big Y product features for a number of us who blog or otherwise educate within the genetic genealogy community.
First, the results will begin rolling today, not tomorrow. 100 will initially be released today and the balance of the initial orders will be released as they finish QA over the next month, at which point, Family Tree DNA anticipates their backlog will be resolved. There were thousands of tests ordered. They aren’t saying how many thousands.
First, a little background. There are 36,562 known Y SNPs in the Family Tree DNA data base that everyone is being compared to. In the example we saw of the delivered product, 25,749 has been found and callable at a high confidence rate in the individual being tested and were reported. Low confidence calls are not reported on this personal delivery page, but are included in the data download files.
In essence, Family Tree DNA has implemented a 4 step process.
An individual’s sequenced data is compared to the SNP data base and divided into two categories, known and previously unknown. The customer’s data is delivered based on these two categories.
All customer data is being loaded into a mammoth size data base at which point it will be determined which SNPs (please see the definition of a SNP here) are actually undiscovered SNPs that will be named, and which are truly novel, family or clan variants.
New SNPs that are found in enough of the population will be named and will be added to the haplotree.
Novel variants will remain that, and will continue to be reported on client pages.
Family Tree DNA is still working on items 2-4. In addition, they are working on a white paper which will be out in the next 6 weeks or so that will discuss things like the average number of novel SNPs per person being discovered, mutation rates, performance metrics and cross validation of platforms between the next gen sequencing Illumina equipment, Sanger sequencing and chip based sequencing, like the Geno 2.0 chip.
What’s Being Reported?
According to Dr. David Mittelman, the Y chromosome has about 60 million letters. About half of those are inverted repeats and are therefore not sequenceable.
Of the balance, there are several with poor readability, for example, some that simulate the X, etc. These are also not useful or reliable to read.
That leaves about 10 million, these being the gold standard of Y sequencing. Family Tree DNA tries to read about 13.5 million of these base pairs. They promised 10 million positions when they announced this product. They are delivering between 11.5 and 12.5 million positions per person. They also promised about 25,000 common variants, meaning known SNPs and they are delivering between 25,000 and 30,000 per person. This is only counting medium to high confidence calls. The low confidence calls are included in the download files, but not counted in this total or shown on your personal page.
Exactly how many locations are reported for any individual are shown on the bottom left hand side of the page. This example is generic. Yours might say something like, ”Showing 1 of 10 of 25,000 of 36,564.” In this case, 25,000 would be the number of SNPs read and called on your test.
All 25,000 or so results are being shown, both positive and negative. That way, there is no question about whether a specific location was tested, or the outcome. Of course, the third and fourth outcome options are a no-call or poor confidence call at that location.
All novel mutations are being reported by reference number so that they can be compared to like data from any source, as opposed to an “in-house” assigned number.
Insertions and deletions are also in the download files, but not reported on the customer’s delivery page.
After steps 2 and 3 have occurred, it has to be determined which SNPs are found in a high enough percentage of a population to warrant primer development to test individual SNP positions.
Family Tree DNA also clarified something from the November conference. The 2000 SNP limit is only how many SNPs can be loaded at one time, not the total number they will ever develop primers for or test for. They will do what makes sense in terms of the SNP being present in enough of the market to warrant primer development. With the very large number of Novel SNPs being discovered, it wouldn’t make much sense to purchase 50 individual SNP tests at $39 each. The break even point today, at $39, would be 17 individual SNPs, as compared to the $695 Big Y test. I expect that eventually the demand for individual SNP testing will decrease substantially.
Downloadable Files
Available on everyone’s page is the ability to download 2 files, a VCF (variant call file) which lists the variants identified as compared to the human reference sequence and the BED file which is a text file which shows a range of positions that passed the QC.
They will also be making available the BAM raw data files within the next week or so, but are finalizing the delivery methodology due to the very large file sizes involved.
The Much Anticipated HaploTree
If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked when the new tree would be available, I’d be a rich woman. As we all know, there have been a couple of problems with the tree. The new tree is 7 to 8 times the size of the 2010 tree. The tree, of course, has been cast in warm jello, an ever-moving target. And with the SNP tsumani that has been arriving with the full sequencing of the Y chromosome, that tree will very shortly be much larger still.
Bennett Greenspan said today that an updated tree is, “Needed, desired and will be delivered.” He went on to say that they have had two teams working together with Nat Geo for the past couple of months to both finalize the tree itself and to work on the customer interface. Since the tree is much larger, it’s not as easy as the older trees which could be seen at a glance and easily navigated. Furthermore, there is also the matter of integration with National Geographic.
Bennett says an updated tree will be delivered “within the next several weeks.”
New SNPs that are discerned to be SNPs and not novel/clan or family variations will then be named and added to the tree.
Integration
The initial release of Big Y data will be just that, a release of the results of the data, displayable on your personal page and downloadable. The newly found SNPs will not initially update the current haplotree on your personal page. This is the same issue we have today with the transfer and integration of Nat Geo data, because the tree is not current, so this is nothing new. The implementation of the new tree however, will remedy both problems.
The Future
Never happy with what we have, genetic genealogists will want a way to match to other people on SNPs, just like we do today with STR markers. In fact, we’ll want a way to integrate that matching and discern what it means to our own private family or clan situations.
Family Tree DNA is aware of that, planning for it, and welcomes feedback for how they can make this information even more useful in the future than it is today.
New Orders
I expect this delivery of new information via Big Y results will indeed spur a new interest in ordering this test from people who were waiting to see exactly what was being delivered. For those people ordering now, they can expect an 8-10 week turnaround, so long as additional vials aren’t required for testing.
For More Information
Elise Friedman is holding the free Big Y Webinar tomorrow, Friday, February 28th. You can read about it, sign up and learn how to access this and other webinars after their initial showing at this link.
Family Tree DNA FAQ pages you’ll want to visit are here and here.
The trip from the US to the British Isles was to follow the path, backwards of course, that my ancestor Thomas Speake took when he immigrated from England to the US about 1660. He was born sometime around 1633 or 1634 someplace in the Gisburn area of Lancashire, and died in St. Mary’s County, Maryland on August 6th, 1681. He married Elizabeth Bowling, who was also a first generation immigrant to the colonies. Both Thomas and Elizabeth were Catholics, settling in the Catholic-friendly colony of Maryland.
Family researchers had long suspected Lancashire as one of the probable locations for Thomas’s origins based on the fact that this area was known for Catholic recussants and because there were Speaks found in this area. But nothing had been found in Maryland or English records to firmly tie these two families together…that is…until DNA testing.
Another Speak(e) family would leave Lancashire 200 years after Thomas Speake left for America. This Speake family would instead sail in the other direction, to New Zealand. It would be the descendant of this man, in New Zealand, whose DNA would match the descendants of Thomas Speake who went to America, confirming that indeed, this Lancashire family is the Speak family from which the American branch descends. If this seems like the long way around, literally, it was, but it got the job done!
That information then allowed us to dig further into the records. Some of the first detailed records we found were for a church in Gisburne, very near the location where our New Zealand cousins family is found, including records where all of his ancestor’s children were baptized. We were hooked. We had found our family line, our family church, our family area….and our family. We wanted to go back, to walk where they had walked, to sit in the church pews that they sat in, to visit the graves of our ancestors and other family members, and to immerse ourselves in the culture and history of where we came from.
Our family journey began in London and took us through Cambridge, Coventry and finally entering the Ribble Valley on our way to our destination, the Stirk House, once owned by a Speak family.
The first morning I woke up at the Stirk House, it seemed surreal as I realized where I was. It looked surreal too, and reminded me a bit of Middle Earth, land of the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. I expected to see Gandalf any minute.
I sat up and looked out the wide picture window, which overlooks Pendle Hill in the distance and the fields that probably look exactly like they did when my 7 times great-grandfather, Thomas Speak was being raised within sight of Pendle Hill between 1634 or so when he was born and about 1660 when he immigrated.
These sheep in the field, meaning the white dots, are probably related to his family’s sheep too. Everyone here has sheep. Cattle are quite rare. That’s probably because the locals use a lot of wool because it’s cold and damp here, almost all of the time. It’s like a rainforest here and rains nearly daily, or at least some part of every day. It’s so moist that the stone walls grow both moss and ferns. His stone walls probably looked just the same and he likely would have been sent to repair them as a young man.
The farms are stunningly beautiful and for the most part, extremely well maintained, including the rock walls that line the fields as well as the roads.
These ancient walls were probably here when our ancestors were living here. They may have touched these very stones. Their ancientness reaches from the past to touch your soul, a silver misty umbilical tether to those who came before…
This is a typical road, lined on both sides with rock walls and stone buildings, including barns, although their barns are not large like ours, for the most part, and never wood or pole barns. This wall above is part of the wall to the left below.
Notice also the hairpin turns. There was more than once our bus was unable to visit a location because it couldn’t navigate these roads, bridges and very tight turns to get there.
Surprisingly, some portions of this region are very heavily forested.
Given that we are traveling in the Ribble Valley, it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that indeed, there is a Ribble River that runs the length of Ribble Valley.
The book, “The Common Steam” by Rowland Parker describes in exquisite detail the part that the literal common streams plays in the development, sustenance and nourishment of an area. I would heartily recommend this book to any history buff or anyone attempting to understand their English history and ancestors.
The Ribble River, indeed, is the common stream in this valley. All creeks flow into it, and it in turn, sustains the entire valley. Water is essential for humans and the animals on which they depend, and settlements sprung up along water sources. Our ancestors were here.
One of the best parts of this Inn is that we got to overlook the Ribble River. It ran, here, when our ancestors lived here. They looked at it as we do today. They probably drank out of it, washed in it and waded across it. Pubs here have a very long history as well, and our ancestors may have visited this very pub and looked at this very scene.
This is both the Pendle Hill and the Ribble River from where I was sitting at lunch. Pinch me. I still can’t believe I’m here, seeing what my ancestors saw.
Jim and I fully believe in “adventure eating.” When traveling, this means trying all of the local dishes, especially anything the local area is known for. In Lancashire, that would be fish pie and shepherd’s pie.
Now I’m not a big fish fan, but The Inn at Whitewell is famous for its fish pie, so I figured if I liked it anyplace, it would be here. Let’s just say that if you really like a fishy taste, this is for you. It included shrimp too, but their shrimp are miniscule. What we call shrimp in the US are called prawns in England. The baked cheese and potatoes were wonderful on the top of the fish pie.
I liked the shepherd’s pie better, but how can you go wrong with beef stew and pie crust. This isn’t only English, it’s all American too. I’m glad I tried both.
My cousin, Dolores and I are chatting outside the Inn at Whitewell. I “met” Dolores many years ago, back in the 1980s, by letter. I still have her original letters and copies of documents she so kindly copied and mailed to me. I was just beginning my genealogy journey and she seemed so very wise and knowledgeable, not to mention kind. Little did I ever know just how far we, together, would travel, literally. Dolores brought her grandson along as well, a college student, standing to our right. He is a lovely young man, very helpful and Jim and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time chatting with him about computers and geeky techy stuff. I can’t imagine a young man his age who would actively choose to spend his time with his grandmother, but this young man is truly exceptional. I wish I had a daughter the right age:) This is the next generation of genealogists we’re raising!
Another family group on our trip included Susan Sills, the President of the Speak(e)(s) Family Association who coordinated most of the trip. She brought her son and his 2 daughters along. In fact, we had just celebrated the oldest granddaughter’s birthday during our lunch at the Inn before we took this family photo. How does a birthday get better than that???
It was wonderful to see the love of history being passed from generation to generation. Susan’s granddaughters are also lovely young women. I hope they realize what a gift their grandmother has bestowed upon them, if not today, then someday…even though I do think she bribed them to come along with that trip to Paris afterwards:)Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
You can hardly take a picture without Pendle Hill being in the background.
After lunch, we tried to visit the ruined castle at Clitheroe and through a series of quite humorous events, including the bus being too tall for a bridge, twice, we gave up and went on to St. Mary’s Church in Gisburn, which was our ultimate goal anyway for the day. Below, you can see one of those hairpin turn types of places we couldn’t navigate. Our bus driver was incredible and I was utterly amazed at his patience. I was sitting in the “jump seat” beside him where the tour guide normally sits, due to motion sickness, and I know I heard him swear under his breath. The poor man had about 10 women trying to “help him,” all at the same time. But he was a married man so he knew exactly how to handle that. He ignored everyone…and muttered.
I must say that the Clitheroe folly bore us a gift and that was the gift of going over the mountain, meaning Pendle Hill, because the bus had to find a different way into town. We got to drive around the countryside and it was picturesque. Look at this beautiful arched bridge. I have to wonder if it was originally a Roman Bridge from the Roman occupation beginning in the year 43. This area did play host to a Roman fort.
Many places look like they were straight out of Thomas Kincaid pictures. There are rock and hedge walls along the roads. It’s raining here, with Pendle Hill in the background.
The villages are comprised of “cottages” as they are called, and in some places, on Pendle Hill, for example, the sheep free range and graze on the moor lands.
And the flowers. Oh, the flowers. Lovely quaint flower gardens are found tucked into the most unlikely places. With all the rain, the gardens were lush and lovely. Oh yes, and did I mention that the houses are built perilously close to the road, because the road used to be a cart path hundreds of years ago. And yes, these houses ARE that old. What we consider old is rather new to them.
We didn’t have time to stop, but these ruins are of Sawley Abbey. Sawley Abbey was an abbey of Cistercian monks in the current day village of Sawley, Lancashire, but historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Created as a daughter-house of Newminster Abbey, it existed from 1147 until its dissolution in 1536, during the reign of King Henry VIII of all England, Ireland, and France. If you’ll recall, it was King Henry’s reign that created the religious persecution of Catholics, following his break with the Catholic faith and his installation of himself as the head of the Anglican Church. He disbanded, dissolved and destroyed the monasteries and abbeys between 1535 and 1541. Our ancestors would have witnessed this, and probably felt strongly about what was happening. This abbey suffered that fate, although some pieces of stone and wooden items such as the rood-screen were installed in other regional churches as an attempt to salvage the sacred.
This rood-screen, above, being the wooden divider between the chancel and nave, from St. Mary of Gisburn, is not one thought to be from Sawley Abbey, but is from the 16th century.
So, if you think about it, all of these church buildings that you see that existed during or prior to that time were at one time Catholic Churches that became Protestant, likely under duress. To defy the king was a bad idea, a very bad idea, a lose-your-head bad idea, so many became Protestant and the Catholic recussants went underground, practicing Catholicism in hiding and under threat of death. Many martyrs were created during this period.
I learned that you can tell which churches were originally Catholic by looking for one particular telltale sign. In the Catholic faith, sacramental wine must be poured into the earth, directly, so that unsavory people don’t somehow come into possession of it and use it for witchcraft or other “unholy” purposes. Built into Catholic churches, at least Medieval ones that existed prior to Henry VIII’s “conversion” to Protestantism, is an orifice similar to a bowl built into the wall for exactly this purpose called a piscina. If you look closely, you can see the drain hole, which leads down the wall directly into the earth. This is typically located someplace towards the front of the church where the Priest would dispose of the leftover Sacramental wine.
Another hint that a church was once Catholic is the Holy Water Stoup, which may look something like a piscina except without the drain. The stoup is used by the congregation to cross themselves with water as they enter the church, so is therefore generally found in the front near the door, or what was the door at that time.
As we arrived in the crossroads village of Gisburn, the excitement was mounting. Gisburn was one of the villages where our Speak family was known to have lived, on the surrounding farms.
Gisburn was mentioned in the Domesday book, created in 1086 as England’s first census, in essence, for taxation purposes. The manor of “Ghisebum” was part of the Percy fee. It was passed to the Abbot of Salley (Sawley) in 1224 and disposed of by the King during the monasterial dissolution. In 1613, Gisburn passed to the Lister family. In 1797, upon threat of invasion by Napoleon, Thomas Lister raised a troop of cavalry and for his patriotism, he was named Baron Ribblesdale of Gisburne Park.
St. Mary the Virgin church, called St. Mary’s of Gisburn, did not exist yet when the Domesday book was created, but was dedicated in 1135. It has been expanded and revamped over the years. Most of these small medieval churches still don’t have either running water or restroom facilities today.
St. Mary’s serviced all of the nearby farms. The village itself isn’t nearly as old as the church, dating from the 17th century. Located on the main road connecting Lancashire and Yorkshire, trade, and a stage coach stop, was what fueled the village of Gisburn.
Our first glimpse of St. Mary’s Church, where many Speaks were baptized, married and buried, beginning in the earliest records in the 1600s, was from the rear, across the gravestones of her departed members.
At St. Mary’s Church in Gisburn, sadly, no one was available to meet us, but they did leave the church unlocked. We spent time in the church and the churchyard, but found only 3 stones from the Speaks family.
Their burial records begin in the early 1600s, and it’s obvious from translating those records that they served a number of other locations, villages and farms, in the area. We find the earliest Speak burials beginning with Anna, daughter of William, in 1602. Not all burials give the location of the deceased, but those who do are all Gisburne through 1653 when a series of other locations is given. Of course, these locations may not be new, they may simply have been among those without a location given earlier.
Locations include: Gisburne, Howgill, Rimington, Paythorn, Twiston, Miley, Horton, Varleyfield, Pasture House, Waitley, Todber, Watthouse, Yarside Bracewell, Martintop and Newby. This list takes us through 1828, when the Speak burials cease until in the mid 1900s. The records may not be complete.
On the map below, you can see that all of these locations that have corresponding locations today are within 2 or 3 miles of Gisburn(e). Those locations that do not exist on the map today may well have been farm or manor names that disappeared instead of becoming hamlets. The location just below Gisburn with no name is Todber. A caravan park is located there today, but otherwise, it has disappeared.
Notice the fence or boundary wall in this diagram. We’ll talk about it in a minute. It’s not what you think.
Fifty-one Speak burials exist in the records, and most of them are quite early. Many family units are evident, although there is a pronounced repetition of names. In particular we find the following:
Alice – 4
Ann/Anna – 5
Chrus – 1
Elizabeth – 2
Ellen – 1
George – 1
Harry – 2
Jacobus – 1
James – 5
Johes – 1
John – 2
Judith – 1
Margaret – 2
Maria/Mary – 3
Richard/Ricus/Richus – 4
Robtus – 1
Stepheus – 2
Thomas – 4
Wilmus – 2
Women designated as “wife of” with no first name given – 4
A bit of English history may be somewhat enlightening. This group of Speaks does not appear to be landowning. In other words, they were not royalty, were not wealthy, did not have coats of arms, etc. In medieval England, if you were not a land owner, then you were a tenant farmer, either free or bond. Bond did not mean slavery, but it did mean you had little freedom to leave. However, the freedmen had little opportunity to leave either, required the manor owner’s permission, and there was no place within the British Isles to go anyway that wasn’t already populated.
We were excited to enter this hallowed church of our ancestors. I love the door. The porch is a 15th century addition with a beautiful cross that protects a 13th century door build on a 10th century foundation.
Notice the defensive arrow slits build into the tower so that our ancestor could barricade themselves into the church and defend their position if need be.
All of the children of the ancestor of our New Zealand cousin were baptized here, not in this exact baptismal font from 1875, but probably one similar and in this location in the church, so we know the family didn’t live far.
Cemeteries and burials are handled very differently in Europe than they are in the US. At first, this was rather appalling to me, but I came to understand that it is simply a cultural difference, although there is a part of me still very uncomfortable with the situation. They reuse graves. They may move stones as well. Some churches simply remove old stones, and in doing so, they make maintenance easier, or reuse the burial plot, but they also lose all track of who was buried in that location. In the photo above, the old stones have been relocated to the wall along the road to make mowing easier. If you look carefully, you can also see that reflected on the cemetery map.
The relative wealth of a church and its parishioners can be judged by the number and quality of stained glass windows in the church. Each window has a story, both in terms of what the window is displaying and in terms of the history of the window itself. Keep in mind that until recent generations, most people could not read so the stories told in the church windows served to remind the parishioners of Bible stories and morals.
It’s believed that some of the stone in this church, particularly the supportive gables, archway and columns were rescued from Sawley Abbey, just 4 miles away, when it was destroyed. The church was expanded about this time.
After the others left, I remained in the churchyard and discovered why it is that none of the oldest stones are in evidence that might correspond to the earliest burials. There are two stacks of stones behind the church that appear to be unreadable. These grave locations have probably been reused for a new burials. Burial space is very scant after hundreds of years, not just here, but all over Europe. The “normal” time for a grave to exist before it is reused in Europe is about 20 years now, except in some of these small villages and towns where many of the older graves do still exist. We know from the church history that the lawn, behind where I’m standing, below, and the church, is where the stones that now line the wall were originally located.
St. Mary’s of Gisburn is a truly beautiful old church and so full of our family history. We know that our relatives, and probably our ancestors, rest in this dirt and worshiped in this church, first as Catholics and then, at least some, as Protestants.
We have no record that our Thomas was baptized here. But he had to have known of this church, passed it, and was probably in this church from time to time. He was assuredly baptized in one of these local churches unless he wasn’t baptized in the Anglican church at all, which is certainly possible, considering the family’s Catholic beliefs.
Our Thomas is had a rather unique profession, that of a tailor, as he stated in his first few years in Maryland. John David Speak checked the 776 Speak family records he has collected from the parishes surrounding this area and he found only three records that indicated Speaks men were tailors, and all three were from Gisburn where in 1613, Ann the daughter of William, a tailor was baptized, in 1647, Sicilia the daughter of Richard, tailor, was baptized, and in 1662, Thomas, a tailor, was buried.
The only other Thomas record found is at Downham, just 4 miles distant, where, indeed, a Thomas Speak was baptized in 1634. Fortunately, Thomas is a very unusual name in the Speak family. Unfortunately, there is also a marriage record for a Thomas in 1656, and his wife is buried in 1667, several years after our Thomas is known to have been in Maryland and having children.
Other church records from this area were lost in the English Civil War and record keeping was officially suspended altogether for an 11 year period between 1649-1660 when Cromwell was on the throne, although some records do still exist. They are however, not consistent.
One record from this area that does exist and functioned as a type of census was the Hearth Tax Return, taxing people on the number of fireplaces they had in their home. It’s also significant because tenants rather than landlords paid the tax on their property, so in essence, we obtain the name of every householder.
The Gisburn tax list is dated 1672 and the Blackburn Hundred for Downham and Whalley is noted as 1666-1671. Both of these dates are after our Thomas was in Maryland, but still, it will tell us where Speak families were located in this region. Thomas of Downham, who married in 1656 and whose wife and daughter were buried in 1667 should be accounted for, but he is not listed. Nor is his household under his wife’s name. So where was Thomas Speake and his family?
There were three Speak households in Twiston, which is where Thomas who was baptized in Downham lived, according to the Downham church records, two households in Gisburn (Rimmington), one in Stansfield near Halifax and two in the Newchurch area near Pendle. Of the 6 entries in Gisburn, Twiston and Stansfield, 5 are named John, as was the son of our Thomas Speak. It’s probably safe to say that either Thomas’s father or grandfather was named John.
Some of the group went back to the Stirk House to rest a bit, but Jim and I stayed in the village and walked around. We found a corner deli and small convenience store and sampled local fare.
Everything is not paved, meaning pretty much everything except the actual road was still cobblestones, probably the same cobblestones that were there when our ancestors trod these same paths.
Tea, in England, is served in real china teacups. Period. Here are their teacups to choose from, stacked like souvenir coffee mugs in my cabinet at home. If you tell them you want your tea “take away,” they look at you like you have lost your mind. Tea, is to be savored and enjoyed while relaxing, not taken away! What’s wrong with you Americans anyway???
Real estate is at a premium in the British Isles. We saw several instances of this type of architecture. If don’t have enough space to go around your house, just go through it.
It appear from historical records that Gisburn may not always have been as tranquil as it is today. Thomas Lister, buried in the churchyard is the son of Martin Lister, supposedly killed by one of the Pendle Witches.
In the 1400s, pigs roamed free through town and created so much manure that manure heaps had to be removed prior to the annual market.
In 1401, a Vicar of Skipton, traveling the 4 miles between Sawley and Gisburn was murdered.
In 1425, the church rector was sent orders to “reconcile the churchyard after the shedding of blood.”
In 1648, Oliver Cromwell stayed in the village with his troops who stabled their horses in the church. The villagers complained that they broke the stained glass. Probably the soldiers, not the horses.
We walked back to the restaurant where the group was meeting and sat and talked with our cousins. Jim and one cousin decided to start a beer drinking/photography club and think they should write a book called, Eat, Pray, Beer. They are convinced it will be a bestseller. They may be right. I started them off by taking their first pictures.
So instead we all had dinner in an Italian restaurant in the English village of Gisburn with the slowest service possible.
One of the great things about visiting locally is that we met other Speak family members, including three male Speak men, Gary, Stan and David, who are certain that they are not related to each other. David, based on his genealogy, we know is a cousin of our New Zealand cousin, Doug, who matches the American line. In fact, it’s HIS fault that we are all here – because our New Zealand cousin knew who his oldest ancestor was – John Speak – the man whose children were baptized in St. Mary’s of Gisburn.
Gary indicated that he was told that his line is not related to ours. By this time, in the 1900s, the different Speaks families were on the other side of Pendle Hill, not terribly close to each other and in different communities. The known ancestral villages of the three different Speaks lines are shown on the map below. Pendle Hill is the high area in the middle. The two most distant points, Gisburn and Bolton are about 25 miles as the crow flies, or about 30 miles driving, and Bolton is a more recent location.
So indeed, we are all quite interested in the outcome of the Y DNA testing. All three men swabbed, so before long, we will all know.
So what do you think? Will three Speak men who believe they are unrelated, but with the same unusual surname, whose ancestors have lived in a remote country region of Lancashire “from time out of mind” share a common paternal ancestor based on Y DNA testing?
I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit to the village of Gisburn. We surely did!
Tomorrow, we go to Downham where we think our Thomas Speake may have been baptized. Every day in England gets better!!!
We began the day in quaint and beautiful Downham, the next stop on our DNA journey. In case you hadn’t yet figured it out, the church is always the center of villages, and historically, of village life as well.
We know that some Thomas was baptized and married here, we just don’t know for sure if it’s our Thomas, but Thomas was not a common name in the Speak family, and there are no other recorded candidates. Lord Clitheroe showed us the transcribed church record of Thomas’s baptism, along with the “T” that indicated Twiston, and his father’s name, Joannis Speak. Joannis would show up on the hearth tax for this area in 1766 as John. Thomas and Johannis were from Twiston, a mile or so down the road, probably the name of a farm of that time. Twiston Mill still exists today.
Regardless of whether this particular Thomas is ours, DNA testing has proven that these Speaks family are all descended from a common ancestor, so all related. Downham is only about 4 miles distant from Gisburn, to provide perspective, and it is literally simply a crossroads.
After we arrived, the vicar was present to greet us. Also in attendance to greet us were Lord and Lady Clitheroe. While he is Lord Clitheroe, his last name was Ashton and he is part of the Ashton family who owned all of the land in Dunham and nearby including Twiston. Therefore, the Speaks who lived in Twiston had to have worked for the Ashton family. Lord Clitheroe is at right in the photo above, the vicar at left.
He also told us that he thinks the church was rededicated at some time since all of the Ashton churches are named St. Leonard’s, so it might have been named something else prior. He brought with him a drawing of the church from 1790, before it was “remodeled.” The church, below, is what Thomas would have known.
Lord Clitheroe said he believes that the original church was built in about 1138 when the town of Downham was founded by the Lacy family who were the overlords at that time. The Battle of Clitheroe occurred in 1138 when the “Scots and Picts came down” and slaughtered many English. Downham was an important crossroads at that time and the Lacy family would have established churches after that battle to keep God on their side and build villages and such to improve life for those who remained. The result was civilization similar to what we know today.
Lord Clitheroe is a historian and he says he felt that if Thomas’s family was Catholic, he could probably have hidden away easier in Twiston than Downham. Both are very small areas. He also said that Twiston had Quakers as well who had a vision on Pendle Hill in 1652. The Quakers were also a group of dissenters, and I recall that we have a record from that time where a John Speak viewed a Quaker meeting, and testified as to such, so the Speak family had to be from that area.
Lord Clitheroe believes that the Lacy family also built Sawley Abbey, now in ruins, at the same time for the same reasons. More Holy was always better.
One of the best views of Pendle Hill from anyplace is from this churchyard. It’s said that in the 1930s or so the Queen visited the Ashton family and when in the church, said it was the finest view from any church in England. It was a very gracious thing to say, because most churches, or at least those with any money at all, have stained glass in all of their windows and you can’t see out.
Just stunning vistas with gardens of some sort every place you look. I just couldn’t soak up enough beauty. I wonder if gardens and flowers were as plentiful when our Thomas Speak left for America, and I wonder if he missed England.
This church visit was most enjoyable, well, except for the bird poop incident which we’re not discussing. I will also say that these local women were the nicest, most welcoming group we’ve met anyplace to date, including attempting to help with the bird poop incident in a church with no bathroom facilities. They just made us feel incredibly welcome and not like we were a bother.
Crissie, the daughter of the retired gardener of Lord Clitheroe, also a Speak descendant, came to visit and took us across the street to see her parents gardens, below. She showed us Rose Cottage where she was born and was most gracious and lovely.
One of the wonderful things about this village is that tourists never come here, so it’s authentic in every way – up to and including the fact that the door on that house is standing wide open.
We had lunch in Ashton Arms, the local pub, owned of course by Lord Clitheroe, as is most everything else in the village. Every November, the farmers meet him in the pub to pay the year’s rent on their farms. He then buys lunch and several pints of course and a fine time is had by all for the day.
After lunch, we went on to Whalley (which is pronounced like Wally with a slight wh sound), the location of the oldest church and the oldest Speaks records as well. Of course, they may have the oldest Speaks records because they have the oldest records of any of the local churches, complete from 1538. It think it’s evident that the early and later Speaks family lived throughout the Ribble Valley.
I just love the walls here, and their mysterious doors. I’m not sure what this door leads to, and the sheep wasn’t telling.
This heart had been placed on a grave, but the type of craftmanship is distinctive to this region. I saw several things “woven” in this manor, but only in this area, so it much be something that is relatively local.
Downham is literally a block long in each direction and is at the intersection of two roads.
On one side you find the church. Across the street are the cottages pictured above. On the other corner, also across from the church is the Ashton Arms Pub, and on the fourth corner, you find the remains of the stocks, directly across from the church. So whatever business you needed to have done, you could do it all right there in the center of town.
Chrissie explained about life in Downham. She told us that she got dressed there in the cottage, the day she was married, and everyone walked across the road to the church, including her in her gown. There is no place to park at the church and there are no bathroom facilities, so you’re not going to be there long. Afterwards, everyone went to the Ashton Arms, across the street, of course, where else?
After saying goodbye to Chrissie, we departed Downham and ventured on to Whalley.
St. Mary and All Saints Church at Whalley, shown above, was first Saxon, then Norman, then rebuilt for the third time about 1200. The church sits on what was a Roman encampment and evidence of a fragment of an altar with a carving of Mars has been incorporated into the existing church. The church is referred to in the Domesday Book in1086 as “The church of Saint Mary at Wallei.”
The Church of England required parishes to keep records from 1538 forward. Local records were to be kept, and copies periodically sent to the Bishop. Those two sets of records don’t always match, where they both still exist, but it does give us two opportunities to find a record for our ancestors.
The oldest Speak church record found in this area was in 1540 for the baptism of Agneta, at St. Mary’s in Whalley, daughter of Henrici Speake. The next year, his wife, Johana, was buried.
Speaks genealogists have reconstructed the Whalley families, to the best of their ability. We find that Henry Speak in 1538 was a tenant of lands in Billington and it was his wife and daughter that were born and died. It appears that he remarried, because there is also a John and Henry of the correct age to be his children. These families come forward in time and of particular interest to the Speaks family is the marriage of Johannis Speake who married an Elizabethae Bieseley in 1622. It has been proposed that this is the same couple who then had son Thomas baptized in Downham in 1634, who is a candidate to be the Thomas Speak who immigrated to America. Furthermore, it would connect the Whalley and Downham families. Those connections have not been made today, and may never be, even if they are accurate. So few records exist.
In this church too, we were met by a volunteer who did an exceptional job giving us a lovely tour. Somehow it was appropriate to take a group photo in a church and this one is both beautiful and connected to our family. Plus, we thought of it here:)
It’s amazing when you think of it. All of these people, from several US states, 3 countries and 3 continents descended from a family who attended this church more than 400 years ago, and probably 800 years ago. It was our DNA that brought us all together, allowed us to find each other and connect back here. It was our DNA that was our umbilical bond, guiding us home.
This church held something we haven’t seen before. The wealthier families could purchase enclosed pews and have a special “box” built. An early version of box seats. The man giving the tour told us that initially, most people stood for the service.
The choir screens on both sides of the church are indeed, stunning. They were hand carved about 1430 and rescued from Whalley Abbey when it was destroyed in the 1600s. Part of the choir screens, behind the rows of bench seats, on the left and right above, are the misericords, which are hand carved pull down seats. Three have inscriptions, one in French, one in Latin and one in English. It’s sometimes difficult to remember that French was the official language of England before English, meaning after the Norman invasion of 1066 and until about 1400 when it became the language of the cultured elite. It seems odd to think of our English ancestors speaking French, but they did.
In the early churches, people with money were buried in the actual floors of the churches. The more money, the closer to the alter. So yes, people did walk on your grave, every Sunday, in fact.
Three ancient sandstone Saxon crosses remain in the churchyard, dating from the 10th and 11th centuries. Such crosses were often set up as preaching places where no church existed and they may predate the first church in this location.
While the Catholics tried their best to eradicate Pagan practices, often by building their churches on the very grounds where Pagan worship had occurred, not everything Pagan was destroyed. In fact, from time to time, something slipped into the Catholic church. In this case, one of the misericords, the beautiful hand carved fold down wooden seats for the monks to perch on during long services had a Green Man carved into the front.
Drinking and sewer water from the Abbey came from the River Mersey upstream and was funneled downstream.
Here’s the original spring, now fenced, dating back perhaps to Pagan times when springs were worshipped and believed to be gifts from the Goddess. Holy wells were often sacred springs in Pagan worship, later Christianized.
After visiting the abbey or what is left of it, we drove by or through Sabden which ironically also had a ‘witches tower’ on the top of the highest hill. Ok, maybe it wasn’t a witches tower, just a tower built by a man in the 1890s that wanted a good view of the Ribble Valley, so local lore says, but it sure looks like one and it’s in the right place. The Pendle Witches were from Sabden and this is also where George Fox, founder of the Quaker faith had his vision. There is a lot of paganism woven into the early Catholic churches and ancient landscape here. Today, we saw ‘green men’ in carvings in the church at Whalley. So a tower at the top of the hill doesn’t surprise me one bit. Oh, and yes, there are Speak people buried in Sabden too.
To reach this area, we had to cross the mountain, Pendle Hill, once again, so we were treated to unbelievable vistas and sheep on the road, crossing very slowly.
We then drove through an area called Blackho which was the area where the last Speaks to be buried in Gisburn lived. He had no children and his line died out with him.
We knew we were close to “home” when we saw Pendle Hill from a distance, always welcoming.
Back at Stirk House, I took the nature walk around the grounds while some of the cousins went to visit Twiston itself in a cab. We couldn’t get there earlier down the small windey roads with the bus.
Twiston, below, looks much like the rest of the area. Pendle Hill is always ever present.
Today, Twiston itself doesn’t really exist. It was obviously the name of a farm that has gone by the wayside. However Twiston Mill is still on the map and according to local history, has been in existence as a water-powered corn mill since the 14th century when it was owned by the Cistercian monks from Whalley Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1534, it became a King’s Mill and then later was owned by the Listers of Gisburn and then the Assetons of Downham in the 1900s.
Today, this is all that’s left of the mill area. From 1792-1880, a bustling cotton mill thrived here, although it burned in 1882 and you’d never know that from visiting the area today.
You can view a lovely video of the Downham area including St. Leonard’s Church here.
How I managed to forget about the side trip to Twiston is beyond me, but I did. So while my cousins called a cab, visited Twiston and took these pictures to share, I was walking nonchalantly through the woods, becoming personally acquainted with the land of my ancestors.
I didn’t see many wild creatures, except for a rabbit, but I did find one of my cousins, a black sheep. There are few of them, most sheep are white, and it’s kind of hard to see them because they don’t stand out like the white ones against the green grass. He’s hiding in the photo below in front of a bush, but you’ll never see him.
Speaking of cousins, remember, in the Gisburn article, I asked you if you thought that our three Speak cousins from this area were paternally related, or not. 49 of you voted. 61%, or 30 people through they would all match, and 39%, or 19 people thought 2 of 3 would match. No one thought none of the would match.
Would you like to know?
All 3 men do match on the Y chromosome, exactly, at 12 markers. You may be surprised that we have only utilized 12 markers, but in this case, we are dealing with haplogroup I1. In total, these Speak men only have 66 matches, and of those, 13 are to other Speak(e)(s) males. So for us, 12 markers is an inexpensive “yes” or “no” answer to the question of whether someone matches the Speak line or not. Of course, now I’m looking at upgrading the results in order to see who our line matches most closely.
So far, all the Speak men who have tested from this area do indeed share a common male ancestor. Now, of course, the question that remains, is who.
We may never have the answer to that question, but earlier records that show this surname in this area do exist. In 1305, Robert Speke was named as a landowner in Billington, which is inside the Whalley parish. This is the earliest known Speak or similar surname record.
In the Act Book of the Ecclesiastical Court of Whalley a Father John Speyke was chaplain of the chapel of Pendle in 1529 and Johannis Speyke was chaplain of Goodshaw Booth in 1530. In 1531, John Speyke was one of four clergy in attendance for the Bishop’s visitation. It’s obvious that this family was very active in this region in the Catholic church, and these early dates are before the forced English Protestant Reformation in the 1540s. Given their level of personal investment in the Catholic church, it’s not surprising that they refused the Protestant faith and became instead, recusants.
We’re off tomorrow for Chorley and Charnock Richard where the Bowling family lived. Elizabeth Bowling, also Catholic, married our Thomas Speake and they were the early immigrants to Maryland about 1660 or so.
I will be sad to say goodbye to the Stirk House, once owned by Harry Speak. We’ve gotten pretty attached.
Thomas Speak(e) is 10 generations upstream from me, or my 8 times great-grandfather. He is also the original immigrant in the Speak family, the one who braved the icy waters of the Atlantic to reach out for a better land, and apparently, religious tolerance, if not opportunity, in colonial Maryland.
My connection to Thomas works like this.
Thomas Speak born circa 1630 in Lancashire, England and died 1681 St. Mary’s County, Maryland, married Elizabeth Bowling about 1663
Bowling Speak born 1665 St. Mary’s Co., MD died 1755 St. Charles Co., MD, married Mary Benson
Thomas Speak born 1698 St. Mary’s Co., MD, died 1755 St. Charles Co., MD married Jane, last name uncertain
Charles Beckworth Speak born 1741 St. Charles Co., MD, died 1793/94 Iredell Co., NC, married Anne, last name unknown
Nicholas Speak born 1782 Charles Co., MD, died 1852 Lee Co. VA, married Sarah Faires 1804 in Washington Co., VA
Charles Speak born 1804 Washington Co., VA, died 1840-1850 Lee Co., VA, married Ann McKee 1823 Washington Co., VA
Elizabeth “Bettie” Speak born 1832 Indiana or Virginia, died 1907 Hancock Co., TN, married Samuel Claxton/Clarkson
Margaret Claxton born 1851 Hancock Co., TN died 1920 Hancock Co., TN, married Joseph Bolton
Ollie Bolton born 1874 Hoop Creek, Hancock County, TN, died 1955 Chicago, Illinois, married William George Estes
Ollie Bolton and William George Estes were my grandparents.
Thomas was the first Speak ancestor to set foot on American soil. That was while we were still a British colony. I was lucky enough to visit St. Mary’s County, Maryland in 2011 where the original Speak family settled and lived for several generations. The annual Speak(e)(s) Family convention was held in St. Mary’s County, and through the generous research of several family members, original Speakes land was identified and much of our early history was pieced together. I wrote an article about the visit for the SFA newsletter, which I’ve adapted for this article.
This research was only possible due to the collaboration of several people. The early Maryland research was completed by John Morris and published in the SFA Newsletters at various times, the land records, research and maps of Bowling Speak(e)(s) land by Jerry Draney, the history of St. Ignatius church from their website, and most of the photography by me during my visit in October of 2011 with the Speaks Family Association. The photo above is from the St. Ignatius church website at http://www.chapelpoint.org/history.asp.
Our first ancestor to come to the land that would one day become America, Thomas Speak was already in Maryland and had married Elizabeth Bowling before 1664. The first record in Maryland that can be directly attributed to our Thomas referred to as Thomas of St. Mary’s, not to be confused with Colonel Thomas Speak who started out in Maryland and wound up, a wealthy man, in Virginia, was his land grant of 50 acres in 1670 “for service”.
John Morris in his 1998 article about the life and times of both Thomas Speak states that there is ample evidence of Thomas of St. Mary’s in Maryland before 1661. In January of 1661 a summons was issued to the sheriff in Charles County Maryland for a Thomas Speake to testify on behalf of the government about a crime. Col. Thomas Speake had been dead for 18 months and his son Thomas, who died without issue, was not yet 21, so the Thomas being summoned had to be, by process of elimination, our Thomas of St. Mary’s. In 1663, Elizabeth Bowling Speak was also mentioned in a court record.
In 1662/63 Thomas Speake filed a lawsuit against Arthur Turner in Charles County to collect debt and he described himself as a tailor and signed with his mark “TS”. Our Thomas did not know how to write. John Morris, a lawyer by trade, states that this record shows that Thomas Speake was not indentured at the time this was filed, because if he had been, the claim would have belonged to his master. However, we know he had been indentured, because he received 50 acres in 1670 for his “service.” If his indenture was the traditional 5 or 7 years, this pushes his arrival date back to between 1655 and 1657. John suggests that he was probably a young man, between the ages of 15 and 20 when he arrived, pushing his birth back to about 1630 or so.
The oldest son of Thomas Speake and Elizabeth Bowling was their son John (whom we call John the innkeeper) who testified at a later date that he had been born “about 1665″ in St. Mary’s County. Charles County was originally part of St. Mary’s County and is adjacent today.
In 1668, Thomas filed with the court requesting that his cattle be recorded as marked in the following manner: “Cropt of both eares, overkeel’d of both eares and a nick underneath both eares.”
In 1670, Thomas received his land grant after having served his time as an indentured servant to pay for his passage to Maryland. Indentured servants were not allowed to marry. Typically, but not always, indentures were for 7 years. If this is the case, and he married Elizabeth Bowling in 1663, he would have been indentured by 1656 or perhaps, if only indentured for 5 years, as late as 1658. If he married earlier, then he would have been indentured earlier as well. He would have entered the country at the time of his indenture. He would probably have been between 18 and 30, so probably born between 1626 and 1638.
Although things would have changed between 1634 and 1655 or so when Thomas arrived, this drawing of St. Mary’s City in 1634 from the Maryland State archives map collection gives us some idea of what Thomas might have seen upon arrival. Note the Piscataway Indian village located just outside the fort on the left. As we now know, the Speak family had some sort of relationship with the Indian tribe as they lived on the land owned by Bowling and subsequently, his son Thomas (of Zachia) and his son, Charles Beckworth Speak. Today, archaeological excavations continue at the site of the Indian village on historical Speak family land.
Thomas is believed to have been born about 1634. He died in 1681 with a will that tells us a great deal about him, in particular that Thomas of St. Mary’s was a Catholic.
… I give unto my Loving Son John Speake all my Lands after the Decease of my Loving wife Eliz. but in Case she my said wife shall marry then she two Enjoy only her third according to law my will is also that my Loving brother in Law James Bowling [Bouring, Bowing] hath the Disposall of my children to be brought up in the Roman Catholick faith And … that my body may be decent lead. At the discretion of my loving brother James Bowling [Bouring, Bowing] my above said Exec.. And I do hereby revoke disannul and make void all former wills and Testaments by me heretofore made in witness whereof fire the said Thomas Speake to this my last Will and Testaments have set to my hand and seal this 6th of May 1681.
My meaning is to give…… Speake my loving Son all my lands to him and his heirs for Ever and to my personall Estate to be Equally Divided my wife first having… third… Rest amongst mind Children.
Not only was Thomas a Catholic, but he was a practicing Catholic and his religion was obviously very important to him.
St. Ignatius Catholic Church of St. Thomas Manor at Chapel Point, Maryland
In England, Catholics were forbidden to practice their faith. They couldn’t hold office, and many unbearable restrictions were put upon them. In the late 1620′s, the Calvert family provided a plan for the colonization of Maryland; a new colony in the new world with freedom of religion possible for all. In November of 1633, the expedition set sail for America in two ships, the Ark and the Dove, with Fr. White among the colonists along with two other Jesuits, Fr. John Altham and Brother Thomas Gervase. The two ships arrived at St. Clement’s Island in March 1634. Fr. White celebrated the first Mass in Maryland and set about establishing the Church in this new land.
Catholic settlers began to move westward along the Potomac River. Fr. White established a claim for St. Thomas Manor lands and took up his residence. A chapel had been erected at the point of land now known as Chapel Point. Fr. White labored among the Indians, broke the language barrier, and wrote a catechism in their language.
The window above the entrance (and shown above) of the Church commemorates the baptism of the Indian King and Queen of the Piscataways. Fr. White also blessed their marriage, and baptized their child.
St. Ignatius Church at Chapel Point was founded in 1641 by Father Andrew White, a prominent English Jesuit, who was born in London in 1579 and who was one of the first Jesuits to arrive in Maryland.
Father John G. Shea, S.J., an authority on U.S. Catholic history, tells of a remarkable miracle wrought through the large relic of the True Cross (shown below) which Father White carried in a specially designed receptacle hung around his neck.
Fr. White was called to attend an Indian who had been impaled by the limb of a tree. The branch had gone through the upper part of his body and he was in great agony and near death. Fr. White was able to impart the necessary articles of faith, which the Indian accepted, and then baptized him and administered the last Sacraments. Leaving instructions that, upon death, the body was to be kept for burial with the Church’s ritual, he blessed the Indian with the relic of the True Cross, and departed.
The next day, Fr. White returned to bury the Indian and was astonished to find the Indian recovered and out fishing. Two small marks were all that was left of the wounds. The same relic of the True Cross which Fr. White brought to America remains at the Church.
The bricks of the Church, house, and chapel are laid in an attractive Flemish Bond, with a header in between each of the two stretches which was a style most popular in colonial days.
On December 27, 1866, a disastrous fire occurred, destroying the interior of the Church, chapel, and Manor. Irreplaceable losses at this time were the Church records and other historic documents. The baptism book begun in 1862 was saved. The walls stood firmly and the interiors were restored in 1867-68. Some Church furnishings saved during the fire include the Church doors, a carved wooden crucifix, and the tabernacle. Former slaves are said to have carried the tabernacle from the burning Church. The old wooden tabernacle is of mahogany from Santo Domingo and the sewing within it was done by the Carmelites before 1830.
The photo below is the church and behind the church, the priest’s quarters in 1933, from a photo hanging in the priest’s home today.
Aside from the historical and religious significance of this church, it is also provides one of the most beautiful vistas of the Port Tobacco River to be found. From in front of the church looking across the cemetery, you look down over the river. A simply stunning and inspiring vista on a warm and windy fall day in October of 2011.
Given that Thomas Speak had to have been here before 1660, and the first and only Catholic church at that time was St. Ignatius, that had to be the church that Thomas attended. His children were Catholic was well, Bowling, his son, at one time being fined as such, and they were surely baptized there. Thomas is most likely buried on his farm, which has not been located, but there is also a possibility that he is buried in the churchyard at St. Ignatius. Whether he was buried here or not, he most assuredly attended here and stood on this land and of a more personal nature, touched and saw the “relic of the true cross” and took communion from this very chalice, complete with its bumps, bruises and dings from its life being carried in a saddle bag by the priests in their travels. Thomas may have been one of the settlers who hosted Mass in his home.
The “relic of the true cross” was brought from England by Fr. Andrew White, S.J. in 1634. He wore it around his neck in a silver and glass case, which was specially made for the relic.
This piece of wood was brought back from the Holy Land during the crusades and is supposed to be a piece of the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. Miracles are associated with people praying and touching the vial that today holds the cross. The relic can be “proven” to the silver makers mark of 1633 in London.
The silver “saddle chalice”, which can be taken apart and disguised as a bell, was used by the early Jesuit missionaries as they traveled the mission circuit.
Sometimes Mass was said at the manor houses, not just at church. In fact the houses had everything they needed, except a priest and the chalice. This chalice was the one carried by the priest when he visited manor houses and from which he gave communion in the church as well.
Thomas’s Eldest Son, John
Thomas’s eldest son, John was an innkeeper at Port Tobacco. The inn was located beside and slightly behind Chimney House. John’s Inn was a neighbor to this home which still stands today. John would have visited Chimney House as well as been in the court house regularly. The court house stands adjacent to Chimney House today, but at that time, these buildings would have been part of a much larger “square” which historical records tell us included several inns, merchants, the court house of course, and homes of course of the “movers and shakers” of the day, who wanted to live close to the port and the court. Port Tobacco was designated as the county seat as early as 1686 and by then, John was already living there. A courthouse was built in 1730, telling us that prior to that, court was held in private residences, or perhaps, inns. The courthouse today is at least the third courthouse following replacements and fires. Chimney House, however, is original, and our ancestors surely gazed upon this house and trod its floors as we did today. Note the “Pent closets”, windows in the chimney, a feature exclusive to southern Maryland homes in this time period. The purpose is unclear.
Thomas’s second son, Bowling, lived near Bryantown, but owned land in two locations. Part of Bowling’s land abutted what is now St. Peter’s Church. In fact, part of the church land encompasses part of Bowlings land that he lost in a resurvey. In that timeframe, everyone named their land. Bowling’s land which abutted the church was called “The Mistake” a name which lends itself to sure and certain speculation. Some additional land, which we know joined to The Mistake was called “Speake’s Enlargement.” The land he lived on was called “Boarman’s Manor” and the tracts called “Cedar Grove and “Speaks Meadow.” They are shown below, Cedar Grove in yellow and Speakes Meadow in blue. Cousin Jerry Draney found and mapped this land in anticipation of our 2011 visit.
Today this land is located near Hunter Hill Place off of Bryantown Road.
Hunter Hill place, shown above, is a private road. It’s believed that Bowling’s land, in particular Speaks Meadow, is the large meadow to the right of the last homes on the road. Below are photographs of the area, left to right, forming a panorama.
Bowling was born about 1674 and would have reached adulthood about 1695. We know that in 1752, Bowling is still an active Catholic based on the following entry:
Archives of MD 50, p57-58
Assembly Proceedings, June 3-23, 1752 The Lower House.
L.H.J. Liber No.47; June 17 (p237-238)
The Lord Proprietary against Bowlen Speak} The said Bowlen Speak being bound by Recognizance for his Appearance here this Court, to answer of and concerning a Pre-sentment by the Grand Jurors, for the Body of the Province of Maryland, against him found; for that he, on or about the first Day of March last, did, in a public Manner, drink the Pretenders Health, and good Success in his Proceedings; and being demanded whether he is guilty of the Premisses in the Presentment aforesaid mentioned, or not guilty, says he is guilty thereof, and submits to the Court’s Judgment thereon.
The Pretender is of course, James, son of King James and his Catholic wife. England feared the return of Catholicism.
In 1718, Bowling Speak acquired land called “The Mistake” in an area known as Zekiah Manor which abutted land on which the current St. Peter’s Church is located. He also had land called “Speak’s Enlargement” which abutted his own land, the location of which has never been exactly identified.
Bowling lived on his land at Bryantown, not on his land at Zekiah Manor. Upon Bowling’s death in 1755, he left his “Mistake” and “Speake’s Enlargement” lands to his children. In his will, he gives the location of this land which Jerry Draney traced through deeds to the current owners, the Catholic Church. His son, Thomas (known as Thomas of Zachiah), born about 1698, did live on this land. Later the same year, Thomas died as well, leaving his land to his children, but specifically to Charles Beckworth Speake and his brother, Nicholas Speaks. Charles Beckworth Speake was born in 1741 and his brother Nicholas, who shared the land with him, in 1734. To date, a sale of this land has never been found.
You can see on the map below that these locations were not far distant from each other. Because of the topography, there is no such thing as “as the crow flies”. Today’s major roads, 5 and 6, were both Indian trails. The Indians had identified the paths of least resistance, and fewest swamps, etc., and the English followed suit.
A = St. Peter’s Church adjacent Bowling Speak’s land called “The Mistake” and “Speaks Enlargement”
B = Bowling’s land in Bryantown called “Cedar Grove” on Boarman’s Manor and “Speaks Meadow.” This land is located 6.7 miles from point A.
C = Port Tobacco which is where John Speak, brother of Bowling, was as Innkeeper and lived near the courthouse. This land is 12.1 miles from point B.
D = St. Ignatious Church, the first Catholic Church where Thomas, the father of both Bowling and John would have been a member. This land is 3.6 miles from point C.
On the map at right you can see the current church and within the yellow boundary, the old cemetery. The land outlined in Green that intersects the land in yellow is land that Bowling lost in a resurvey. Today it is the “point” in the photo below. You can also see the high power lines that transect the land today.
In the photos below, you can see the “point” in green which overlays the yellow.
In 1673, Governor Charles Calvert moved his residence to “his Lordship’s Manor of Sachay (Zacchia)” for greater security and brought with him a Franciscan priest who established a mission, Lower Zacchia, which was the beginning of St. Peter’s neighboring parish, St. Mary’s or Bryantown. A short time later, the Franciscans built a second mission in Upper Zacchia, which is now known as Waldorf, but was then nothing more than a cabin, with the loft used to house passing missionaries. When the friar arrived, a bell was rung long and loud so that the Catholics for miles around could be notified of his presence. He would stay but a short time, hearing confessions, saying Mass and otherwise helping the parishioners any way he could. Marriages were performed, babies baptized and other sacraments administered according to the needs of the day.
For the most part, until 1700, the mission church in Upper Zacchia was served by the Jesuits from St. Thomas Manor in Port Tobacco (St. Ignatius). In 1700, the log cabin was replaced by a church, probably a looking like an ordinary small frame house without a steeple to avoid the penalties places on Roman Catholic churches at that time. This church was located in the old cemetery about a mile east of the present church.
The location of this cemetery is right across the road from the Bowling (then Thomas of Zekiah’s) land. It’s not unlikely that the old cemetery contains a few, or perhaps more, burials of our families. More specifically, it’s very likely that Thomas, son of Bowling, is buried there along with his wife. Bowling may be buried here as well, especially given that both Bowling and his son Thomas died very near the same time. Both of their estates were probated at the same term of court in September 1755. There are many unmarked graves in this old cemetery and the records have been destroyed.
Bowling was assuredly a Catholic, and one could safely presume his children were as well. All of them probably baptized in St. Ignatius Church in Port Tobacco. It’s unlikely that all of the children born to Thomas, Bowling or Thomas (of Zekiah) survived. Those children were probably buried, after being baptized, if possible, either in the family cemetery, now lost, or in the St. Ignatius churchyard, whose early records are also lost. After 1700, they could have been buried in the old church cemetery on Bowlings and then Thomas’s land.
Charles Beckworth Speake lived with his father, Thomas, on Zekiah Manor from his birth in about 1741, inheriting land in 1755 at his father’s death, until he moved to Rowan/Iredell County, NC. He was on the Rowan County tax lists by 1787 and had died by 1793, leaving young orphans. Apparently his wife had died too, as the children were made wards of a Richard Speak. Nicholas, the son of Charles Beckworth Speake, reported being born in Maryland in 1782, so apparently Charles Beckwith Speak(e)(s) moved to NC between 1782 and 1787.
Charles Beckworth was probably born Catholic in Maryland, but may have switched to the “church of opportunity” after leaving Maryland. Charles’ son, Nicholas, as we know was a Methodist minister, never wavering from his path, establishing Speaks Methodist Church in Lee County, Virginia in the 1820s, near 1830.
Back in Maryland, we can rest assured that indeed, the two churches, St. Ignatius and St. Peters served the needs of at least the first 3 if not 4 or 5 generations of our Speak(e)(s) ancestors in Charles County, Maryland.
In the photo above, I am holding both the “relic of the true cross” and the chalice. Both of these items were assuredly near and dear to the hearts of Thomas, the immigrant, and his wife, Elizabeth Bowling who, along with her brother James, were assuredly Catholic. Their sons would also have taken communion from this chalice, Bowling and John. Bowling was a practicing Catholic, so we can presume his wife Mary Benson was as well. Their sons would also have been baptized Catholic, which included Thomas of Zekiah who died in 1755. Thomas’s wife, Jane was probably Catholic as well, but it’s about this time that we can no longer tell for sure. It’s likely that Thomas remained Catholic and that his son Charles Beckworth Speak was as well. Charles moved to North Carolina and died while his children were yet young, in 1793 or 1794. By 1820, Charles’ son, Nicholas was a devout Methodist. If Charles was still a practicing Catholic, then Nicholas would have been initially baptized Catholic, probably in St. Peter’s Church, when he was born in Maryland in 1782.
I am a 10th generation descendant of Thomas, the immigrant, and Elizabeth Bowling Speak. I’m sure that Thomas and Elizabeth never dreamed that 355 years later, their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter (yes, that’s 8 greats) would come back to Maryland, from someplace that at that time had no name (Michigan) and had not yet even been “discovered,” in one days time, in an incredible metal carriage with no horse, on roads with hard surfaces, at unbelievable speeds, to stand where he worshiped, to hold the chalice he drank from and the relic he prayed with. Perhaps he prayed for the life of my ancestor or his other children. Perhaps he prayed not to be forgotten, and perhaps, just perhaps, his prayers were answered.
Indeed, he hasn’t been. Not only did a group of his descendants come back to visit him, and homelands where he lived, his DNA lives on as well
DNA and the Speak Lines
Several Speaks men have tested who descend, or thought they descended from Thomas Speak.
You might notice on the chart above, that not all of the “sons” are yellow, the color of John, Bowling and Thomas. In fact, Capt. Francis and William are blue and red, and John E. is both green and yellow striped. This means that the descendants who tested in these lines do not match. Whether that is actually because Francis, for example, really was not the son of Richard, or whether an undocumented adoption has occurred some place in the line or the genealogy is incorrect has yet to be determined. In order to further define those lines, we need additional men from those lines to test.
John, on the other hand was schizophrenically colored with yellow and green stripes because his two sons lines DNA did not match. However, we know that the Thomas line is yellow because people from various sons lines all matches the yellow DNA results.
The Charles Beckworth to Nicholas Speaks line is the yellow line to the far right, above.
Based on this information and the combined DNA results of his descendants, we know that Thomas the immigrant was “yellow” because that DNA is found identically in both of his sons lines and from this, we have been able to reconstruct Thomas’s marker values. It’s really kind of amazing, to be able to reconstruct part of the DNA sequence of a man who died 333 years ago, and all without a shovel!
The chart above shows that these four individuals all descend from Thomas, 2 through son Bowling, and 2 through son John. All 4 of these men match exactly on all of the markers shown. Therefore, we know that Thomas, the immigrant carried these exact same marker values. This process is called triangulation, and it’s how we “reconstruct” the DNA of an ancestor by utilizing the DNA of his descendants, preferably through multiple sons.
It would be the Y DNA of Thomas’s descendants that would match the Lancashire DNA and would, in 2013, guide us home, back across the sea, tracing Thomas’s footsteps, in reverse. What would he think?
I want to thank Carlyle Henshaw for this wonderful article. When I asked him for permission to publish, here’s what Carlyle had to say.
“I really had fun researching that article. The three Bluejacket brothers that establish Bluejacket Crossing were George, Henry and Charles. Henry was my great great grandfather. The three brothers were grandsons of Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket, 1737-1808. He was the last principal war chief of the Shawnee Tribe of Indians. We have 15 members in our PekowiBlueJacket Project. All trace to Blue Jacket genealogically. We all descend from the three brothers via DNA. Nine of us have Family Finder. Four males have fathers who are named Bluejacket and all match each other. One is haplogroup Q and three are Q1a3a1. All in all, everyone matches up in the Blue Jacket line, genetically and genealogically. We have sixth, seventh and eighth generations from Blue Jacket represented.”
A REUNION with a TOMAHAWK
by Carlyle Hinshaw
Twin Bridges State Park — On July 1, 2001, the Shawnee Indian Blue Jacket family held its biennial reunion at this lovely place eight miles southeast of Miami, Oklahoma. The picnic was comprised of 60 relatives and other Shawnee friends and two fine Ottawa County Coon Hounds who know a Shawnee repast when they see, er, smell one! Blue Jackets from the Cherokee Nation (Cherokee Adopted Shawnee), Eastern Shawnee Tribe and Shawnee Tribe gathered to celebrate their long, illustrious history. Several excellent stories arose and are being told as time allows for the telling.
Robert Harry Withrow, Jr., of Kanab, Utah, brought a Pipe Tomahawk used by and handed down through, his family from Shawnee days in northeastern Kansas Territory during the middle 1800’s. Robert also brought along the story of the Pipe Tomahawk.
On November 30, 1831, a group of 334 Shawnees, including families of Chief John Perry, Henry and James (Jim) Blue Jacket, Peter Cornstalk and John Woolf arrived at the Shawnee Agency in Kansas after a three month “Trail of Tears” from Allen County, Ohio. Most of the adults rode horseback and the children in baggage wagons. These Wapaghkonetta and Hog Creek Shawnees had ceded (August 8, 1831) their homelands to the U. S. Government for 100,000 acres within or contiguous to, the existing Shawnee Reserve south of the Kansas (Kaw) River. The following year, 24 Shawnees of the River Huron in Michigan Territory made their trek to the new Shawnee country. In 1833, 14 more followed suit and in 1839, the total of River Huron Shawnees in the Shawnee Reserve was 38. (Louise Barry, THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST, p. 223-24, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, 1972).
The new Shawnee lands were however, smack dab in the middle of the great western migration. Starting with a fur party path in 1827 (Sublette’s Trace), several trails headed up in the Independence, Missouri – confluence of the Kaw and Missouri rivers area and the main trace of the Oregon California Road crossed Shawnee lands south of the Kaw. Westward Ho traffic steadily increased and reached a crescendo after the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Settlement along the various trails began and Indian lands became more and more desirable to emigrants wanting to establish roots.
Treaty of 1854
Successful in their continual efforts to displace Indians, the U. S. Government had Shawnee leaders travel to Washington DC and sign a treaty on May 10, 1854, ceding 1, 600,000 acres of their land for 200,000 within the same area. Now that was a hell of a deal for the governmental’s! Shawnee signers of the document included: Joseph Parks, Black Hoof (was he still around?), George McDougal, Silverheels, Paschal Fish, Long Tail, George Blue Jacket, Graham Rogers, Wa-wah-che-pa-e-kar (or, Black Bob), Tooly and Henry Blue Jacket. Witness’s to the signatures included Agent Benjamin F. Robinson and Interpreter Charles Blue Jacket. Each Shawnee was awarded, in severalty, 200 acres and that included Absentee Shawnees and Adopted Shawnees.
Hughmongous tracts of lands immediately became available for settlement and many new areas were incorporated, including Lawrence in 1854 and Eudora in 1857. German settlers purchased land for the latter town from Paschal Fish, who, along with John Blue Jacket, had been assistant gun and blacksmiths for the Leavenworth Agency in 1837. Quick to take advantage of this new situation, the Blue Jacket brothers, Henry, George and Charles, went into the hotel and ferry business. George and storekeeper William “Dutch Bill or Billy” Greiffenstein incorporated the town of Sebastian, six miles SE of Lawrence in the SE1/4 of the SW1/4 of Section 12 – Township 13 South – Range 20 East. The town did not survive and is not shown on modern maps. Henry died at Blue Jacket’s Crossing of the Wakarusa River on May 3, 1855, leaving his wife, Eliza, with six children and expecting a seventh. The latter was born in early 1856.
On the afternoon of May 19, 1855, the first steamboat to ply the Kansas River, the EMMA HARMON, left Kansas City en-route to Topeka and other way landings. Stopping to re-supply wood around noon the next day, they slipped into the stream again and almost immediately were hailed by an Indian wanting a tow up river for his flatboat. They stopped, made the small boat fast and proceeded west up river. The flatboat had just been made by Tooly, a Shawnee who had operated a ferry where the Delaware River, coming from the north, joined the Kaw between Lawrence and Topeka. Upon reaching the confluence of the Kaw and Wakarusa, they cast the Indian loose in his craft. Amidst cheering and waving from the passengers, the red man poled his way up the smaller stream. That Indian boat captain had to be one of two cousins, both strapping 21 year olds, Stephen S. Blue Jacket, eldest son of Henry, or William George Blue Jacket, eldest son of George! Thus began operations of Blue Jacket’s Ferry. (Kansas Historical Quarterly, V. 6, p. 17-19)
The Free State – Slave State concept became an overriding one at this time, as anti-slavery Kansas Jayhawkers actively worked with the underground railroad bringing freedom to many and pro-slavery Missouri Bushwhackers fought to bring the freedmen back into slavery. With Lawrence as the “free state” capitol, local traffic added to the depth of Oregon California Road ruts. Kansas in fact became a free State in 1861 as the Civil War broke out.
On the night of August 21, 1863, Confederate Captain William Clarke Quantrill led 400 raiders from successes at Independence, Missouri against Union troops, toward Lawrence to punish the anti-slavery zealots of many years standing. The inhabitants of Blue Jacket’s Crossing got wind of Quantrill’s sweep across northeastern Kansas and took precautions. Eliza Silverheels, wife of David Likens Blue Jacket, had a one year old boy at the time but took it upon herself to round up the children and some older protectors, loaded them with provisions and the very youngest and sent them into the hills south of the Wakarusa.
Defending Hearth and Home
Eliza was determined to guard her home, stayed there and lay in wait for the band of guerillas prancing toward Lawrence. This great-great grandmother of Robert Harry Withrow, Jr., was armed with a Pipe Tomahawk, most assuredly obtained from her father-in-law, the Rev. Charles Blue Jacket, by now an ordained Methodist Minister.
As the raiders crossed the Wakarusa at this Shawnee enclave, one, bent on looting Eliza’s home and perhaps intent on doing bodily harm to any inhabitants, tried to enter by a window. A young, enraged Shawnee Indian woman brandishing a wicked looking Tomahawk confronted him! With great effort, Eliza gave a mighty swing of her weapon, so mighty in fact, that when the axe met the raider, her arm broke. The haft of the Tomahawk broke at the same time. The Quantrillian was not so fortunate, as the blow to his head did him in for good!
The Confederates hit Lawrence at 5 AM, killing upwards of 200 men, looting, raping and setting fire to the entire town in an atrocity of the worst kind. Quantrill later was abandoned by most of his men and killed by Union troops in Kentucky. Lawrence began recovery immediately, regardless of the heartbreak foisted upon them by those monsters.
Pipe Tomahawks
The successful defender passed the family Pipe Tomahawk on to daughter Cindarella Blue Jacket who passed it to her daughter Cindarella Florence (Mills) Brown. Mrs. Brown’s daughter, Betty June, married Robert Harry Withrow and they parented Robert, Jr., who is the current keeper of the family heirloom. The Withrow family and 90 year old grand mom, Cindarella Florence, all attended the picnic and all contributed to this story.
European and Americans developed pipe Tomahawks for the Indian trade. Made with a smoking handle and a tobacco bowl insert at the head, they served, among other things, as “badges of prestige” given to Indian leaders at treaty signings and other occasions. Giver and receiver ornately decorated most. Modern artisans reproduce them and can be acquired at less than $50.00 to $500.00. Documented historical antiquities sell for upwards of $35,000!
Robert Withrow’s Pipe Tomahawk does not have the original smoking haft, thanks to Eliza’s mighty blow, however, its origin is documented by makers marks.
The maker was a Vickers metal smith in London, England in 1833. The head was cast in the Naylor, Vickers and Company’s Sheffield foundry.
The Masonic emblem was probably etched by gun and black smithy, John Blue Jacket, brother of the Rev. Charles Blue Jacket, who, along with many other Shawnees, was active in that organization.
The other side is scribed with a man in the moon, which is a bit unusual. The French Moon or crescent moon was, however, a common inscription, sometimes included when the head was cast.
Robert Withrow, Jr. is a teacher of survival skills across the country, both to private and military groups. It is fitting that he continues to preserve Shawnee history and heritages.
Top L-R: Robert Withrow, Robert Withrow, Jr ., Robert John Brown
Bottom, L-R: Betty Withrow, Cindarella Brown, Saundra Davis.
The elder Withrows live in Chetopa KS, Robert and Saundra in Centralia IL and Cindarella in Centralia.
Cindarella had the good fortune to remember her grandparents. She was born in 1911 and David Likens Blue Jacket passed away on April 4, 1919 and Eliza (Silverheels) Blue Jacket on June 12, 1929. Great historical events were told directly to their daughter Cindarella (Blue Jacket) Mills and to their grand daughter Cindarella Mills. Now, at 90 years of age, the latter is still able to give us insight to our Shawnee heritage. Thank you Cindarella Florence (Mills) Brown.
Gaylord Carlyle Hinshaw
1713 Baron Dr
Norman OK 73071
405-364-4584
bjexploration@swbell.net
Bowling Speake was born in 1674 in St. Mary’s County, Maryland and died there, in the same location, probably in the same house where he was born, which by then located in Charles County, Maryland, after he signed a deed on July 23, 1755 and before his will was probated on Sept. 13, 1755.
Thomas Speake, his father, had arrived in the colonies about 1660 and subsequently married Elizabeth Bowling. They were having children by 1665 when their son John, known as John the Innkeeper, was born. A record of their marriage does not exist.
Their only other known child was Bowling Speake, although it would have been very unusual to have only two children. John and Bowling are the only ones named in the will of Thomas or that we can find in either earlier or subsequent records.
We know positively that Elizabeth Bowling and Thomas Speake were Catholic because Thomas states in his will “that my Loving brother in Law James Bowling hath the Disposall of my children to be brought up in the Roman Catholick faith.”
According to Harold Speake, early Speake historian, now deceased, John Speak left the Catholic Church when he married Winifred Wheeler, an Anglican (the date of the wedding was apparently August 11, 1685). Bowling Speak remained a Catholic and retained the family homestead.
In March of 1722, Bowling gives a deposition about the bounds of a tract of land called Mudd’s Rest that he purchased about 13 years prior from the daughter of Thomas Mudd. This would put his land purchase in about 1709.
In 1718, we discover that Bowling was a shoemaker.
Charles Co. Land Records Liber D2 p. 203
6 Aug 1718 mentions Bowling Speake, shoemaker.
In August and September of 1718, Bowling Speak acquired land called “The Mistake,” 200 acres, for 5000 pounds of tobacco, in an area known as Zekiah Manor which abutted land on which the current St. Peter’s Church is located. I have always wondered how “The Mistake” got it’s name. There has to be a good story in there someplace!
Bowling also purchased part of a tract called ”Boarman’s Reserve” for 9000 pounds tobacco and patented land called “Speake Meadow.” Land known as ”Speak’s Enlargement” abutted “The Mistake,” according to a 1754 deed in which he deeded both to his son Thomas in which the land was identified as “where Thomas Speake’s dwelling place now is.”
Bowling lived on his land at Bryantown, probably “Boarman’s Manor,” not on his land at Zekiah Manor. Upon Bowling’s death in 1755, he left the balance of his “Mistake” and “Speake’s Enlargement” lands to his children. In his will, he gives the location of this land which Speak cousin, Jerry Draney, traced through deeds to the current owners, the Catholic Church. Bowling’s son, Thomas (known as Thomas of Zachiah or Zekiah), born about 1698, lived on this land.
On July 23, 1755, Bowling Speake deeded land to his son Thomas Speake. Bowling’s will was then probated on September 13, 1755. On August 2, 1755, Thomas Speake, Bowling’s son, wrote and dated his will. His will was also probated September 13, 1755, the same day as his father. I can’t help but wonder if his father’s death in some way contributed to his own death. Or perhaps Thomas’s death was more than Bowling could stand.
Bowling’s poor wife, Mary - to lose her husband and her son within days of each other must have been almost too much to bear. We know she was alive at Bowling’s death according to his will, unless she had died between October 20, 1750, when he wrote his will and his death nearly 5 years later. It was unusual during that timeframe for men to make wills significantly prior to their death. He may have had an earlier scare and recovered. Wills at that time were often much more of an “on my deathbed” kind of event. Mary signed a release of dower in 1744 but when land was sold but in 1754 and 1755, no dower release was signed. We don’t know when she died.
Thomas’s children lost both a father and grandfather as well. The entire family was in double mourning.
Thomas of Zachiah left his land, shown below, to his children, specifically to sons Charles Beckworth (or Beckwith) Speake and Nicholas Speake. Thomas’s will and his father Bowling’s will were probated at the same court session on September 13, 1755. That must have been a very sad day.
Charles Beckworth (or Beckwith) Speake was born in 1741 to Thomas of Zachiah and wife Jane. His brother Nicholas, who shared the land with him, was born in 1734. To date, a sale of this land has never been found, but it surely was sold, because Charles Beckworth Speak would strike out for North Carolina by 1788, taking with him his young son Nicholas Speak, born in 1782, who would in the 1820s found the Speaks Methodist Church in Lee County, Virginia. Nicholas’s great-grandfather, Bowling, probably turned over in his grave! His grandson had become a Protestant!
In a 1739 record, we discover that Bowling Speak married Mary Benson, via this archival record dealing with land in 1739 and that her father’s name was Hugh Benson.
Archives of MD v40 Assembly Proceedings, May 1–June 12, 1739
(LHJ Lib. No. 45)
Your Commitee find on Inspecting the papers of the Petitioners and Land Called Crackburns Purchase Containing Two Hundred acres was Granted on the 24th Day of October Ann. Domr. 1659 unto Richard Crackburn assignee of Walter Peak and Peter Mills assignee of Paul Simpson in ffee. Your Committee furhter find that the said Richard Crackburn by his deed bearing Date the 17th Day of November 1681, Did bargain and sell the said Tract of Land to Richard Gardiner of St. Marys County in ffee.
Your Committee also find that Richard Gardiner and Mary his wife of St. Marys County afd. Did Convey to Hugh Benson of the same County Planter one Hundred acres part of the said Tract in ffee.
Your Committee Likewise find that Mary the Daughter and Heiress at Law of Hugh Benson Intermarried with Bowling Speak of Charles County and that the said Bowling Speak and the said Mary his wife by their Deed bearing Date the 31st day of March 1739 did Convey the said Parcell of Land unto the Petitioners in ffee….
Bowling’s Act of Defiance
This next 1752 record involving Bowling is just a wonderful peek into his life.
Archives of MD 50, p57-58
Assembly Proceedings, June 3-23, 1752 The Lower House.
L.H.J. Liber No.47; June 17 (p237-238)
The Lord Proprietary against Bowlen Speak} The said Bowlen Speak being bound by Recognizance for his Appearance here this Court, to answer of and concerning a Presentment by the Grand Jurors, for the Body of the Province of Maryland, against him found; for that he, on or about the first Day of March last, did, in a public Manner, drink the Pretenders Health, and good Success in his Proceedings; and being demanded whether he is guilty of the Premisses in the Presentment aforesaid mentioned, or not guilty, says he is guilty thereof, and submits to the Court’s Judgment thereon.
Therefore it is considered by the Justices here, that the said Bowlen Speak, for the Offence aforesaid, be fined to his Lordship the Lord Proprietary in the Sum of Ten Pounds Current Money; and he is ordered to give Security for the Payment of the Fine aforesaid: But for the Want thereof, he is committed to the Custody of the Sheriff of Charles County, there to remain until, &c. who being present here in Court, took Charge of him accordingly.
And it is further ordered, that he give Security in the Sum of Fifty Pounds Current Money, himself, with one Security, in the like Sum, or two Securities in the Sum of Twenty-five Pounds like Money each, for his the said Bowlen Speak’s keeping the Peace, and being of good Behaviour, until next Court; and do for the payment of the several Officers Fees arising due by Occasion of the Premisses aforesaid.
Thereupon the said Bowlen Speak, being present here in Court, acknowleges himself to owe and stand justly indebted to his Lordship, the Right Honourable the Lord Proprietary, in the Sum of Fifty Pounds Current Money, together with William Bryant of Charles County, Planter, as his Security, being likewise present here in Court, acknowleges himself also to owe and stand justly indebted unto his Lordship, the Right Honourable the Lord Proprietary, in the like Sum of Fifty Pounds like Money: And they severally acknowlege, that the several above Sums shall be levied on their respective Bodies, Goods, Chattels, Lands and Tenements, to and for the Use of his said Lordship, his Heirs, and Successors; in case he the said Bowlen Speak, shall not keep the Peace, and be of good Behaviour, until the next Provincial Court, and shall not pay the several Officers Fees arising due by Occasion of the Premisses aforesaid.
A true Copy from the Records of the Provincial Court, Liber E I, No. 10.
Folios 231 and 232.
Per R. Burdus, Clerk.
In Testimony whereof the Seal of the said Provincial Court is hereunto affixed, this 15th Day of June, Anno Domini 1752. L.S.
What was Bowling doing, and why? The Pretender here probably refers to “Bonnie Prince Charlie” given the date of 1751 when Bowling uttered these traitorous words for which he stated he was guilty and was remanded to jail because he did not have the fine of 10 pounds. Ironically, his security recognizance to be released, after paying the 10 pounds, to assure his good behavior “until the next court” was 5 times that much – 50 pounds. Apparently the judges felt that Bowling’s good behavior was anything but a sure bet!
However, Bowling’s friend, William Bryant, paid the security, of course, assuming I’m sure that Bowling would behave and his security money would be returned. The lesson here is never open your mouth unless you can afford the consequences or you’ll wind up in jail!!!
Bowling was not a young man when this happened. He was 78 years of age. His children were in their 50s, probably rolling their eyes and scurrying about trying to scrape together the money to bail Bowling out of jail. It makes me wonder if he was suffering perhaps from dementia that made him forget what was politically correct. Or maybe, at age 78, he simply didn’t care anymore. He was going to say what he wanted, the consequences be damned. I love his spirited heart and am so glad he left us this unquestionable view of his beliefs.
The Jacobites
All of this dissention hearkens back to the Protestant vs Catholic battles and politics in England, Scotland and Ireland, and was at the heart of the Jacobite movement. Remember that the US was a colony of Great Britain, so indeed, this mattered to the people who lived here. It involved who officially ruled them. The phrase “Pretender” alluded to one who believes he is rightfully entitled to the English throne, but who is currently not King. In this case, the men who would have been King has England been a Catholic country at that time.
Jacobitism was the political movement in Great Britain and Ireland to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II of England and his heirs to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. The movement took its name from Jacobus, the Latinised form of James, and refers to a long series of Jacobite risings between 1688 and 1746. After James II was deposed in 1688 and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary II, ruling jointly with her Protestant husband and first cousin (James’s nephew) William III, the Stuarts lived in exile, occasionally attempting to regain the throne. The strongholds of Jacobitism were the Scottish Highlands, Ireland and Northern England. Significant support also existed in Wales and South-West England.
The Jacobites believed that parliamentary interference with monarchical succession was illegal. Catholics also hoped the Stuarts would end recussancy. In Scotland, the Jacobite cause became entangled in the last throes of the warrior clan system.
The emblem of the Jacobites is the White Cockade. White Rose Day is celebrated on 10 June, the anniversary of the birth of the Old Pretender in 1688.
White Rose of York from a manuscript of Edward IV in the late 1400s
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, his son Charles II became Pretender until his restoration 11 years later.
After the overthrow of the Catholic James II and VII in the Glorious Revolution in 1688, many refused to accept the legality of the new regime of William and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter and son-in-law, and continued to recognize James as King. James made a significant effort in 1690 to recover Ireland, but was defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne. After James’s death, his supporters recognized his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, the Roman Catholic son of the deposed King James VII and II.
James was barred from the succession to the throne by the Act of Settlement 1701. Notwithstanding the Act of Union 1707, he claimed the separate thrones of Scotland, as James VIII, and of England and Ireland, as James III, until his death in 1766. In Jacobite terms, Acts of Parliament (of England or Scotland) after 1688, (including the Acts of Union) did not receive the required Royal Assent of the legitimate Jacobite monarch and, therefore, were without legal effect. James was responsible for a number of conspiracies and rebellions, particularly in the Highlands of Scotland. The most notable was The Fifteen, which took place in 1715-16.
Charles Edward Stuart, James’ elder son, the would-be Charles III, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led in his father’s name the last major Jacobite rebellion, the Forty-Five, in 1745-46. He died in 1788, without legitimate issue.
In essence, what Bowling said, publicly, in 1752, probably, if I had to guess, after having a bit too much to drink, was that he supported the overthrow of the government under which he was living. Not a wise thing to say in public. However, for Bowling’s descendants, it makes him a colorful man and allows us a peek at his true character. We know he remained a strong Catholic. This also tells us that his wife would have been Catholic as well, and his children baptized in that faith.
Bowling’s Will
Bowling Speake, born in 1674, according to several depositions during his lifetime, in St Mary’s County, Maryland, died in August or early September 1755 in Charles County, Maryland, just three years after publicly drinking to the Pretender. His will was probated on September 13, 1755.
In the name of God Amen I Bowling Speake of Charles County in the province of Maryland being in perfect health and memory thanks be to God do make & ordain this my will & testament in manner & form following Viz.
Imprimis I give and bequeath to my son Thomas Speake his heirs & assigns forever 121 acres of land being part of a tract of land. ..Mistake beginning at the first bound tree and running thence to Jordan Branch & up the Branch to a small (sic) next of his Dwelling place and thence to the beginning to make acres –
Item I give and bequeath to my son William Speake two hundred and two acres with Dwelling place being part of a tract of land called mistake to him & his heirs forever and bequeath to my well beloved wife my Dwelling plantation and the use of all my persc Estate during her natural life and after her decease I give and bequeath to my grandson Speake the son of Thomas Speake my Dwelling Plantation and also a small tract of land c(alled) the meadow also his first choice of the negroes and the first choice of my beds and fuz
Item I give and bequeath to my granddaughter Ann Higdon the second choice of my beds an furniture my great chest one Dish & three plates one iron pot & Cattle and Sheep that a make to her without interuption –
Item I give & bequeath to my Daughter Mary Baggott th 112 of my cattle and sheep one feather bed and furniture and one chest
Item I give & to my son William one negro –
Lastly I do hereby nominate constitute and appoint my beloved wife Mary Speake and my aforesaid grandson Edward Speake the son of Thomas Speake full sole Executors of this my last will and textament
In Witness whereof I have hereunto se hand and affixed my seal this this(sic) Twentieth day of October in the year of our Lc Signed sealed published & delivered in the presence of us
Will McPherson Junr Wm Comes Bowling Speake seal
Ma–maduke Semmes
Annexed to the foregoing will was the foll(owin)g probate to wit
Maryland for 13th September 1755 Marmaduke Semmes William McPherson Junior and William Coomes the three subscribing witnesses to the foregoing will being duly & solemn sworn on the hole Evangels deposeth and saith that they saw the Testator Bowking Speake & seal the within will and heard him publish & declare the same to be his last will and and that at the time of his so doing was to the best of their apprehensions of sound & mind & memory and that they severally subscribed as witnesses to the said will in the presence of the Testator & at his request which was taken in the presence of Edwd Speake heiz who did not object to the same.
Perhaps Edward was Bowling’s executor because his son Thomas was already ill.
Children of Bowling Speake and Mary Benson were:
Thomas Speake, born 1698 in St Mary’s County, Maryland; died between August 2nd and September 13, 1755, in Charles County, Maryland; married Jane, last name unknown
William Speake, born about 1699.
Mary Speake, born about 1700; married ? Higdon and a Baggott?
However, it seems there was more than religion that separated John Speake from his brother, Bowling. As it turns out, there might be DNA as well.
Lancashire DNA Speaks
In 2013, on our Speaks family trip to Lancashire, we were very fortunate to meet several of our Speak(e) cousins in various locations. Several joined us for dinner one evening at the Stirk House, a country manor house once owned and restored by Harry Speak himself.
Our trip was precipitated upon DNA findings. Our cousin, Doug, from New Zealand tested and matched our American line descended from Thomas Speak(e) born about 1634 and who immigrated to America around 1660. The blessing was that Doug knew exactly where his Speak ancestors were from – Gisburn, Lancashire, England.
During and shortly after our visit, three of our British cousins, Gary, Stan and David took the Y DNA test to see if they matched each other as well as Doug. The prevailing sentiment was that indeed, the Speak families were not related to each other.
David, based on his genealogy, we know is a cousin of our New Zealand cousin, Doug, who matches the American line. In fact, it’s Doug’s fault that we were all there, in Gisburn – because our New Zealand cousin knew who his oldest ancestor was – John Speak – the man whose children were baptized in the 1700s in St. Mary’s of Gisburn.
Gary indicated that he was told that his line is not related to ours. By this time, in the 1900s, the different Speaks families were on the other side of Pendle Hill, not terribly close to each other and in different communities. The known ancestral villages of the three different Speaks lines are shown on the map below. Pendle Hill is the high area in the middle. The two most distant points, Gisburn and Bolton are about 25 miles as the crow flies, or about 30 miles driving, and Bolton is a more recent location.
So indeed, we are all quite interested in the outcome of the Y DNA testing.
And the answer is……drum roll…..all 4 men, Doug, David, Stan and Gary do share a common paternal ancestor. So yes, we are all related. Of course, figuring out exactly how we are related, and how far back, is another matter altogether.
I’ve reconstructed their pedigree charts as best I can. The men graciously provided me with their genealogy information.
What I’ve tried to do with these results is to group them according to ancestor. In other words, in the group above, 201632 and 312514 both share a common lineage via the John born in 1822 in Burnley and who married Mary.
This second chart is a bit more complex. We know that Gary’s ancestor Thomas was the brother of Harry who owned the Stirk House. Gary is still working on his ancestry, but in the mean time, I found a lovely family tree on Ancestry.com provided by the granddaughter of Harry Speak. It’s fully sourced, so I felt good about using it. So even though we don’t have a DNA sample from Harry of the Stirk House, we do have his genealogy which I aligned side by side with Gary’s, as the genealogy should be identical from brothers Thomas and Harry on back in time.
As you can see, the oldest ancestors here are Henry who was born in Twiston and baptized in Downham in 1650 and John born in 1700, location unknown, but who died in Hey, Houlridge and who married Mary.
The common ancestor between these two groups is further back in time. We really don’t know how much further back, but we do know it was after the adoption of surnames. The first mention of a Speak or similar surname male in this region is found in 1305 when Robert Speke was named as a landowner in Billington, which is inside the Whalley parish. This is the earliest known Speak or similar surname record. Given this information, we can safely say that the common Speak ancestor lived sometime between the 1300s and about 1650, a span of about 14 generations.
In the first section, after the kit number, you can see the names of the participants oldest ancestors, followed by DNA values at specific markers found on the Y chromosome which they inherited from their fathers unmixed with any DNA from their mother. Therefore, their Y chromosome also matches that of their father, and grandfather, on back in time on the paternal side – except for an occasional mutation. We count on those mutations to identify families and within families, to identify specific lines of descent.
This is actually quite interesting, because all of the British men, plus Doug from New Zealand, have a value of 17 at location DYS19. Two of the American participants have this value as well. This tells me one thing and then begs a second question.
The piece of information this provides me for sure is that the value of our original ancestor in this location was 17. We know this because all of the British samples and the New Zealand sample have this value. This tells me that the mutation happened either in Thomas, the American immigrant’s generation, or thereafter.
The fact that two American samples also have this value isn’t unusual, as one would expect for Thomas to have carried this value as well. However, here’s the fly in the ointment. The two American men who carry this value are from two different sons of Thomas the immigrant. However, none of the rest of the American men have this value. This means one of a few things – options below.
The genealogy of one of the two American men who carry this value is incorrect and they both descend from the same son of Thomas who carried the original mutation. This means that Thomas’s other son had a mutation to a value of 16.
Both of Thomas’s sons had a value of 17, and both of their lines fairly quickly had a mutation to a value of 16. This is unlikely but not unheard of.
Of course, the problem is that both of the two known descendants of Thomas Speak, the immigrant, have additional descendants that have tested and who don’t carry a value of 17.
How can we find out what happened here? We can’t. We can continue to research and if we find something significant in the research that suggests a different genealogy for one participant, that might shed light on the topic. But assuming this is a genetic mutation and not a genealogical problem, the only way we could ever sort through this to test people who descend from every generation of men along the way to see when and where this mutation took place. It’s interesting, but it’s not THAT interesting nor will it answer the question of which Lancashire line the American line is closer to genetically.
What I was hoping to find was a marker that differed between the Lancashire men. For example, if the green group of Lancashire men had a value of 12 at the first marker, 393, and the red group of men had a value of 13 at 393, we would immediately surmise that we most likely were more closely related to the group that sported a value of 13, since all of the Americans carry that value. Unfortunately, there is no marker yet tested in the British men that shows this level of differentiation.
However, we also haven’t tested everyone to 111 markers. The 111 marker upgrade was created for exactly this type of situation. Indeed, the answer may well be waiting for us, waiting to be uncovered or discovered in the 111 marker test.
Recently, I’ve received a number of questions about comparing people and haplogroups between 23andMe and Family Tree DNA. I can tell by the questions that a significant amount of confusion exists about the two, so I’d like to talk about both. In you need a review of “What is a Haplogroup?”, click here.
Haplogroup information and comparisons between Family Tree DNA information and that at 23andMe is not apples and apples. In essence, the haplogroups are not calculated in the same way, and the data at Family Tree DNA is much more extensive. Understanding the differences is key to comparing and understanding results. Unfortunately, I think a lot of misinterpretation is happening due to misunderstanding of the essential elements of what each company offers, and what it means.
There are two basic kinds of tests to establish haplogroups, and a third way to estimate.
Let’s talk about mitochondrial DNA first.
Mitochondrial DNA
You have a very large jar of jellybeans. This jar is your mitochondrial DNA.
In your jar, there are 16,569 mitochondrial DNA locations, or jellybeans, more or less. Sometimes the jelly bean counter slips up and adds an extra jellybean when filling the jar, called an insertion, and sometimes they omit one, called a deletion.
Your jellybeans come in 4 colors/flavors, coincidentally, the same colors as the 4 DNA nucleotides that make up our double helix segments. T for tangerine, A for apricot, C for chocolate and G for grape.
Each of the 16,569 jellybeans has its own location in the jar. So, in the position of address 1, an apricot jellybean is always found there. If the jellybean jar filler makes a mistake, and puts a grape jellybean there instead, that is called a mutation. Mistakes do happen – and so do mutations. In fact, we count on them. Without mutations, genetic genealogy would be impossible because we would all be exactly the same.
When you purchase a mitochondrial DNA test from Family Tree DNA, you have in the past been able to purchase one of three mitochondrial testing levels. Today, on the website, I see only the full sequence test for $199, which is a great value.
However, regardless of whether you purchase the full mitochondrial sequence test today, which tests all of your 16,569 locations, or the earlier HVR1 or HVR1+HVR2 tests, which tested a subset of about 10% of those locations called the HyperVariable Region, Family Tree DNA looks at each individual location and sees what kind of a jellybean is lodged there. In position 1, if they find the normal apricot jellybean, they move on to position 2. If they find any other kind of jellybean in position 1, other than apricot, which is supposed to be there, they record it as a mutation and record whether the mutation is a T,C or G. So, Family Tree DNA reads every one of your mitochondrial DNA addresses individually.
Because they do read them individually, they can also discover insertions, where extra DNA is inserted, deletions, where some DNA dropped out of line, and an unusual conditions called a heteroplasmy which is a mutation in process where you carry some of two kinds of jellybean in that location – kind of a half and half 2 flavor jellybean. We’ll talk about heteroplasmic mutations another time.
So, at Family Tree DNA, the results you see are actually what you carry at each of your individual 16,569 mitochondrial addresses. Your results, an example shown below, are the mutations that were found. “Normal” is not shown. The letter following the location number, 16069T, for example, is the mutation found in that location. In this case, normal is C. In the RSRS model of showing mitochondrial DNA mutations, this location/mutation combination would be written as C16069T so that you can immediately see what is normal and then the mutated state. You can click on the images to enlarge.
Family Tree DNA gives you the option to see your results either in the traditional CRS (Cambridge Reference Sequence) model, above, or the more current Reconstructed Sapiens Reference Sequence (RSRS) model. I am showing the CRS version because that is the version utilized by 23andMe and I want to compare apples and apples. You can read about the difference between the two versions here.
Defining Haplogroups
Haplogroups are defined by specific mutations at certain addresses.
For example, the following mutations, cumulatively, define haplogroup J1c2f. Each branch is defined by its own mutation(s).
Haplogroup
Required Mutations
J
C295T, T489C, A10398G!, A12612G, G13708A, C16069T
J1
C462T, G3010A
J1c
G185A, G228A, T14798C
J1c2
A188G
J1c2f
G9055A
You can see, below, that these results, shown above, do carry these mutations, which is how this individual was assigned to haplogroup J1c2f. You can read about how haplogroups are defined here.
At 23andMe, they use chip based technology that scans only specifically programmed locations for specific values. So, they would look at only the locations that would be haplogroup producing, and only those locations. Better yet if there is one location that is utilized in haplogroup J1c2f that is predictive of ONLY J1c2f, they would select and use that location.
This same individual at 23andMe is classified as haplogroup J1c2, not J1c2f. This could be a function of two things. First, the probes might not cover that final location, 9055, and second, 23andMe may not be utilizing the same version of the mitochondrial haplotree as Family Tree DNA.
By clicking on the 23andMe option for “Ancestry Tools,” then “Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper,” you can see which mutations were tested with the probes to determine a haplogroup assignment. 23andMe information for this haplogroup is shown below. This is not personal information, meaning it is not specific to you, except that you know you have mutations at these locations based on the fact that they have assigned you to the specific haplogroup defined by these mutations. What 23andMe is showing in their chart is the ancestral value, which is the value you DON’T have. So your jelly bean is not chocolate at location 188, it’s tangerine, apricot or grape.
Notice that 23andMe does not test for J1c2f. In addition, 23andMe cannot pick up on insertions, deletions or heteroplasmies. Normally, since they aren’t reading each one of your locations and providing you with that report, missing insertions and deletions doesn’t affect anything, BUT, if a deletion or insertion is haplogroup defining, they will miss this call. Haplogroup K comes to mind.
23andMe never looks at any locations in the jelly bean jar other than the ones to assign a haplogroup, in this case,17 locations. Family Tree DNA reads every jelly bean in the jelly bean jar, all 16,569. Different technology, different results. You also receive your haplogroup at 23andMe as part of a $99 package, but of course the individual reading of your mitochondrial DNA at Family Tree DNA is more accurate. Which is best for you depends on your personal testing goals, so long as you accurately understand the differences and therefore how to interpret results. A haplogroup match does not mean you’re a genealogy match. More than one person has told me that they are haplogroup J1c, for example, at Family Tree DNA and they match someone at 23andMe on the same haplogroup, so they KNOW they have a common ancestor in the past few generations. That’s an incorrect interpretation. Let’s take a look at why.
Matches Between the Two
23andMe provides the tester with a list of the people who match them at the haplogroup level. Most people don’t actually find this information, because it is buried on the “My Results,” then “Maternal Line” page, then scrolling down until your haplogroup is displayed on the right hand side with a box around it.
Those who do find this are confused because they interpret this to mean they are a match, as in a genealogical match, like at Family Tree DNA, or like when you match someone at either company autosomally. This is NOT the case.
For example, other than known family members, this individual matches two other people classified as haplogroup J1c2. How close of a match is this really? How long ago do they share a common ancestor?
Taking a look at Doron Behar’s paper, “A “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root,” in the supplemental material we find that haplogroup J1c2 was born about 9762 years ago with a variance of plus or minus about 2010 years, so sometime between 7,752 and 11,772 years ago. This means that these people are related sometime in the past, roughly, 10,000 years – maybe as little as 7000 years ago. This is absolutely NOT the same as matching your individual 16,569 markers at Family Tree DNA. Haplogroup matching only means you share a common ancestor many thousands of years ago.
For people who match each other on their individual mitochondrial DNA location markers, their haplotype, Family Tree DNA provides the following information in their FAQ:
Matching on HVR1 means that you have a 50% chance of sharing a common maternal ancestor within the last fifty-two generations. That is about 1,300 years.
Matching on HVR1 and HVR2 means that you have a 50% chance of sharing a common maternal ancestor within the last twenty-eight generations. That is about 700 years.
Matching exactly on the Mitochondrial DNA Full Sequence test brings your matches into more recent times. It means that you have a 50% chance of sharing a common maternal ancestor within the last 5 generations. That is about 125 years.
I actually think these numbers are a big generous, especially on the full sequence. We all know that obtaining mitochondrial DNA matches that we can trace are more difficult than with the Y chromosome matches. Of course, the surname changing in mitochondrial lines every generation doesn’t help one bit and often causes us to “lose” maternal lines before we “lose” paternal lines.
Autosomal and Haplogroups, Together
As long as we’re mythbusting here – I want to make one other point. I have heard people say, more than once, that an autosomal match isn’t valid “because the haplogroups don’t match.” Of course, this tells me immediately that someone doesn’t understand either autosomal matching, which covers all of your ancestral lines, or haplogroups, which cover ONLY either your matrilineal, meaning mitochondrial, or patrilineal, meaning Y DNA, line. Now, if you match autosomally AND share a common haplogroup as well, at 23andMe, that might be a hint of where to look for a common ancestor. But it’s only a hint.
At Family Tree DNA, it’s more than a hint. You can tell for sure by selecting the “Advanced Matching” option under Y-DNA, mtDNA or Family Finder and selecting the options for both Family Finder (autosomal) and the other type of DNA you are inquiring about. The results of this query tell you if your markers for both of these tests (or whatever tests are selected) match with any individuals on your match list.
Hint – for mitochondrial DNA, I never select “full sequence” or “all mtDNA” because I don’t want to miss someone who has only tested at the HVR1 level and also matches me autosomally. I tend to try several combinations to make sure I cover every possibility, especially given that you may match someone at the full sequence level, which allows for mutations, that you don’t match at the HVR1 level. Same situation for Y DNA as well. Also note that you need to answer “yes” to ”Show only people I match on all selected tests.”
Y-DNA at 23andMe
Y-DNA works pretty much the same at 23andMe as mitochondrial meaning they probe certain haplogroup-defining locations. They do utilize a different Y tree than Family Tree DNA, so the haplogroup names may be somewhat different, but will still be in the same base haplogroup. Like mitochondrial DNA, by utilizing the haplogroup mapper, you can see which probes are utilized to determine the haplogroup. The normal SNP name is given directly after the rs number. The rs number is the address of the DNA on the chromosome. Y mutations are a bit different than the display for mitochondrial DNA. While mitochondrial DNA at 23andMe shows you only the normal value, for Y DNA, they show you both the normal, or ancestral, value and the derived, or current, value as well. So at SNP P44, grape is normal and you have apricot if you’ve been assigned to haplogroup C3.
As we are all aware, many new haplogroups have been defined in the past several months, and continue to be discovered via the results of the Big Y and Full Y test results which are being returned on a daily basis. Because 23andMe does not have the ability to change their probes without burning an entirely new chip, updates will not happen often. In fact, their new V4 chip just introduced in December actually reduced the number of probes from 967,000 to 602,000, although CeCe Moore reported that the number of mtDNA and Y probes increased.
By way of comparison, the ISOGG tree is shown below. Very recently C3 was renamed to C2, which isn’t really the point here. You can see just how many haplogroups really exist below C3/C2 defined by SNP M217. And if you think this is a lot, you should see haplogroup R – it goes on for days and days!
How long ago do you share a common ancestor with that other person at 23andMe who is also assigned to haplogroup C3? Well, we don’t have a handy dandy reference chart for Y DNA like we do for mitochondrial – partly because it’s a constantly moving target, but haplogroup C3 is about 12,000 years old, plus or minus about 5,000 years, and is found on both sides of the Bering Strait. It is found in indigenous Native American populations along with Siberians and in some frequency, throughout all of Asia and in low frequencies, into Europe.
How do you find out more about your haplogroup, or if you really do match that other person who is C3? Test at Family Tree DNA. 23andMe is not in the business of testing individual markers. Their business focus is autosomal DNA and it’s various applications, medical and genealogical, and that’s it.
Y-DNA at Family Tree DNA
At Family Tree DNA, you can test STR markers at 12, 25, 37, 67 and 111 marker levels. Most people, today, begin with either 37 or 67 markers.
Of course, you receive your results in several ways at Family Tree DNA, Haplogroup Origins, Ancestral Origins, Matches Maps and Migration Maps, but what most people are most interested in are the individual matches to other people. These STR markers are great for genealogical matching. You can read about the difference between STR and SNP markers here.
When you take the Y test, Family Tree DNA also provides you with an estimated haplogroup. That estimate has proven to be very accurate over the years. They only estimate your haplogroup if you have a proven match to someone who has been SNP tested. Of course it’s not a deep haplogroup – in haplogroup R1b it will be something like R1b1a2. So, while it’s not deep, it’s free and it’s accurate. If they can’t predict your haplogroup using that criteria, they will test you for free. It’s called their SNP assurance program and it has been in place for many years. This is normally only necessary for unusual DNA, but, as a project administrator, I still see backbone tests being performed from time to time.
If you want to purchase SNP tests, in various formats, you can confirm your haplogroup and order deeper testing.
You can order individual SNP markers for about $39 each and do selective testing. On the screen below you can see the SNPs available to purchase for haplogroup C3 a la carte.
You can order the Geno 2.0 test for $199 and obtain a large number of SNPs tested, over 12,000, for the all-inclusive price. New SNPs discovered since the release of their chip in July of 2012 won’t be included either, but you can then order those a la carte if you wish.
Or you can go all out and order the new Big Y for $695 where all of your Y jellybeans, all 13.5 million of them in your Y DNA jar are individually looked at and evaluated. People who choose this new test are compared against a data base of more than 36,000 known SNPs and each person receives a list of “novel variants” which means individual SNPs never before discovered and not documented in the SNP data base of 36,000.
Don’t know which path to take? I would suggest that you talk to the haplogroup project administrator for the haplogroup you fall into. Need to know how to determine which project to join, and how to join? Click here. Haplogroup project administrators are generally very knowledgeable and helpful. Many of them are spearheading research into their haplogroup of interest and their knowledge of that haplogroup exceeds that of anyone else. Of course you can also contact Family Tree DNA and ask for assistance, you can purchase a Quick Consult from me, and you can read this article about comparing your options.
A week into our DNA journey across England, I awoke for the last time in the Ribble Valley. This photo is an extremely misty sunrise in the Ribble Valley, through our window in the Stirk House Lodge. Pendle Hill is out there, always out there, but you can’t see it. Just like it’s still in my mind and heart everyday.
This morning, we prepare to leave the Ribble Valley which we have come to love and to view in an odd sort of way as “home.” It only took a very few days for us to adopt this homeland in our hearts as “ours.” We own it in our soul now. It is interwoven into part of who we are, and who we were. We know we are related to many of these families in this valley, centuries back…those whose names and surnames we will never know. Our families were here before surnames were needed. This ancient land holds our history and our family. This is from whence we sprung in the times and days before records. Social history of the region is all that we have now of our early families. The history of the Ribble Valley is the history of our ancestors – the invasions, the wars, the victories – all theirs and all ours as well.
I look at Pendle Hill and I know that before the Quakers received their divine message there, before Catholics and Protestants, before Christianity, before the Romans invaded in the first generation after Christ lived, that Pendle Hill was used for worship. Around the world, the highest sites in the landscape were used for temples to worship deities, and some deities were female, Goddeses. Pendle Hill had to have been one of these places. Our ancestors were surely among these people.
It was hard to say goodbye to Pendle Hill, the Ribble Valley and the Stirk House, because we know it’s forever.
Today, we switch sides of the family. Thomas Speak born about 1634 married Elizabeth Bowling, presumably shortly after immigrating to Maryland before November 1663 when she was subpoenaed to court to testify. The Bowling family was also Catholic, and from an area about 30 miles distant from the Ribble Valley, named Charnock Richard, near Chorley and Standish.
We boarded the bus for Chorley and the St. Laurence Church, where many of the early Bowling burials were recorded. This is our family’s church, as well as St. Wilfred’s at Standish. As it turns out, Charnock Richard lies not terribly far down the main road and is between Chorley and Standish – and of course the ever-present traffic circle, known as a round-about, welcomed us.
Our Bowling family was from Charnock Richard, which tells us they were probably vassals of the Charnock family, one of the landed families who owned a manor and was one of the families with a crest who is remembered in both churches. Unfortunately, the Charnock Manor Hall no longer exists.
The church, St. Laurence, in Chorley is a small church created for a small congregation. Chorley was a market town, and this church was not the main church of the region, but a chapel church for outliers. The photo below is of the original church before the additions. This is the church our ancestors knew and attended as Catholics, then as Anglicans when forced to.
Today’s church is the third church on this location, built the third time in the 1500s, but an earlier church was almost certainly present on the site in the Anglo-Saxon era as the daughter church of Croston. The first documentary record is dated 1362 and refers to a priest for the church. A letter dated 1442 refers to a reliquary owned by the church which is said to contain bones of Saint Laurence for which the church was named.
The gargoyle, the silent sentry, always standing guard. He would have been here when our ancestors laid eyes on him too. Maybe one of our ancestors carved him, or set him where he has been for hundreds of years. How many generations has he seen come and go?
The photo below is the original baptistery. It was relegated to the back corner where I discovered it with a bunch of stuff stacked against it. I asked about it, and the guide told me that the current rector is modernizing and replaced it and it has been retired. I think this is sacrilege after how many centuries. I dug it out and photographed it. And I didn’t put the stuff back up against it either. This is the ancient font from which our Bowling ancestors would have been baptized.
This was also the church of the Standish family, as in Myles Standish, the pilgrim on the Mayflower. Are we related? Not that we know of, but who knows back before records are available. The families certainly lived in the same area and knew each other well, at least through the church, if not socially. The Standish family was “well off” and had their own box seat in the church, shown below.
St. Laurence was originally a Catholic church, of course, but became Anglican along with the rest of England following King Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic church in 1534. From St. Laurence, we visited St. Mary’s Catholic church, maybe a quarter or half a mile away.
St. Mary’s is a Catholic church and includes the martyr’s windows, specifically one for our John Finch, brutally killed in 1584.
Elizabeth Bowling is believed to be the daughter of Hugh Bowling (born 1591) and Ellen Finch (born 1598). Ellen Finch is the daughter of Roger Finch (born 1573) who was the son of John Finch (born 1548) who we believe is the John Finch who was martyred.
The history of St. Mary’s church tells us that Catholicism had been the faith of most of the English from the time of St. Augustine in 597AD until the 16th century. Despite this, from 1535 until about 1789, those who remained faithful to this “old religion” suffered fines, arrests, confiscation of property or mob violence, and some 500 were executed. No less than 10 Catholic martyrs either originated from or served in the current Chorley Borough area.
The Mass and Sacraments were celebrated secretly and illegally through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in the various halls and farmhouses around Chorley still in Catholic hands. Lancashire had a higher proportion of Catholic recusants than any other English county, estimated at over 20% even in the 1700s. Catholic worship remained illegal until 1791. The Catholic church here was founded in 1847, but this building was built in 1927.
St. Mary’s includes 5 stained glass windows commemorating five local martyrs.
Venerable Roger Ashton from Crostin, executed at Tyburn in 1592.
Bd Roger Wrenno, weaver, from Alfred’s Court off Anderton St. Chorley. Executed for shelttering Father John Thules and hanged with him on March 18, 1616 at Lancaster. The rope broke at the first attempt. behind him is a weaving frame.
Bd Lawrence Richardson, a priest who served at Park Hall, shown behind him, home of the Catholic Charnock family. Executed in 1582 at Tyburn.
Venerable John Finch, a yeoman farmer of Eccleston, executed at Lancaster in 1584.
Saint John Rigby from Harrock Hall by Mawdesley, executed at Southwar in 1598.
One end of the church commemorates the martyrs in a beautiful enclave.
I must say, I am not Catholic, but when I approached those windows, every single hair on my body stood up. I had a very physical reaction, something I haven’t had in any other location on this trip and was very unexpected.
The church provided this information about John Finch.
We learned a lot about the Catholic’s in this region. Charnock Richard was called a “nursery of recussants” meaning they had more “refusers” of the Catholic faith than anyplace else.
Just the other side of Charnock Richard, actually, across from it, is the Bowling Green Inn, land where the Bowlings used to live. This inn has been here for hundreds of years in one form or another.
In the painting and photograph below, purchased from the Lancashire County Council, we can see the Bowling Green Inn in historic times. You can still see this older building in the current complex, if you look closely.
This quaint road sign, directly across the street from the Bowling Green Inn today, points the way from Charnock Richard to Wigan, 7 miles, and Preston, 10 miles.
On the map above, the Bowling Green Inn is the red balloon. The green balloon is where Google misplaced the inn. The red arrow points the location, in the photo below, of the other end of Delph Lane, which begins directly across from the Bowling Green Inn. The road is not contiguous today, but it was originally. The areas between Delph Lane and The Bowling Green Inn is the area believed to be where the Bowling family lived, or the area of Bowling Green. It’s amazing that we can find this location today.
Unfortunately, we can’t take a virtual street view drive down Delph Lane on Google, but on Church Road, where, ironically, another church was later built, we can see some of the fields.
The road leading to the Bowling land at Charnock Richard turns to the left here at the bridge on Delph Lane. It’s a dead end today and we didn’t try it in the bus. It’s just fields, sheep and English countryside, much like it was then. Our ancestors lived here, probably for many generations. They worked and walked these lands.
Our next destination was Standish, and we drove through quaint villages with wonderful pubs, reaching back centuries in time. The pub and the church are the two establishments in every village that was timeless and survived through the centuries.
This church was named for St. Wilfrid (634-709) who was the son of a Northumbrian Thane, educated at the Lindisfarne Monastery, studied in Rome and Lyon, and became a monk of the Benedictine order. He returned from Europe to Ripon as Abbot in 657 and introduced Benedictine rule to an area under the Celtic form of Christianity.
The earliest reference to this church is in the year 1205 when it is recorded that a dispute arose between the Standish and Langtree families regarding the advowson or right to appoint a Rector. No doubt the church had been in existence before that date. The first recorded Rector was Alexander de Standish in 1206.
In 1543 it was confirmed by the Bishop of Chester that the church was in great ruin and that the whole parish should decide on its repair and rebuilding. That apparently didn’t happen, because Record Moody’s tomb refers to this “twice-ruinated temple.” In 1582, the church was rebuild with Robert Charnock as their representative and a go-between with the master mason Lawrence Shipway. Work was completed in 1589. If the Charnock family was involved, you can rest assured that the Speak family, who probably worked for them, was involved too.
Standish Parish was quite large and served 11 townships until in the 1900s. Charnock Richard was among those. The Bowling family obviously attended two churches, perhaps different branches of the family, or at different times – both at Chorley and at Standish.
The porch entryway to the church, below, is from the 1500s. Inside the inner church door is found an Acanthus flower and it’s leaves. This is a Mediterranean plant used in classical design, probably brought back to England returning from the Crusades.
St. Wilfrid’s Church in Standish records many Bowling burials, although no stones remain intact today. Like many other churches, they have rearranged some of the remaining stones to make maintenance easier.
In many of these churches, expansions were built right over graves and in that time, place and culture, that was no problem. In fact, it might have just made you holier. This church is particularly interesting because it has a secret staircase hidden in one of the pillars – actually carved in. It led to a chantery where people who died paid for priests or monks to chant for them to get them into Heaven. Of course, when it became Anglican, the chantery was no longer needed – as the concept of Purgatory is a Catholic concept – as is praying your soul out of Purgatory in return for money.
However, the church history says that it might have been for a pen and ink or an old lamp or statue. This is in the porch, and the church porch was utilized for a significant number of things, aside from sheltering the door. The first part of the baptismal and wedding services took place here and in the days when women were denied admission to the church after childbirth, the “churching ceremony” was held in the porch.
The churching ceremony was where women were blessed after childbirth and thanks was given for their survival, even if the child had died or was stillborn, and even if the child died unbaptised. It symbolized ritual purification of the Virgin Mary as discussed in the New Testament. The churching ceremony generally took place about 40 days after the woman’s “confinement,” or when the birth took place. In some places it was regarded as unwise for a woman to leave her house to go out at all after confinement until she went to be churched. In the UK and Ireland, new mothers who had yet to be churched were regarded as attractive to the fairies, and so in danger of being kidnapped by them. Customs varied by church and region, although this version seems typical.
On the fortieth day after childbirth, the mother is brought to the temple to be churched; that is to say, to receive a blessing as she begins attending church and receiving the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments) once again. The child (if it has survived) is brought by the mother, who has already been cleansed and washed, accompanied by the intended sponsors (Godparents) who will stand at the child’s Baptism. They all stand together in the narthex (the entranceway) before the doors of the nave of the temple, facing east. The priest blesses them and says prayers for the woman and the child, giving thanks for their wellbeing and asking God’s grace and blessings upon them.
At her churching, a woman was expected to make some offering to the church, such as the chrisom or alb placed on the child at its christening.
Augustine Schulte in the Catholic Encyclopidia described the churching ceremony:
The mother, kneels in the vestibule, or within the church, carrying a lighted candle. The priest, vested in surplice and white stole, sprinkles her with holy water in the form of a cross. Having recited Psalm 23, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, he offers her the left extremity of the stole and leads her into the church, saying: “Enter thou into the temple of God, adore the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary who has given thee fruitfulness of offspring.” She advances to one of the altars and kneels before it, whilst the priest, turned towards her, recites the appropriate blessing, and then, having sprinkled her again with holy water in the form of the cross, dismisses her, saying: “The peace and blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon thee, and remain forever. Amen.”
The Parish Clerk undertook much of his business on the church porch too. Contracts were signed, debts paid and executors of wills distributed legacies to beneficiaries on the church porch.
This baptistery (below) has a very old Anglo-Saxon base, pre-dating the current church significantly, and the current church is hundreds of years old. The baptismal font represents three dates. The stem is the oldest and dates from the earlier church. The bowl is 16th century and probably dates from the rebuilding and the base is an 18th century replacement.
This church is stunningly beautiful. I can feel the presence of so many ancestors and I look around, drinking in my surroundings, absorbing as fast as possible, to see what they saw. This is their life I’m visiting in a place most sacred to them.
The armorial shields were gifted to the church in 1917 and represent the chief families in the 11 townships of the ancient parish. Charnock Richard’s is shown below.
This beautifully carved oak pulpit was donated by Ralph Standish in 1616, so it would have been here, and relatively new, when our Bowling ancestors stood to hear the sermon, or perhaps sat in the pews.
Aside from the typical floor burials, the oldest of which is from the 14th century, there are two actual tombs in the church. One, that of Richard Moody, from about the same time, bears the cheerful message of, “As you are I was and as I am you shall be.”
This is an ancient church and a sarcophagus was found under the church suggesting this was a very early religious site as well – probably back to pagan days. It’s now a flower holder outside of the church, along with what they consider to be ”a huge boulder” also found on the grounds.
The inscription below the sundial reads, “Let no passing cloud of bitterness thine accustomed serenity o’ershadow.”
The grounds are ancient and hallowed. The graves may not be marked, but we know the bodies of all of the families that lived in this area are interred here, probably stacked and intermingled after generations of reburial, much as the DNA of their descendants is today.
The church graciously arranged for the group to have lunch in an old restored building, I believe the old restored rectory which is now a Parish Hall. Group meals, while organizationally challenging were also some of the most rewarding times, as we visited with each other. Notice the old wooden beams. Everything in England is either very old or very new.
After leaving Standish, we stopped outside Liverpool and visited Speke Hall which, ironically, has nothing to do with our family. Speke Hall obtained its name from Speke Township which was first found in the Doomsday survey of 1086 where Spec (Speke) appears as one of several local properties held by the Saxon Thane Uctred, and is described as comprising “two carucates of land worth sixty-four pence”. A carucate was a measure of land that could support a family and measured between 60 and 120 acres according to the fertility of the soil. However, the similarity between Speke and Speak served to confuse and tantalize genealogists for years.
Despite the fact that it’s not from our family, Speke Hall did have a “priest hole,” shown below, designed to hide and protect Catholic priests who were, of course, persecuted on pain of death after the reformation. Priest holes were often found in Manor homes where clandestine services were held. It is very difficult to see, but here is the well-disguised entrance. The exit is to the Mersey River where the priests could easily exit to the coast and quickly escape back to Ireland.
After walking back to the visitor center in the drenching cold rain, Jim and I had our own version of “high tea” with creamed tea, scones with locally made jam and “fresh cream” which is not whipped cream. The perfect end to the perfect day!
While the Bowling family may seem like any other Catholic Lancashire family, they weren’t. In fact, their DNA is quite rare, something that by the time our ancestors were getting ready to leave for America was probably long forgotten in their family.
In fact, by the time that the Doomsday book was written in 1086, the Bowling family origins in the UK were already roughly 43 generations in the past, and had probably been forgotten for about 40 of those generations.
How do we know this? It’s written in the Bowling Y DNA, and when combined with the historical knowledge of what was happening in the world during that time, it’s relatively easy to construct a “most likely” scenario.
In fact, this part of the story is so interesting, it’s deserving of its own telling, so please join me for the future article, “Bowling DNA, Rare as Hen’s Teeth.”
Say what? Mitochondrial results from a Y DNA test? You must be kidding? It’s April Fool’s Day, right???
“Not funny,” you say…
Keep reading:)
Felix’s Thought Logs, by Felix Chandrakumar, a software engineer from Australia, ran a nice article about the deliverable report from a company called YFull that does an analysis of the output of the fully sequenced Y chromosome files from either Family Tree DNA (Big Y) or Full Genomes (Full Y). I did find this report very interesting, but having said this, I would NOT go so far as to recommend this service. It’s free, and I know that’s enticing, but there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
YFull lists no terms of service. What are they doing with the DNA results, other than analyzing them for you? Are they also processing or retaining them in some other manner, for something else? There has to be a benefit of some sort to YFull, and they don’t tell us what that is. You can read more about YFull here. The YFull service is located in Moscow, Russia.
Until I fully understand what is being done with the files and results, I certainly will never recommend anyone send files to an unknown foreign entity under uncertain circumstances. Furthermore, Russia is outside the legal reach of people in the US if a dispute arises. There is no available recourse. Looking at the owners, and the websites they are involved with, are the DNA results being incorporated into those sites? Again, without terms of service and full disclosure, as consumers, we have no way of knowing.
Now that we have that housekeeping out of the way, let’s take a look at a very unusual report.
When reviewing Felix’s YFull results, I was very surprised to notice one screen in particular – his mitochondrial DNA.
This, of course, begs the question of how, on a Y chromosome test, can one obtain mitochondrial DNA results? To the best of my knowledge, there is no mitochondria on the Y chromosome.
In fact, the mitochondrial isn’t even in the cell nucleus with the X and Y chromosomes – it’s outside. So, how can the Y test be returning mitochondrial results?
I turned to Dr. David Mittelman, PhD, geneticist and Chief Scientific Officer for Gene by Gene, parent company of Family Tree DNA for answers.
Dr. Mittelman has been gracious enough to provide insights into how this happens. See, no April Fools joke afterall!
Q. Dr. Mittelman, can you please confirm that the mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome are completely separate entities?
A. The mtDNA and Y chromosome are still separate entities :)
Q. Then how are mitochondrial DNA results being returned in conjunction with the Big Y test?
A. When you perform capture sequencing, you enrich for specific targets (in this case, the Y chromosome) but enrichment means you also get trace amounts of other sequences in the genome.
Q. Are these mitochondrial results high quality? Does the Big Y test cover all 16,569 mitochondrial DNA locations, like the full mitochondrial sequence test?
A.These mitochondrial results do not represent a high quality, high coverage sequence; and it does not give you the full mtDNA sequence — however in many cases you get enough markers to assign a haplogroup. You would probably prefer the complete sequence, however, if you want to use mtDNA for genealogical matching. Furthermore, since these are incidental findings, they are not reported on your mitochondrial page at Family Tree DNA, so no matching is possible. Only the specific mitochondrial tests designed for complete mitochondrial DNA coverage are reported on your personal page as results.
Q. If there are mitochondrial insertions, deletions or heteroplasmies, will the Big Y test be able to “see” those?
A. Yes but again the biggest limitation is coverage. At lower coverage and with fewer high quality reads, it is harder to resolve heteroplasmies and even some insertions and deletions. The BigY does not contain enough information to fully characterize all your variants in your mtDNA sequence, which is why we do not advertise it as such. It is exciting, however, to see that others are trying to extract value from the data. That is a key reason we make the raw data available. We are eager to see what complementary tools and insights other folks come up with.
Q. So, from what you’re saying, it sounds like the Big Y sequencing process may return an indeterminate amount of mitochondrial information, but it should not be relied upon as there is no guarantee that it is accurate or complete. In other words, they are simply incidental findings that are included coincidentally. Haplogroups predicted from this information may be incorrect or incomplete based on the quality or lack thereof of the incidental mtDNA data.
A. Certainly we did not design BigY to return your mtDNA sequence and I have not personally reviewed the accuracy of YFull, but it is possible for some customers to get some bonus mtDNA data. I think to gain more clarity it would be valuable to compare mtDNA data from the BigY to high quality, full mtDNA sequence from the same customers. Comparing that data would tell us more about the accuracy and value.
Following up on Dr. Mittelman’s suggestion, I checked with Felix about the accuracy of his mitochondrial results.
Felix has had his full mitochondrial sequence tested at Family Tree DNA. He reported that the YFull report found all of his 31 mutations, except for one in the coding region, and that another mutation, 315.1 was reported as 310. His haplogroup is accurate, but if some of the mutations missed were haplogroup defining mutations, it certainly could be, and probably would be estimated incorrectly. Not at all bad though, for an incidental freebie!
I want to thank Felix for being gracious enough to allow me to use his mtDNA results and Dr. Mittelman for his insights.
Thomas Speake, the immigrant that founded the Maryland line of the Speak(e)(s) family America, was born about 1634, had immigrated by 1660 and was married to Elizabeth Bowling by November of 1663. They lived in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. They had only two known children, John, known as John the Innkeeper, born in 1665, and Bowling Speak born in 1674. We know about their children, because Thomas died August 6, 1681 and he appointed James Bowling, his brother-in-law, guardian of his minor children, naming them.
The Speak family who descends from Thomas Speak who married Elizabeth Bowling carries as many genes from the Bowling family as from the Speak line. We just don’t think of it that way because the Speak surname has been passed down, and of course, the Bowling name, except as a first name, Bowling Speak, and then a middle name, Thomas Bowling Speake, did not get passed to future generations.
The Bowling Y-line DNA would be that of Elizabeth’s father who is believed to be Hugh Bowling, christened August 6, 1591 in Chorley, Lancashire, and died Sept. 7, 1651, buried in Standish, married to Ellen Finch in 1616.
Before our trip to England, we located some Bowling males, and thanks to Shirley Platt, Jerry Bowling agreed to have his Y DNA tested for a special kind of mutation called a SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) that tells us about his haplogroup or his deep ancestral clan.
About 50% of the men of Europe descend from one group of settlers, but in our case, we’ve twice been lucky now, because our Speak line comes from the Dinaric area of the Alps and our Bowling line is even more unique. The Bowling males from Chorley, in Lancashire, carry haplogroup T1. What is T1, you ask? Rare, that’s what it is!!! We’re talking hens-teeth rare here.
And not only is it rare overall, it’s extremely rare in England.
Jerry has a total of 15 low resolution DNA matches, and of those, 3 are other Bowlings, 6 are to other English surnames, of which 3 are Dutton, and the balance are to men from either Portugal or Spain. All of the English surname men match Jerry exactly, and all of the Spanish/Portuguese matches carry one mutation difference. This indicates that the Bowlings are more closely related to the English men than the Spanish/Portuguese men. For example, the Stockton family is from just up the road, in Cheshire.
As we move to higher resolution markers, meaning matches closer in time, the other surnames all fall away and the Bowling men only match other Bowling men. They should be more closely related to Bowling men than men who match genetically but carry different surnames, unless an “adoption” of some sort, name change or illegitimate birth has occurred in the line.
This match with Iberian men doesn’t necessarily mean that the ancestors of the Bowlings were Iberian. It could mean that the Bowling men and the Iberian men both share a common ancestor from elsewhere, with both groups having migrated from that central location. Or, it could mean that the Bowling ancestors were Iberian. Perhaps we can find clues in the history of the population migration pattern of haplogroup T1. Let’s see what we can find.
At Family Tree DNA, there are haplogroup as well as surname projects. People who share a common haplogroup join the haplogroup project that matches their haplogroup designation in order for the population spread and migration pattern of the haplogroup to be studied. Generally, the haplogroup project administrators know more about their haplogroups than almost anyone else. Often they have a personal interest, carrying that haplogroup themselves. They are also often out in front of the scientists who define subgroups. Science is slow-moving by its very nature, and in genetic genealogy, sometimes scientists move so slowly that the science is obsolete by the time it’s actually announced. In other words, the field sometimes moves faster than the scientists can keep up.
In this case, Family Tree DNA, who waits for academic consensus before assigning new haplogroups, shows the SNP marker M70 as defining haplogroup T1, but the administrators, based on both STR markers and SNPs, have grouped Jerry with a small subgroup of people who are from ….are you ready for this….Egypt, Saudi Arabia (2), Bangladesh, Spain, Yemen (2), Bulgaria and the United Arab Emirates. Of this entire grouping, Jerry Bowling is the only individual from the British Isles or even from Europe except for Spain and Bulgaria. This group is labeled at the Alpha-1-Y group. Keep in mind, however, that not all testers join haplogroup projects and it’s obvious from this information that Jerry’s English matches have not joined.
So, in timeline order, the Bowlings are the most closely related to other Bowlings males, then the English non-Bowling men they match, then the Iberian men they match, then the Alpha-1-Y haplogroup T group. On the map above, showing the Bowling matches, the location in Turkey is believed to be the birthplace of haplogroup T.
What do we know about haplogroup T, the parent of subgroup T1?
Haplogroup T is very rare in Europe, with less than 1% of European men carrying haplogroup T. It is much more common in the Middle East, portions of South Asia and portions of Northern and Eastern Africa.
In addition, the distribution of haplogroup T is very spotty, with some areas virtually devoid of this haplogroup, while in other locations we find rich pockets. The map below shows the distribution of haplogroup T.
On the map above, haplogroup T is found most often in Northern and Eastern Africa, in the Middle East and South Asia and in spotty locations in Southern Europe. It’s believed that haplogroup T originated in the Taurus Mountains in Eastern Turkey about 25,000 or 30,000 years ago, with subgroup T1 being born in the Middle East between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago.
A Relief of the Taurus Mountains is shown below. Cyprus is the island just to the south of the mountain range.
So how, then, did our haplogroup T ancestors get to Europe? And not just Europe, but the western periphery of Europe?
There are four scenarios that have historical evidence and fit what we know of the migration path of haplogroup T. Any or all of these could have come into play, or perhaps another scenario we don’t know about today.
Scenario 1 – The Phoenicians
The Neolithic period, as the introduction of agriculture was known, began about 12,000 years ago in the Levant and had arrived in Europe by about 7,000 years ago. It took another 3000 years to spread across Europe from Southeast to Northwest, moving at the rate of .6 -1.3 km per year, or between a third and 4/5ths of a mile, or between 400 and 1400 yards, just enough for the next generation to move next door to find available, unoccupied farmland.
The path to Europe was originally thought to be through the Caucus region, present day Turkey, Georgia and countries East of the Black Sea, but alternate routes are a probability and for our haplogroup T1 ancestors, a certainty. Another route was likely a coastal Mediterranean route or a slightly different route that bypassed the northern Caucus area for the easier coastal route, crossing into Turkey at Istanbul and then taking the overland route in Europe. These routes would also explain the frequency of haplogroup T found in the Balkan area, into Italy, the Iberian peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean in addition to northern Europe.
The coastal route associated with Phoenician trading is a strong possibility. Phoenician traders, whether they settled or regularly visited, would have deposited their Y-line DNA for centuries in various trading and settlement areas, as shown in the following map from the paper “Identifying Genetic Traces of Historical Expansions: Phoenician Footprints in the Mediterranean”.
As you can see, illustrated on the map below from the National Geographic Genographic project, the population migration route for haplogroup T parallels these settlements.
The Phoenicians were dominant traders 2000-3000 years ago. The following map shows both Phoenician (yellow) and Greek (red) trade routes in 500 BC. The route is extremely suggestive of correlation when compared with the frequency charts compiled from research papers. Many of the locations with the highest frequencies in the Mediterranean today were trade destinations of the Phoenicians or Greeks.
Haplogroup T is found in very low levels throughout Europe, but they tend to be clustered and are often significantly higher in areas where Jewish families are known to have settled. Below, we see a haplogroup breakdown within the Ashkenazi Jews. This, of course, implies that even if haplogroup T was already resident within Europe, additional families were part of the Jewish diaspora. Clearly not all European men who are haplogroup T were of the Jewish faith, but many are. Haplogroup T dates much further back in time than the Jewish faith, so many people will be distantly related to those of the Jewish faith, but not Jewish themselves.
We have actual evidence of a haplogroup T1 family found in Germany, France and the Netherlands and having a history of being a Sephardic Jewish from Spain who left with the edict of Nantes in 1492 evicting all Jews. I am intimately familiar with this family because my family in Mutterstadt, Germany is the Rapparlien family, referred to in the Bible, originally from the coast of France at Calais.
The Rapparlie family crest, shown above, is taken from the Rapparlie family Bible in Mutterstadt. The information on the family crest translates as follows:
“Rapparlie. An ancestral Spanish family which came in the 16th century to the Netherlands. From where (our ancestor) Josef Georg, who lived in Leuven, came to Frankfurt (the one of the river Main). He obtained citizen rights there in 1820.”
The translator adds information telling us that the Rapparlie family is likely to have fled from Spain to the Netherlands because of the Decree of Alhambra of 1492, an edict expelling all of the Jews from Spain.
Estimates are that between 165,000 and 800,000 people were evicted with about 28,000 displaced individuals migrating to what is today France, Holland, Germany and England. These displaced Jews became the Shepardic Jews, and were forced to convert to Catholicism before the expulsion, becoming therefore known as Conversos. Their conversions were often insincere, only a method to survive persecution, and therefore they would have been ripe pickings for the rebellion against Catholicism accompanying the Protestant reformation some years later.
The Rapparlie (and variant spellings) family in Valenciennes were known to be silk weavers, and historical records are full of references to Jewish silk weavers in Spain and other Middle Eastern and Northern African locations in the Middle Ages and prior to their eviction from Spain in 1492.
Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews
The Ashkenazi Jews were known to have been in Europe as early as the Middle Ages in the 4th century. It is unknown if this early group survived intact, but Jews are again prevalent in the records by the 10th century. Most of the Jews were clustered in cities, trade centers, as their high rates of literacy and knowledge of trades made them successful and desirable, if sometimes looked down upon because the Christian church forbade Christians from participating in usury (money lending in exchange for interest), which the Jews embraced heartily.
Conversely, the Jews maintained their separate living quarters, communities and family units, practiced endogamy (married only within their Jewish community) and they too looked down up on their neighbors. Unfortunately, this mutual distrust and antipathy was the seed of eventual anti-Semitic discrimination and ultimately, attempted genocide.
The Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and again in 1497, and many settled in Europe, but the two Jewish groups tended to maintain separate communities as their beliefs, practices and languages had come to differ in the centuries they had both been separated from their motherland.
Following the Roman takeover of Judea, the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem in 70AD. They continued to be residents of Palestine for several hundred years, but groups began to look for opportunities elsewhere and they began to be found in other locations in Mesopotamia and dispersed within the Mediterranean region. The largest concentrations were in the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, including Rome itself. Smaller communities are recorded in Gaul (France), Spain and North Africa. Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople (current day Istanbul) in 380 and Jews were increasingly marginalized.
The Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century by tribes such as the Visigoths, Franks, Lombards and Vandals caused massive economic and social instability within western Europe, contributing to its decline. In the late Roman Empire, Jews are known to have lived in Cologne and Trier as well as in what is now France. However, it is unclear whether there is any continuity between those Roman communities and the distinct Ashkenazi Jewish culture that began to emerge about 500 years later.
After 800 AD, Charlemagne’s unification of former Frankish lands with northern Italy and Rome brought a brief period of stability and unity in western Europe which created new opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle once again north of the Alps. Many Jewish merchants embraced occupations in finance and commerce. From that time to the present, the Ashkenazi are well documented in Europe.
Unfortunately, their lives in Europe were not always stable, and with the onset of the Crusades, they were evicted from England in 1290, France in 1392 and parts of Germany in the 1400s, pushing them eastward into Poland, Lithuania and Russia. By the 1400s, the Ashkenazi Jewish Communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area which eventually fell under the domination of Russia. Austria and Prussia (Germany) would remain the center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust. A painting on the previous page of Ashkenazi Jews praying on Yom Kippur was painted in 1878 by Maurycy Gottlieb in his hometown of Drohobych.
During the Holocaust, of the 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.War II, about 6 million, more than two-thirds, were systematically murdered because of their Jewish faith or heritage. More than 91% of the Polish Jews died, 82% in
the Ukraine and between 50 and 90% in other European nations (Germany, France, Hungary and the Baltic states). Sephardic communities suffered similar depletions in a few countries including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. At this time, many Jews began to immigrate, to the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia and Argentina where they and their descendants are found today. At right, refugee Jews are portrayed arriving in London, poor and destitute, but alive.
Scenario 3 – Phoenician, Jewish or Maybe Moors?
First, let me say we simply don’t have the definitive answer to this question, but let’s use what records we do have to try to narrow the possibilities.
The Bowling family first has records from 1520 in Chorley, in Lancashire, England. This Bowling family was, indeed, Catholic, as was the rest of England in 1520. The Protestant Reformation had not yet happened and wouldn’t until in the 1530s, specifically, 1534 when Henry VIII declared himself the head of the church in England and broke ties with Rome.
After that, the Bowling family, along with the Speak family, the Finch family and others would staunchly refuse to become Protestants.
It’s hard for me to believe that the Bowling family was Jewish in 1492, when only 28 years later, or one generation, we find them in England, and not coastal England, but in the middle of Lancashire. Even harder for me to believe is that they would become Catholic, the religion that persecuted them so terribly and forced the Jews to leave Spain in such desperate straits. If they were going to become Catholic, they would simply have converted and stayed in Spain. It would have been a lot easier that way.
They could have been Phoenician. They could also have been Moorish, as the Moors from the Middle East and North Africa invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and called the territory Al-Andalus, an area which at different times comprised Gibraltar, most of Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. There was also a Moorish presence in what is now southern Italy, primarily in Sicily which also has a significant amount of haplogroup T, although none that matches the Bowling line.
This 13th century painting depicts Moors in Iberia.
Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Al-Andalus sent periodic raiding expeditions to loot the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives. In a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, the governor of Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves.
Similarly, Christians sold Muslim slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a center for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks. Malta remained a slave market until well into the late 18th century. One thousand slaves were required to man the galleys (ships) of the Order.
The religious difference of the Moorish Muslims led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe called the Reconquista. The Fall of Granada in 1492 saw the end of the Muslim rule in Iberia.
Perhaps the history of Lancashire itself can help us understand how our ancestors might have settled in that region.
History of Lancashire
In the Domesday Book, written in 1086 after William the Conqueror conquered England in 1066, some of the lands now within Lancashire had been treated as part of Yorkshire. The area in between the Mersey and Ribble Rivers (referred to in the Domesday Book as “Inter Ripam et Mersam”) formed part of the returns for Cheshire. Although some have taken this to mean that, at this time, south Lancashire was part of Cheshire, it is not clear that this was the case, and more recent research indicates that the boundary between Cheshire and what was to become Lancashire remained the river Mersey. Once Lancashire’s initial boundaries were established in 1182, it bordered Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Cheshire.
Lancashire takes its name from the city of Lancaster, which itself is means ‘Roman fort on the River Lune’, combining the name of the river with the Old English cæster, which referred to a Roman fort or camp. The county was established some time after the Norman conquest when William the Conqueror gave the land between the Ribble and the Mersey, together with Amounderness, to Roger de Poitou. In the early 1090s Lonsdale, Cartmel and Furness were added to Roger’s estates to facilitate the defense of the area south of Morecambe Bay from Scottish raiding parties, which travelled round the Cumberland coast and across the bay at low water, rather than through the mountainous regions of the Lake District.
Scenario Four – Roman Soldiers, Slaves or Conscripts
From this information, we know two things. First, there was a Roman fort in this area, and second there were Scottish raiding parties. This DNA is not Scottish, so we can discount that but what it does tell us is that the fort was very probably heavily fortified and the soldiers patrolled throughout the region to protect it from the Scots.
We also know, from our visit to Chester, that a Roman fort was also located there. A little additional research yields even more interesting information, revealing a Roman fort right in the Ribble Valley at a location called Ribchester, shown below, which is located on the Ribble River half way between Gisburn, the home of the Speake family and Charnock Richard, the home of the Bowling family, about 10 miles from each.
Furthermore, this fort is much older than the Domesday Book. The first fort at Ribchester was built in timber in AD 72/73 by the Roman Twentieth Legion. The fort was renovated in the late 1st century AD and was rebuilt in stone in the early 2nd century. During the life of the fort, a village grew up around it becoming Ribchester. A fort remained at Ribchester until the 4th century AD and its remains can still be seen around the present village.
The map below shows the following locations:
The Lowbarrow Bridge location of the Roman fort recorded in the Domesday Book
Gisburn – home region of the Speak family
Ribchester, location of the Roman fort in the Ribble Valley
Charnock Richard, home region of the Bowling Family
In other areas in England, in particular, along the line of Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland, where we find several Roman forts and fortifications, we also find Mediterranean and North African DNA, quite a bit of it, and concentrated in pockets surrounding the forts. We know that not all Roman soldiers were Roman citizens, some were slaves and some were conscripted. Many slaves volunteered for military duty. And the Romans, of course, as soldiers will do, sometimes left their DNA behind, if they didn’t marry outright with the local females.
So Who Are We???
I really don’t think the Bowling family has a Jewish history. In part because they have no Jewish matches at all, nor matches in highly Jewish areas. Also, the known history of the family does not mesh with what would have happened historically at that time. England was not a Jewish haven, especially not the countryside. London might be another story, but Lancashire, in the Ribble Valley? I don’t think so as there is absolutely no evidence to support this.
The Bowling ancestors could have been Phoenician and found their way to the Iberian peninsula in that manner, but if they were, I would think we would see a path of matches throughout the Mediterranean, particularly on Greece, the southern end of Italy and on Sicily, and we don’t. We see Middle Eastern matches, Iberian matches and then English matches with only a couple of exceptions.
The Bowling men could be Moors, except the Moors didn’t invade the Iberian peninsula until about 300 years after the Roman occupation of England ended, meaning the Romans were no longer sending troops to England so the dates with Moors are problematic.
The scenario that fits best is that the Bowling ancestors were likely slaves or conscripted soldiers of the Roman legion that conquered England beginning in AD43. The Roman occupation continued until about the year 500 when the Saxons invaded. This means that Romans lived in Britain, among the British for about 400 years which equates to about 16 generations, plenty of time to assimilate with the local population.
The Roman empire from the year 43AD to 409 is shown below.
In time, slaves and captives became part of the Roman army, willingly or not, conscripts or otherwise, that invaded and subsequently ruled England for the next 400 years. Slavery was part of Roman life and captive soldiers and their family were traditionally sold into slavery. Note, on the map above, that the entire Mediterranean basin fell under the Roman rule, including several Middle Eastern locations where Bowling haplogroup matches are found.
This relief below, from Smyrna, present day Izmir, Turkey, shows a roman soldier leading 2 Turkish slaves away in chains.
Regardless of whether the Bowlings paternally are Moors, Phoenicians, Roman soldiers, Roman slaves or Jews, we share a common heritage between all of these groups – back in the Middle East before these groups were separately defined as such. Our origins are firmly tied there, for tens of thousands of years, in the land of sand and forbidding mountains, the Holy Land and the religious well from which Christianity, the Muslim faith and the Jewish religion all sprang. The Taurus Mountains and the Middle East. This is the land of our Bowling forefathers, before Lancashire…this is our homeland.
Data mining, also known as screen scraping has been occurring in the genetic genealogy community for some time now. I had hoped that peer pressure and time would take care of the issue and it would resolve itself, but it has not.
This topic has become somewhat of the pink elephant in the middle of the living room. People are whispering. Some people have adopted the pink elephant as a pet. Some are trying to ignore it. A few haven’t noticed and some just kind of accept its presence since no one seems to be able to convince it to leave. But no one has yet to walk in, take a look, and say “Hey, there’s a pink elephant in the living room.”
Well folks, there’s a pink elephant in the living room and we’re going to talk about it today.
What is Screen Scraping and Data Mining?
Screen scraping and data mining is where (generally) robots visit certain sites online on a scheduled basis and harvest data that is residing there. The harvested data may be used privately after that, or may be reformatted and massaged and then displayed differently on a public site. No notification is given or permission is asked to use the data.
Screen scraping and data mining is different than one person doing a Google search for information about their genealogy or their ancestor utilizing online resources. Screen scraping or data mining is the capturing or targeting of entire data bases. Mining implies searching for just one type of data – like maybe a certain haplogroup – and scraping implies taking everything viewable. Best case, it’s Google spidering sites for indexing. Worst case, they are thieves in the night. Like many things, the technology can be used for bad or good.
Let me give you an example which illustrates how I initially discovered this issue.
I administer several projects at Family Tree DNA – both surname and haplogroup. One of my surname project members e-mailed me one day in March of 2013 with a jovial note about their “15 minutes of fame.” The essence of this is that they had just transferred their National Geographic results to Family Tree DNA and the next day, found their results with their new SNPs they were so proud of on a website in Russia. Because of the quality of the site and how quickly those results appeared, they presumed that this was a collaborate research effort between either Family Tree DNA and/or National Geographic and the Russian site.
I took a look, and sure enough, he was right. There, big as life, was his DNA SNPs, his surname and his kit number, on an unauthorized site. I clearly knew that the website was not collaborative, but I confirmed with Family Tree DNA just to be sure, who was aware of it but could not do anything about the screen scraping of the DNA projects.
At that point, my project member attempted to contact the Russian site owner to have the information removed and to ask how they obtained it in the first place. There was no name on the semargl site, nor e-mail, only a form. I also attempted to do so and even involved two intermediaries who also attempted to facilitate contact. The site in question had clearly advertised a haplogroup project so I reached out to those project admins to facilitate contact as well. The website owner never replied. However, two days later, the web site owner did remove the surname from the site, but all of the harvested information remains. You can see it for yourself today. Kit number 24162.
In fact, this site has scraped and reconstructed almost all (if not all) of the haplogroup projects at Family Tree DNA. You can see them here.
I conducted a little experiment not long ago wherein I timed how long it took after results were posted at Family Tree DNA for them to appear on this site and it was generally between 24 and 48 hours. I repeated that this week with my husband’s results which were already displayed on the semargl website (without his permission,) and sure enough, his Big Y results that are displayed on the haplogroup project page at Family Tree DNA were immediately updated on the semargl site with his new SNP information.
One of my haplogroup projects has SNPs “turned off” but the participants data and SNPs are harvested anyway, because the robots don’t just scrape haplogroup projects, but surname projects as well. And almost everyone who joins haplogroup projects joins surname projects.
Have you noticed that the response times at Family Tree DNA are sometimes slow? Well, when robots are searching every project for new results on a daily basis, it does indeed tax their systems. We know the semargl site uses robots, but there may be more sites we aren’t aware of doing the same thing.
Remember when Ysearch was taken offline entirely and the following message was displayed?
“YSearch is currently unavailable due to an increase in abusive data mining by automated scripts. The site will be unavailable for an extended period of indeterminate duration.”
Well, robots at it again.
Ironically, one of the people I spoke to about this used the fact that YSearch was down to justify why the semargl site was so important – because they duplicated the YSearch info.
How Can They Do This?
The bottom of every single project page at Family Tree DNA displays copyright verbiage, as follows:
This clearly includes the contents. In the context of Russia, where the semargl website is located, this doesn’t matter, but perhaps Judy Russell will tackle the topic of project content ownership relative to the US in one of her columns.
I assure you that I have never been contacted and many of my projects’ contents are shown on the semargl site, complete haplogroup project data along with many participants, specifically those with SNP tests, from surname projects.
If you have had any SNP testing at Family Tree DNA, your results are probably included in this data base. If you want to see if your kit number is there, you can search by kit number, and just for yuks, try searching by surname too: http://www.semargl.me/en/dna/ydna/search/
When participants join projects, they can clearly expect their results to be shown on the associated project page at Family Tree DNA. In fact, that’s the whole point of genetic genealogy, to be able to find your paternal line, for example, or your genetic cousins. Sharing and comparing.
Do participants expect that their data will be scraped and displayed on a website in Russia, with or without their surname, and entirely without their permission or knowledge? Many surname project administrators are probably entirely unaware of this themselves.
The answer to “how can they do that?” is that they are in Russia and they are not bound by any US copyright or any other US laws. If you have any doubt about that, think Edward Snowden and why he is in Russia. In fact, the only thing that binds them is a sense of ethics, what’s right and wrong, internet courtesy and a colloquial definition of fair use. As you might have noticed, none of these things are legally binding, especially not on people in Russia.
Ethics speaks for itself. This site obviously sees nothing wrong with taking or harvesting the data from elsewhere without notification or permission. They also see nothing wrong with retaining, utilizing and displaying data even when it has been asked by the owner to be removed. Internet courtesy or netiquette would indicate that you would ask permission or minimally, inform the individuals that you are using their data. And fair use would indicate that you credit the individuals for their work and that you would source your data. Given that individuals didn’t grant permission for their information to be included, one should at least have the opportunity for their data to be removed, if randomly discovered, but that isn’t the case. This certainly explains why they were trying to remain anonymous a year ago, and refused contact.
As one participant said to me, “Just because the technology door can’t be locked to prevent this type of activity, does that make taking something that doesn’t belong to you any less of a theft?”
In discussions surrounding this topic, a highly respected project administrator said the following:
“I do not think any person today should have a reasonable expectation that anything displayed on the Internet can be expected not to be copied because it is public info – fair game to a third party as long as the fair use doctrine is observed. If I copied that particular person’s results to my website as an example of something it comes under fair use – as long as I indicate the source for the info. But when someone copies large numbers of items or fails to show the source of the info, it is no longer fair use.”
This isn’t the only situation like this, although it is by far the most blatant.
Recently, I saw a draft of a “paper” where an entire haplogroup project was “analyzed” using a third party tool without knowledge or involvement of the administrators, nor appropriate credit given for their project. Clearly, without their efforts in the project, the analysis paper could not have been written because the project would not exist. While that paper involves one person, this website involves many, is very public, and now the owner(s) have also formed and are part of a company. The website also solicits donations as well.
You’ll notice that YFull is advertised on their website, under the donate button. The ISOGG Wiki provides the following information about YFull.
“YFull.com was founded in 2013 and focuses on the interpretation of Y-chromosome sequences. The main aim of the project is to provide services for the analysis of full Y-chromosome raw data (BAM) files and convenient visualization. The data is collected and analysed and newly discovered single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are placed on an experimental Y-tree. Haplogroup and thematic projects are offered. The YFull service is located in Moscow, Russia.”
The YFull product analysis deliverables have been covered by two bloggers here and here.
The YFull team is listed in the Wiki article as follows:
Vadim Urasin (aka Wertner): active participant of the DNA genealogical community since 2008, the developer of robots to collect Y-data from public sources, “Y-predictor” developer, FTDNA group administrator, developer of the Y-series SNPs (for R1a, J2b, R2a, Q, O etc).
Roman Sychev (aka Maximus Centurion): active participant of the DNA genealogical community since 2006, since 2007 as moderator dna-forums.org (aka Maximus), molgen.org, FTDNA group administrator, developer of the Z-series SNPs (for R1a, I1, J2b), developer of the Y-series SNPs (for R1a, I, R2a, J2b, Q, O etc).
Vladimir Tagankin (aka Semargl): active participant of the DNA genealogical community, the DNA database “semargl.me” developer, FTDNA group administrator and co-administrator, developer of the Z-series SNPs (for R1a, I, J2b), developer of the Y-series SNPs (for R1a, J2b, R2a, Q, O etc).
You’ll note that the team includes two people who are credited with developing the mining/screen scraping robots and the developer of the semargl.me database. Also please note that all 3 are listed as group administrators at Family Tree DNA, which, given the circumstances, seems to be in violation of the Project Administrator Guidelines. I wonder if Family Tree DNA is aware of this and if project members understand what their project administrator is doing with their DNA results.
I happened to be working with someone’s results who are in the R1a1a and Subclades project. I noticed a familiar name among the project co-administrators at the bottom of the list.
This is particularly unfortunate, because the haplogroup projects have been key players in terms of encouraging SNP testing, sorting through results and defining key haplogroup subgroups. Project participants join haplogroup projects to further science and research. They expect the administrators to work with the results, but working with/ analyzing the results and reproducing the results on another site is not the same. Furthermore, being both a project administrator and the same person whose robots are scraping the FTDNA project sites to reproduce elsewhere without permission seems like a wolf masquerading as a shepherd to gain access to lambs.
Of course, the fully sequenced Y results are not posted to the public pages of projects, so they can not be harvested in full by robots like the individual SNP results, including Nat Geo transfers and Walk the Y results. Enter the free analysis provided by YFull to individuals who receive their fully sequenced Y results from either the Big Y at Family Tree DNA or the Full Y from FullGenomes.
When I first looked, there were no terms and condition, but there are terms and conditions on the YFull site today, at the bottom of the main page.
4.2 We may disclose to third parties, and/or use in our Services, “Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information”, which is Genetic and Self-Reported Information that has been stripped of Registration Information and combined with data from a number of other users sufficient to minimize the possibility of exposing individual-level information while still providing scientific evidence. If you have given consent for your Genetic and Self-Reported Information to be used in YFull.com Research, we may include such information in Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information intended to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. We emphasize that Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information will be stripped of names, physical addresses, email addresses, and any other Personal Information that may be used to identify you as a unique individual.
4.3 We may disclose to third parties – Yfull.com. Partners or service providers (e.g. our contracted genotyping laboratory or credit card processors) use and/or store the information in order to provide you with YFull.com’s Services.
Is Screen Scraping and Data Mining Wrong?
There are two sides to this argument.
At the time of the initial discovery, a year ago, with my project participant, based on my communications with some project administrators, it was clear that at least some of the admins knew of this activity and were supportive.
Why?
Because they perceived that the data was “public domain” and the resultant semargl website and ”knowledge base,” as they phrased it, justified the means. These sentiments were expressed by multiple project administrators, separately, although now I realize that at least one of these people is a project co-administrator with the semargl owner, whose identity I didn’t know at that time. Their interpretation of public domain is incorrect, because public domain refers to works “whose intellectual property rights have expired” and this is clearly not the case. What they probably meant was that since the data has been posted publicly, from their perspective, the data at that point is freely available to use.
In some circumstances, that might at least partially be true. But since this site is in Russia, they are not bound by any laws here and they clearly did not choose to abide by any of the generally accepted netiquette standards.
Having said that, the semargl site is wonderfully done and extremely informative, which is why genetic genealogists have embraced it. Many probably don’t realize how the data has been obtained. Combine that with the mindset of “there’s nothing we can do about it anyway,” since they are in Russia, and many have simply resigned themselves to the fact that the situation is what it is. Besides that, brining this topic up causes you to be extremely unpopular in some camps.
Semargl vs Family Tree DNA
This is probably a good time to define how the semargl site is different than the Family Tree DNA site. Family Tree DNA is focused on genealogy, which includes surnames and oldest ancestor information. They also support and encourage testing of markers that reveal deeper ancestry, before the advent of surnames, which falls into the anthropological timeframe. After all, that’s still the history of our ancestors, revealed in their DNA – but before surnames. At Family Tree DNA, people join themselves to projects and they give permission when testing for comparison of their data. If they so choose, then can remove their data from projects, make their information entirely private or remove it entirely from the data base. In other words, they own and control their data.
The semargl site does not focus on genealogy and is generally focused on haplogroup definitions (by both SNP and STR markers) and population movement and settlement relative to haplogroup subgroups. In that way, it’s more of a research support endeavor. It’s not genealogy focused although it has the potential of helping genealogists understand the genesis of their ancestors before surnames. Having said that, they do have marker matching capabilities but without surnames displayed.
Of course, we know how they obtain their data, screen scraping the Family Tree DNA and YSearch sites, and that people whose data is displayed have not given permission and may be entirely unaware their data appears on that site.
Let’s look at an example of what semargl has done with DNA information. I’ll use haplogroup Q since it is a smaller haplogroup than others and one I’m familiar with.
They have divided haplogroup Q into 30 groupings based on SNPs. Each of these branches has its own map. The Q1b-Ashkenazi map is shown below with associated kit numbers to the right under the ad.
You can also select any SNP to view. I’ve selected L294 at random. Notice that the results are noted as from FTDNA (with kit number) or YSearch (with user ID) and those are the only sources given, so the origin of the data is very clear.
You can query by haplogroup placing results on maps and other types of queries as well.
This owner(s) of this site has done a prodigious amount of work, and it is all very useful, and very well done. It’s actually too bad this isn’t a collaborate work, because I think it would have been very well accepted under different conditions. Most people would have gladly given permission had they been asked.
Unfortunately, the method used to obtain the data generates a lot of unanswered and pretty ugly questions.
Begging the Questions
Some people feel that if this site were to disappear, that the genetic genealogy community as a whole would suffer. It is the only location where aggregated SNP data is processed and analyzed in this manner.
They also feel that because the individual information has been publicly posted elsewhere, in this case, in Family Tree DNA projects, that this site, and others who might be doing the same thing, have done nothing wrong, unethical or inappropriate.
Others feel that this screen scraping/data harvesting of Family Tree DNA project data is an ethics violation in the strongest terms and that if this activity had been undertaken by someone within the US or within reach of the US via copyright treaty, it would be prosecutable under copyright laws.
Originally, many felt that since these people were “just genetic genealogists” trying to understand results, focused on just a few haplogroups in which they were personally interested, and since they weren’t selling anything, that there was no conflict of interest. However, the site has clearly grown exponentially and evolved over time, robots created and utilized, donations are being solicited, and now a company is involved as well, formed in 2013. And now we discover that the site owner is a project administrator at Family Tree DNA, giving them unprecedented access to DNA results beyond what is available publicly. One might suggest that is a conflict of interest. In defense of Family Tree DNA, a year ago it was almost impossible to discern the name of the person behind the semargl site and I was never able to obtain an e-mail address, even though it was clear that the intermediaries were communicating with him. People on the internet use pseudonyms and screen names regularly, as you can note in the Wiki entry about the YFull team.
Clearly, the people responsible for the robots that were and continue to disrupt the Family Tree DNA site and taking YSearch down have to be aware of that and they didn’t and haven’t stopped their activities. Was it these robots? I don’t know for sure, but semargl has obviously been utilizing robots, screen scraping the Family Tree DNA site for more than a year based on when my participants data was harvested. In fact, they are still utilizing robots, because my husband’s Big Y SNPs that were posted at Family Tree DNA (a subset of his total SNPs) one day this week were displayed on the semargl site the following day. Furthermore, one of the YFull principals is credited with developing these robots and is also noted as being a project administrator. Project administrators are supposed to be trusted stewards of the DNA of their participants.
Because the provider’s services were disrupted, one can’t really argue that no one has been damaged. Family Tree DNA has clearly been and continues to be impacted, their customers have been inconvenienced. Family Tree DNA spends money on bandwidth and staff to deal with these issues.
Some would assert that the expectations and rights of those whose results have been pirated, harvested or stolen, depending on your perspective, have been violated because the results have been used without permission of the participant. Others would say that there has been no harm because the results are anonymized (currently) on the semargl site with the surname removed from the display and they were retrieved from a publicly available source. However, the surname is still stored in the semargl system, because you can query by surname and all kits numbers with that surname are returned. With some creative Googling, you can uncover the surname relatively easily given just the kit number on the semargl site, but I know of no way you could discover the actual identity of an individual unless that person was the only person in the world with that particular surname, or if they had themselves posted their name and kit number together on a public venue.
If participants refuse to join projects in the future, or withdraw from projects because they don’t want their data to be harvested by sites like this, then genetic genealogy as a whole has been damaged. Then so have you and I as genetic genealogists.
Let me quote my husband, who never gets ruffled, this evening, when I showed him his results. He knew nothing about any of this before I sat him down at my computer and showed him his results, first at Family Tree DNA, where he was excited to see his extended haplogroup and Big Y Novel Variants, and then on the semargl site. I wish I had taken a picture of the shocked look on his face. Here’s what he had to say when he saw his results on the semargl site:
“What the <bleep>? How did they get there?”
Pause for a moment while the reality soaked in.
“Get them off there. They have no right.”
I really can’t quote anymore of what he said and remain family friendly, but suffice it to say the word appalled was used several times, along with horrified, and when I showed him that the semargl data base owner was a co-administrator of his haplogroup project, he shifted to utterly livid and suggested that Family Tree DNA remove him and whoever added him as a co-administrator as well for complicity. In fact, his “suggestions” went even further, to removing all of the project admins as co-conspirators, because they obviously knew what their co-admin was doing and did nothing to protect his data, as a project member. In fact, some of them may well be involved in the exploitation of his data.
His uncomfortable questions continued, like “How can that be?” and “Does he have the rest of my data too?” Suffice it to say my husband is utterly furious, and when I told him that I can’t have those results removed from the Russian site, and why, it got even worse. Maybe it’s a good thing they are in Russia.
On the other hand, others argue that many benefit from the semargl site and that the people who join projects and whose results are publicly posted had no reason to expect that their results would not be harvested or utilized by someone, at some time. Try explaining that to my husband, whose comment when he saw the ‘donate’ button right beside his results on the semargl said to me, “How is that right, they’re getting money for something they stole? My DNA results, that I paid for. My God, they had my results posted on their site before I even had a chance to look at them at Family Tree DNA.”
One DNA project clearly states on their main project page that once you post your information on the internet, it can never be entirely “removed.” Of course, DNA testing for genealogy without sharing is entirely pointless. Where is the line between sharing, when an individual intentionally joins a project, posting their own data, and theft?
The only difference between cousin Johnny discovering that you descend from the same genealogy/genetic line based on your surname project at Family Tree DNA and Russian data miners harvesting the data is the order of magnitude, intention and methodology. As someone else has pointed out, not dissimilar from the difference between consensual sex and rape.
Another perspective is that because we are here and they are in Russia, there’s nothing we can do about it, anyway, so why sweat it and just enjoy the benefits. Right? Besides, as has been pointed out to me, we don’t want participants to become upset and withdraw from projects or not join, so we won’t discuss the elephant in the room. What pink elephant? I don’t see a pink elephant. And we certainly, most certainly, do NOT want to have to answer any of those uncomfortable questions my husband asked me this evening. After all, their DNA is already out there and there’s nothing to be done about it now, so don’t make waves.
“Doing something” now to prevent harvesting, assuming there was anything that could be done, is like closing the barn door after the cow has already left, or, in this case, the pink elephant.
This fatalism sounds a whole lot like the thought process involved in how slavery was justified along with gender and race discrimination and Hitler’s genocidal atrocities. I’m not equating data mining to those things, but I am saying that the thought process that “we can’t do anything about it” or “everyone else is doing it,” so we accept it and even participate can be a deadly, slippery slope. And if it’s wrong, ignoring, tolerating or accepting it certainly doesn’t make it right.
Let me share a parting thought from my husband, after he calmed down enough to speak coherently.
“I feel unclean. I feel like I’ve been violated. My DNA has been kidnapped and I’ve been genetically raped. It’s wrong. It’s just wrong, in so many ways.”
So….you tell me…
Harvested, pirated or stolen? Right or wrong? Ethical or unethical? Malicious or not? Theft? Plagiarism? Does the end justify the means? Perfectly fine?
I shared with you my husband’s reaction. He’s not involved in this field like I am. He’s much more of the typical “end consumer.” I’m not telling you what I think. You decide for yourself.
Note: I thought that participants would be able to view the comments entered in the “other” field. Since you can’t, here’s what they say:
Inevitable
Wrong, unethical, non consensual, and exploitive
Thank you for letting us know about this.
It’s criminal
FTDNA should learn from the semargl site, then it would be more useful and legal
Ellin Martin was born around 1600, possibly in Great Hardres (Hadres,) and was married to Sylvester Eastye November 24, 1625 in the church in Ringwould, Kent. He died before 1667 when his daughter was married. Ellen died in 1649 with a will that tells us at that time she was living in Waldershare. Documentation by other researchers states that both documents, her marriage and her will, respectively, state that she was “of Great Hardres,” but I have not seen evidence of this in either document. I find it difficult to believe this very specific piece of information was not located someplace, though because it is too specific, and a bit distant, to have been grabbed out of thin air.
The location called Great Hardres in the record indicating where Ellen Martin was born is now called Upper and Lower Hardres, noted as twin villages. We did not get to visit either as they are about 20 miles distant and much closer to Canterbury. If Ellen indeed was born here, they it’s likely that this church is ripe with her relatives and ancestors.
I’m not terribly clear what record indicated that Ellen was in fact born in Great Hardres. It’s reported to be her marriage record from 1625 in Ringwould, but transcribed records provided by the church do not include or indicate this information. What this means is that it’s quite likely that relevant information to these records may not all have been transcribed and it would probably be worth our while to have these records retranscribed, including Martin records from Ringwould. This information could also be in the Bishop’s returns, the records that were supposedly duplicates sent periodically by the church to the Bishop.
I am still somewhat baffled about how she would have met Robert Estes who lived some 20+ miles distant. That’s a long way to walk and that was the transportation available at the time. It’s more plausible that her family moved to Ringwould, in which case, there might well be additional records that contain valuable information. There are some Martin records in Ringwould’s church records, but not many.
The church below is St. Peter and St. Paul at Upper Hardres Court. Parts of this church date from the 1200s. A newer church was built 3 miles away in the twin village of Lower Hardres in the 1800s, but this would have been the church in which Ellen Martin was baptized in about 1600. I would surely love to see these church records.
Sylvester married on 24 November 1625, at Ringwould, Kent, Ellin Martin. Ellin was born about 1600 and died in 1649 at Ringwould, Kent, two years after the birth of her last child, our ancestor, Abraham. Ellin’s will states she was born at Waldershire, but at her marriage she reportedly gave her origin as Great Hadres, and her name perhaps as “Hellen Martine.” I don’t see any birth location reflected in the original records below.
Here is the entire page that includes their marriage. You can see that this was a small church, with only 2 marriages that year, 14 christenings and about as many burials.
The church at Ringwould was certainly beautiful and served as a respite for me that fine fall day in Kent as well. It seems that Jim and I had a bit of excitement with the rental car, and just suffice it to say that I desperately needed a break, even though we had only driven about 6 miles, on the wrong side of the road of course, from where we rented our car in Dover. But that hair-raising story will have to wait.
The village of Ringwould was first recorded more than 200 years before the Domesday survey, in an Anglo-Saxon Charter dated 861 AD under the name of Roedligwealda (the forest of Hredel’s people). The site of a Roman period farm has been identified close to the present Ripple windmill; which is in the parish, although metal detector finds and other relics which have been found, suggest that the area was populated well before the Roman invasion. The oldest coin ever found in England was discovered by a metal detectorist working close to Ringwould. It seems probable that the village was established sometime during the Anglo-Saxon period, probably in the 6th century AD, and certainly well before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The village of Ringwould has about 350 residents and is about the size today that it was when our ancestors lived nearby or in the village itself. The church connects both front and back street and is, in essence, the center of the village. It was also the center of village life. Musters were help here for defense and below the church in the field, target practice was held with arrows hewn from the cedar trees in the churchyard.
The walkway to the church through the center of the village remains today. It used to be a cart path, and it had to be at least 30 inches wide in order to accommodate the width of 2 pall bearers and a casket.
However, on that special day, on Monday, November 24, 1625 there are no caskets approaching the church, but instead, a wedding party. After walking past the old forge, the building on the right, the gate to the church yard would be up ahead. Inside the gate would be the gravestones of all of those relatives who had gone ahead, and perhaps a few siblings who never made it beyond childhood. This was not an anonymous place. There is no room for grief today, although the bride may have paused for a moment to quietly pay her respects if her parents were in the churchyard waiting silently for her, or perhaps her grandparents, as they motioned her inside with feathered, wispy fingers.
When Sylvester and Ellen got married, the bride entered from the doorway of the church and the first part of the service was actually conducted in the doorway. I’m thinking that in Catholic times, it would have been a blessing or cleansing of some sort. Ellen would have walked up the walk to the church, in the center of Ringwould, and into this door the day she married Sylvester.
Many of the events of their lives together would transpire here as well, including, just 10 months later, the baptism of their first child.
Sylvester and Ellin Martin Estes had the following children. Note that descendants of females with bolded names would be potentially be mitochondrial DNA candidates.
1. Robert Eastes, baptized 10 September 1626, Ringwould, Kent, died 1692 and buried 23 June 1692, Waldershire, Kent, married Elizabeth, who died in 1676 at Waldershire, Kent, and was buried 8 August 1676. Married second Margaret Coachman, 26 June 1688, Hadres, Kent. Children: Robert (1652), Elizabeth (1653), Susan (1655), Silvester (1657-1692) of Waldershare, Kent;
2. Anne Eastes, baptized 25 November 1627 at Ringwould, Kent, died young;
3. Silvester Eastes, (a female) baptized 31 May 1629 at Ringwould, Kent, married a Nash.
4. Susan Eastes, baptized 30 March 1631 at Ringwould, Kent.
5. Thomas Eastes, baptized 20 January 1633, Ringwould, Kent, died 15 April 1682, Pelham, Kent, married Sarah and had children: John (1665) of Waldershare, Kent, and later of Acrise, Kent.
6. Richard Eastes, baptized 5 October 1634, at Ringwould, Kent.
7. Mary Eastes, baptized 2 October 1636 at Ringwould, Kent.
8. Anne Eastes, born 1637 at Ringwould, Kent. [There is some doubt as to whether this child belongs to this family.]
9. Nicholas Eastes, yeoman, baptized 9 December 1638 at Nonington, Kent, married Jane Birch, died 1665, Sutton, Kent. Children: John (?-1715) of Sutton.
10. Elizabeth Eastes, born 1639/40 at Nonington, Kent.
11. Ellen Eastes, baptized 11 December 1642, Nonington, Kent, died 1729 and buried 26 December 1729 at St Leonard’s, Kent. Married Moses Eastes, 23 December 1667, at Deal, Kent. Moses was baptized 12 November 1643 at St Leonard’s, Kent and died at Deal, 19 March 1707/8 & buried 23 March, at St Leonard’s, Kent. Children: Richard (1667/8-1668), Constant (1669-1708), Aaron (1671) & Samuel (1674/5), of St Leonard’s, Kent. Ellen was the second wife of Moses Eastes, her second cousin once removed.
12. John Eastes, baptized 29 December 1644 at Nonington, Kent.
13. Abraham Eastes, born 1647, probably at Nonington, Kent, married Anne Burton (widow), 29 December 1672, at Worth, Kent. Abraham them immigrated to America and married Barbara, long rumoured to be Barbara Brock, without one shred of evidence. Abraham died November 21, 1720 in King and Queen County, Virginia.
Sylvester and Ellen’s children born between 1626 and 1636 were baptized in Ringwould, but the ones born between 1638 and 1644 were baptized in Nonington. There is no baptismal record for Anne born in 1637 or for our Abraham born in 1647, but based on his brother’s 1644 baptismal record in Nonington, it’s presumed Abraham was born there was well. St. Mary’s church in Nonington is shown below, although we were unable to visit.
Nonington is about half way between Ellen Martin’s potiential birth location in Great Hardres (Hadres) and the Ringwould area where the rest of the Estes family was located, although there are no further Estes records and no Martin records in the church records there.
Suffice it to say that indeed, St. Nicholas church in Ringwould is steeped and bathed in the history of the Estes family as well as that of their wives. Many Estes children, my ancestors, were baptized in this very baptismal font.
Ellen and Sylvester regularly attended church in Ringwould. Sylvester was sometimes a church warden there according to Deal Parish records.
Sylvester died sometime after Abraham’s birth in 1647 and before his wife, Ellen, died, with a will in 1649. The last family record at Ringwould is 1644.
Ellen died in 1649 at Waldershire, just down the road from Ringwould, before she was 50 years of age. Many of her children were young. Abraham, the youngest, was only 2 years old. It must have pained her greatly to know that she was going to leave them, and in doing so, leave them as orphans.
In Ellen’s will, shown below, she tells us who her children are and makes the best provisions she can to care for them. It’s the one peek at her life that we have, directly from her….albeit probably through an attorney or equivalent of the time. One thing is for sure, the woman did have some financial means. This family was not poverty stricken.
In the name of God, Amen, the fifth day of April 1649, I, Elin Estes [sic] of the parish of Waldershire [sic] in the County of Kent widow, being sick in body but in perfect memory thanks be given to God, do make and ordain this my last Will and Testament in manner and form following,
First, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God hoping by the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ to enjoy Everlasting life and my body to the Earth to be buried at the discretion of my Executor hereafter named.
First, I give to my son, Thomas Estes, twenty pounds of current money of England to be paid to him as followeth, that is to say, ten pounds at his age of twenty and one years of age and ten pounds when my youngest child shall come to the age of twenty and one years.
Item, I give to my son, Richard Estes, the sum of five pounds when he shall attain to the age of twenty and one years.
Item, I give to my son, Nicholas Estes, fifteen pounds to be paid to him when he shall attain the age of twenty and one years.
Item, I give to my son, John Estes, twelve pounds to be paid to him when he shall attain the age of one and twenty years.
Item, I give to my son, Abraham Estes, the sum of twelve pounds to be paid to him when he shall attain to the age of one and twenty years.
Item, I give to my daughter, Anne Estes, twelve pounds to be paid to her at her age of four and twenty years or day of marriage which shall first happen.
Item, I give to my daughter, Silvester Nash, five pounds when my youngest child cometh to the age of twenty and one years.
Item, I give to my daughter, Susan Estes, the sum of twelve pounds to be paid to her when she shall attain to the age of one and twenty years or day of marriage which shall first happen.
Item, I give to my daughter, MaryEstes, ten pounds to be paid to her when she shall attain to the age of one and twenty years or day of marriage which shall first happen.
Item, I give to my daughter, Elizabeth Estes, ten pounds to be paid to her [next few words crossed through but said: "when she shall attain"] at her age of one and twenty years or day of marriage which shall first happen.
Item, I give to Ellin Estes, my daughter, ten pounds to be paid to her when she shall attain to the age of one and twenty years or day of marriage which shall first happen.
And I do nominate and appoint Robert Estes, my son, whole and sole Executor of this my last Will and Testament and I give to my said son, Robert Estes, all my goods, chattels and household stuff paying my debts and legacies and funeral expenses.
In witness that this is my last Will, I do hereby publish and declare this to be my last Will and Testament in the presence of those whose names are hereunder written:
Thomas Jenkin, John Peers
Ellin Estes, her mark
Her will was proved at London before Sir Nathaniel Brent, Knight, doctor of laws and Master or keeper of the Prerogative Court the sixth day of December in the year of our Lord God one thousand six hundred fifty one by the oath of Robert Estes, the son of the deceased and Executor therein named to whom administration of all and singular the goods, chattels and debts of the said deceased which any manner of ways sworn the same will was granted and committed, he being first legally sworn by virtue of a commission in that behalf issued forth well and truly to administer the same.
I have always wondered why Ellin’s will was probated in London.
At time time of Ellen’s death, she would probably have been attending the church at Waldershare, All Saints Church, which is no longer in service. Like many others in the area, it has a rebuilt Victorian Nave. Jim and I were not able to visit, but it is found on Sandwich Road, Waldershare, near Dover.
The proportions of the building are dramatically affected by the two red-brick chapels on either side of the chancel, both of which were built after Ellen’s death, so the church she knew would have been the original one without the additions.
This is likely where Anne is buried, unless her family took her down the road to Ringwould to be buried with her husband, assuming he was buried at Ringwould. It would be interesting to check the Waldershare church burial records to see if she is listed. For that matter, Sylvester could be buried there as well as Abraham’s christening record.
Ellen’s eldest son, Robert, born in 1626, would found the Waldershare Estes line. Interestingly, Robert in 1670 and again in 1680 donated money towards the redemption of English captives “out of ye Turkish slavery.
While we have managed to piece together some of Ellen’s short life, we are still left with the question of who her parents were. It feel like it’s most likely that they were all members of the same church and lived in the same area. A young couple has to live in relative proximity to court.
The church in Ringwould was gracious enough to provide their transcribed church records in a binder. I photographed the entire grouping and later extracted the relevant surnames.
Ringwould Church Records
Ringwould church records begin in 1569 and include christenings, burials and beginning in 1572, marriages. I did not copy any beyond 1746. These records were transcribed from the originals and provided at the church in Ringwould, where I photographed the pages and have extracted various surnames from their transcription.
Based on the records shown below, the Martin family in Ringwould, living the before Ellen’s marriage to Sylvester, appear to descend from the progenitor, William, who married first Margaret Clark in 1576 and then Elizabeth Hart in 1584. Both wives died, Elizabeth passing in 1597. The only name resembling Ellen is Emlin born in 1580, which would make this person too old to be having children as late as 1647. Based on these records, there are obviously some records missing, such as Thomas’s wedding and the birth of Nicholas who married in 1621.
From the looks of things, Ellen, if born in roughly 1600 could have been a child of a third marriage of William whose wife died in 1697, although he is referred to as “an aged man” at his death in 1614. If he was just age 25 when he first married in 1576, he would have been 63 in 1614. That was certainly aged for that time. However, even “aged men” could and did father children. Ellen could also have been the daughter of Thomas who would have been age 23 in 1600. If that is the case, then William Martin and Margaret Clarke would have been her grandparents. Of course, it’s also possible that her parents had already passed away and she was sent here to live with Martin relatives. It’s worth noting here that her first male child was named Robert for Sylvester’s father but their second male child is named Thomas. There is no William.
Martin
March 5, 1575 – Roger Howell and Beatrix Martyn, married
Nov. 19, 1576 – William Martin and Margaret Clarke, married
April 16, 1677 – Thomas Martyn, son of William christened
Nov. 1, 1579 – Nicholas Martyn, son of William christened
Nov. 8, 1579 – Nicholas Martin, son of William buried
Jan. 22, 1580 – Emlin, daughter of William christened
April 23, 1584 – John Martyn, son of William christened
May 24, 1584 – Margaret Martyn, daughter of William buried
June 24, 1584 – William Martyn and Elizabeth Harte married
July 25, 1584 – John, son of William buried
April 21, 1597 – Elizabeth Martyn, wife of William buried
Jan. 10, 1607 – Margaret Martin, daughter of Thomas christened
April 13, 1614 – William Martin, an aged man, buried
April 28, 1614 – Margaret Martin, daughter of Thomas buried
May 29, 1621 – Nicolas Martin and Elizabeth Whitten married
July 23, 1622 – Margaret Martin, daughter of Nicolas christened
Nov. 24, 1625 – Silvester Esties and Ellen Martin married
Was Ellen the daughter of Thomas or William Martin?
Note – In Ellen supposedly was born in Great Hardres, although that location is probably at least 20 miles distant and it begs the question of why the family came to Ringwould, and when. However, familiarity and family ties in that area may also explain why the Estes family moved back in that direction some 10 miles to Nonington during the English Civil War. However, one of her sons did marry someone from Hardres, so it’s certainly possible. This marriage makes me wonder if there were relatives in that area.
July 29, 1627 – Thomas Martin, son of Nicholas christened
Aug. 6, 1627 – Thomas Martin, son of Nicholas buried
July 27, 1628 – Jane Martin, daughter of Nicholas christened
Jan. 9, 1630 – Thomas Martin, son of Nicholas christened
Sept. 15, 1633 – Ellenor Martin, daughter of Nicholas christened
April 12, 1635 – Nicholas Martin, son of Thomas and Elizabeth
Jan 21, 1637 – John Martin, son of Nicholas and Elizabeth
September 13, 1640 – Elizabeth Martin, daughter of Nicholas and Elizabeth christened
April 4, 1643 – Mary Martin, daughter of Nicholas christened
Nov. 14, 1644 – Wilman Martin, wife of Thomas, buried
Dec. 29, 1647 – John Martin, son of Nicholas buried
March 24, 1664 –William Martin buried
April 16, 1688 – Daniel Martin and Margaret Bradly married
Feb. 28, 1699 – Nicholas Martin, buried
April 16, 1716 – Mary Martin buried
Ellen Martin’s DNA
In order to obtain Ellen’s mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mothers to all of their children, but only passed on by their mother, we would need to find a female child of Ellen who also had female children, to the present generation. In the present generation, the descendant can be a male, so long as they descend from Ellen through all females.
To begin this process, we only have information that two of the daughters lived to adulthood, although we can’t assume that the rest didn’t.
Of the children we know of who did live to adulthood, Ellen married Moses Eastes and had one daughter, Constant, born in 1699, christened at St. Leonard’s Church in Deal, and who subsequently died in 1708.
The other daughter who may have married is Silvester who reportedly married a Nash.
Unfortunately, we have no information about any other daughters, and the presumption is that they died young. Of course, presumptions are related to assumptions.
The only other possibility of obtaining Ellen Martin’s mitochondrial DNA is to figure out who her parents were, and then figuring out if she had any sisters who had daughters to the current generation.
I turned to both Rootsweb and Ancestry to see if perhaps my records were incomplete for this family. Unfortunately, the few female lines there are daughtered out quickly, and as for the rest of the daughters….maybe they didn’t die young. Maybe someone knows something about this family. They don’t seem to have been researched, so perhaps either there is a goldmine waiting to be harvested, or the lines have died out, which is why no one has documented this lineage.
I have a scholarship for either Ellen’s mitochondrial DNA or the Martin Yline from this group of individuals. In the Martin surname project, there seem to be three Martins from Kent, but I can’t tell who is who, assuming that any one of the three could be mine. Bottom line, I would love to have someone from this family line test.
If this is your Martin line, please give me a shout. If nothing else, we can compare records and autosomal DNA!!!
Jim and I discovered when we were booking the DNA journey that the airfare was a pretty big chunk of the cost of the trip. We also like to cruise, and in particular, we love the Mediterranean. However, there were no cruises leaving the right place at the right time for the Mediterranean, but there was one leaving, as luck would have it, the day after we returned to London from the Cotswolds and the Ribble Valley, out of Dover, just down the road. Well, in England, everything is just down the road, as compared with the US. It’s an island, after all.
Woo hoo. Off we go on another adventure.
This cruise lasted 12 days on the Carnival Legend and circled the British Isles as well as stopping in two European ports. My ancestral families were from all over this part of the world, so I can’t go anyplace over here without some kind of ancestral connection. It’s a wonderful problem to have!!!
Our friend, Said, came to get us in his magic carpet Mercedes and we had a wonderful opportunity to chat on the way to Dover. He also took me to a couple of quilt shops on the way to the boat, although there weren’t many. I did manage to find a couple of things, including a couple of tea towels. Sometimes, you just have to make do.
I had been wanting to see the White Cliffs of Dover for years, and had been looking forward to this for weeks. You see, my Estes family is from Kent, just 8 miles up the road. They were fishermen, mariners, and yes, they would have been intimately familiar with these white cliffs. They would have been a landmark for the sailors and fisherman then just as they are today. The castle is still there guarding those cliffs too, probably looking much the same today as 400-500 years ago, especially if you add a little mist or fog to hide the automobiles and modern roads.
The first photo is of the fort and castle of Dover and the second is a panoramic view of the white cliffs. In WW2 our pilots used the white cliffs as a sign they were near safety.
I wonder what my ancestors would think if they knew that some 500+ years after they were fishing here that their 10 times great-granddaughter would come back and would stand right here.
Of course, my Estes family wasn’t the only ancestral family that lived here. We’ll talk about the Estes line when we return. Yes, Jim and I will be visiting the family lands, churches and villages for a few days when we come back into port. I couldn’t be this close and not visit.
However, I was unsuccessful in determining anything about the families of the women from this area who married Estes men. I’m hopeful that perhaps someone will see this list and recognize a name from this region. I did check the associated DNA projects without any luck.
Robert Eastye married Anne Woodward in Shoulden, Kent, just up the road from Deal, on December 2, 1591.
Their son Sylvester Eastye married Ellen Martin just down the road in Ringwould, Kent in 1625. Ellen was reportedly from Great Hadres or Hardres, spelled both ways, nearby.
Records for these families are found in or referring to Great Hardres (A), Deal (C), Shoulden (C), adjacent Deal, Ringwould (D), Waldershare (between D and Dover), Nonington (E) and last, Sandwich (B), where our immigrant ancestor was apprenticed. Records for the Martin or Woodward family from these locations would be immensely helpful. It appears from the church records that families actually were surprisingly mobile within this area.
After boarding the ship, during the welcome reception, we met our old friend, John Heald. He was the cruise director on our first cruise too. Just suffice it to say that, ahem, he remembered Jim. It was great to see John again. He brightens every day and is quintessentially English.
This, by the way, is the lobby area. These ships are “brightly decorated,” to say the least.
Over the years I’ve discovered a couple of things about cruising. First, shawls are very lightweight and can dress even a t-shirt up enough for dinner. Black works with any color. Second, you’ll want to carry a small purse, but it doesn’t need to be any bigger than to hold a lip gloss and your room key. You don’t need anything else on board the ship. This one I’m carrying, my Mom crocheted for me at least 20 years ago, “in case you have someplace fancy to go.” Well, Mom, I do, and you’re along for the ride.
I know this next photo looks like I’m in jail, but I swear, I’m not. This sunset shot was taken from our dinner table out the window. I know, you’re not buying a word of this are you?
Oh yes, another cruise tip…your American Express card will get you out of jail around the world, not that I know personally of course. I do know from the couple that got themselves stranded (twice) and missed the ship’s departure in Istanbul on a previous cruise that your American Express card will purchase plane tickets, limo service, and save your sorry butt when you go into Asia where they tell you not to go! And yes, they did it, not once, but twice, on the same cruise. Let’s just say that the first time everyone felt a little sorry for them, but the second time, they WERE the entertainment until the end of the cruise. A honeymoon they won’t soon forget, or live down.
Now Jim and I have a tradition, and you’re just going to have to suffer through it along with us on this cruise, since you’ve joined us on our journey. Every night, while you’re at dinner, your cabin steward creates a “towel animal” and leaves it on your bed. So every night when we return to our cabin, our towel animal gets posed with something from our day. Yes, I know it’s kind of corny, but it’s a lot of fun and we’ve done it for years now, since our very first cruise. So it’s our tradition!
Oh, and by the way, my first cruise was a genealogy cruise to the Caribbean with my Claxton cousin and his wife who I had met through genealogy and are now my Claxton/Clarkson DNA Project co-admins! Yes, I shamelessly recruited them.
When my cousin’s wife asked if I wanted to go on the cruise, I walked into Jim’s office and announced, “I’m going on a genealogy cruise.” He pronounced, “Well, I’m going with you.” I said, “But you don’t even like genealogy.” He said, “So what.” Well, he has a point. You can’t be bored on a cruise or if you are, it’s entirely your own fault.
Today our towel animal, who might be a seal, is proudly displaying fabric from the quilt shops, along with the business card from the shop and a Carnival pin.
Anne or Ann Woodward married Robert Estes, a mariner, in St. Nicholas Church in Sholden on December 2, 1591, a Monday. Given when she married and her age when she last bore children, she would have been born around 1573 or so.
We don’t know a lot about Anne, we don’t know who here parents were and we know nothing of her early life, before she married. We do know that the Woodward family would have been members of the St. Nicholas of Sholden church at that time, and that if her marriage record exists, surely other church records exist as well. Her parents and perhaps her birth are surely recorded here.
St. Nicholas was constructed in the 1200s and portions of the original church remain. It is located on the original Sandwich/Deal road which passed right through what is now the graveyard with the doorway being on the north side of the church, now enclosed. The present road was constructed in 1795, so after Anne was long buried in Ringwould.
This church was heavily damaged during WWII, in April 1941, but in the nave, some of the original components still remain, believed to date from 1070-1120. The church was not reopened until 1947 when repairs were complete. The bell tower and north isle were added in 13th and 14th centuries when the church was only a few hundred years old.
Here is the Shoulden church in 1918 before it was damaged in WWII, but it is surely more beautiful today.
The bride would have come in from the rear of the church, through these doors, and would have walked down this aisle, unless she entered from the now converted original porch, shown below. This porch would be a remnant of the time when the road passed through the churchyard on this side of the church. Today, this is the “back” but at one time, it was the front.
She would have proceeded to the nave, where she and Robert would have been married, hopefully on a bright sunny day like the day was when we visited in September 2013.
The first child born to Robert and Anne Woodward Estes was born and baptized in Shoulden, but in 1595, they moved down the road a few miles to Ringwould where they would become members of St. Nicholas church there, and where they would live the rest of their lives. There are no Woodward records in that church, so Sholden was definitely the home church of the Woodward family.
The baptismal font in which Anne’s first child was baptized still exists today. The basin and stem are 14th and 15th century, respectively.
1. Matthew Eastes, baptized 11 June 1592 at Sholden, Kent, died as an infant.
2. Sylvester Eastes, baptized 26 September 1596 at Ringwould, Kent;
3. Alice Eastes, baptized 26 March 1597 at Ringwould, married Thomas Beane, 28 October 1628 at Ringwould. They had children Christopher (1628); Richard (1632) of St. Mary the Virgin, Dover, Kent; Mary (1636) of Great Mongeham, Kent; Sarah (1638) of Westminster, London; Judith (1642); and, Thomas (1643) of All Hallows Staining, London. The bolded entries reflect possibilities for mitochondrial DNA testing of descendants.
4. Matthew Eastes, mariner, born 1601, Ringwould, Kent, died 1621, buried 4 June 1621, St Leonard’s, Deal, Kent, he married Margaret Johnson, 23 November 1620, Deal, Kent. Margaret died and was buried 15 October 1622, St Leonard’s, Deal, Kent. Children: Martha (1621) of Deal, Kent, and William (1621-1687) of Ringwould, Kent.
5. Robert Eastes, Jr. was baptized 29 May 1603, Ringwould, Kent, he married Dorothy Wilson, 31 January 1634, Ringwould, Kent. Children: Robert (1635), Thomas (1636), Sylvester (1638), Sarah (1640), infant (1643) of Ringwould, Kent, Matthew (1645-1723) and Richard (1647-1737), both born at Dover, Kent and died in America. This is the “Northern Estes” line that settled in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
6. Thomas Eastes, baptized 2 June 1605 at Ringwould, Kent, died in 1671, at Ringwould, Kent, he married Joan Wilson, 21 November 1636, at Ringwould, Kent.
7. Susan Eastes, baptized 30 October 1608 at Ringwould, Kent.
8. John Eastes, baptized 3 March 1610 at Ringwould, Kent, he spent the latter years of his life in poverty, living on parish assistance. John died in 1684, at Ripple, Kent.
9. (Male) Eastes, born in 1616 at Ringwould, Kent, died at birth.
Since we don’t know who Anne’s parents were, but we do know that this was her home church, I surely have to wonder if they are buried in this very hallowed ground. They must surely be here. Perhaps her grandparents too, and siblings. Even after Anne and Robert Estes moved, Anne was surely back in this church regularly throughout her lifetime.
The church records at St. Nicholas of Ringwould tell us about her children’s baptisms, beginning in 1596. She had additional children in 1598, 1605, 1608 and in 1610 according to church records, and then 1616 happened. It was a terrible year for the Estes family, and for Anne in particular. She and Robert had been married for 25 years. They had several children at home ages, 6 through 20. Anne was pregnant again, expecting her last child, given that she was about 43 years of age. But then tragedy struck. On November 4th, Robert Eustace, householder, was buried. And then 3 days before Christmas, a baby girl was born, and died, before she could be baptized.
Anne was left with 5 children and no husband. Fortunately, her eldest 2 children were males. That’s probably all that saved her. Five years later, her son, Matthew, a mariner, age 20, would die as well, followed by his wife a year later. Who raised their baby? Did Ellen take that child to raise as well?
Nov. 4, 1616 – Robert Eustace, householder buried
Dec. 22, 1616 – daughter of Robert Eustace, not baptized, buried
In 1625, Anne’s children began to marry in this church.
Her son Sylvester Estes was the first, marrying Ellen Martin. That must have been a joyful day, and the next year would welcome Anne’s first child into the world, baptized there as well, from the same baptismal font in which Anne’s own children had been baptized.
More grandchildren arrived and in 1628, her daughter was married as well.
And then there is this solemn entry for Anne’s own death in 1630.
May 18, 1630 – Anne Esties, widdowe, buried
Anne must have been ill, because she made a will on April 4, 1630. It was probated June 9, 1630. Estes researcher Don Bowler found it years ago, but when it was requested from the UK National Archives, they reported that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps Estes was spelled in some odd way.
Anne, Robert and their daughter born in 1616 are all buried in the churchyard at St. Nicholas of Ringwould. Their son Matthew who died in 1621 may be buried here too, assuming he didn’t drown. That could have been Robert’s fate as well. Both men were mariners.
Perhaps they are buried someplace near this centuries old yew that stands silent sentry over generations of Estes descendants of Robert, the mariner, who died in 1616 and Ellen, his wife who died in 1630. This yew would have seen their burials.
There is a Woodward DNA project, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who has tested that can track their lines back to Kent. I’ll gladly offer a scholarship to any Woodward male from this Kent line. I would also be very interested in obtaining the transcribed church records from Sholden in Deal in order to determine the parents of Anne Woodard.
I would also love to offer a scholarship for mitochondrial DNA testing for anyone who descends from Anne through all females to the current generation. If we can determine her parents and siblings, she may also have sisters who may have eligible descendants today. Alice had 2 daughter, but nothing is known of Susan aside from her baptism record. Alice is the only female to survive long enough to marry and reproduce. Alice had 3 daughter, Mary, Sarah and Judith burn in 1636, 1638 and 1642. We know nothing about what happened to these daughters. Maybe they are lurking in your tree???
If you descend from the Kent Woodward family or have access to the Sholden church records, please contact me!!
A great introductory documentary by National Geographic called the Human Family Tree featuring Spencer Wells, and lots of New Yorkers who DNA tested. Like all Nat Geo productions, the photography and video itself is beautifully done.
William Herrell was born in 1790 in North Carolina. In 1809, in Wilkesboro, he married Mary McDowell, born in 1785, the daughter of Michael McDowell who was born in 1747, probably in Bedford County, Virginia, and who died in 1834 in Claiborne Co, Tn. in the portion that became Hancock County later. Most of what we know about Michael is from his Revolutionary War pension application made in 1832. Michael is probably the son of an earlier Michael, who is probably the son of Murtough McDowell who died in 1752 in Baltimore, Maryland, but that is a story for another time.
The 1800 census of Wilkes Co., NC shows Michael McDowell, Jacob McGrady (the minister who married William Herrell and Mary McDowell), and both John Herrell Jr. and Sr. (spelled Harral) on adjoining pages. Based on this evidence, pending further investigation, it is presumed that Michael McDowell is Mary and John’s father and John Herrell Sr. is likely the father of William Herrell.
John McDowell states in his affidavit that he left Wilkes County about 1810 and that Mary and William were married about a year before that. We have every reason to believe that Mary McDowell and William Herrell relocated about that same time to the Mulberry Gap area of then Claiborne, and now Hancock County, Tennessee.
The early tax and census records of Wilkes Co, NC reveal that the Herrell (Harral, Herold, Herrald), McNiel, Vannoy, Sheppard, and McDowell families lived just houses apart. Those families also migrated about the same time to the area that was originally Claiborne County, Tennessee and would eventually become northern Hancock County, near the Lee County, Virginia line and lived in close proximity as neighbors there too. Today, both a Harrell cemetery and the cemetery on Michael McDowell’s land remain. The McDowell cemetery is shown below, under the tree.
The first record in the Tennessee-Virginia area we have shows Mary and William Herrell actually living in Lee County, probably just across the border, in 1812 when they purchased land.
May term 1813 – Oct. 10, 1812 John Claypool and Eliza his wife of Claiborne and William Harrold of Lee Co Va. for the sum of $200 a tract of land lying in Claiborne on the N side of Powell River including a stripe of land on the opposite side of said river included in a tract of land conveyed to William Bails by James Allen bounded as follows: Beginning on the back line in a deep hollow at two hickories and at a dogwood, thence to a white oak marked AB (with the right side of the A the same as the back of the B) thence to the south line of said tract containing 100 acres more or less it being part of a tract of 440 acres conveyed to said William Bails by James Allen as above said conveyance bearing the date Jan. 20 1809. Witnesses William Briance, Michael McDowel (his mark), William Hardy. Registered Dec. 3, 1813.
Their land was aptly named, Slanting Misery. Having climbed this land hunting for the cemetery, I can vouch for the appropriateness of the name. Below is a panoramic view of Slanting Misery.
William Harrell served in the War of 1812. Much of what we know about him and his family comes from his pension application papers, and those of Mary following his death in 1859. William served beginning January 14, 1814, and was discharged May 13, 1814, being in Solomon Dobkins company.
In terms of Mary’s life, she married in Wilkes County in 1809, moved to a new state and environment in 1812 and bought land with her husband. Three months later, her husband marched off to war, leaving her with at least one infant, if not 2 or 3 children by that time, and having to get the crops in the ground in the spring in spite of his absence. She could also have been pregnant at the time, given that women of that era were either pregnant or nursing for their entire married, reproductive lives.
In his deposition taken on March 5, 1855, William states that he is 65 years old and enlisted as a private in Captain Solomon Dobkins company of Tennessee Militia in the regiment commanded by Samuel Bunch in the “War with the Creek Indians,” and served 14 days. According to his military records, he served for 4 months, not 14 days. He could not have traveled to the area in Alabama where he served and back in 14 days.
On July 5, 1871, William’s widow, Mary states she is 86 years old and that she lived on Powell’s River in Hancock County. She further states that William was discharged at Fort Strother in May of 1814 and that William “helped to build Fort Williams in the fork of the Coosey and Talley-Poosey Rivers”.
She says that she was married under the name of McDowell in 1809 at Wilkesboro NC by Jacob McGrady and that William died on October 8, 1859 on Powell’s River.
John McDowell filed an affidavit in 1872 stating that he is 90 years old (so born in 1782) and was acquainted with both William Herrell and Mary McDowell before their marriage. He states that he was at their wedding. Further testimony in 1872 by the postmaster of Mulberry Gap, John Woodward, attests to the honesty of Alexander Herrell and James E. Speer as witnesses to Mary McDowell Herrell’s loyalty. Alexander is believed to be her son and James possibly her son-in-law. There are Spears buried in the McDowell cemetery.
John McDowell is mentioned in the early settlers of Lee County along with a Michael McDowell who is a Revolutionary War veteran, born in 1745 and serving from Bedford Co Va.
The known children of William and Mary McDowell Harrell are:
Mildred born 1816 married Hiram Edins
Nancy born 1820, never married
Mary born 1822 married William Edens
Malinda born 1829
All of the above daughters are unmarried and living at home in 1850 census.
Abel Herrell, born 1824 married Nancy ? probably about 1847, since in 1850 the census shows that they had Margaret M age 2.
Another possible son was Alexander Herrell born 1826 who married Lydia ? and in 1850 had Sirery E age 3 and James J age 2.
Daughter Margaret was born about 1812, married Anson Cook Martin who died about 1845, and in 1850 was shown with the following Martin children:
Evaline b 1830 married Alexander Calvin Busic
William b 1833 married Rachel Markham
John b 1833 married Hannah Eldridge
Selerenda b 1834 married Pleasant Smith
Manerva b 1838
Mary b 1839 married Edward Hilton Claxton
Malinda b 1842 married James Parks
Alexandria b 1844
All of the bolded individuals, if they had daughters who had daughters to the current generation, could provide the mitochondrial DNA of Mary McDowell. There is a scholarship for anyone who fits that bill. In the current generation, the candidate can be either male or female, because women give their mitochondrial DNA to both genders of children, but only females pass it on.
Margaret then married Joseph Preston Bolton about 1850 and had:
o Mary Ann Matilda Bolton born about 1851 married Martin Mordicai Cuningham
o Joseph B. Bolton born on September 18, 1853 and married Margaret Claxton (Clarkston, Clarkson) in 1870 in Hancock County, eventually moving to the little Sycamore Community of Claiborne County. Both Joseph and wife Margaret are buried in the Plank Cemetery. Their daughter Ollie Bolton, born in 1874, died in 1955 in Chicago Ill, married in 1893 to William George. Ollie Bolton was my grandmother.
Mary McDowell Harrell died sometime between 1872 and the 1880 census.
Unfortunately, we don’t have anything in her own voice except for her application for widow’s benefits. The application itself is actually a form.
From all outward appearances, Mary’s life seemed to be pretty routine for the time in which she lived. Unfortunately, we don’t even have a full accounting of all of her children. Many things have been pieced together.
But there was one thing that always seemed unusual to me. Mary, in fact, none of the Herrell’s were ever involved in any of the church records. This was a relatively small, tight-knit, community and there was only one, then two, churches. We have the minutes from both of them, and all of the other neighbors were members. Where was the Harrell family? Their eldest daughter Margaret Herrell joined after she married Joseph Bolton. But no place were her parents in evidence. Why? That is extremely unusual in this time and place.
Well, as it turns out, there was a skeleton in the closet. There was indeed another entire story, a drama, in fact, going on, perhaps not so quietly, behind the scenes.
It started to unravel back in 1983 – the secrecy I mean, when I received a letter from cousin Louise, who, in essence threatened my life if I ever told anyone while she was still alive. She was in her 80s then, so I think I’m safe now. However, if I turn up dead….hunt for Louise!
It seems that William Herrell had another wife, a black wife. Not only that, according to the family story, but he built the black wife a house on the other side of his property, that would be Slanting Misery, and he went back and forth between the two. As you might imagine, this was THE talk of the family, apparently, for generations, and cousin Louise remembered when she was small, which was the early 1900s, her family would still whisper about the young female slave William Herrell bought, and who would then become his defacto wife. It’s no wonder that not one Herrell set foot in church.
Ever the skeptic, I wanted to see if there were any records to support that claim. After all, there was another unrelated Harrell family living about 20 miles away in Claiborne County. Maybe they had the wrong William Herrell. It’s certainly possible. I mean, it’s not like he had an unusual name like Ebenezer.
On the 1830 census, William Herrell had no slaves.
On the 1836 tax list, William had one slave.
On the 1840 census, William had 1 female slave age 10-24, so born before 1830 and one young male slave child under the age of 10.
The 1850 census shows William with 1 mulatto male slave, age 12.
The 1860 slave census shows Mary Herrell and 5 others owning a 33 year old male mulatto slave. These 5 would have been William’s heirs.
The 1870 census shows Cannon Herrell, age 35, mulatto, living with Mary Herrell and her spinster daughter, Nancy.
Cousin Louse did not know Cannon’s name, but other family members did. Cannon was believed to have been William’s son by Harriet, the slave. Whether she was really a slave, unable to leave, or not is questionable. Some say yes some said no. But one thing is clear – legally, Cannon was the property of William Harrell, and then his heirs of law, as evidenced by the 1860 slave census. That just hurts my heart.
Oral history tells us that Mary raised Cannon as her own child after his mother, Harriett, died. That she took him in with her children and raised them all one and the same. The same oral history tells us that Cannon cared for her in her old age.
Indeed, this seems to be confirmed by the 1870 census. He was 35 years old, clearly not a slave anymore, certainly marriageable, especially with assets, but still, he stayed and took care of Mary. In 1880, Mary was gone, Nancy was living in the house alone, and Cannon had married and was living in a house beside 2 of the white Herrell boys.
Cannon died in 1916 and his death certificate gives his mother’s name as Harriett Herrell and his father was “not given.” Cannon was born about 1838.
In 1838, William and Mary McDowell Herrell had been married for 29 years. Mary was born in 1785, age 53, too old to be having children in 1838. Her youngest child was 9 years old. Harriett, on the other hand, was born between 1816 and 1830, based on the census, and assuming she was at least age 13 when she had Cannon, she would have been born between 1816 and 1825. So in 1838, Harriett was someplace between 13 and 22, at least 30 years younger than Mary, and possibly more.
William was slightly younger than Mary, according to his deposition, born in 1790, but still, certainly old enough to have been Harriett’s father, and to know better. It’s difficult for me to believe that the relationship between William and Harriett was entirely consensual, especially given the bonds of slavery. How could she have said no, if she wanted to? Had be freed Harriet, and she stayed by choice, I would feel better about this. Hancock County was formed in 1845 and it’s records burned, so it’s possible that there are records we’ve missed. I find it unlikely that he freed Harriett, because Cannon, her son, is shown enslaved in 1860, legally, if not functionally.
The family story says William would live with one wife until she got mad and threw him out, then he’s go live with the other one until the scenario repeated itself. Maybe the women had a common bond in their dislike of the situation. I have to wonder how Harriett felt about this situation. Was her life better because she bore William’s child? Is that the best she could hope for? Sadly, she never lived to see emancipation. She died between 1840 and 1850, someplace between the ages of 15 and 34, depending on her actual birth year and when she died. In 1865, she would have been between 40 and 49, had she lived that long. Maybe she and Mary would have lived together with their children after William’s death.
I can only imagine the heartbreak that Mary must have felt, her marriage vows having been betrayed by William, and then the persistent presence of the “other woman,” Harriett, and then her child. The “other woman” was only a child herself and certainly did not have a say in much of anything, if anything at all. The other woman was also the age of Mary’s children, and Mary had to know that a slave didn’t get to vote in the matter. Worse yet, it’s likely that Harriett actually lived with William and Mary, at least initially, so this betrayal probably took place in her own home. This situation was clearly William’s responsibility and that was likely clear to everyone, which explains why none of the family attended church. Mary was also probably embarrassed, but there were very few options for her and none for Harriett.
This also wasn’t the deep south were these kinds of master/slave activities went on regularly and unnoticed by virtue of the massive number of slaves on hand and the “everyone does it” type of justification. Slaves were rare in Hancock County, very rare. There was no call for slaves as the ground was relatively nonproductive and could barely produce enough for one family. No slave labor was needed. This begs the question of why William bought a young female slave in the first place. I’d suggest maybe that it was to provide household assistance to his wife, but I’d also suggest that perhaps his wife would have chosen not to have that much help. I also have to wonder why Harriett didn’t have more children. Perhaps she died having a second or third child. Oral history says “children” not child. If they lived as a family in one house, that also explains why Mary took Cannon as her own. Cannon may never have known any mother except Mary, depending on his age when Harriett died. Regardless, Mary had to have a big heart to do that, to take Cannon, love and raise him as her own, given the circumstances. He obviously repaid her in kind. Family love sees no colors, even in the post-slave south. This also explains why my family for the next two generations lived in the “mixed race” area of Hoop Creek.
Oral history goes on to say that when William died, he left his land to all of his children, including his children by Harriett. I only found evidence of one of Harriett’s children that reached adulthood. In 1870, Cannon does have assets, but at the time William died, he would not have legally been able to leave anything to Cannon because Cannon was still enslaved. It’s certainly possible that Mary left Cannon something, but we’ll never know because those records were burned during the Civil War.
And now, the question that I know you’re all dying to ask. Was Cannon really the son of William Herrell?
A few years ago, I was contacted by descendants of Cannon Herrell. It was interesting to compare the family stories. It was evident that there was certainly a common thread in both families stories.
We undertook various DNA tests to determine just that. Was Cannon William’s son? Were we related?
Between the three of us, we spent quite a bit of time locating the right people to test, and convincing them of why we needed the test. Here’s a picture of the three of us when we started our journey of discovery.
And then, the time came. We elected to meet at the Cumberland Gap Homecoming that was sponsored by our Cumberland Gap DNA group, and we would reveal the results. Of course, we also used the opportunity to teach about how to utilize the various kinds of DNA.
On the first day, we did a teaser, a background story. We created a composite of all of the ancestor photos that we could find of both sides that would potentially be related if William was Cannon’s father.
When Jim and I were planning our trip in September of 2013, including the cruise around the British Isles, we carefully selected our side trips to correspond with anything genealogical I could find in that region. Given my colonial Virginia and Appalachian heritage, I have lots of family history in the British Isles, so I felt connected just about everyplace.
One of the stops I was most excited about was the port of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Jim and I planned to visit the Giants Causeway on the far northern shore, but on the way is what I really wanted to see – Kingsmoss Road in Newtownabbey. On the map below, B is Kingsmoss Road located between Belfast (A) and the Giant’s Causeway (C).
Why was I so anxious to see King’s Moss Road? Well, that’s the story of what genetic genealogy can do for you, even in a less than optimal set of circumstances.
Let’s back up several years.
The McDowell project is one of those that doesn’t have a project website at Family Tree DNA, nor a public website of any kind. I’d love to provide a link here, but I can’t. My cousin tested some years back and the project administrator provided me with a spreadsheet showing results and his matches.
The project situation is certainly less than optimal – but still – what I needed was that “one good match” and I indeed, did receive that.
Mary McDowell was born about 1785 and she married William Harrell in 1809 in Wilkes County, NC.
Mary’s father was Michael McDowell, a Revolutionary War veteran, born about 1747. He served from Bedford County, VA and after the war, settled in Wilkes County, NC with his wife, Isabel, last name unknown. Around 1810, Michael, along with a number of other families who were intermarried and lived adjacent moved to what was then Claiborne County, Tennessee, on the border with Lee County, Virginia, in what would in the 1840s would become Hancock County, Tennessee. Mary McDowell and William Harrell were among this group.
Michael’s father is believed to also be Michael McDowell found on a 1755 Bedford County tax list. In 1752, Michael was in Halifax County, Virginia and he was selling his father’s land, in Baltimore, Maryland.
His father’s name was Murto or Murdo McDowell, probably actually Murtough McDowell. We know nothing about him except that he was dead in 1752. Much research remains to be done on this line.
However, DNA testing has allowed us to jump the pond, without knowing who Murtough’s ancestors were or where they were from.
The descendant of Michael McDowell whose test I paid for had three matches, according to the administrator. She sent me a paragraph or so provided by those three matches. One match is from another son of Michael McDowell, one is from Pennsylvania and the common ancestor with that individual is likely overseas in the old country, but the third match was the gold mine.
This gentleman’s father was born in Ireland, outside of Belfast, and he knows exactly where.
“There is a Kings Moss Road and I have been on it. There is also a place called Kings Moss. I have relatives there and my father was born there. It shows Kings Moss on his birth cert.”
This extremely valuable piece of information tells me several things. First, it tells me that this is likely where Murtough was from as well. During this time, the Scotch-Irish were immigrating in record numbers, and while McDowell is originally a Scottish name, it is found in the area of Ireland, now Northern Ireland, where the Scotch-Irish were forced to live – the Ulster Plantations. And, the McDowells are Protestant, very important in Ireland, according to the McDowell match, suggesting strongly that they indeed were not Irish, who are staunchly Catholic. They were strongly Protestant in Wilkes County too, the denomination typically known as Primitive or Hard-shell Baptists.
Kings Moss Road is a very rural area. It’s not a large city, not a “go to” type of location, even though it’s only 15 miles or so out of Belfast.
So I was incredibly excited that I was going to be riding within sneezing distance from where the McDowell family lived, driving on the same roads that my ancestor probably walked on, maybe driving livestock, maybe tending fields or searching for food. You can see, below, it’s just a little divit, a dog-leg, off the main Mossley road, maybe half a mile long, in total. Kingmoss road actually ends at the intersection of B56 and Springwell road. The B balloon is about half way on Kingmoss road. I would be able to see it! I could take a picture or maybe even a movie.
But, unfortunately, Lady Luck was not with me and Lady Fate took over instead. The British Isles was experiencing severe storms including 25-30 foot seas. The port of Belfast was closed, and we could not put into that port. Sometimes they change itineraries, reversing ports, but on this trip, Belfast was cancelled entirely. I was crushed. We had come so far to be turned back. But there was nothing to be done.
So, I did what any technologist would do, I checked to see if this area of Northern Ireland had street views in Google Earth. I was amazed to discover that it did. So I took a virtual, turn by turn, tour. Come along!
It certainly wasn’t quite the same as being there, but it’s decidedly better than nothing at all. I wonder what other places might be available to visit virtually that I had never considered previously.
And of course, being a genealogist, I’m now wondering where the closest church is to this location, and if the records still exist for that church. Murtough was likely born sometime around 1700, if not earlier. Could I possibly be that lucky???? Is Lady Luck with me? Has she returned?
Occasionally, synchronicity steps in. Do you ever look for a sign? Something hopeful….maybe from the ancestors themselves??? Like my friend who was hunting for her ancestor’s gravestone, with absolutely no luck. Not watching where she was walking, she stepped into a hole and turned her ankle, causing her to fall. As she lay there on the ground taking stock of the situation, she realized that to get up, she was going to have to roll sideways until she could reach a stone to help her stand up. She looked at the stone directly beside her and it was indeed, her ancestor that tripped her up.
Sometimes, you just notice something incredible. Now I know there is probably, most probably, no correlation or relation at all. But still, I want to share with you something I discovered.
Joseph Rice was born about 1700, possibly earlier, probably in Hanover County, Virginia, and died in 1766 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He married Rachel, whose last name is unknown, probably about 1725-1730. Rachel died after Joseph but before 1792.
For a long time, Joseph was believed to be the son of Matthew Rice, who lived adjacent to his property in Prince Edward County, Virginia, but this has now been disproven. Matthew is Joseph’s brother. Joseph’s parents are believed to be Thomas Rice, born about 1660 in the British Isles, and who reportedly died about 1716 reportedly on a ship returning to collect his inheritance. Thomas’s wife was Marcy who was possibly a Hewes. Thomas was first found in the New Kent County records of St. Peter’s Parish baptizing his children:
James the sone of Thom: Rice & Marce his wife baptized ye 4 day of April 1686.
Thom: son to Thomas Rice bapt. ye 24th: day of June 1688.
Edward Son to Thomas Rice bapt: ye 17 of April 1690.
John Son of Tho Rice & Marcey his wife bapt the 18 Septemr 1698.
Mary Dautr of Tho Rice baptiz the 19 September 1700.
Alice daut of Tho Rice baptz the 19 September 1700.
Marcy dautr of Tho Rice baptized the 5 July 1702.
Thomas’s other children’s baptism records are absent.
I have always wondered about the records in the Vestry book in New Kent and then what would become Hanover Co in Va. Thomas Rice and his wife Marcy are recorded having children in this book, but then some children are apparently missing. Why? I copied part of the transcribed book, including the intro pages, and here is what I found.
“The back part (pages 1-143) contains a record, apparently very incomplete, of births, marriages, baptisms and deaths in the parish between 1685 and 1730 or 31 when a new book was begun.”
The transcriber also goes on to say:
“Of this number some 20 or more leaves have been torn out, apparently at random, generally speaking only 1 leaf at a time is missing, but occasionally two consecutive and in one case three. Furthermore of the ones that remain, or rather that have been counted as remaining, many have been torn or otherwise mutilated to the point where there is less than half and in some cases less than fourth of the sheet left.”
In 1802, this parish was split into two.
Thomas’s immigration is proven by a 1700 land patent to George Alves of New Kent Co. for importing people into the colony which includes the name of Thomas Rice. Marcy’s name is not mentioned which may mean he married her after his arrival before 1686, the date of his first child’s baptism.
We know Thomas owned land, but we don’t know how he acquired it. He died sometime between 1711 and 1716 when his wife was called Widdow Rice, possibly on a boat returning to the old country for his inheritance.
Unfortunately, records are very sparse because the majority of the records of Hanover County were burned during the Civil War, however the parish records of St. Paul’s Parish of Hanover and St. Peter’s Parish of New Kent are extant. Hanover County was formed from New Kent County in 1721.
Joseph is not proven to be the child of Thomas, but circumstantial evidence and family oral history is compelling.
We find Joseph consistently with Matthew Rice, known son of Thomas, owning land beside him in Prince Edward County, Virginia the two men being constantly intertwined throughout their lives.
Joseph Rice is first mentioned in a merchants account book in 1743 in Hanover County, Virginia.
Matthew Rice is first found mentioned in a deed executed in 1741 in Amelia Co., VA, which then encompassed present-day Prince Edward County. He purchased 800 acres and was identified as “of St. Martin’s Parish” of Hanover Co. Matthew accumulated considerable land in Sandy River area close to the land of Joseph Rice, who first obtained land in a 1746, a 400 acre land grant on Sandy River (near Great Saylor Creek) in Amelia (later Prince Edward) County. Later probate records indicate these two men were contemporaries in age. They likely were brothers since their children were near in age and were similarly named.
Joseph surveyed and worked on roads, served on jurys and voted for representatives in the House of Burgesses.
I visited Prince Edward County in 2007 and while I wasn’t able to pinpoint Joseph’s exact land, it was likely near here on Rolling Road, which appeared in his deeds.
In 1759, Joseph was granted permission to build a “meeting house” on his property, indicating he was a fervent member of a dissenting religion (not Anglican), probably a Methodist given that his 2 grandsons, William and Rice Moore became early Methodist ministers in Halifax Co., Va. and Grainger Co., Tn., respectively, in the 1770’s.
Matthew Rice in Prince Edward County lived adjacent Joseph Rice and James Moore. Matthew is the son of Thomas Rice and Marcy. Joseph is not Matthew’s son. The proof lies in these deeds.
All 3 of these deeds are executed on May 18, 1765:
Matthew Rice of Prince Edward County to John Rice of Prince Edward County for the love which I have for my son John Rice of Prince Edward County, 165 acres on the branches of Sandy River in Prince Edward bounded by Matthew Rice Sr., Matthew Harris, Deep Bottom branch, north fork of the Great Branch of Sandy River, Thomas Smith, signed Matthew Rice wit Matthew Rice Jr., Thomas Turpin, recorded May 20, 1765
Matthew Rice of Prince Edward County to Nathan Rice of Prince Edward County for the love and affection I have for my son Nathan Rice a certain tract of land about 165 acres on the branches of Sandy River in Prince Edward bounded by Matthew Rice Jr., Daniel Lewallings plantation cornering on the branch, the Great Branch of Sandy River, Thomas Turpin, Matthew Rice Sr., Thomas Smith. signed. wit Matthew Rice Jr., Thomas Turpin, recorded May 20 1765
Matthew Rice of Prince Edward County to William Rice of Prince Edward County for the love and affection I have for my son William Rice of Prince Edward County a certain tract of land about 175 acres on the branches of Sandy River in Prince Edward bounded by Elizabeth Barns, the road, Joseph Rice Sr., William Womack’s new corner line, Matthew Rice Sr., the branch that runs between David Rice and Joseph Rice Jr, it being half of a tract of land that Matthew Rice Sr. bought of Samuel Goode. signed. wit Matthew Rice Jr, George Rabourn recorded May 20 1765.
Note that I don’t show a land purchase from Samuel Goode to Matthew in either Amelia or Prince Edward County, but the Good(e) surname is everpresent with the Rice family, and I have to wonder if Rachel, wife of Joseph Rice was a Goode.
William, Nathan and John Rice were children of Matthew Rice and Ann McGeehee. Doing the math backwards, this means that all 3 of these people were of course born 21 years or more before this time, so before 1745. I show a birth year of 1738 for Nathan and 1742 for William. I don’t show a date for John.
Matthew Rice Sr. was born about 1696. Therefore he would have married and began having children between about 1716/1725.
Anyway, Matthew deeds his land to three of his sons. In the last deed, he references both Joseph Rice Sr. and Joseph Rice Jr., which threw me for a loop for a minute until I realized that our Joseph Rice (Sr)’s son Joseph would have been coming of age about this time, born before 1744 because he was of age when his father Joseph Sr. died in 1766, so he would be referenced as Jr. by this time in 1765.
We know old Thomas Rice and Marcy were in Hanover County having children because the Parish register shows the baptisms from 1686-1700. Two known children, Matthew and William were omitted, but thought to be born in 1792 (William) and 1796 (Matthew). Perhaps they were reversed. There are children every 2 years for all of the other slots, so if not then, they Matthew would have had to be born before 1692 (possible) or after (1700) very unlikely given the ages of the children.
Until I found a chancery suite, it was believed that Joseph was the son of Matthew, but this chancery suit, filed after Matthew died in 1775, proves otherwise. Ann McGeehee was Matthew’s second wife and their children were all under 21 when he died in 1775. Ann had 8 children by Matthew, and I believe that Benjamin Rice was the oldest of her children and came of age sometimes about 1776 because he is not listed as an infant in 1776.
We know that Benjamin went west in 1787 or 1788 from the suit. So let’s say Benjamin was born about 1755, so the other kids Matthew, Charles, Nathan, James, William and John were born to the first wife. Let’s say it took Matthew 2 years to remarry. So he would have married his first wife about 18 years before 1755, so 1737. I show Matthew Jr. in my data base as being born about 1735, so all of that makes sense.
However, the chancery suit gives all the names of his children, says that Matthew Jr. is the eldest child, and says nothing about a Joseph. So Joseph must be a brother to Matthew Sr. and not his son, which means that Joseph was the child directly of Thomas Rice and Marcy, or of some other Rice male in that neighborhood at that time. However, there are no other Rice’s recorded in the parish registers in that time and place.
Joseph Rice’s will was written in 1765 and probated on June 16, 1766, naming his wife Rachel, his children, several still underage, and his son-in-law James Moore. What we know about Joseph’s family is limited and is based on his will and other evidence. His children are listed the order they are set forth in his will along with their inheritance.
Son-in-law James Moore 100 acres of the land “whereon I live”.
John Rice, underage when his father wrote his will, born after 1744, inherited land adjoining James Moore.
William Rice, underage, 100 acres of the “east part of tract whereon I live”.
Charles Rice, underage, “remainder of land where I live after death of wife”.
David Rice, born before 1744, 133 acres of land where “he now lives”.
Joseph Rice, born before 1744, 133 acres” where he now lives”. Joseph also married a Rachel and had 4 children, John, Salley, Massey and Martha Patsy.
Mary Rice, feather bed, furniture, cow and calf. Given that Mary was James Moore’s wife, it’s unclear why Joseph named her separately and with her maiden name, unless James first wife died and he later remarried to Mary. We do know that James’ wife’s name in Halifax County was Mary. These people are my ancestors.
Not mentioned in Joseph’s will, but proven as his son by earlier deeds of gift, is his son Icay Rice. Icay settled very early in current Bourbon Co., Ky. where he obtained a preemption grant in 1779 just before his massacre on June 20, 1780 at Martin’s Station by Indians. His wife and 4 children were taken prisoner and taken to Detroit where his wife, possibly named Maiden, subsequently remarried.
There is also an unexplained William Rice who died in 1760 in Prince Edward County and Joseph Rice is an appraiser for him. We know this William is not Joseph’s son William, who is alive in 1765 when Joseph makes his will, nor Matthew’s son William who is alive in 1765 when Matthew deeds land to him. Who was this William? Joseph was most likely related to William in some manner.
By 1770, James Moore and his wife, Mary Rice Moore had moved to Halifax County, VA and their children were:
James Moore born circa 1785 married Lucy Akin
Rev. William Moore born 1750/1751 married Lucy unknown
Rev. Rice Moore married Elizabeth Madison and moved to Grainger County, Tennessee
Mackness Moore born before 1766 married Sarah Thompson and moved to Grainger County, Tennessee
Sally Moore born about 1767 married Martin Stubblefield and moved to Grainger County, Tennessee
Mary Moore bore before 1769 married Richard Thompson
Lydia (probably) Moore born about 1746 married Edward Henderson and lived beside James Moore
Thomas (possibly) Moore, died leaving an orphan
This inventory of Joseph Rice’s estate gives us our only insight into his daily life and tells us a great deal about the man. He was not poor, by any means, but he did not own slaves, which would be in keeping with the Methodist faith. He was probably a soldier, a member of the mustered county militia. Most men were. He could have served in the French and Indian war. Let’s take a peek at what he left behind when he departed this Earth:
31 cattle
mare, 5 horses
12 sheep
10 geese
16 hoggs
Cart, wheels, old rake
12 bells
4 jugs, butter pott
some camphire and tickler (tuhler) bottles and a funnell
4 pair cards
3 drawing knives
parcel carpenter tools
parcel shoemaker tools
two old swords, pistol barrel
3 reaphooks, meal sifters
old baskets, wool, flax
bed (2), bedstead, furniture, bag of feathers
barrell with salt
3 old chests and a box
Corn, cotton, tand leather
money scales
ladle, fleshfork
parcel of old books
some bottles and old punchboles
rifle, smooth bore gun belt, shot bagg
2 smoothing irons, 2 candlesticks
2 iron wedges, parcel of old hoes and axes
parcel of pewter dished
parcel of cyder casks
parcel of salt
4 old saddles and horse harnesses
3 bee hives
whip and cross cut saw
6 iron potts, a grinstone, pan
loom and slay
washing tub, water pails
wollen wheal
2 tables, parcel of chairs
shears, iron skillet, pickler bottle, bridle bitt
3 beds, furniture
3 cattle hides, knives, forks
parcel of wax and tallon
spectacles, razor, hone
paper, some bottles, old file
pair bullet moles
3/4 of a hoggshead crop tobacco
Inventory returned to court March 16 1767
Was Joseph a carpenter or a shoemaker, or was he a jack of all trades out of necessity? Did he use those swords? If so, when and where? Where is the rest of the pistol? Are bullet moles actually molds? Did he make his own ammunition to put in his shot bag? Is there a story to be told?
There were books. Could he read? We know he can at least sign his name because the deeds he executed in his lifetime are signed, not marked with an X. What were the books? There are spectacles. I can see this man wearing his spectacles beside the fireplace, sitting at one of his 2 tables, reading his books by the light of his two candles.
I turned to the Rice DNA project to see if I could better define Matthew Rice, or his line. This DNA project is not housed at Family Tree DNA and it does not provide oldest ancestor information on their website. Unable to make heads or tails of this site, I wrote to the administrator and asked about descendants of Matthew Rice. The administrator replied:
“I have not updated my records in sometime, but at least #4086 who is a descendant of Jesse Rice born circa 1778 of Shelby and Muhlenburg, KY who believes they are descendants of Matthew Rice of Prince Edward County, VA is in Group 4. #4086 has no exact matches, so I am unsure if there are other descendants of Matthew or not.”
The information about group 4 shows the following.
“Although nine of the donors have tentatively been traced back to Rices of Virginia, and eight others to Rices of Kentucky or the Carolinas (and probably to Virginia ultimately), the identification of the progenitor remains uncertain. Indeed, some other testees who do not match seem to be contending for the same progenitor (Thomas Rice of Gloucester Co, Va., c1650 – c1716). It will be necessary to test more descendants to firm up this group.”
But this part, this is really painful.
“Besides the results presented here, some of the participants have tested for certain additional loci with much lower mutation rates. These loci are used in studies of population genetics to define categories known as haplogroups. Since haplogroups are distributed broadly on continental scales and date back to prehistoric times, these categories are not useful for genealogy, and we have avoided displaying them here. Indeed, they would be a hindrance, since they have a notable tendency to distract viewers and participants alike from genealogical pursuits.”
I really want to know the Rice haplogroup. I track all of my haplogroups on my DNA pedigree chart. Furthermore, I want to know a detailed haplogroup. There is so much deep ancestry to be gleaned here and historical context that is unavailable without the haplogroup information.
I wrote to the administrator again, and was very pleasantly surprised to discover that they also maintain the Family Tree DNA Rice project site, grouped in the same way. Now, if they just showed the oldest ancestor too, that would be really useful!!!
The good news is that many of these Rice descendants have their haplogroup extended, including kit 4086, believed to be descended from Matthew. They are haplogroup R1b1a2a1a1b, otherwise known as P312. This SNP in effect divides haplogroup R in half, sometime around 4000 years ago in Europe, distributing from the west of the Rhine basin.
Many people test additional SNPs downstream of P312, but the project doesn’t have the SNP table turned on, so I can’t see if anyone in this group has tested with Geno 2.0 and what extended haplogroup they might be. However, with the new haplotree, promised shortly by Family Tree DNA, hopefully this problem will be resolved because the most downstream named haplogroup will show for everyone.
However, sometimes there is more than one way to discover information.
I decided to check the Haplogroup P312 project to see if any of the Rice’s in this group had joined that project. They do have oldest ancestors enabled, and SNPs as well.
I discovered that kits 4897 and 4131 are found in the DF27 group where the administrator wants participants to also test for Z196.
Both of these men list their oldest ancestor as Thomas Rice, Gloucester Co., VA born circa 1655 and died in the early 1700s. One says 1711, one says 1716. Both show his country or origin as Wales. I wonder if that is something that is documented or they have just assumed due the Rice surname being commonly Welsh. For the first time, recently I’ve seen Thomas’s birth listed as having occurred in 1650 in Shirenewton, Monmouthshire, Wales, but I’ve been unable to find any source for that information, so at this point, I have treated it as simply a hint. I’m not even sure how to go about verifying someone’s birth in 1650 in Wales.
I turned to my British friend, Brian, for help with these records and he every so kindly checked the book, “The British Registers of servants Sent to Foreign Plantations, 1654-1686” by Peter Wilson Coldham to see if Thomas Rice was listed. Indeed, he was.
“Thomas Rice of Shire Newton, Glam, To Clement Blake, mariner, 4 years Barbados.”
This entry was dated August 15, 1656. Next, of course, we need to know if indeed, in Wales, near Shire Newton, there was a Rice whose estate was probated sometime between 1711 and 1716. If the story about Thomas’s death is true, then there would be an estate for him to collect. Of course, if his family was well enough off to leave an estate, why was Thomas Rice bound in the first place instead of his family simply paying his transportation?
Moving back to Thomas’s DNA – checking the SNP tab in the DF27 project, it shows is that kit number 4131, a descendant of Thomas Rice, indeed has had additional testing done, which eliminates several common downstream haplogroups.
4131
Thomas Rice, Gloucester Co,VA,ca1650-ca1716 (WLS?]
Even better yet, kit 4897 has taken the Geno 2.0 test and has had many downstream SNPS tested. Indeed, this is my lucky day. This result extends to all of the Rice men who descend from a common ancestor. We can see below that indeed, DF27 is positive.
Unfortunately, SNP Z196 is not one that is tested in the Nat Geo test, so we’re stuck until the new tree is released, unless, unless….these men have tested SNP Z196 and have joined the DF27 project. Would I be that lucky? Let’s see.
WooHoo, it is my lucky day. Both men have joined the DF27 project, both have apparently tested SNP Z196 because they are both clustered in the group titled “Aa. DF27+Z196- (R1b-DF27*).” Translated, that means they do have the DF27 haplogroup mutation, they don’t have the Z196 haplogroup mutation and the DF27* means that they have tested all downstream SNPs available and they don’t have any, so they are confirmed DF27 and not DF27 with untested downstream SNPs. So even though I can’t see these results directly, the grouping told me everything I need to know!!! Thank you DF27 project admins!!!
So, I’m excited to see where the men with this mutation set are found. Do they cluster someplace in Europe? Will we be able to tell anything from where they are found, as a group? Keep in mind, this map is generated from the “most distant ancestor” field and location, and if you don’t enter that geographic information on the Matches Map, it won’t show up here. What this means is that there are probably a lot more people who could be plotted here but haven’t entered their ancestor’s location information. Let’s see what we have.
This is very interesting. Aside from the British Isles, which is after all, a destination location for the rest of Europe, these group participants are widely scattered. Not something I expected. They are literally found from Spain to Scandinavia and east to west. Let’s take a closer look at the British Isles.
There is no Irish or Scottish cluster. Most of these participants ancestors are from England. Interestingly, there is no Wales cluster either. In fact, there is only one person in Wales, a Davies from Monmouthshire, which, ironically, is where Thomas Rice is supposed to be from in one set of records. Of course, verifying those records and proving it’s the same Thomas Rice are horses of a different color. What this does tell me though is that the two Rice men have listed their oldest ancestor on the Most Distant Ancestor tab, they have not entered the geographic information on the Matches Maps tab. It’s very easy to miss.
We’ve learned a lot through our little DNA sleuthing journey to find the results of our Rice line’s DNA. We’re now back some 4000 years or so in Europe and now we’re looking to figure out what type of historic migration event would populate England but not Ireland or Scotland with the DF27+Z196- men. It surely wasn’t Vikings and we know that Scotland and Ireland were settled by the Celtic people, so it wasn’t them. Who was it? Where did these people come from before England?
This Saxon England map above is similar to the distribution of the DF27* group in England, but we know that the Saxons were clustered in Germany before they arrived in England, and doesn’t fit the continental European distribution of this haplogroup very well.
This map shows Roman Britain and contains the distribution of DF27 quite well, including the portion in Scotland along Antoine’s Wall which is the northern walled border of Roman Britain.
Roman soldiers were recruited and conscripted from all over Europe. At one time Rome controlled most of Europe. The extent of the Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD is shown on the map below.
Which one of these scenarios might best fit the cluster of matches that includes our Thomas Rice? In time, we may discover that answer.
Sometimes looking to the history of the area where an ancestral family is first found is helpful. If, indeed, our Thomas is from Shirenewton, the history of Shirenewton tells us this:
“Before the Norman invasion of Wales, the Shirenewton area formed part of the forest of Wentwood (Welsh: Coed Gwent). At the time of the Domesday Book, it was part of the lands at Caldicot which were held by Durand, the Sheriff of Gloucester. Durand and his successor as sheriff, his nephew Walter FitzRoger also known as Walter de Gloucester, had part of the forest cleared around the year 1100, and established a small settlement which was known as “Sheriff’s Newton (or New Town)” or, in Latin, Nova Villa. The manor then became known as Caldecot-cum-Newton, and in some documents the village was called Newton Netherwent. “Netherwent” is the English name given to the Welsh cantref of Gwent-is-coed (Gwent beneath the wood, i.e. Wentwood), with “-went” deriving from the Roman town of Venta which became Caerwent. The name “Sheriff’s Newton” became contracted over the years into Shirenewton.
But back to our Rices after they adopted their surname which was after 1086 and probably before 1300, or so. Was our Rice line really from Wales? Do Thomas Rice born about 1650 and found in Gloucester County, Virginia and Thomas Rice born about 1660 in the British Isles and found in New Kent/Hanover County, Virginia share a common grandfather or great-grandfather perhaps? And was that ancestor found in Wales? Do records exist for this timeframe that could confirm or refute the claim that Thomas from New Kent/Hanover indeed was sailing back to claim an inheritance sometime between 1711 and 1716? The answers to all of these questions, some resting in history, some in genealogy and some in the genetics of the future wait for us to answer them.
The amazing thing is that we were able to make this discovery about the Matthew Rice line through his common paternal Rice cousins. I don’t have a male Rice descendant to test. This was done entirely “second hand” or as we could have called it at home, via “shirttail cousins.” In this case, shirttail cousins equate to Y DNA cousins, and that’s exactly what was needed. Now, let’s hope that the genealogy is correct for kit number 4086. While that is a serious consideration, I do know the genealogy of some of the Matthew lines and they did indeed wind up in Muhlenburg, KY where this participant’s ancestors are found, so I’m not terribly concerned about the line being connected to the wrong ancestor.
So, just for the record, anyone who thinks that project fields like haplogroup, oldest ancestor and location aren’t important to be displayed in any project are mistaken and deprive genealogists of information that could be useful.
Furthermore, project features like maps and SNPs, provided free by Family Tree DNA, can very simply be enabled and provide a wealth of knowledge to researchers, especially those who don’t have a male line to test.
One should not go to sleep at 8:30 at night. Because one wakes up at, let’s say, about 4:30 in the morning. However, I laid down to read and the Carnival Legend was gently rocking and the next thing I knew, I was sound asleep. No evening entertainment or shows for me that night! Too bad, because the shows are wonderful and the cost is included. This shot below is from the show on the Carnival Splendor. We sailed on her before. I can’t show you the photo from this cruise, because, obviously, I slept through the shows….all of them. Yep, every last one.
The other disturbing thing that is happening is that I’m now dreaming in that cockney British accent. I’ve never had this happen before, except when I lived in France. And I’ve only been here for 10 days or so. And the problem is that I don’t understand about half of what they are saying. You see, after 300 years or so, British and American English are only distant cousins, kind of like we are to them. And when you take into consideration that English is a second language in most of London, you’re dealing with cockney British English spoken by a non-native speaker – and then you understand about every 4th word. So I understand only part of what people are saying in my dreams. But that’s OK, I just make up the rest to be what I want it to be! It’s my dream, after all.
Yesterday was a “sea day” meaning we didn’t dock in any ports. We won’t discuss this particular sea day because the word of the day was “Dramamine.” High winds forced us to change the schedule as well, and we’re going to miss one of the ports I was very excited to visit, because the tour we had booked was going to go right past the last of the McDowell family whose DNA my McDowell family matches, in Northern Ireland, on King’s Moss Road in Ballyrobert, Newtown. When you’re trying to use DNA to find your family location in the old country, this is indeed the Holy Grail. I’m so close but yet so far.
The problem is that it’s storming and there are extremely high seas, 25-30 foot waves. To put this in perspective, waves are generally no more than 6-8 feet. The port of Belfast has closed and we’ve been rerouted. We’re going, guess where…. back to Liverpool which is adjacent Chester. In fact, Chester is one of the shore excursion options. Instead, Jim and I chose to go to Conway Castle in North Wales.
Try as I might, I could not find any ancestor who was from Wales. There is one rumored to be from Wales, one Peter Johnson supposedly born 1715 in Wales and who died in 1790 in Allegheny Co., PA. He married Mary Polly Philips. I also have a Thomas Rice, which is a Welsh name, rumored to be from Shirenewton, Monmouthshire Wales, born about 1660, but no proof. This probably means I just haven’t hunted deep enough, because someone has to be Welsh.
There is a Wales Cymru DNA project at Family Tree DNA for people who can prove their ancestors back to Wales. This project is for both Yline and mitochondrial DNA. Due to the importance of determining the genetic profile of the indigenous populations of the British Isles, The Wales/Cymru DNA Project collects the DNA haplotypes of as many persons as possible who can trace their Y chromosome and/or mtDNA lines to Wales; the reasoning by many researchers being that there was less genetic replacement from invaders in Wales than elsewhere, excepting small inaccessable islands and similar locales.
Having said that, tradition among historians holds that the Celts retreated as far west into Wales as possible to escape invading populations. The Wales DNA project seeks to determine the validity of that theory. Their long term goal is to identify the haplotypes of the Welsh Princes. They provide a nice list of resources on this page if you have Welsh ancestry.
I decided to dig a bit deeper. In the Rice DNA project, kit number 4086 is reportedly a descendant of Matthew Rice, who is probably the brother of my Joseph Rice (c1700-1766) who was married to Rachel. If this is the case, and if the project grouping is correct in terms of family association, then my Matthew could have been Welsh.
So, I’m going to enjoy Wales assuming that I do indeed have Welsh ancestry and I simply haven’t proven it yet! If nothing else, I’m Welsh for a day because today, we’re visiting Conwy Castle.
Conwy Castle (Welsh: Castell Conwy) is a medieval fortification in Conwy, on the north coast of Wales. It was built by Edward I, during his conquest of Wales, between 1283 and 1289. Constructed as part of a wider project to create the walled town of Conwy, the combined defenses cost around £15,000, a huge sum for the period.
This rendition shows the town within the walls as it would have appeared in the 1200s when initially build.
Over the next few centuries, the castle played an important part in several wars. It withstood the siege of Madog ap Llywelyn in the winter of 1294–95, acted as a temporary haven for Richard II in 1399 and was held for several months by forces loyal to Owain Glyndŵr in 1401.
Following the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, the castle was held by forces loyal to Charles I, holding out until 1646 when it surrendered to the Parliamentary armies. In the aftermath the castle was partially slighted by Parliament to prevent it being used in any further revolt, and was finally completely ruined in 1665 when its remaining iron and lead was stripped and sold off.
UNESCO considers Conwy to be one of “the finest examples of late 13th century and early 14th century military architecture in Europe”, and it is classed as a World Heritage site. The rectangular castle is built from local and imported stone and occupies a coastal ridge, originally overlooking an important crossing point over the River Conwy. Divided into an Inner and an Outer Ward, it is defended by eight large towers and two barbicans, with a postern gate leading down to the river, allowing the castle to be resupplied from the sea.
Unfortunately, Conway Castle is so large that I couldn’t get far enough away from it to get a good photo. The outside of it is at least 2-3 stories below the inside courtyard and castle main area where I was. The entire city was walled with a total of 21 towers and everything inside was part of the castle complex. The magnitude of this castle was simply astounding. It only took 4-5 years to complete. It was built in the 1200s and is in ruins today. But they are beautiful ruins. The 8 castle towers and walls are all still intact.
When we were in Chester, I wanted to walk the old city walls, but we didn’t get a chance to do that. Here, I walked the walls, around the castle, but the wall walk at one time extended entirely around the city.
You can see in the photo below that the castle walls seamlessly transition into the city walls.
In addition, I climbed the very small, very tight circular stone stairs to the top of one of the paraphets, or towers. The views were utterly stunning. I’m glad I did it, but I won’t be doing it again. Between the height, the wind and the motion sickness from the circular stairs, once is enough. The next few photos are from the paraphet walk.
Can you imagine maneuvering a bus through the city wall? Well, our driver knew that there was only one wall entrance that had a 3 inch clearance, side to side, and that is the only entrance the bus would fit through. And it was not this entrance.
After leaving Conway Castle, we went and had lunch in Betws-y-Ceod, a resort area in North Wales. We had lunch at the historic Village Inn where they served us lamb. We had no choice in this matter. So, I ate lamb. I still don’t like lamb, but I did try it. For dessert, we had strawberries and cream, which made up for the lamb.
By then, it was pouring but we had 45 minutes or so of shopping time, so we visited some local shops which is, of course, what tourists do.
There is a very quaint local courting custom. Young men interested in young women would carve wooden spoons with highly decorated handles and give them as a gift to the object of their desire. They are called love spoons. The number of balls on the handle tells her how many children he wants to have, inferring of course, with her. This custom is excusive only to Wales. You can see many examples in the LoveSpoon store, of course.
We also tried Welsh cakes and had a little dessert picnic. Welsh cakes are a cross between pancakes, cookies and biscuits. They were different. We tried three kinds, one berry of some sort, one with sugar and cinnamon – how could that be bad? But the third was called “savory” and to me it tasted like it had lamb in it. Not my favorite.
Back on our bus and back to our floating home. The great thing about cruises is that you only unpack once and the cruise line worries about logistics. All you have to worry about is getting yourself back on that bus at the appointed time.
Tonight at dinner, we left port just as we were seated. As we moved out to sea, we saw a wind farm in the sea, followed by an oil rig.
You can see how hard the wind was blowing because the flame at the top is burning sideways, not straight up. Very rough sea tonight. I’m ready for bed and I’m wearing my sea bands to bed tonight with my fingers crossed.
Our towel guy tonight was a scorpion and had a tea towel of the flag of Wales, a sweater I bought, the giveaway book about Wales and two love spoons on his fingers.
On April 25th, DNA Day and Arbor Day, Family Tree DNA updated and released their 2014 Y haplotree created in partnership with the Genographic project. This has been a massive project, expanding the tree from about 850 SNPs to over 6200, of which about 1200 are “terminal,” meaning the end of a branch, and the rest being proven to be duplicates.
If you’re a newbie, this would be a good place perhaps to read about what a haplogroup is and the new Y naming convention which replaces the well-known group names like R1b1a2 with the SNP shorthand version of the same haplogroup name, R-M269. From this time forward, the haplogroups will be known by their SNP names and the longhand version is obsolete, although you will always see it in older documents, articles and papers. In fact, this entire tree has been made possible by SNP testing by both academic organizations and consumers. To understand the difference between regular STR marker testing and SNP testing, click here.
I’ve divided this article into two parts. The first part is the “what did they do and why” part and the second is the “what does it mean to you” portion.
This tree update has been widely anticipated for some time now. We knew that Family Tree DNA was calibrating the tree in partnership with the Genographic project, but we didn’t know what else would be included until the tree was released.
What Did Family Tree DNA Do, and Why?
Janine Cloud, the liaison at Family Tree DNA for Project Administrators has provided some information as to the big picture.
“First, we’re committed to the next iteration of the tree and it will be more comprehensive, but we’re going to be really careful about the data we use from other sources. It HAS to be from raw data, not interpreted data. Second, I’ve italicized what I think is really the mission statement for all the work that’s been done on this tree and that will be done in the future.”
Janine interviewed Elliott Greenspan of Family Tree DNA about the new tree, and here are some of the salient points from that discussion.
“This year we’re committing to launching another tree. This tree will be more comprehensive, utilizing data from external sources: known Sanger data, as well as data such as Big Y, and if we have direct access to the raw data to make the proof (from large companies, such as the Chromo2) or a publication, or something of that nature. That is our intention that it be added into the data.
We’re definitely committed to update at least once per year. Our intention is to use data from other sources, as well as any SNPs we can, but it must be well-vetted. NGS and SNP technology inherently has errors. You must curate for those errors otherwise you’re just putting slop out to customers. There are some SNPs that may bind to the X chromosome that you didn’t know. There are some low coverages that you didn’t know.
With technology such as this you’re able to overcome the urge to test only what you’re likely to be positive for, and instead use the shotgun method and test everything. This allows us to make the discovery that SNPs are not nearly as stable as we thought, and they have a larger potential use in that sense.
Not only does the raw data need to be vetted but it needs to make sense. Using Geno 2.0, I only accepted samples that had the highest call rate, not just because it was the best quality but because it was the most data. I don’t want to be looking at data where I’m missing potential information A, or I may become confused by potential information B. That is something that will bog us down. When you’re looking at large data sets, I’d much rather throw out 20% of them because they’re going to take 90% of the time than to do my best to get 1 extra SNP on the tree or 1 extra branch modified, that is not worth all of our time and effort. What is, is figuring out what the broader scope of people are, because that is how you break down origins. Figuring one single branch for one group of three people is not truly interesting until it’s 50 people, because 50 people is a population. Three people may be a family unit. You have to have enough people to determine relevance. That’s why using large datasets and using complete datasets are very, very important.
I want it to be the most accurate tree it can be, but I also want it to be interesting. That’s the key. Historical relevance is what we’re to discover. Anthropological relevance. It’s not just who has the largest tree, it’s who can make the most sense out of what you have is important.”
Thanks to both Janine and Elliott for providing this information.
What is Provided in the Update?
The genetic genealogy community was hopeful that the new 2014 tree would be comprehensive, meaning that it would include not only the Genographic SNPs, but ones from Walk the Y, perhaps some Chromo2, Full Genomes results and the Big Y. Perhaps we were being overly optimistic, especially given the huge influx of new SNPs, the SNP tsunami as we call it, over the past few months. Family Tree DNA clearly had to put a stake in the sand and draw the line someplace. So, what is actually included, how did they select the SNPs for the new tree and how does this integrate with the Genographic information? This information was provided by Family Tree DNA.
Family Tree DNA created the 2014 Y-DNA Haplotree in partnership with the National Geographic Genographic Project using the proprietary GenoChip. Launched publicly in late 2012, the chip tests approximately 10,000 Y-DNA SNPs that had not, at the time, been phylogenetically classified.
The team used the first 50,000 male samples with the highest quality results to determine SNP positions. Using only tests with the highest possible “call rate” meant more available data, since those samples had the highest percentage of SNPs that produced results, or “calls.”
In some cases, SNPs that were on the 2010 Y-DNA Haplotree didn’t work well on the GenoChip, so the team used Sanger sequencing on anonymous samples to test those SNPs and to confirm ambiguous locations.
For example, if it wasn’t clear if a clade was a brother (parallel) clade, or a downstream clade, they tested for it.
The scope of the project did not include going farther than SNPs currently on the GenoChip in order to base the tree on the most data available at the time, with the cutoff for inclusion being about November of 2013.
Where data were clearly missing or underrepresented, the team curated additional data from the chip where it was available in later samples. For example, there were very few Haplogroup M samples in the original dataset of 50,000, so to ensure coverage, the team went through eligible Geno 2.0 samples submitted after November, 2013, to pull additional Haplogroup M data. That additional research was not necessary on, for example, the robust Haplogroup R dataset, for which they had a significant number of samples.
Family Tree DNA, again in partnership with the Genographic Project, is committed to releasing at least one update to the tree this year. The next iteration will be more comprehensive, including data from external sources such as known Sanger data, Big Y testing, and publications. If the team gets direct access to raw data from other large companies’ tests, then that information will be included as well. We are also committed to at least one update per year in the future.
Known SNPs will not intentionally be renamed. Their original names will be used since they represent the original discoverers of the SNP. If there are two names, one will be chosen to be displayed and the additional name will be available in the additional data, but the team is taking care not to make synonymous SNPs seems as if they are two separate SNPs. Some examples of that may exist initially, but as more SNPs are vetted, and as the team learns more, those examples will be removed.
In addition, positions or markers within STRs, as they are discovered, or large insertion/deletion events inside homopolymers, potentially may also be curated from additional data because the event cannot accurately be proven. A homopolymer is a sequence of identical bases, such as AAAAAAAAA or TTTTTTTTT. In such cases it’s impossible to tell which of the bases the insertion is, or if/where one was deleted. With technology such as Next Generation Sequencing, trying to get SNPs in regions such as STRs or homopolymers doesn’t make sense because we’re discovering non-ambiguous SNPs that define the same branches, so we can use the non-ambiguous SNPs instead.
Some SNPs from the 2010 tree have been intentionally removed. In some cases, those were SNPs for which the team never saw a positive result, so while it may be a legitimate SNP, even haplogroup defining, it was outside of the current scope of the tree. In other cases, the SNP was found in so many locations that it could cause the orientation of the tree to be drawn in more than one way. If the SNP could legitimately be positioned in more than one haplogroup, the team deemed that SNP to not be haplogroup defining, but rather a high polymorphic location.
To that end, SNPs no longer have .1, .2, or .3 designations. For example, J-L147.1 is simply J-L147, and I-147.2 is simply I-147. Those SNPs are positioned in the same place, but back-end programming will assign the appropriate haplogroup using other available information such as additional SNPs tested or haplogroup origins listed. If other SNPs have been tested and can unambiguously prove the location of the multi-locus SNP for the sample, then that data is used. If not, matching haplogroup origin information is used.
We will also move to shorthand haplogroup designations exclusively. Since we’re committing to at least one iteration of the tree per year, using longhand that could change with each update would be too confusing. For example, Haplogroup O used to have three branches: O1, O2, and O3. A SNP was discovered that combined O1 and O2, so they became O1a and O1b.
There are over 1200 branches on the 2014 Y Haplogroup tree, as compared to about 400 on the 2010 tree. Those branches contain over 6200 SNPs, so we’ve chosen to display select SNPs as “active” with an adjacent “More” button to show the synonymous SNPs if you choose.
In addition to the Family Tree DNA updates, any sample tested with the Genographic Project’s Geno 2.0 DNA Ancestry Kit, then transferred to FTDNA will automatically be re-synched on the Geno side. The Genographic Project is currently integrating the new data into their system and will announce on their website when the process is complete in the coming weeks. At that time, all Geno 2.0 participants’ results will be updated accordingly and will be accessible via the Genographic Project website.
In summary:
Created in partnership with National Geographic’s Genographic Project
Used GenoChip containing ~10,000 previously unclassified Y-SNPs
Some of those SNPs came from Walk Through the Y and the 1000 Genome Project
Used first 50,000 high-quality male Geno 2.0 samples
Verified positions from 2010 YCC by Sanger sequencing additional anonymous samples
Filled in data on rare haplogroups using later Geno 2.0 samples
Statistics
Expanded from approximately 400 to over 1200 terminal branches
Increased from around 850 SNPs to over 6200 SNPs
Cut-off date for inclusion for most haplogroups was November 2013
Total number of SNPs broken down by haplogroup
A 406
DE 16
IJ 29
LT 12
P 81
B 69
E 1028
IJK 2
M 17
Q 198
BT 8
F 90
J 707
N 168
R 724
C 371
G 401
K 11
NO 16
S 5
CT 64
H 18
K(xLT) 1
O 936
T 148
D 208
I 455
L 129
myFTDNA Interface
Existing customers receive free update to predictions and confirmed branches based on existing SNP test results.
Haplogroup badge updated if new terminal branch is available
Updated haplotree design displays new SNPs and branches for your haplogroup
Branch names now listed in shorthand using terminal SNPs
For SNPs with more than one name, in most cases the original name for SNP was used, with synonymous SNPs listed when you click “More…”
No longer using SNP names with .1, .2, .3 suffixes. Back-end programming will place SNP in correct haplogroup using available data.
SNPs recommended for additional testing are pre-populated in the cart for your convenience. Just click to remove those you don’t want to test.
SNPs recommended for additional testing are based on 37-marker haplogroup origins data where possible, 25- or 12-marker data where 37 markers weren’t available.
Once you’ve tested additional SNPs, that information will be used to automatically recommend additional SNPs for you if they’re available.
If you remove those prepopulated SNPs from the cart, but want to re-add them, just refresh your page or close the page and return.
Only one SNP per branch can be ordered at one time – synonymous SNPs can possibly ordered from the Advanced Orders section on the Upgrade Order page.
Tests taken have moved to the bottom of the haplogroup page.
Coming attractions
Group Administrator Pages will have longhand removed.
At least one update to the tree to be released this year.
Update will include: data from Big Y, relevant publications, other companies’ tests from raw data.
We’ll set up a system for those who have tested with other big data companies to contribute their raw data file to future versions of the tree.
We’re committed to releasing at least one update per year.
The Genographic Project is currently integrating the new data into their system and will announce on their website when the process is complete in the coming weeks. At that time, all Geno 2.0 participants’ results will be updated accordingly and accessible via the Genographic Project website.
What Does This Mean to You?
Your Badge
On your welcome page, your badges are listed. Your badge previously would have included the longhand form of the haplogroup, such as R1b1a2, but now it shows R-M269.
Please note that badges are not yet showing on all participants pages. If yours aren’t yet showing, clicking on the Haplotree and SNP page under the YDNA option on the blue options bar where your more detailed information is shown, below.
Your Haplogroup Name
Your haplogroup is now noted only as the SNP designation, R-M269, not the older longhand names.
The redesigned haplotree page includes an option to order SNPs downstream of your confirmed or predicted haplogroup. This refines your haplogroup and helps isolate your branch on the tree. You may or may not want to do this. In some cases, this does help your genealogy, especially in cases where you’re dealing with haplogroup R. For the most part, haplogroups are more historical in nature. For example, they will help you determine whether your ancestors are Native American, African, Anglo Saxon or maybe Viking. Haplogroups help us reach back before the advent of surnames.
The new page shows which SNPs are available for you to order from the SNPs on the tree today, shown above, in blue to the right of the SNP branch.
SNPs not on the Tree
Not all known SNPs are on the tree. Like I said, a line in the sand had to be drawn. There are SNPs, many recently discovered, that are not on the tree.
To put this in perspective, the new tree incorporates 6200 SNPs (up from 850), but the Big Y “pool” of known SNPs against which Family Tree DNA is comparing those results was 36,562 when the first results were initially released at the end of February.
If you have taken advanced SNP testing, such as the Walk the Y, the Big Y, or tested individual SNPs, your terminal SNP may not be on the tree, which means that your terminal SNP shown on your page, such as R-M269 above, MAY NOT BE ACCURATE in light of that testing. Why? Because these newly discovered SNPs are not yet on the tree. This only affects people who have done advanced testing which means it does not affect most people.
Ordering SNPs
You can order relevant SNPs for your haplogroup on the tree by clicking on the “Add” button beside the SNP.
You can order SNPs not on the tree by clicking on the “Advanced Order Form” link available at the bottom of the haplotree page.
If you’re not sure of what you want to do, or why, you might want to touch bases with your project administrators. Depending on your testing goal, it might be much more advantageous, both scientifically and financially, for you to take either the Geno2 test or the Big Y.
At this point, in light of some of the issues with the new release, I would suggest maybe holding tight for a bit in terms of ordering new SNPs unless you’re positive that your haplogroup is correct and that the SNP selection you want to order would actually be beneficial to you.
Words of Caution
This are some bugs in this massive update. You might want to check your haplogroup assignment to be sure it is reflected accurately based on any SNP testing you have had done, of course, excepting the very advanced tests mentioned above.
If you discover something that is inaccurate or questionable, please notify Family Tree DNA. This is especially relevant for project administrators who are familiar with family groups and know that people who are in the same surname group should share a common base haplogroup, although some people who have taken further SNP testing will be shown with a downstream haplogroup, further down that particular branch of the tree.
What kind of result might you find suspicious or questionable? For example, if in your surname project, your matching surname cousins are all listed at R-M269 and you were too previously, but now you’re suddenly in a different haplogroup, like E, there is clearly an error.
Any suspected or confirmed errors should be reported to Family Tree DNA.
They have made it very easy by providing a “Feedback” button on the top of the page and there is a “Y tree” option in the dropdown box.
For administrators providing reports that involve more than one participant, please send to Groups@familytreedna.com and include the kit numbers, the participants names and the nature of the issue.
Additional Information
Family Tree DNA provides a free webinar that can be viewed about the 2014 Y Tree release. You can see all of the webinars that are archived and available for viewing at: https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/ftdna/webinars/
What’s Next?
The Genographic Project is in the process of updating to the same tree so their results can be synchronized with the 2014 tree. A date for this has not yet been released.
Family Tree DNA has committed to at least one more update this year.
I know that this update was massive and required extensive reprogramming that affected almost every aspect of their webpage. If you think about it, nearly every page had to be updated from the main page to the order page. The tree is the backbone of everything. I want to thank the Family Tree DNA and Genograpic combined team for their efforts and Bennett Greenspan for making sure this did happen, just as he committed to do in November at the last conference.
Like everyone else, I want everything NOW, not tomorrow. We’re all passionate about this hobby – although I think it is more of a life mission for many – and surpassed hobby status long ago.
I know there are issues with the tree and they frustrate me, like everyone else. Those issues will be resolved. Family Tree DNA is actively working on reported issues and many have already been fixed.
There is some amount of disappointment in the genetic genealogy community about the SNPs not included on the tree, especially the SNPs recently discovered in advanced tests like the Big Y. Other trees, like the ISOGG tree, do in fact reflect many of these newly discovered SNPs.
There are a couple of major differences. First, ISOGG has an virtual army of volunteers who are focused on maintaining this tree. We are all very lucky that they do, and that Alice Fairhurst coordinates this effort and has done so now for many years. I would be lost without the ISOGG tree.
However, when a change is made to the ISOGG tree, and there have been thousands of changes, adds and moves over the years, nothing else is affected. No one’s personal page, no one’s personal tree, no projects, no maps, no matches and no order pages. ISOGG has no “responsibility” to anyone – in other words – it’s widely known and accepted that they are a volunteer organization without clients.
Family Tree DNA, on the other hand has half a million (or so) paying customers. Tree changes have a huge domino ripple effect there – not only on their customers’ personal pages, but to their entire website, projects, support and orders. A change at Family Tree DNA is much more significant than on the ISOGG page – not to mention – they don’t have the same army of volunteers and they have to rely on the raw science, not interpretation, as they said in the information they provided. A tree update at Family Tree DNA is a very different animal than updating a stand-alone tree, especially considering their collaboration with various scientific organizations, including the National Geographic Society.
I commend Family Tree DNA for this update and thank them for the update and the educational materials. I’m also glad to see that they do indeed rely only on science, not interpretation. Frustrating to the genetic genealogist in me? Sure. But in the long run, it’s worth it to be sure the results are accurate.
Could this release have been smoother and more accurate? Certainly. Hopefully this is the big speed bump and future releases will be much more graceful. It’s easy to see why there aren’t any other companies providing this type of comprehensive testing. It’s gone from an easy 12 marker “do we match” scenario to the forefront of pioneering population genetics. And all within a decade. It’s amazing that any company can keep up.
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