Category: Genealogy

Tea Leonis’ Grandfather

The name is what caught my attention – “Sumpter”. Henry Louis Gates, Harvard Professor and Presenter on the PBS series, Finding Your Roots,  said to Tea Leoni, “Sumpter J. Daniel is your grandfather.” My head nearly snapped off as the camera zoomed in on a map of eastern louisiana.

The Pioneer Children Migrate

This all sounded familiar to me, a man named Sumpter living in East Louisiana. Before I saw the beautiful pedigree chart Henry presents on Teas’ grandfather, I had already guessed that the Daniels (O’Daniel) were probably connected to the families who had participated in the great Carolina Migration West. It is a story I know well because my 3rd great grandfather made the same trip with the Richardson Family.

The children of the pioneers to Virginia left for greener pastures to the south, then their children left for greener pastures to the west. Why? The oldest child normally inherited the land or worked in the community. There would be nothing left for the younger children of the pioneers, so they moved on to be the next pioneers.

From the Schlatter Family Site:

  • “In the early 1700’s several of John Richardson’s children moved to the Cape Fear River area of North Carolina from Virginia, probably the Jamestown area.

  •  Around 1750 members of the family moved to Sumter District, South Carolina.

  •  Several of the South Carolina Richardson’s fought on the side of Francis Marion during the Revolutionary War.

  •  In the early 1800’s there was a rush of migration from the Carolina colonies to the West — which, at this time, was Mississippi and Louisiana.  In addition to population pressures due to immigration and birthrates, the land that had been heavily farmed in the Carolinas was beginning to wear out and many people headed west to new land.

  •  In Dec 1808-Jan 1809, one of several Richardson brothers and a small party, including several slaves,  trekked to southwest Mississippi — to what is now Wilkinson County — where they cleared land and put in a cotton crop.  In the fall of 1809 they sold the crop, returned to South Carolina, packed up several other family members and “100 slaves” and returned to Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in January 1810 where they settled and prospered.

  •  Descendants of the Richardson’s who moved from South Carolina to Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in 1810 spread throughout Wilkinson County and adjoining counties in Mississippi and Louisiana.”

My Gauldens followed this route from Virginia to Sumter, South Carolina, following John Gauldens Father-in-Law, John Watson Brumfield,  to his plantation in Sumter, South Carolina. Then his Children moved on to Louisiana.

Carolina Migration from the north.

John Gauldens Daughter, Martha and her brother Dempsey

John Gauldens daughter Martha married Francis R. Richardson. Francis R. was a part of the group who migrated through Native American Lands out to Eastern Louisianna/Western Mississippi. My 3rd Great Grandfather, Dempsey Gaulden traveled with his sister and her family out to Louisiana, sowed some wild oats in New Orleans and returned to South Carolina to continue my line of Gauldens.

Sumpter Daniels Family Trail

Sumpter Daniels family followed a similar path, immigrating from Western Europe, to Virginia, to Edgefield District, South Carolina. They were very close to where my Gauldens lived.

SC Map
Map showing proximity of Sumter, Camden and Edgefield SC.

Did the Gauldens/Richardsons and Daniels know each other? It’s hard to know unless Francis D. Richardson mentions the Daniels in his Memoir. But the fact that over 27,908 native born South Carolinian people lived in Mississippi and 4,583 native born South Carolinian people lived in Louisiana in 1850 might preclude any knowledge of each other.

Knowing your family history

Because I know my family history, when I heard a similar story, I recognized in Tea’s family a story we share. Makes our world seem just a bit smaller.

Further Research

If you check-in with The Family Search Wiki you will discover information and resources for the migrations into and out of SC.  One regarding the westward move of South Carolina Pioneer children is, Dorothy Williams Potter in Passports of Southeastern Pioneers 1770-1823 “which identifies some migrants from South Carolina into territories that are now Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri.” – FamilySearch Wiki

Roads west
Routes into Mississippi and Louisiana

DNA Confirmations and Citations

Did you know DNA Confirmations and Citations are like peas in a pod?

Or Peanut Butter and Jelly or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Bread and Butter.

You can not have Confirmed with DNA status in your research or on a WikiTree profile without the DNA Confirmed Citation. Period, end of story.

How many DNA confirmed status buttons have you clicked without also including the DNA Confirmation Citation? If you have a citation, is it done following WikiTree’s DNA Confirmation Citation Standards?

This page gives you the nuts and bolts of using Confirmed with DNA indicators on WikiTree relationships and how to cite your source for the confirmation. Here is citation specific help. 

The Data Doctors rolled out a new Suggestions report for the DNA Project yesterday:

213: Missing fathers DNA confirmation

313: Missing mothers DNA confirmation

You will notice these popping-up in your Suggestions Report (My WikiTree Drop-down Menu, Top right of every page, scroll to and click on Suggestions) as well. 

As of today there are over 17,000 of these suggested corrections. Can you help to make WikiTree more accurate by reading the instructions listed above and working to reduce these suggested corrections?

Examples from the DNA Confirmations Link above:

One To One Family Finder:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 1417.42 cM Family Finder match between [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] and his maternal uncle [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]].

One To One 23andMe:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed with a 23andMe test match between [[Whitten-1|Chris Whitten]] and [[Nally-4|Rebecca (Nally) Syphers]], first cousins once removed. Predicted relationship from 23andMe: “1st to 2nd Cousin based on 6.68% DNA shared across 21 segments.”

One To One Ancestry:
* Paternal relationship is confirmed with an AncestryDNA test match between [[Whitten-1|Chris Whitten]] and [[Bartlett-34|Hollis Bartlett]], second cousins. Predicted relationship reported by AncestryDNA: 2nd Cousins based on sharing 150.3 cM across 9 segments; Confidence: Extremely High.

One To One GEDMatch:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 1417.42 cM match between [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] GEDmatch T412069 and his maternal uncle [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]] GEDmatch T559569.

Autosomal Triangulation:
* Paternal relationship is confirmed by a triangulated group consisting of [[Roberts-7085|Peter Roberts]] GEDmatch T412069, [[Sjostrom-39|Kris Sjostrom]] GEDmatch A936004 and [[Collins-5366| Elizabeth Collins]] GEDmatch T688604 sharing a 10.8 cM segment on chromosome 1 from 163621974 to 173712569.

X Chromosome:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 18.89 cM X-DNA Family Finder match from 142421555 to 150560582 between [[Dekle-6|Dekle-6]] and his [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1_name=Price-7294&person2_name=Dekle-6 fourth cousin twice removed] [[Price-7294|James Price, Jr.]]

mt DNA:
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by an exact HVR1 and HVR2 match between [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:DNATests&u=6727476&id=7 this Family Tree DNA mtDNA test] for [[Weatherford-199|Priscilla Weatherford]] and [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:DNATests&u=7713929&id=7 this Family Tree DNA mtDNA test] of her maternal line cousin [[Zimmerman-1613|Clair Zimmerman]].

Y DNA
* Paternal relationship is confirmed through Y-chromosome DNA testing. [[Roberts-7266|Anonymous Roberts]] and [[Roberts-7085|Peter J. Roberts]] match on 36 out of 37 markers (see YSearch IDs 9WCMS and 97ZDB) thereby confirming their direct paternal lines back to their MRCA [[Roberts-7104|Thomas W. Roberts]].

Just one more way WikiTree is working to become the most accurate Global Family Tree. Period. End of Story.

Do You Triangulate Well?

 

The WikiTree DNA Project has a brand new spiffy badge just for you.

Triangulator Badge

 

This badge is awarded to WikiTreers who have mastered the complex concept of DNA triangulation and applied it on WikiTree to mark profiles as “Confirmed with DNA“.

To be eligible, the member needs to have added the appropriate citations for each parent-child relationship for three or more distant cousins who share a segment measuring 7cM or more back to their shared ancestral couple as explained in the triangulation instructions on Help:DNA Confirmation.

In addition, so that the badge committee can confirm the triangulation:

  1. all three tests need to be on GEDmatch, and
  2. all three relationships trails to the common ancestor or common ancestral couple need to be on WikiTree and the profiles need to have public family trees.

Requesting the badge

Are you a triangulator? If so you’re a valuable contributor to our single family tree project and we thank you for it!

To get the Triangulator badge, please answer this G2G post.

Be sure to include:

  1. Your WikiTree ID.
  2. The IDs of profiles in the triangulated group that have been marked as Confirmed with DNA.

Standards used

WikiTree’s standard for triangulation (see Help:DNA_Confirmation) is based on ISOGG auDNA triangulation and the writings of Tim Janzen, Jim Bartlett, and Blaine Bettinger.

WikiTree profile: Space:Triangulators

Can Gen Summit and Blueberries

Oh yes I said it, “Blueberries”. Speaking in Halifax at the Canadian Genealogy Summit and I am being well rewarded by the calibre of speakers (myself included, what?!?!) AND Blueberries.

Blueberry Arrival

First thing today, off the plane in Halifax and I am greeted with this:

The Land of Wild Blueberries! BLUEBERRIES! Heaven here I come.

Settled into my hotel room in Halifax, registered for the Great Canadian Genealogy Summit, badge on (Speaker ribbon attached), Grandma’s Genes Biz Cards and decaf coffee in hand and I am set to go! 

The keynote

The Keynote speaker was better than good. Jan Raska introduced us all to Canadian immigration through Pier 21, The canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. I learned Immigrants to Canada were “cared for”. They were given housing and meals and even a gentle ear for translations or a postcard home. For those deemed problematic? They still had the tender love and care of Canada. He mentioned some of the Syrian and American refugees that Canada has been taking in over the last year (yes the wide, Canadian, southern border is being crossed en mass by people, families who are in fear of being deported by the current US presidents’ roll back of many immigration protections). Canada is truly the “Melting Pot” unlike so many other places in the world. They took me didn’t they?

Discoveries Before we begin

The presentation was great and the speaker’s knowledge was great and the company was great – at my table three women who did not know each other discovered there were cousins. Where else can you have that happen? When I mentioned this to Kathryn Lake Hogan (one of the organizers of the Conference) she said: “That’s it. We’re done”. Really. What other reason is there for coming to a great conference than meeting two living cousins before the opening of the event!

More Discoveries

For me? I might be walking away with a DNA connection to one of my clients. Yes tonight before the Keynote we spent time going around the table talking about our genealogical interests and one of the cousins mentioned above knew one of my client surnames. Yes, she knew someone researching that line in the area I have been searching. Yes, they had done a DNA test. Yes, she would get me her GEDMatch Id and get us in touch with each other. HOW freakin cool!

And now back to our sponsor, BLUEBERRIES!

Then? The Blueberry infused dinner. I ate in the hotel restaurant, The Arms, at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax. Way above and beyond!

The Meal:

Blueberry. Whiskey. Reduction. O M G.

I may never leave!

Genealogy Gadget Geek

This weekends BIFHSGO conference has all the traditional Genealogy lectures and Tours and Workshops and a great Marketplace Hall.

Social Media Team

I am also volunteering here at the conference since BIFHSGO is also my “home” Genealogical Society (OGS Ottawa too). Surely you have noticed my tweets about the conference as a member of the Social Media Team. As such I spend a good bit of time slinking along the back rows of lectures taking quiet pictures and tweeting briefly, politely during those lectures so you all can live vicariously through me and my Social Media Shares.

DISCLAIMER – Please do not take pictures or do social media while attending lectures unless you are  a part of a recognized Social Media Team for the event.

Gadget Proximity

Since the Social Media Hub at this event is set-up in the BIFHSGO Conference MarketPlace we have the opportunity to hob nob with some of the venders while sessions are running. No it’s not downtime, because you don’t have to be registered or even pay to get into the Market Hall, so there are always people buzzing about, it’s just a break from the crush of people from the sessions.

This year the Social Media Hub is just around the corner from this conference’s main Gadget Geek Vender, Shop The Hound!

I want to buy everything they have!

A Few Eye Catching Gadgets

One thing that has caught my eye is the ZCan Scanner Mouse. If you have ever had a scratch off card? Lottery or coupon – as you scratch an image appears kind of thing? Well this is similar  you run your mouse over an image or document and with each swipe of the mouse the image or document appears. It’s crazy cool and it’s easy to carry.

Shop the Hound has other Gadgets too. Need to add some bling to your headphone jack? They have has shiny, sparkly bangle for this. Want to carry a full blown, but portable, Scanner? You can walk away with the Flip Pal. Have a lot us SD storage cards from Camera’s or netbook storage floating around in every bag and drawer you have? Well, they have a little leather case designed just for this and more! Tech Gear and Gadgets specifically designed for Genealogy, can’t beat it.

Now I have to run do another WikiTree Source-A-Thon. Exhausted but still working!

Slavery In The US Southern Colonies/States and DNA

Accessory Tether Bonds Prison Shackles Lake Dusia

It’s a controversial topic, Slavery In The US Southern Colonies/States and DNA. Well, I don’t know if DNA is all that controversial but I don’t shy away from discussing it either. It is my heritage, slavery and slave ownership. That my family(s) were a part of this wide ranging, “it’s what they did back in the day”, thing is not something to be proud of, but I am also not hiding it away. My Family, most every limb, at one time or another owned slaves.

Resources, information and a listing of owners.

My part as the descendant of slave owners, is to add any information I find regarding the ownership, sale, gift of a human being to another, to the work I am doing. Mainly on WikiTree, where the US Southern Colonies has a Project on Slavery.  As WikiTreers add profiles of Slave owners, and transcriptions of wills or other documents to WikiTree, they can also add the category, Slave Owner. There are other categories for each state and one for all of the US. Searching these categories for the names given to Slaves is a boon to helping those searching for their ancestors. These categories create an incredible resource for people trying to find and identify the place where their ancestor lived and worked.

The DNA

Today I was looking into something we are working on in the DNA project regarding triangulation (using DNA from three matches that share DNA on the same segment of the same chromosome, used in confirming the genealogical paper trail). I drifted to my own DNA trail when I got an email from a Gaulding/Gaulden cousin in reference to the Y-DNA of her brother – which matches my dad back many, many, many generations to our MCRA.

The haplogroup that caught my attention

I headed over to the FTDNA Gaulding/Gaulden Portion of the Golding DNA project. The results page is cumbersome (a table within a table and two scroll bars) so the page often sits or takes a while to scroll. Sitting there waiting for the screen to catch up with my mouse I realized I was staring at people in the project who had a Nigerian/Camaroonian Hapogroup – E-M2.

I had been staring at it for so long that when it dawned on me who I was looking at I felt a burst of energy. Really. There in the midst of all these DNA results were people whose ancestors were, in all probability, slaves. They listed as their MDA (most distant ancestors) as people living in the US south prior to 1864.

Slavery DNA Project

My next question is, is there a DNA Project specifically designed to help identify people whose ancestors were slaves? Googling Slavery DNA Project returns hits with people. like me, writing articles or Blogs about Slave related DNA Projects. FTDNA has an African DNA Project and  23andMe has the African Genetics Project, but no one has a Slavery DNA Project.

Check your surname DNA project

Because of the way Slaves were named, very few carried their original name, they were given the name of a master, or of many masters. Then the masters listed them in the bills of sale or their wills by first name only or by the diminutive “boy” or “girl” or just “negro”.

I know there are Gaulden’s out there who are of African descent. Already done a shout out to try and connect with Lydia Gaulden (mother of Raven-Symoné – someone has to know how to get me in touch!). There’s a college football player with Gaulden emblazoned across his Jersey as well. I know that every single person out there with the name Gaulden is related to me to some degree, no matter the amount of melanin we have.

Find Your Surname DNA Project

Go check out all the DNA Projects associated with the name your family was given and look for the African haplogroups in the DNA. Better yet, get your DNA tested and add your results to a DNA project. Other people may find you and have some answers for you.

Great Canadian Genealogy Summit

I’ll be talking more about slavery as it relates to the US and Canada in my presentation, An African Canadian Family History Mystery on Sunday October 15th at the Great Canadian Genealogy Summit in Halifax. 

 

LiveCast on the 30th

The US Southern Colonies Project will be the focus of the the WikiTree LiveCast comping up on the 30th, live from the BIFHSGO Conference 2017.

Further Reading

Check out this in-depth article, Locating Afro-Diasporan haplogroups within Africa,  on African Slave DNA from Tracing African Roots Blog.

Give me a shout

If you ended up with my last name (any of my last names) or any derivative shoot me a note. I will gladly try to connect you further back along your in your heritage if I can.

Shout out from me

Thanks to my childhood friend Cynthia for sharing your finding of your heritage story with me. Your wonderful work and your family inspire me everyday.

Rabbit Holes and Amonute Matoaka “Pocahontas” and DNA

What about Rabbit Holes and Amonute Matoaka “Pocahontas”? As I sat down to go through my emails and social media notifications (I often laugh when I check in on Facebook for work) I saw a note from Abby Glann, Leader Liaison at WikiTree, telling me she has chosen the profile of Amonute Matoaka “Pocahontas” to be used as an example profile coming up in a week or two.

Setting out to do anything but what I planned

Forget my wonderful and patient (you know you are) clients, forget my research, push a blog post to the back (the blog is the first thing that gets pushed back to accommodate everything else) forget everything else, drop it all to run have a look at the state of this profile? 4 hours later I am still fixing stuff, piddling about, sending messages to project members about this looming deadline and the need to work collaboratively to make this profile sing.

To Blog or not to Blog

Blogging is something I enjoy. I love to Blog, to write (if you can call my butchery of the english language “writing”) and to share the “what’s going ons” of my genetic genealogical pursuits. In a year that has seen regular Genealogical Bloggers pull up stakes and move on from blogging I jumped in with so many feet and inches and centiMorgens that I am chest high in the muck of it – the genealogy blogging world. And LiveCasting – that too can be considered a blog. I don’t see myself jumping out either.

I have been pushing this blog thing to the back of everything. When Abby sent the note about the Example Profile, I thought I would just have to wait to write til another day. Enough!

What are all of these Rabbit Holes? Here are a few…

My most regular client

for whom I work a specified amount of hours a month – working the DNA and the Genealogy looking to make connections for him as I find them and or as they appear. He drops me a note when he gets a note from someone wanting to know if they are connected a certain way via DNA. They have the same surname in common, it must be it! 9 times out of ten it isn’t and I get to spend some time in the primordial ooze that is his family DNA and his genealogical paper trail to show the hows and whys of “not that route”or the excited exclamation of YOU ARE RIGHT! and we need to do this and this and…Doing work for him every month is like the part of the doughnut you save for last whether it be the filling or the icing, there is always something fun to be had and it can be had at anytime – no calorie restrictions (I have been craving doughnuts this week).

One of my clients sent me an email from the Ukraine

Yes he took off on his own to investigate some of the information we have turned-up about his family. This one is interesting in that it is Jewish Genealogy rife with a demographic that makes genetic genealogy hard – Endogamy. The practice of marrying within ones own community or family group. This case is exacerbated by the living descendants protective nature of the past and the unwillingness to do tests to help find an adoptee from the 1910’s. “Yes, we must keep our 100 year old secrets hidden, even if we don’t know what they are ourselves”.

Betty Jean

Oh yes Betty Jean is still on the front burner because we need to track down her mother. Yes I have been waiting for my favorite genealogical investigator to emerge unscatheed from some very hard family issues. Why do I feel guilty if I work without her? No, it’s not that I feel guilty, it’s because on this we are a team and I feel like I am walking without one of my legs. There is no rush on this for my part at all. Take care of family and I will see you soon.

New client with boxes

She actually said she was bringing shoeboxes with her to our first meeting. She is a professional who just doesn’t have time to learn how to do Genetic Genealogy. She is a good and tenacious researcher and a joy to work with. Sent her a note to ask her Ancestry DNA matches to download their DNA raw data and upload it to GEDMatch and zoom she was off. I am working the analysis and working the paper trail as they appear.

AND MORE! <breath> At this point I just had that stomach turning feeling of I really should be working and not blogging <STUPID FEELING>

WikiTree

Of course there is always work to do on WikiTree since I use WikiTree as my Genealogical Program and it is an integral genetic Genealogy tool in my genealogy toolbox. Did I mention Chris Whitten came back to me with the answer to a question I asked him while at Roots Tech? Hey! He has been busy revamping the GEDCOM apparatus of WikiTree among other things! The question?

How many DNA connected profiles do we have on WikiTree?

Drum Roll Please…

“A new number just went live on our home page: 3,027,628.

As in: “Our shared tree includes 15,105,620 profiles (3,027,628 with
DNA test connections) edited by 453,232 genealogists from around the
world.”

…The total number of DNA test connections is up around five or six million….The total number of test-takers is about 53,000.

This is really very cool. A stat that really says something about our commitment and success in growing a shared, *accurate* family tree. Afamily tree that someday will be confirmed with DNA.” -Chris Whitten

What does a “Test Connection” on WikiTree mean?

Every time a WikiTreer adds their DNA test information to WikiTree, WikiTree adds that information to the WikiTreers profile as well as to that of every profile in the limbs of WikiTrees great big ole shared tree, that that test would affect. So, if I add that I have taken a FTDNA auDNA (Family Finder Test) to my WikiTree Profile, WikiTree will post that DNA Connection to every single profile of my family – siblings, parents, cousins, grand parents, great grandparents – back to my 64, 4th great grandparents will show my test information. All following how I. you, we, inherit auDNA.

Why is this important and why is it a connection? Let’s say Julie Blue is hunting around the internet for information on her great great great grandfather, Dempsey Gaulden. Because WikiTree is cutting edge on it’s search engine optimization, when she searches for Dempsey, his WikiTree Profile pops-up at the top of her search engine results page.
She bounces over to his profile and sees all of the information that this ‘Mags Gaulden’ has done on he and his family, “Oh wow I never knew Dempsey raced horses in New Orleans!” she exclaims. Then her eye falls on this list, “DNA Connections” prominently displayed at the top right of the page:

“Oh My Word! I tested my DNA, I wonder if we match?” And,  “Wow, My Uncle jeb Gaulden – his y-DNA should match this Earle!” Julie Blue spends the rest of HER afternoon down the rabbit hole that is the GEDMatch/WikiTree integration. She uploads her raw data to GEDmatch where she finds Mags and Earle and others on wikiTree from her list of matches at GEDMatch.

Chris just posted this explanation – way more…techie than my answer. What you don’t like Melodrama? <southern hand across southern forehead>

“What exactly is a DNA test connection? It’s where we post a notice on a WikiTree profile that says there is a DNA test that might be useful for confirming or rejecting relationships to that person. For Y-chromosome tests it means the test-taker is on the same paternal line. For mitochondrial tests it means the test-taker is on the same maternal line. For autosomal tests (the most popular these days, e.g. AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA Family Finder, 23andMe) it means that the test-taker is within eight degrees and is therefore likely to share significant segments of DNA.

The bottom line: A DNA test connection is an opportunity to try to scientifically prove what’s been established through traditional genealogy.

Every time I see a new one on a profile that I care about I get a little rush of excitement. Knowing there are three million of these around our shared tree puts a big smile on my face.” – Chris Whitten

Sound easy? It is!

ooop, I just blogged. ‘Scuse me.

Genealogical Holiday

You often see posts for people traveling to their family home to do research and see loved ones and family. Visiting the Archives of the state or province where the family lines connected and settled. You even see posts where people follow the (whichever) “Great Wagon Road” their pioneers used to get to the place where lines connected and family settled.

My Genealogical Holiday

I was asked to speak at a family reunion in Cherryville, North Carolina by my Mom’s Neill Family. Not because I am a Neill researcher, but because 3 Neills had done DNA tests and I had results and observations to share.

It was supposed to be one day for a short bit of Genealogy and I was done.

Blaming my Flight

On the flight south a fella politely turned his head from his row mates and and sneezed on me. Within two days (mom said it isn’t possible it was the sneeze) I was laid out with a very nasty bit of nastiness – a cold turned into bronchitis variety of sick. The first two days were spent with family and friends, but on the third day I flat out couldn’t do a thing. All plans canceled – except the presentation.

What to do when your Mom is in charge and you are home Sick?

My mom is in charge of my schedule this trip anyway. One day I knew about in advance. The “Going Through Doodle’s Photographs Day” (Doodle = my grandmother who passed in 2005 on the brink of a century). I had gone through them with her many years ago and had asked her to go through them and mark who the people were so when we went through them later we would know. She did. She reorganized them into their own envelopes with each person in the photo noted on the back. Wow and thank you Doodle.

Who needs a Brick and Mortar Archive?

We also went through her keepsakes: letters from her grandkids, EVERY single newspaper article about us and Dad and Mother and Mom. An old Scrapbook about…we couldn’t really figure it out…clippings from the Laurens Advertiser on keeping house and home. Bible verses and stories. Her children’s storybooks (so delicate we barley touched them). My dad’s early artwork. It was, for me a wonderful day of sitting with my parents, with my dad, and reintroducing Doodle and my dad to me through Doodle’s archive.

The Presentation

Bolstered with piles of pills, cough syrup and herbal remedies we set out for the drive up I-85 into North Carolina for the reunion and the presentation. Nothing better than a potluck in the Carolinas – Friend Okra, Mac and Cheese, Home cured Ham Biscuits, Squash Casserole, Green Beans cooked southern style and Banana Pudding. The tastes of my childhood.  The Presentation went very well, made more so by one of the organizers who took all the kids into the church kitchen for Ice Cream while I spoke (Thanks Sam). There were great questions afterwards and a couple of people asked me if I might help them with brick walls. I was able to spend time with the DNA testers as well, to thank them for testing and to give them specific information about their results. One set of results were a bit hard to deliver as they introduced one fella to his real last name according to the DNA. He didn’t tell me, but he told my mom I had it wrong. That’s ok. It’s DNA and unless he got a friend to do the swab?

More HomeSpun Archives

The plan was that I was going to spend the night at my Aunt Chris’s and meet with the testers so there would be time to discuss things. But with me so very under the weather I didn’t stay. Chris had a bag of stuff for me to take back to South Carolina. The First Volume of the Shoe Cobbler’s Kin, By Lorena Shell Eaker. Family Memories and Stories, a collections of emails and essays about the family including recipes. The last one is an incredible collection of Family notes for each of James Andrew and Mary Jane Eaker Neils descendants which was aptly entitled, Genealogy. This collection of Binders and book were too heavy for me to carry. Now I have two days to try and absorb them. Wow.

Downtime and Chief Inspector Gamache

Since I am sick I asked my mom to make me some soup. In my mind I was thinking of her old cure, Campbells Tomato Soup. Instead I arrived at the kitchen table to Lobster Bisque. YUM. When I curl up with a blanket (which means I can’t work – incapable of holding a laptop and curling up in a blanket at the same time) I pull out my current Louise Penny book and read. Being able to escape to Quebec with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Sûreté du Québec while I am sick in South Carolina is more than wonderful.

The delivered archives are calling to me here, wrapped in the blanket, medicines and herbal cures to my left and my Mom and Dad working around the house, around me (Mom is cooking dinner for My Aunt, my Brother, my Niece, my cousin and his family tonight – I hope I can smell the lemon zest I hear her working on in the kitchen).

 

WikiTree Challenges

WikiTree has SO much going on, all the time that It’s almost impossible not to get involved as a volunteer in something. When you do volunteer you can do it in the most selfish way. Working on your own limbs to the great big ole shared tree that is WikiTree. But, when you get to a point where you need to clear your pallatte, so to speak, try dropping into one of WikiTree’s Weekly, Monthly or yearly challenges. The Challenge that caught my eye today is the WikiTree Surname Spotlights. Here is WikiTree Team Member Abby Glann’s Post from G2G about this challenge:

Surname Spotlights Challenge

We’ve got a new challenge in town, focused on surname collaboration: Surname Spotlights. 

So much of what we do as genealogists and family historians centers on surnames. We have so many tools on WikiTree to make working on specific surnames easy and kind of fun. We want to encourage it! 

Most of our surname activity is centered on our One Name Studies, which run the gamut from official studies associated with the One Name Study Guild to amateur approaches just look to connect with others who share an interest in certain surnames.

Focus

Our Surname Spotlights will focus on 4 surnames each month. You pick one surname to work on during that month. Any contributions you do for the Spotlight counts toward other challenges, like the Connectors, Errors, BioBuilders, or Sourcerers Challenges, as they apply to each of those (for a full ist of WikiTree Challenges please see the Challenges Page). 

You do not have to have any of these surnames in your family to join in. It’s just a fun way to work together with shared goals and improve the tree as well as try to gather together folks with shared interests in certain names. 

The names for August are Acheson, Downing, Callis, and Smith. A couple of these are just getting started and would love some attention to the free-space page to add information. Others are well established so working on specific profiles would make sense. All of them would love your attention! 

If you’d like to head up the volunteers working on a specific surname, post an answer below. Then all others working on the same name, comment on that answer to chat about what you’re working on.

See the Surname Spotlights page for more detailed information on how to join in. 

Thanks for making WikiTree a great place to collaborate!

So for all you One Name Study Junkies (I know quite a few) try jumping into this challenge! Smith? Really? Who puts Smith into a single challenge date. This surname should be a weekly One Name Study Challenge.

Serendipitous Synchronicity – Michael Stills

Serendipitous Synchronicity. Well Serendipity is something I beleive in. When I saw the Title of Michaels post to the WikiTree Members Group Facebook page, I had to share it with y’all, so here it is:

Shaking Brick Walls

SO in the month of my 54th birthday, DNA has decided to shake my biggest brick walls. But only to tease me.

Watt? What?

My Mom, also born this month, has the surname of Culp, but my 2nd Great Grandfather in her line got his surname from his mother Nancy Jane Culp. We do not know his father. But tantalizing info suggests a James Watt. This month I found a DNA connection that has one of my two suspected James Watt in her tree and this Watt family intertangles with the Culp family. But Also, DNA withholds a confirming connection, 3rd Cousin, one removed.

Ricker, Make it so…

My Dad, during the month of Father’s day, is not a true Stills. My 2nd Great Grandfather, in his direct line, was raised by William Henry Stills and Nancy Jane Tarlton. Y-DNA testing with a Stills cousin, confirms that my Dad is not a Stills, which we knew. My grandmother says that my 2GG Smith A Stills parents were killed in a wagon accident but did not say who his parents were. Lots of circumstantial evidence suggests he is a Ricker. While I am still searching for a Ricker to test with, auDNA says that my tested Stills cousin is a Second cousin, and that Nancy Tarlton is possibly the mother, but alas DNA once again with holds confirmation as there are just too many Ricker, Lamb, Stills, Tarlton intermingling’s and dalliances that need sorting.

Should I sort this all out, I will have changed the surname of both my parents and found my remaining 2nd Great Grandparents.

Identity Crisis or not?

So, am I Michael Ricker son of Maynard Ricker and Martha Watt?

Good Bye June 2017, you raised my hopes with DNA and excited my heart only to leave me yearning for better chromosomes.

Michael Lee Stills (Ricker)

It’s always incredible to me to see someone, anyone, making great strides in their Genealogy. Genealogy is now a dynamic, sometimes fast moving enterprise. Certainly not the Genealogy Hobby of our Grandparents.

Use Triangulation Michael you don’t HAVE to have that third cousin connections to confirm this.

Thanks Michael!