Gaulding Archives - Grandma's Genes

Posting To Cousin-Connect on Facebook

I noted a friend posting to our Gaulding Cousins facebook group about how many of “us” there are in the world.

Gaulding

Gaulden

Gauldin

It’s not a lot to be sure – we can absolutely say we are a rare breed.

Every time I have an opportunity I jump into the post to share my connections via DNA testing and my relationship trail. This will, hopefully, entice others of my Gaulding cousins to DNA test and share their well-documented family history (or not – I am not beyond working someone’s history so it is documented if I can).

I thought I would share the steps I took to quickly and succinctly share my information.

Answer The Post

Don’t just bomb a Facebook or other social media feed with your idea. Even if you are adding a link to a blog post of your your own be careful not to wear-out your welcome by over posting or repetitive posting.

In this particular post I had two things I added – first one person answered about one of the derivative names, Gaulden or Gauldin, “those who kept the name…” I commented that Gaulding is the root of our name. That Gaulden and Gauldin were derivatives of Gaulding. This is the first known spelling in this part of the world – it is attributed to John Gaulding, (abt.) 1665 (unknown but assumed to be England)-1740, New Kent County Virginia.

Second, the original poster and I discussed the fact that we are not related to the Golden family (he is a Golden).

DNA

The Golden et al (which includes we Gaulding cousins) FTDNA Group Project includes 223 YDNA tested males. Of these, there are 11 instances of the Gaulding/in/en surname.

Unfortunately the Golden Group Project does not have the earliest known surnames (EKA) shown in the results. If they were we could see that the Gaulding/en/ins would be all grouped together since we share YDNA.

Also, knowing the EKA can give good hints as to the origins of these families. This is not an FTDNA setting but a setting the group administrator can allow or not, depending on how they see the need for privacy for the group members.

I also posted my father’s name on FTDNA to the Facebook discussion so people who do test can see their connection to me. Then I posted his mitoYDNA.org kit ID. mitoYDNA.org is a free and accessible YDNA and mtDNA database where one can compare and match and run tools on results from any and all possible DNA testing companies, past present and future.

There are no other Gauldings on mitoYDNA.org, yet (we are rare) so I ran this with a very wide search parameters. I can tell you that the closest match up is Tsar Nicholas. I know! Cool!

Talk About Family Connections and DNA

I posted about my specific DNA matches and our connections back to John Gaulding of New Kent County, Virginia. About how the two connections who shared their DNA and their family histories with me, briefly, without identifying them – privacy. I also mentioned that I have one match that surely goes back but there is a gap in the paper trail.

I then jumped over to WikiTree and ran a “Relationship To Me” with my fathers ID and John Gaulding, 1665 and posted that to my post.

It’s easy to share information in a family group in Facebook. It’s easy also to incorporate tools available to help those in the group see how these tools work.

Hope more of us rare Gauldings do some more DNA testing!

70k Doc – First Connection

The last Blog Post was all about the 70k Document. It’s a Descendants of John Gaulding compilation document from a DNA connected (who is not connected to my Gauldings yet) cousin who is the keeper of a lifelong Gaulding researchers research. Up to speed? If not please read the, My Dad Has a Y DNA match to two Gauldings.

Making DNA Match Connections

I, personally, have DNA cousins and also people who should be DNA cousins, who are not a match to me, that I have wanted to connect for quite a while. The cousins who we think share a Gaulding MCRA (Most Common Recent Ancester) with me are of course the ones I want to connect first and especially the Y-DNA matches.

BUT, I have this friend and we have known for 3 or four years that we have the Gaulding Surname in our respective limbs of the Big Ole Shared Family Tree that is WikiTree. We have never been able to make that connection until…

You guessed it, the 70k Doc.

I know I should be tracking down those Y-DNA connections so I can confirm my fathers line back forever…

I couldn’t resist Liz and our shared wonder at the fact that we do not match via DNA. Yes, I am absolutely my fathers daughter and he matches two other Gaulding Y-DNA testers. We are Gaulding’s for sure and according to the 70k Doc we share my fifth great grandfather, John Mathew Gaulding.

Why not a match?

Matching a MCRA at our 64, 4th great grandparents is about as far back as you can go with auDNA. Give or take a shake or two. Knowing Liz and I match further back than our 64, 4th Great Grandparents at our fifth makes a non-match a definite possibility.

The other factor might be that we didn’t inherit as much of the same DNA segment from our MCRA or that we didn’t inherit ANY matching segments of DNA from our MCRA. It’s the same as looking at a pair of siblings who have different color hair or eyes. I didn’t inherit the exact same things from our ancestors that my siblings did and it’s obvious when you look at us.

The Excitment of the Hunt

Over the past week or so, Liz and I have shot emails back and forth exploring names that might break down her brickwall. We finally did it a few days ago and couldn’t have done it without the 70k Doc. So this is revelation #1, Brickwall busting #1 and possibly pulled muscle #1 from Liz’s happy dance. Now we just need to verify all the genealogy we are looking at and we are done.

Now back to those two YDNA matches.

TEST Please!

To any male Gaulding, Gaulden, Gauldin, Golding, Goulding descendants, please test! In particular any descendant of John Gaulding of Verginia (any of them) or William Goulding of Bermuda. William names a nephew in his will, another William, who lived in New England. Be great to prove the theory that he was the father of John Gaulding of Virginia, imported by the Ripley Family.

My Dad has a Y-DNA match to two Gauldings.

My Dad has a Y-DNA match to two Gauldings. This means we can confirm our family connections back to our most common recent ancestor. The other two Y-DNA testers are from a branch of the family that haven’t been connected to the main trunk by anyone with published information.

Distant Cousins and Gaulding Researchers

Over the past years I have been talking to a very distant Gaulding cousin (a close relation to one of the Y-DNA testers) who has one such unpublished document. To make the family connections she agreed to share it with me. The document arrived as a 70K word rich text document converted to a Word document format. There is no consistent numbering schemes. It does not follow any genealogical numbering system nor is it chronological, skipping around from sibling to sibling in one generation then back to the generation before. The formatting, because of the conversion, has globs of spacing and the indents and lists are crazy.

Making It Make Sense

It’s taken me weeks of night and weekend work to get it into a format to print so I can look at it, make notes and correct the formatting, chronology, indents and lists systems. I started three nights ago with the meat of the document. The “How are we connected?” work of getting the siblings, parents, grandparents, great grandparents all lined up correctly so I can start the research and sourcing to make it right (the author did not include his sources either).

The author of this document (in an introduction to the document) makes no excuses, no apologies for the document format or lack of sources and rightly so since it is not intended to be published.

My hope is to get the document in good nick, genealogically wise, make the connections to confirm my dad and their dad’s DNA connection and to send the re-formatted document file back to the cousin who sent it to me. What a wonderful labor this is. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate her willingness to trust me with this researchers life work. As I work, I will fill in the missing pieces on WikiTree from his work so you can follow along there if you’d like.

Follow along if you’d like

I think our most common recent ancestor is, John Gaulding, St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent, Virginia, (abt. 1665-1740).