23, The North Sea and Me

Well I got my results from 23 and me and it makes me feel better about the path my research took. I'm R1b - U106 or S21 or M405. 23 and me says I'm R1b1b21a1a1* which follows the 2010 ISOGG tree for nomenclature. Recently FTDNA and ISOGG have changed the tree nomenclature so the haplogroup is now R1b1a2a1a1a 23 and me now lists me with a * to signify that they think I have further snps but they don't know what they are. 


I had a hunch that we were R1b-U198 or S29 or M467, but it turns out I am ancestral for that so. I had a no call for L48 which means they couldn't get a result so I may be that, but I'd have to have more testing to find out and I'm not sure how much narrower this group can get. 


23 and me says this group is centered in the now submerged area between the mainland and britain called Doggerland. Estimates of the MRCA for R1b-U106 are given as 3000 to 4000 years at many sites. It's hard to say though and on an interactive map of europe I saw that Doggerland was pretty well and Island by 5000 years ago so it makes me think that scenario needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The other theory on this is that the Germanic migrations brought R1b-U106 to England, Scotland and Ireland.

On the left is U106 my clade. On the right is S116 or P312 the large branch that eventually leads to L21 and then to M222 which is a major Irish clade. Although no culture can really be assigned to P312 it's often seen as Celtic where U106 is often seen as Germanic and labeled Frisian because of it's concentration in old Frisia. For fun here is a distribution of I1 another "Germanic" group.

So obviously even haplogroups seperated by 10s of thousands of years can inhabit the same area, and there is considerable overlap among these groups. Although Haplogroup I1 is considered Norse because of it's concentration you could obviously be French or German and and have Haplogroup I1. 


So they say my group of people can be found hugging the north sea and to an extent the Baltic sea as well. It would seem that they were pinched between the R1b-S116 people to the south and the I1 people to the north. 


To me this explains all the German, English and Danish/Swedish matches on my Y chromosome and may explain why I struggle so hard to find Y matches. There are only 6 Thompsons listed in my clade at FTDNA. It may be because of lack of testing, but still it's pretty daunting. So I feel good about my research and my hunches. I figured it out and then verified my findings.


When people wax poetic they say we are sea people. Water people who lived anywhere a longship would go. I've always pictured myself as more of a forest person and I've never been particularly drawn to the sea...but then your Y chromosome is only a small part of the multitude of people who make you up.

Some Followup on the First Levi Thompson of Interest

So my first Levi Thompson of interest in Ohio has some cool leads but one dead end. He's got a lot going for him, some family names, location, a tie in with the Davis family, but he get's shot down by appearing in the 1860 census in Scott Adams Ohio with his family. It's really hard to put this one away though so I'd like to review the evidence I have against him.

Here are the Levi Thompsons born from 1833-1836 in the 1850 Ohio Census:

 

You can see my two Levis of interest and one extra I hadn't counted on. Next here is the same search in 1860:

Damn. There's the Levi I was hoping would disappear...and he's the only one I can find! How about the rest of the family:

 

Not being able to actually see the census record behind it, here is what I have. Several of the Thompsons from 1850 indexed as Thomson by family search in the 1860. Levi, Mary, Mother Mary, Jesse, John, Joseph the invalid and even Amos all appear. So if this Levi were my Levi he would have to be in two places at once.

I know in the 1870 census this Levi is not with this particular family but I have no way of knowing where he goes or what he does. Here is where this gets really creepy though. If you remember my older post Levi Thompson alive in 1900? where I openly posed the question of whether my Levi had run off to Ohio and married a woman named Margaret only to die before 1910. I had thought he was a good possibility because he was a bit further east in Ohio...not too far from Celina.

Here is that Census record:

 

If you take a look at it you'll see that this Levi I suspected of being ours is a Gun Smith and that his father was born in Virginia..like Jesse Thompson and his mother was born in Ohio..like Mary Thompson. He also lives in Washington Township, Highland, Ohio which isn't too far from Scott, Adams Ohio. 

So I think, although I probably haven't found my Levi Thompson, I may have done a pretty good job of tracking this particular Levi Thompson...in a round about way...twice.

All the Levi Thompsons in Ohio sort of disappear in 1870. There is one dead Levi Thompson in Columbus, Ohio in 1873. Not sure who he belongs to. Since I know my guy is around in 1890, I can guess that it's not him. 

So I'll keep this Levi in mind as I move on, mostly because of that Amanda Davis record..I still want to tie Levi to those Brodericks somehow..I can't help it.

Next steps:

• Continue looking for the Cardington Morrow Levi to return..if not he may be the best choice to follow. 
• Search for any 1880 Levi Thompsons and compare to Cardington Morrow Levi parental records. 
• Search for Pennsylvania Levis and see what's new.

Another Ohio Thompson of Interest

Along the same lines as the first, this Levi Thompson came up in a general search of Levi Thompsons born in 1834. This Levi Thompson is in Cardington, Morrow, Ohio. Which is a bit farther away than the other Levi Thompson, kind of in the middle of Ohio, but it's much closer to Pennsylvania. Here is a google map:

 

Cardington is point A, Van Buren Indiana point B and Celina Ohio is point C. It's a nice straight shot and you could almost imagine a person going by this route and passing right through the Hopewell area on their way to Van Buren  Indiana.

This Levi Thompson record also comes with a Mary Thompson as an older sister and a younger brother named James so there are my two family names. Very common, but still there they are. Here is the census record for 1850. 

 This Levi Thompson's father is from Delaware and it would appear that his mother is from Massachusetts. Again, this Levi is born in Ohio, not Pennsylvania or Indiana, but beggars can't be choosers.

With my limited access to actual census records through Familysearch.org I can verify that John Thompson from Delaware moves to Galion, Ohio a bit further north in 1860. I also cannot find a record for Levi Thompson in the vicinity in 1860. In fact the Levi Thompson I find in 1860 is this Levi Thomson record from (GASP) Scott Township, Adams Ohio.

Sadly. For all the promise of the first Ohio Levi he may be taken out of the running by this record. I find him, his brother John H and Jesse all listed as Thomsons in Scott Township, Adams, Ohio in 1860 precisely when my Levi Thompson is living with the Broderick/Davis family in Van Buren Indiana. It's not a total killer, as I said the Silcotts show up in two different towns in the same census..but by this point Levi has been married for a few years and has children.

On the other hand, the omission of Levi Thompson from Galion, Ohio does bump the Cardington Morrow Levi up in the rankings. It doesn't have the cool tie in of the odd Davis name, but it could make sense geographically and it makes sense in the timeline. This will be one to watch.

The next steps for this record:

• Attempt to track the other Thompson family members. Mother and daughter Lucy, sister Mary, brother James and sister Melissa. Especially Lucy and Melissa as they are the most likely to be present in 1860.

An Ohio Levi of Interest

Searching through familysearch.org I found a Levi Thompson of interest born in the 1834 range. I've gotten in the habit of looking for any Levi Thompson born around 1834 because of the confusion surrounding his birthplace in the census records.

The reason I didn't find him in earlier searches at Ancestry.com is that he is indexed as a 10 year old there while he is indexed as  16 year old at familysearch. He could be 10 it's hard to say, but from the census record he appears to be 16 to me.

 

Here is that Ancestry Index:

So in this case it pays off to check with a couple of sources. I never would have found this Levi on ancestry because he doesn't fit in my time range.

There was one other record..also from Ohio in Cardington, Morrow of a Levi Thompson who was 16. Both of these records are of interest because they contain a Mary Thompson. When I'm looking at family records I also look for repeating family names. So for instance I had to wonder about Levi's daughter Mary and Levi's son James. Well I think James is probably named after his maternal grandfather James Blades. So now I'm on the lookout for Albert, Mattie, Mary, Rena and Francis which seems to appear in the family more than once.

Mary Thompson is a pretty common name though so I'm really always hoping to find it in combination with one of the others.  Of course this family has two Marys which shows a pattern of Mary naming. Here is census record. It spans two pages:

 

Now the second page looks like Hary A Thompson but it is really Mary A. Thompson. 

Here is the Familysearch.org index:

Here is the ancestry.com individual index for Mary A Thompson in the same family:

And the Ancestry indexes for Jesse and Mary (the mother):

No idea about Jemmima Thompson in the same town but you can see Jesse and wife Mary sandwiching Jemmima in the index.

So this got my attention. I have a Levi of the right time. He's not born in Pennsylvania or Indiana but those are suspect because they're inconsistent and because I just haven't been able to find a record of him in 1850 in Indiana...yet. I totally missed this one before because of it's index, which has been the pattern with my Thompson records.

So, okay, it's worth looking into. Where is Scott, Adams, Ohio. It turns out it's not too far from other known Levi Thompson locations. Here is a google map:

 

On this map. Point A. is Celina Ohio (a town close to Hopewell where Levi Thompson is listed in 1890 in a veteran's roll. Point B is Scott, Ohio where this Levi Thompson lives in 1850 and Point C is Van Buren, Indiana where my Levi Thompson lives in 1860 with his wife and family.

Okay. Now, I'm extremely interested because this could go a long way to explaining what the heck Levi Thompson is doing in Ohio in 1890, but I'm stuck. My ancestry.com account has lapsed and although I'm free to search all I want, most records are closed to me.

Familysearch.org will show me 1850, but no other records. So what I really want to know is, does this Levi Thompson disappear from the 1860 record of this family. If Levi Thompson is still show living with the family in 1860, then it is less likely that he's my Levi Thompson. Not impossible because the Silcotts appear in two different census records, but, unlikely. Except I can't look at the 1860 records at either Ancestry or Familysearch.

So I asked for help from a newly met Thompson branch of my family, and they dug up the 1870 record for this family for me. It's helpful because it gives a clearer picture of the family and Levi is missing from that picture.

 

It's easier to read some of the names too. Jesse, Mary, John, Mary A., Joseph, Sarah, Amanda Davis and the last one looks like Amos Thompson. Now here's the thing that got me really excited about this particular record. Who is that little Davis kid?!

If you remember from one of my earlier posts about Rosa, Levi and the records fire, Levi, Rosa and the kids are living with the Broderick/Davis family in Van Buren Indiana. I could not find a way to tie George Broderick or his wife Piety Davis to Levi or Rosa. The Brodericks live with a family of Thomases in Mill, Gates, Indiana in 1850. Thomas is a Thom name but it's not exactly Thompson. I couldn't find Piety before 1850 because in the 1840 census children are just tick marks. I knew she was from Ohio but all I have to go on are their marriage records and her really interesting name to tie them together and confirm that she is a Davis:

 

So I was kind of left to explain the Thompsons and the Brodericks living together as random chance.  But now I have to wonder if there is some deeper family connection between the Ohio Davis family and my Indiana Thompsons.

So it's time for more research into the 1860s. Trying to see if this Levi Thompson from Scott Adams Ohio totally disappears from the Ohio records in 1860. It's also good to note that there is another Thompson family from Pennsylvania in the same 1870 census sheet as Jesse Thompson. It looks like a Sarah Thompson with two children in her household lives just up the road from our other Thompsons. This could indicate a broader family group and bigger groups are easier to track. 

 

Next steps:

• Levi Thompson 1860s headcount. Time to count all the Levi Thompsons I can search for in Indiana and  Ohio to see if the numbers change and how.
• Track the movements of Jesse Thompson from Virginia. He marries his wife in Ohio I imagine since that is where she's from so there's a good chance he's lived there for 20 or more years and possibly get a marriage record for them.
• Check 1880 census records for Levi Thompson activity in the Western Ohio region. If he's there in 1890 was he also there in 1880?

While I'm waiting...yet another map!

So I'm waiting on 23 and Me now for that Y snp. I decided in the meantime to shore up some of my matches. This time I disregarded just the "top" matches and drew my list from those that shared the most markers in common...from 29 markers up to 39 in common. I pulled from Ancestry.com, Ysearch, Ybase, and SMGF.

For many of my matches I was able to get a better handle on their location because SMGF and Ysearch contain some family information in their results. So I was able to google the last known relatives for a few and get better information. Some though are still bald faced guesses based on world family names listings for most common locations.

Here is my most recent map. I was happy to place Elmer correctly in East Anglia. Corson is still kind of a mystery. They live in New Netherlands (New York) but they believe they are Swedish. They believe they stem from Caerston Jansen. Jansen is really popular in the Netherlands and Norway, but I know from my research with Thompsons that people change the spelling of their name to suit the place they live, for example SMGF matches me up with a Johnson who is really a Johannson from Sweden that anglicized his name.

Here is the 29 plus marker map. I had to short change the Ancestry.com matches because there are so many. As would be expected since we have the exact same tests. Customers from Genebase or FTDNA are at a disadvantage for matching me because SMGF/Ancestry tests different markers than they do.

I tried my best to place my matches from Prussia and Switzerland. My Custy and Bruemmer top matches are based on world family names ranking. The order of matching goes from highest solid yellow to lowest blue dot.

As I've said, my bet is Anglo Saxon or Viking..mostly because of these maps and the really scattered nature of my matches. Many are in England but not all of my closest. So my guess is that I match some dudes who get around. For kicks, here is a viking settlement map stolen from Wikipedia.

Of course there's nothing firm to base any of this on and even if my SNP comes back U106 as I suspect, it won't tell me much about whether there was a viking that made the rounds or hundreds of years of Saxon movement cause my map. Making maps of where people lived in the 19 through 1500s isn't scientific proof of anything, but it is interesting to me.

Also for fun, here is another map of viking England in the 10th century. 

At first I thought this was a pretty good match, but then I was concerned about my Knowltons in Kent. It turns out that the vikings were very active in Kent early on not far from Knowlton residing on the Isle of Thanet...which is apparently not an island...if the maps are correct. Also by the 11th century it looks like they have taken over all of Kent and Northumbria...home of the most Thompsons in England.

Here's a closeup of Britain and Ireland:

My Irish matches are interesting. Most of them are R1b-U106 which is seen as an invader marker. Coen is definitely, and I imagine Custy is as well. 

Over in Cumbria is a 34 marker match Hogarth. They are from Ireby which is picturesque. Cumbria is a borders area. Ironically Ireby is said to mean town of the Irish Vikings. 

Down in Wales is a Thomas from Swansea. Swansea is a viking settlement in Wales. Thomas is my only Thom in this list and he's at 29 markers. Also R1b-U106.

The one known L21 person here is placed in Bristol. L21 is like U106 but a different branch of the R1b tree. L21 occurs all over continental Europe, England and Ireland. For a long time I thought I might be L21 (probably wishful thinking on my part). Who knows though, maybe I am.

The waiting is the hardest part. Mostly I'd like to see if my logic is sound and if I've done my mapping correctly, or at least to the best of my ability. It's been a fun distraction and a good enough reason to learn about northern Europe. It may also give me clues on finding the rest of my Thompson family. Maybe I should take those Danish Thompsons in Indiana seriously after all?