Off Modal matches Map

One piece of Advice was to find off modal matches. These are people who match me at my off modal markers. Basically, they have the same mutations from modal R1b that I have at specific points, but could be different elsewhere. I made a new ysearch id that is just my off modal markers (with a few modal markers there to bulk it up and keep things on track). Then I mapped those out. Many of the names on the list are familiar to me from searching for my 9 and 16 slow marker map.

For this map I used a variety of sources for positioning, House of Names, Surname DB, their own Pedigrees (if available) and whatever they may have listed in ysearch as an origin. I later color coded the results by how closely they match me. Blue pins match many of my off modal numbers but they have a value of 10 for DYS391 (I have 11 and it's a slow marker). Red pins have DYS391 = 11. Yellow pins with black dots have the odd 391=11, 385a=11 and 385b=11. Finally yellow pins without dots match my off modal markers further beyond 12 markers (so they have more matches overall). That is an artifact of the kind of test they had. Many people only have the 12 marker test so I would never know if they match me beyond 12 markers.

The overwhelming amount of hits in the U.K. might be proof of ancestry or it could be proof of the high rate of DNA testing done in the U.K. The specimen in Denmark is an odd man out. I haven't found many matches in Denmark at all, Ironic given their colonization of Britain. I don't know who "Danish Specimen" is from ysearch, but the Vikings did take Scottish and British slaves during their raids, sometimes numbering in the thousands. It could be indicative of that era. There is one match from Spain who is not shown.

    A closer look at the British map. The yellow without black dot markers are those that share the most off modal markers with me.

The Norton is up there in Argyllshire. On the 1881 map in people profiler Nortons are more common in East Anglia, The Midlands, Yorkshire and Ireland around Dublin and the Irish Midlands. Not Argyllshire or Kent as House of Names gives for the homeland of those people.

The Burnett placed in Berwickshire by HON (near Edinburgh). In 1881 there are more Burnetts in Aberdeen and Harrogate (near York).

Thompson placed in Cumbria by HON, in 1881 is represented well in Cumbria but most popular in Newcastle Upon Tyne in Tyne and Wear near Northumberland. The most popular Thompson Postal city is Belford north up the coast from Newcastle Upon Tyne near the Scottish border.  Oddly enough, google searches for Belford turn up Belford Cumbria which makes it hard to determine if Belford is part of some greater "Cumbria" unrelated to the County Cumbria that has Carlisle in it.

Bell placed in Cumbria by HON and on this map is popular in Cumbria, Dumfriesshire and Northumberland on or over the Scottish border. Carlisle is the top area. Ravenglass (in Cumbria) is the top postal town. Bell is also the only other well known Borders area family name in this little Yellow pin without dot list besides Thompson. There are plenty of borders families represented in other colored pins but Bell has the most markers to match mine.

Keyes placed in Yorkshire by HON. In 1881 the only place they are common in Britain is tiny Southend by Sea which is between Kent and East Anglia. The name is actually most common in Ireland in Offaly and Laois.

Knowlton (always comes up high in any sort of Match list because we have the most markers in Common) is placed in Kent by HON and in Kent or Dorset by Surnamedb. It's most popular in Maine, New Hampshire and New Brunswick now. One Knowlton Family claims Kent in their pedigree. In 1881 Britain it's most popular in Southampton a busy port city in the south central part of Britain.

Also in this group, but not on the British map, is the "Danish Specimen" mentioned above. I'm not sure what the testing rate is in Denmark. I've been to the Danish y dna project and there are not many people there. It may be that there are huge sections of the population that share this DNA pattern but because of lack of testing we're not seeing it. Or, like I said above, it may be that this person represents a slave who passed on their DNA in their life in Denmark.

Obviously, given the small amount of total matches it's safe to say that these people or family lines are probably not representative of their total surname populations. This entire map contains 2 Thompsons out of probably hundreds or thousands of records and we don't even match each other that well.

Still these samples are pretty scattered. Like I said, Bell and Thompson are the only names that appear to be from the same region and even with that, we don't appear to be representative of our surnames..in fact we seem to be quite odd. I think in all my maps an overall pattern is evident. If we're to follow the general pattern of movement from east to west in R1b, some roughly Germano-Celtic people moved into England and from there Ireland. People who are yellow pins (dot or no) seem to be generally in northern and western Germany and then sort of peppered around Britain.

In this map my showing for Ireland is pretty small with most matches in Ulster. Since Ulster historically has been populated by Borders area Scots and English Reiver families (along with some contingent from Wales I've heard) it seems again really likely that we're a border family. The odds are still in favor of the Thompsons having moved to North Ireland during the plantation and from there to America.

Jumbled Mess of Analysis

Along the way, I had to give up on matching any Thompsons. I just don't. Not within 500 or more years. So I won't be finding any relatives this way. So I moved on to finding a place. Where do I fit then in the grand scheme? Ancestry.com left me at R1b which could be anywhere from Afghanistan to Ireland. How can I go further. Well the quick answer is...I can't really go much further with Ancestry.com; they don't offer any further testing. Most people I've run into use Family Tree DNA. They give you a bit more information and have many avenues for testing. Including SNP testing, which would help me find a narrower list of places. That all costs money. So I've been all over trying to figure out some sort of system for finding people like me...as you can see from my maps. Here is a breakdown of what different sites and people have categorized me as:

Ancestry.com 46 markers says R1b (super helpful) no further testing available through them.
Genetree guesses R1b1b2* - s128 (a safe bet, well above any defining)
OGAP19 (comforting but outdated) Highest in the highlands but also present in North England, Borders, East Anglia and Wales
McEwan R1bstr10 or R1bstr21...yes there are two of them. 46 markers is so frustrating 10 is popular in scotland and scandinavia 21 in Wales.
Campbell (also here) R1b-11 (R1b1c9*) - It's everywhere there are sheep- Cornwall, Cumbria, Western Isles, Orkney, Shetland, Wales and Norway?

A nice haplogroup predictor gives me two results:
Haplogroups and probabilities are as follows:
R1b =>51%  R1b-S21-Scottish =>11%  R1b-Frisian =>10%  R1b-S.Irish =>6%  R1b-Frisian3 =>5%  R1b-S28 =>4%  R1b-North/South 2 =>3%  R1b-E.Europe =>2%  R1b-Leinster =>2%  R1b-N.Irish =>1%  R1b-M222 (NW Irish) =>1%  R1b-North/South 1 =>1%  R1b-S21-Scottish2 =>1%


The s21 Scottish seems pretty explanatory and McEwan suggests that S21 is a broad group. S21-Scottish is spoken of in the context of the Scots modal Haplotype which I have quite a few markers in common with...but also some very telling markers are missing.

The same tester with a slightly different group of panels..probably listing all my numbers gives me this:
Haplogroups and probabilities are as follows:
R1b =>52%  R1b-S28 =>11%  R1b-S29-Frisian2 =>10%  R1b-North/South 1 =>8%  R1b-N.Irish =>4%  R1b-M222 (NW Irish) =>4%  R1b-S.Irish =>3%  R1b-North/South 2 =>2%  R1b-Frisian3 =>2%  R1b-Frisian =>2%  R1b-Ub =>2% 

R1b-s28 is a bit more enigmatic..Here is what McEwan says:  

"One of the principals of Ethnoancestry, David Faux, is S28+ and has been also undertaking considerable research genotyping as well. They have also found it in Southern Norway and in Wales. His full summary and hypotheses can be read at http://www.davidkfaux.org/dnaprofile2.html . In brief he ascribes S28+ to have appeared sometime during the LGM and was located in the Balkan Refugia. After the retreat of the ice, S28+ individuals traveled north to Germany via the Danube and into Poland. At a much later date they were associated with the La Tene culture and later still the Cimbri celts. Further work is required to clarify its exact origin and movement."

 Reading that and taking a look at my maps...it seems to fit. Here is what David Faux says:  

"In order to determine the S28 who is ancestral to the Faux family it has been necessary to delve into the history of the Celts and Germanic peoples and ferret out what makes the most sense.  The evidence is very much in favor for the intermediary (between the first settler in England and pre - history) as being a member of the Cimbri Nation, a Celtic people from the uppermost reaches of the Danish Jutland Penninsula."

Unfortunately not much is really known about the Cimbri, including whether they spoke Celtic or Germanic. Some consider them Celts others Germans. What is great about this for me is the weird nature of my matches. I don't have any in Denmark, but I do in Germany and Poland and it's nice that someone else is looking for these "edge tribes" between the Celtic and German world.


Interestingly Capelli's listing for me is pretty widespread in Britain with most in Llangefni which is in North Wales on Anglesey . Another name caught my eye though. Morpeth. I'm not sure why anymore, but I associate that with this Campbell/Capelli/Oppenheimer group of clustering. For some reason it's stuck in my head. Morpeth. It comes up in a tie for 4th place for people like me. It's in Northumberland and it happens to be really close to the epicenter of Thompsons in 1881 (Belford UK just up the coast). It's definitely part of the Scottish English borders area where the Thom(p)sons are so plentiful.  It's on the side of Hadrian's wall associated with the Votadini or Otadini (a tribe someone I contacted from my maps turned me on to).




Wikipedia: The name is recorded as Votadini in classical sources. Their descendants were the early medieval kingdom known in Old Welsh as Guotodin, and in later Welsh as Gododdin.

Why is it Described in Old Welsh? Because some of the Gododdin leave the Old North; Hen Ogledd and form a kingdom in Wales called Gwynedd...which includes..yup.. Anglesey.


So what does it all mean?


The odds are that the other paper trails I've followed are correct for our Thompsons as well. We're probably British/Scottish/Welsh and we probably moved to Northern Ireland before crossing over to the U.S. with the other Thompsons. We seem to be kind of different than the other Thompsons. We're from some odd scattered group. Odd ducks with some sort of Germano-Celtic-Belgic heritage that seems to stem from the east moving to Britain before the Romans..possibly...maybe.

16 slow markers map

After I made my 9 slow markers map, I decided to push it out to 16 FTDNA slow markers to see what pattern would emerge.

This map takes the person's word for it unless they didn't know, then I used house of names, or surnamedb. Also it's fair to note that there are repeated names in this map which may add weight to certain areas. I put a Dameron in Belgium (where HON wants them) I put one in Ipswitch and one in Suffolk (where they place themselves). I have a Campbell in Argyllshire (their listing) and one in Strathclyde (HON). I have a Knowlton in Kent (their listing) and one in Dorset (Surnamedb and world names profiler puts Knowlton in the Cornwall/Dorset area). I put Steiner in Somerset (HON says Austria which makes sense, Surnamedb says Somerset..either would match my maps). I put Norton in Kent, although it's also supposedly from Argyllshire and world names profiler has it as most popular in Southern Ireland.

Here is a closeup on Britain:

Thom(p)son

Recently I visited the World Name profiler from publicprofiler.com: http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org

It's a very quick look at name distribution today. When talking about Thomsons and Thompsons the common knowledge is that the intrusive P is an english name and without is Scottish.  I've even seen in other searches Thomson listed as a Celtic Scottish name while Thompson is listed as Western European/Other. Somehow, people are more willing to accept that MacTavish and MacTaus are Thompson but not that Thomson is likely Thompson.

It's the P! What do we do!? There's a P!

If you speak English...or probably even lowland Scots..try to say Thomson without the p sound sneaking out. The best I can do is Thomzun. It's hard because moving from the m to another consonant sound puts your mouth in the P position and it just slips out. Lets take an accepted clan name like Cam Biel..or Campbell. Now try to say Cambell. Say bell. Notice it's a nice B sound. now say cambell..feel the P sneaking in there? If you're me it also comes out more like Campbull.

So I decided to look at the profiler and see where these Thom(p)sons actually fall.

Here is Thomson:

Wow it really does decline at the border of Scotland...but it doesn't disappear.










Keep your eye on that Scottish Border...here is the Thompson map.

  

Holy Cow! right across the border is the Thompson homeland!











It seemed like the two names were really just variations of each other, so I made my own combined map with darker colors because of the two names overlapping.

I'm calling this one the Thom(p)son map. The near black parts are where the two names overlapped the most. Colors are adjusted out from there. Britain is pretty awful with Thom(p)sons. Ireland appears to be fairly well infected with them too.

When looking at this map it will help to realize that not all Thom(p)sons are related. The last name is more popular in the north..generally, but it doesn't mean they are a single family or ethnicity...just that Thomas's and their sons were more likely to pick a patrilineal  name rather than an occupational name like Baker or Smith.

Once you put these two names back together the political border between England and Scotland becomes irrelevant and you can see that there is a cultural epicenter in the borders area for Thom(p)sons and it seems to push out from there.

Levi Thompson Civil War Vet.

Here are some collected Notes I've attached to Levi Thompson (b circa 1835) father of Albert, who served in the 34th Indiana Infantry Volunteers:

Name:      Levi Thompson
Residence:     Alexandria, Indiana
Enlistment Date:     21 Sep 1861
Side Served:     Union
State Served:     Indiana
Service Record:     Promoted to Full Corporal.
Enlisted as a Private on 21 September 1861.
Enlisted in Company D, 34th Infantry Regiment Indiana on 21 Sep 1861.
Mustered Out Company D, 34th Infantry Regiment Indiana on 3 Feb 1866.

Levi applied for his pension in 1869. I've read that early pension requests were the norm because soldiers often had terrible arthritis from being out in the elements for years.

Here is a general record of the movements of the 34th:

   
UNION INDIANA VOLUNTEERS

34th Regiment, Indiana Infantry

Organized at Anderson, Ind., and mustered in September 16, 1861. Moved to Jeffersonville, Ind., October 10, thence to New Haven, Ky., November 15, and duty there till December 14. Moved to Camp Wickliffe, Ky., December 14, and duty there till February 7, 1862. Attached to 10th Brigade, Army of the Ohio, November-December, 1861. 10th Brigade, 4th Division, Army of the Ohio, to February, 1862. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, Army of Mississippi, to April, 1862. 1st Brigade, 3d Division, Army Mississippi. Garrison at New Madrid, Mo., to July, 1862. Helena, Ark., District of Eastern Arkansas, Dept. of Missouri, to November, 1862. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division, District of Eastern Arkansas, Dept. of the Tennessee, to January, 1863. 3rd Brigade, 12th Division, 13th Army Corps, Army of the Tennessee, to February, 1863. 1st Brigade, 12th Division, 13th Army Corps, to July, 1863. 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 13th Army Corps, Army of the Tennessee, to August, 1863, and Dept. of the Gulf to March, 1864. Defences of New Orleans, La., to December, 1864. Brazos, Santiago, Texas, U. S. Forces, Texas, to June, 1865. Dept. of Texas to February, 1866.

SERVICE.-Moved to Green River, Ky., February 7, 1862, thence to the Ohio River February 14, and to Cairo, Ill., with Nelson's Division, Army of the Ohio, February 17-20. Detached from Division and moved to Commerce, Mo., February 27-March 3. Siege of New Madrid, Mo., March 5-14. Siege and capture of Island No. 10, Mississippi River, March 15-April 8. Riddell's Point March 17. Garrison duty at New Madrid, Mo., April 7 to June 14. Expedition down Mississippi River to Fort Pillow, Tenn., May 19-23 (Detachment). Capture of Fort Pillow June 5 (Detachment). Moved to Memphis, Tenn., June 14-15. Expedition up White River, Ark. June 26-July 14. Action at Grand Prairie July 6-7. Near Duvall's Bluff July 7. Aberdeen July 9. Arrived at Helena July 14, and duty there till April, 1863. Expedition to Arkansas Post November 16-22, 1862. Ordered to Milliken's Bend, La., April 14. Movement on Bruinsburg and turning Grand Gulf April 25-30. Battle of Port Gibson May 1. Fourteen-Mile Creek May 12-13. Battle of Champion's Hill May 16. Siege of Vicksburg, Miss., May 18-July 4. Assaults on Vicksburg May 19 and 22. Advance on Jackson, Miss., July 4-10. Siege of Jackson July 10-17. Ordered to New Orleans, La., August 4, thence to Brashear City September 12. Western Louisiana Campaign October 3-November 30. Grand Coteau October 19. Carrion Crow Bayou November 3. At New Iberia till December 19. Regiment re-enlisted at New Iberia December 15. Moved to Pass Cavallo, Texas, December 23, 1863-January 8, 1864, and duty there till February 21. Moved to New Orleans, La., February 21, and duty there till March 20. Veterans on furlough till May. Garrison duty at New Orleans till December 18. Ordered to Brazos, Santiago, Texas, December 18, and duty there till June 16, 1865. Expedition from Brazos, Santiago, May 11-14, 1865. Action at Palmetto Ranch May 12-13, 1865 (last action of the war). White's Ranch May 13. March to Ringgold Barracks, 260 miles up the Rio Grande June 16-28. Duty at Ringgold Barracks till July 24, and at Brownsville till February, 1866. Mustered out February 3, 1866.

Regiment lost during service 2 Officers and 32 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 5 Officers and 204 Enlisted men by disease. Total, 243.

Here is a link to the Park Service Listing for their Marker in Vicksburg: http://www.nps.gov/vick/historyculture/34th-indiana-infantry.htm

Once I find Levi's grave site, I'll be able to add a record to the Database of the Sons of Union Veterans grave registry: http://www.suvcwdb.org/home/