Anthropology Closing the Gap on Genealogy

I was looking at my most recent map of people who are roughly like me at FTDNA who are also U106. It looks much like my other maps but just a little more focused. Having those extra four STRs from FTDNA really culled my matches down quite a bit. Still it's broadly German and English. Many of these people are also members of R1b-Z18 and a few are part of R1b-Z14 which are both under U106.

These are again people who match my "pattern" roughly, there are some markers off but overall they seem like me. I've color coded them so that Blue are just those with my rough pattern, Red are matches from FTDNA at 25 markers and the single Yellow is my match at 37 STRs or markers..I use those interchangeably.

When I talk about people matching my pattern, it means the pattern of short tandem repeats in my YDNA. Here is an example of several people who are in R1b-Z14:

Notice number two through four from the top down. They seem to have several markers or STRs in common, while the top one has many in common but not as many as the the three below seem to share with each other. You can begin to see a pattern in those last three that the first one doesn't follow. Notice also that the second one has more differentiation from the two below it. Those last two are very similar. At this level they only have one marker different. That is a closer match for STRs. My map above would contain 2 - 4 because they seem to form a rough group. Those STRs "suggest" a relationship. The closer the STRs the closer the suspected relationship.

I also talk a lot about SNPs. Single nucleotide polymorphisms don't just suggest a relationship they are the evidence of a relationship. People who share a Y SNP are definitely related to the same man, although it may be thousands of years in the past. It happens that in my example above, all those patterns in Y DNA are also people who carry the R1b-Z14 SNP. So I am related to all of them. At some point we all share a common male ancestor...of course that ancestor could be any time between now and about 0AD when it is thought the parent SNP Z18 came into being. Z14 itself has children which are younger than it. Here is an image of the ISOGG YDNA tree for my branch of  U106 as it stands today. Keep in mind that this tree is always changing as new things are learned. So like any family tree, it grows.

So there you can see U106 which I tested for with 23 and me (23 the north sea and me). Z18 is beneath that at about 2000 years old. Then Z14 is Z18's child. Beneath Z14 is Z372 and it's child (so far) L257. I've seen L257's age estimated at 1500 years ago. So somewhere between 1500 and 2000 years ago is Z14.

An actual map of people in R1b-Z18 or R1b-Z14 would probably look remarkably like my other maps here. Broadly "Germanic" with people in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, Latvia and France. There aren't a ton of people tested in Z14 and Z18 so it appears more scattered and sparse than it actually may be. It is also basically the geographic area covered by U106 itself.

Here is an interesting map of Europe I found with rough borders for different groups about 1500 years ago:

You can see the Angles and Saxons right there on the top of Germany and eating into Denmark and then in Britain the Angles and the Saxons occupying the same sort of vertical space on the east coast. Angles are purple, Saxons..kind of puke mustard colored. U106, Z18 and Z14 would be represented in many of these groups and many that aren't on the map in Scandinavia.

What can we do to get closer than 1500 to 2000 years ago? Well, for that we go back to the STRs and suggested relationships. If I hone down my map to show just those people who match closely enough for FTDNA to list them in my matches at 25 and 37 markers I get something like this with the red dots being 25 matches and the yellow dot my 37 match:

This represents only my matches at FTDNA, both 25 and 37. All the dots except my friend in Germany there have tested Z18 positive. The yellow dot is Z14 positive.

It's possible that at the next test up I could gain or lose matches and that's the next recommended test for me. This is basically why I've picked out the Saxons for us. I don't think these groups are small enough to differentiate between an Angle and a Saxon and  I don't think the lines between people are as cut and dry as maps make them. You can get a rough idea though that people most like me are most likely in Britain, but also probably Germany. This could represent genetic evidence of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain or it could represent some later migration of "Germans" to England. Right now, given the ages of SNPs involved the consensus seems to be Anglo Saxons.

As things progress we may find further SNPs to split this group up and get tighter timeframes. Y SNPs will eventually enter the genealogical timeframe. When I started I was at cave paintings with R1b. Last year I was at 5000 years ago with prehistoric "Germanic" cultures and R1b-U106. Now I'm at 0 to 500AD, the fall of the Roman empire, Germanic migrations and the Anglo Saxon invasions with R1b-Z14. That's a huge leap in a few years.

John Bayer 1782 Butler PA

I attempted some follow up on the Thompson children living with John Bayer born 1782 in Ireland. These are further Thompsons who live near John B Hollingsworth in Butler PA.

There are multiple names in North Butler at the time that seem like I might be looking at an extended family. John Bayer has a wife named Isabelle in the census. His daughter is named Margaret B Bayer born 1828. The Thompsons living with him are John born 1833, Mary born 1835 and Isabelle the youngest.

Also in North Butler is a woman named Margaret Thompson born in the 1760s in Ireland with another woman named Isabelle Thompson who is in her 50s living with her. That's a lot of Isabelles and Margarets between these two families and it makes me suspect some sort of relationship. It also makes me suspect some missing male Thompsons.

It's possibly of interest that in the same 1850 census Jane (Stevenson) Thompson (b 1781) is living with her adult son David William Thompson and Nathaniel S Thompson. Her husband John Thompson having died in the 1840s. Jane would be about 69 here, which is one reason I doubt she could be the mother of Levi Thompson, she would have been 53 when he was born in 1834. So there is at least one missing male Thompson that I know of.

In at least one family tree for John Thompson and Jane Stevenson I see a daughter named Isabella. In all the trees I have John Thompson is listed as being born around 1770 which would make him about 10 years older than Jane Stevenson. If I make some conjectures given the relative ages of people, it seems like John and Jane have at least one child born around 1802 (Samuel). The Isabell listed with Margaret is in her 50s (I'll have to recheck the record). That would put her birth date around 1800. This could be John's child..possibly an oldest daughter. Margaret born in the 1760s could be a sibling to John..she doesn't seem old enough to be a parent, but then the 1770 date for John's birth may be a best guess.

They could be totally unrelated Thompsons in the same town. I've seen that enough.

I couldn't track the Bayer family any further than this single census because I'm not sure their name is spelled correctly..in 1840 there are Barrs, Bears and Berrs in Butler.. and with one daughter of marrying age and parents near their 70s, they just may not exist as a unit beyond this point. "John" and "Mary" Thompsons will be hard to track. Isabelle offers the best hope because of her relatively young age and fairly unique name.

Also in this family, John Thompson living with John Bayer would have to BE Levi Thompson. What I'm really hoping for here is sort of what I found with my Williamsons. If I looked at the Census That listed Henry Williamson with his mother and no father, a few houses away was his grandfather..sitting there the whole time. I can't say with a certainty who his father was but I have a few candidates among the Williamson men who all died around the same time that would fit well.

Similarly Levi and his parents may just fall into a record gap I can't get past. Not all the children of these Thompson patriarchs are known or documented, but if I can jump over is parents to find his grandparents (like I did with Henry Williamson), I might get a lot closer to piecing this together and maybe with the help of genetics, work it the other way around.

It's possible that these people who live near John B. Hollingsworth represent a larger family we're tied to. It's a funny quirk of being a Thompson that even here when I've got a very narrow search I turn up at least two totally separate Thompson families. Still it gives me a bit of hope to think that I may be looking at aunts, uncles, cousins or if I'm really lucky, grandparents for Levi.

Z14 it is

My results are in and I am Z14, along with my Elmer match(es). Z18, our parent group contains the Knowltons, Damerons, Emery and Pipkins who were in my matches at FTDNA, Ancestry.com and SMGF. I'm clustered with all these people so it is more likely that they will also be Z14 (although not absolutely known until they test for it or an SNP downstream).

As I move down the Y DNA family tree, the possibilities for matches narrow and so does the time to most recent common ancestors. R1b-U106 is thought to be roughly 5000 years old. So I share a common ancestor with everyone who is R1b-U106 about 5000 years ago. I haven't yet seen a number of years associated with Z14, but Z18 is thought to be roughly 2000 years old. Z14 would necessarily be less than that, but I wouldn't have a guess what age that is. So I share a common ancestor (one man) with everyone who is Z18 about 2000 years ago.

Z18 contains people from all over Northern Europe and especially around the North Sea but also in Switzerland and France. Z14 testers also appear to be pretty wide ranging. To me it seems the Z14 haplogroup exists in as many places as Z18 so it may not be a big divider like R1b-U106 was for R1b where you could definitely see the map change. The ranges of the parent and child SNP might be exactly the same.

In our Cluster (labelled the cumberland cluster also sometimes labelled "channel British") there are many people of European descent. Polish, Dutch, Germans, English, Irish and Welsh. So there again, even our cluster of very similar STR results is pretty spread out. The test results of the Elmer and I are wedged right in a chunk of Southeast England results. It's not definitive of course, but we're getting a lot closer to mapping out an area. These results really back up many of the maps I made based on STRs and it tells me that I'm working this end of the puzzle the right way even if accidentally. For me it still appears to be a map of a migration taking place. The easiest one to pick out would be the Germanic migrations, although it's not the only migration of "germanic" people.

I still have a lot of homework to do to see how things line up between other Thompsons in my family and the Elmers (which we're also starting to gather). It will be crucial for me to test at least one more known Thompson relative, preferably a little more removed than my immediate uncles. So that I can have a baseline for our family and compare that with (hopefully) a group of Elmers. It could help us determine how much closer than 2000 years we share a common ancestor. Right now estimates seem to range between 200 and 400 years, but that is just comparing two people.

I need to be careful because I've been down this road before with the Knowltons where it seemed highly possible there was an NPE. Now further testing has proven that to be unlikely even though we are very obviously in the same haplogroup. The relationship is just further back in time than my other tests suggested.

The next steps will require even more involvement from my family and, as ever, I'm aware of the costs of this hobby and what an imposition that can be on my relatives. It's time to put my recruiter hat back on.

A Comforting Thought and Some Follow Up on Carles

First some follow up on Carles Thompson.

It turns out that Carles Thompson and Susannah from Butler County PA (see last post Hollingsworths next door) are actually Charles Thompson and Susannah Colby from Butler County PA. I was able to find some family history on them. Charles is born in Massachusetts and his daughters marry Washington Perry Smith (ironically born in Indiana). Charles' son Warren dies in the area before his son Michael. No Levis are mentioned in the material I found.

Charles has some interesting connections to Allisons from the History of Butler County:

 Mr. SMITH has been an active worker in the Republican party
since its organization, has held the office of school director for
sixteen years, and has always manifested a laudable interest in the
progress of the public schools. He was married in 1848, to Harriet, a
daughter of Charles THOMPSON, of Massachusetts. She died in 1850,
leaving one child, who died in early youth. His second wife was
Emeline THOMPSON, a sister of his first wife, to whom have been born
five children, as [p. 1073] follows: Harriet N., wife of John N.
ALLISON;

JAMES ALLISON, a native of Ireland, first settled in Maryland, and
came to Centre township, Butler county, Pennsylvania, in 1802. He
purchased 300 acres of land, and cleared a farm, a portion of which is
now in possession of his grandson, John ALLISON, the old homestead
being owned by O. D. THOMPSON. Mr. ALLISON married a Miss THOMPSON,
and his family were as follows: Frank; William; Robert; Margaret, who
married James PHILLIPS, and Ellen, who married Henry THOMAS


Now for the comforting thought.

John B. Hollingsworth and family from my last post make their way to Indiana between 1850 and 1860, without any decade of layover in Ohio. That means to me that my searches in Ohio may be fruitless. It's comforting though because it means that people really did just leave Butler PA and move to Madison Indiana. The family of Howell D. Thompson seems to make a similar trip from York PA to Randolf, Grant and Madison county Indiana so it's not uncommon at all.

What is uncommon to me is how I can track all these other families back to Pennsylvania, but not Levi. I've tracked multiple Thompson families in the Madison area and I can't get any of them back to Butler County PA. What makes me feel a lot better about this lack of data is that I CAN get John B. Hollingsworth, neighbor in 1860, back to Butler.

If Levi is on the up and up and he really is just misrepresented in the census records or in the index of those records (as he has been in every one I've found) then at least I have circumstantial evidence of other Butler-ites in the same town..one house away in Madison Indiana.

If Levi is not on the up and up and possibly doesn't even know his origins, but borrowed a background to make life easier when he joined the Army. Then I have a person he would have associated with who influenced him enough to give him some kind of past and a profession he would fall back on when times became hard.

Either way, he didn't just appear in Madison Indiana like a magic rabbit and that, to me anyway, is comforting.

Now I should check into the family that John B. Hollingsworth is living with because there is another stone cutter there and I need to look at the three Thompson children living with the Bayer/Boyers in North Butler.

Then of course there is the matter of John Thompson and Jane Stevenson's children. John dies in the 1840s, that doesn't count him out as a father of Levi but it's cutting it close. His other sons would be a decade or more older in that scenario. I have a few sons listed for John and Jane with no ages assigned. Any of them could be parents of Levi too.

The trail though really seems to stop at John. He is from Lancaster or Chartier's creek, and is one of the many faces of John Thompson in Butler. He may be the one with 11 children...or he may not.

Hollingsworths Next Door

With our paternity in question and just more confusion in the world of DNA, I decided to go back and look at the people around Levi again. I'm sure I've noted in the past that the person living next door to Levi in Van Buren Indiana in 1860 is a Stonemason and wondered openly if that is where Levi got his start in that trade. This time I looked more closely at the people involved. There are actually two stone masons living next door to Levi and interestingly enough, one of them is a Hollingsworth from Pennsylvania.

That name always gets my attention so I decided to follow up on him. He is around the same age as Levi, living in the same area, also with a seemingly unrelated family (Levi is living with the Brodericks) and he's from Pennsylvania. Worth looking into.

It turns out he is not alone. The rest of his family is in Fairmount, Grant, Indiana. Just a few miles away from the Alexandria area. In 1870 John B. Hollingsworth ends up living in Grant with his parents (nice) and just like Levi he seems to forget where he was born. Close families often travel together, so I thought I would look through Grant Indiana for some Thompsons.

There are two families of Thompsons I've found so far. One is the family of a James Thompson who lives there in 1850 as well and is from Virginia. The other is the family of Samuel R. Thompson who is a brother of Howell D. Thompson who is well remembered in the history of Madison County Indiana. Howell D. Thompson's father John L. Thompson lives in Randolph Indiana and is from York Pennsylvania. (He is also a suspect. His wife dies in 1839. I haven't gotten a good 1850 record for him, Howell D is living separately in Pendelton Indiana in 1850.)

Neither Samuel R. or James from VA shows a Levi or even a male child of a similar age, so...darn. Of course I've already been through Grant County in the past and didn't find Levi there, but it's worth a try.

Next I stepped back in time to 1850 to see where the Hollingsworths were and who lived around them. With John B. Hollingsworth's whole family for reference, he was actually pretty easy to find. In North Butler, Butler County, Pennsylvania.

Hold the phone! Things I know about Levi Thompson, he's born in Butler County Pennsylvania and moves to Madison Indiana sometime before 1855. He is a farmer but after the war becomes a stonemason or Tombstone manufacturer.

Things I now know about John B. Hollingsworth, he's born in Butler County Pennsylvania and moves to Madison Indiana sometime before 1860. He's a stonemason. Now that is a bit weird.

I started to wonder about a lot of things, like why are these guys so similar? How is it that I can find John B. Hollingsworth, practically a clone of Levi Thompson (or maybe the other way around) but I can't find Levi? What kind of ninja is Levi Thompson?

Well, then my next step was to go through the 1850 census in North Butler, Butler Pennsylvania and look for  Thompsons..which I would expect to find because Butler PA is awful with Thompsons. I find three families of Thompsons.

One family consists of several Thompson children living with a Bayer or Boyer family. No Levi Thompsons. The second is a family of Thompsons who is lead by a man listed as Carles (there is no H) and his wife. Carles is from Massachusetts his wife is from Vermont. Again, No Levi Thompsons. The other Thompson family is one I've seen before. It's Jane (Stephenson/Stevenson) Thompson and her son David and Nathaniel Stevenson Thompson. Their father John Thompson is dead. He is sometimes linked with John, James and Matthew threesome of brothers who settle in Center and Franklin, Butler PA. No Levi Thompsons.

Again here, I've already been through the Butler censuses for 1850 and didn't see Levi Thompson then either so no big surprise there. Given our DNA results, I thought maybe I should do a search for males who were not Thompsons but were about the right age and came up with a laundry list of 15 year olds in North Butler.

Of course the Hollingsworths were there, but also scattered around the Stephenson Thompsons were just plain old Stephensons. The Stephenson Thompsons are living in a cluster of Stephensons in 1850. Nathaniel Stevenson Thompson is named after Jane Thompson's father Nathaniel Stevenson who is a pioneer from Scotland I believe. Jane and her sons must have been living around what I imagine is her sibling's family. Among these Stephenson's there was one record that was interesting. A male child listed as (something) N. Stephenson at the end of a list of Stephensons. I believe he is not a direct descendant of the head of household because he is listed after the entire family down to a 2 year old (which is what I see often with unrelated children). Although I'm sure I'm imagining it, the first letter looked a lot like an L to me.

I was at the point that I was convincing myself it was an L I was seeing and that the census taker had mislabeled that last boy as a Stephenson when he obviously was L. N. Thompson. Then I conjectured that Levi Thompson was obviously this L. N. Thompson the son of John Thompson and Jane Stephenson and that he left Pennsylvania with a friend named John B. Hollingsworth and moved to Madison Indiana with him. That was when I realized that it is way too easy to assign too much meaning to these coincidences.

Still, even without that last bit of fever dream, there are an awful lot of similarities with these two men John B.  Hollingsworth and Levi Thompson with their proximity in 1860 and the same birthplace and later the same occupation. I think it will be worth further investigation.

Stinsons

Last year while working with two different genetic matches at 23 and me, I noticed that they shared the same Stinson and Bailey family. In particular they shared James Bailey and Margaret Stinson. Because these two people matched me on different chromosomes, I put it off as an interesting coincidence among people with roots in Virginia. Since I also have roots in VA, it's possible our match is there somewhere.

Here is a link to a family tree containing the Baileys: http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/l/a/Norman-R-Blankenship-VA/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0237.html

This year working with two more matches, this time they do share a match on the same chromosome, I found that one of them has a Stinson family and that the match is most likely on the branch of their family tree with the Stinson in it married to a Burkett. Their Stinsons go to the Carolinas. They also overlap with a person who has Stinsons, Barbers and Boulwares from South Carolina:
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=marciamcclure&id=I5678

It turns out the Stinsons are Stephensons from Scotland. So I independently have four matches with Stinson/Stephenson connections.

There is a yest another person in this research mix who has no Stinsons (call her J) that I have seen so far, but does have a lot of Scots who move into Canada. On my grandmother's side, I also have Scots who move into Canada, but no Stinsons.

On the list of names from the memorial linked above, I do see some I recognize like the Strouds that appear to be linked to so many of my genetic matches and the Johnstons from  J's family tree. I also see Baileys from my matches last year (along with Stinsons of course). So this group from South Carolina may have  more meaning for me than I can fully realize now. Should I be looking for Stinsons and Stephensons in Indiana. Could these be a clue to Henry Williamson's wife or mother? Are they connected to my Finks or McQueen family? Is there more for me in Canada than I have seen so far?

Royal Pain

One of our family stories is that we're British. The next family story is that we're in some way Native American (Cherokee) and the third part of the story is that we're related to the British Royal family in some way. Possibly through Mary Queen of Scots.

It's not really important for me to follow up on the Queen of Scots thing except that the mythology of it may point me in the right direction to find the Thompsons. There is a family of Thompsons from Pennsylvania, Juniata I think, that marry some Stewarts and claim a Royal line through that. Here is a link to the text of the Descendants of John Thomson: http://archive.org/stream/descendantsofjoh00mcal/descendantsofjoh00mcal_djvu.txt

Specifically looking at:

• Branch No. 10, Andrew and Jane Stewart

• 55 — Andrew Thompson and Rebecca Stewart

• 52 - John Thompson and Rachel Stewart

So those are good Stewart/Thompson matches. The thing is that when I think about these stories I have to remember also that "The Aunts" were Ida Williamson's daughters too. Their father Albert seemed to have no knowledge of where his father Levi was from and then Albert died young. It is possible that many of the stories of my Thompson family are actually stories of the Williamsons. Along those lines I decided to have a look at the Stewart I found in my recently discovered Williamson family tree. Hugh Williamson born around 1720 marries Elizabeth Stewart born around the same time. Elizabeth Stewart is listed as the daughter of John Stewart born in 1687 in Scotland who marries Mary Shaw.

There are two rumor trees assigned to John Stewart, one of them seems unlikely given that it says John's parents were born in the Americas while listing him as being born in Scotland. The other cycles through several generations of Scots Stewarts until it reaches the High Stewards of Scotland that became the Stewart Kings of Scotland.

I'm pretty sure no one will haul out the stone of destiny so I can be crowned king of Scotland, but it would be reasonable to think that the Aunts would have known about Hugh Williamson and Elizabeth Stewart. That by itself (without the lengthy royal tree) would be enough to spawn a family legend.

As I've examined my family, I think I've grown accustomed to the idea that most of any Native American heritage we may have would come from our Finks (and associated) family. I show none of that genetically, but I think that might be where the story comes from.

Finding this Stewart in my Williamson tree makes me think the Royal connection is there. The Williamsons who were lost to me because of Henry's missing dad may have been readily apparent and known to Ida Williamson and her daughters (The Aunts).

For reference here is the rumor tree back to a Scottish Stewart:

John Stewart (1687 - 1774)

is your 8th great grandfather

Elizabeth Stewart (1718 - 1764)

Daughter of John

Alden Williamson (1750 - 1816)

Son of Elizabeth

Hammond Williamson (1783 - 1874)

Son of Alden

Joseph Williamson (1814 - 1846)

Son of Hammond

Henry H Williamson (1840 - 1913)

Son of Joseph

Ida Rachael Williamson (1874 - 1936)

Daughter of Henry H

Ray Bishop Thompson (1898 - 1970)

Son of Ida Rachael

Charles Paul Thompson (1925 - 2006)

Son of Ray Bishop

my dad

Son of Charles Paul

me

By Any Other Name

Tonight my wife asked me if I would change my name if I found out we were definitely related to Elmers. For a lot of people, I think this is a very serious issue. I've known people who have done just that. I haven't asked them about their motives, but my guess would be that they always felt different and wanted to put things right. Maybe they grew up hearing about the mystery of a relative's paternity and solved the puzzle. I'm sure the reasons to do it are many.

I do not plan to do that. I am a Thompson. I can't really see myself being something else at this point. Maybe because of autosomal DNA and having that reminder of how important moms are, even though they give up their last names, or maybe because I have my own children, it seems less important to me. There isn't really anything for me to fix, just things for me to learn.

Depending on how close the crossover is, it may be supremely interesting to figure out where a missing branch of my genetic family is today. Really, even if it were my grandfather, I can't see myself changing. My family has assigned meaning to our name. We feel unique in our huge crowd of Thompsons. We have a way of being that identifies us and we've used our name to identify it. I don't think I could give that up.

Thompson is a name people picked when they wanted to fit in. I told my wife tonight that maybe it's a name that picks you. I owe the Thompsons something for making this life possible. I intend to honor our odd little branch of this giant sequoia in the world of names.

We may not be Thompsons from the beginning of the use of surnames which is a loss. On the other hand, since my father is named Thomas, I am every bit as qualified to wear this name as the very first Thompson to crawl out of a bog a thousand years ago.

Swiss Family Thompson?

I decided to take a minute to think about the Swiss. For many reasons. My Steiner match is the first person to make me think about this. Without many other Swiss matches, it seems less likely but my really close Elmer match (with a really late census record saying Ephraim's dad was from Germany) brings it back to mind. Elmer is a Swiss name too. It's a place name from Elm Switzerland.

The Elmer tree that runs to England seems really solid, but I began to stew on the Swiss and think that I gave them short shrift. When I look at my map of German matches a few are up north but a few are in the south west in and around the Rheinland-Pfalz area.

This from the article on Rheinland Pfalz:

"Certain colonies in the United States were settled by major groups of poor Palatines—then refugees in England—passage paid for by Queen Anne to reduce the number of impoverished families who had taken refuge in London. In 1710 the English used ten ships to transport nearly 3,000 Germans to the colony of New York. Many died en route, as they had been weakened by disease. They were settled in work camps along the Hudson River, where they developed naval stores for the English to work off their passage. Churches set up in both the East and West Camps provided some of the earliest population records in New York. In 1723 the first hundred heads of families were allowed to acquire land west of Little Falls, New York along the Mohawk River, in what was called the Burnetsfield Patent after the governor. This became Herkimer County. The Germans and their descendants were important in the defense of the Mohawk Valley during the American Revolutionary War."

Note that the article mentions Herkimer County by name where Ephraim Elmer is from. These Elmers from New York live among Helmers, but keep their Elmer name rather than take on the more common name Helmer. It could be for differencing because they are English Elmers or it could be a direct reference to being Swiss Elmers from Elm Switzerland. It could also be a quirk of the family and have nothing to do with their origins at all.

I read in several articles that Swiss Mennonites left persecution in Switzerland and settled in the Palatinate, later Palatines made the journey mentioned above to England and then on to the Americas. This is probably the migration my Finks family made, so it's not unfamiliar territory.

How would this connect to my Thompsons from Pennsylvania, well, like my Steiner match, many Swiss and German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania. One good reason I've been on the lookout for German Thomassons.

So there is my reasonable doubt about English-ness. They may just be close genetic relatives of Saxon ancestors or they could be a buried connection to my Pennsylvania family. Either way, I can't afford to ignore the Swiss or Germans just yet.

Z14 Waiting Again...Anxiously

I ordered the Z14 test today as that seemed like the most likely group for me to fit in. I've had my eye on Z18 for some time and planned on testing for that, but it turns out that quite  a few people in the group within Z18 that I have watched, are Z14. So my Elmer match and I ordered ours at the same time.

Although these results may not be exciting in the Y DNA community, or to anyone really, they are of particular interest to me. If the Elmer match and I are both Z14 then I continue to pursue the NPE. If we both aren't, then I continue to pursue the NPE. If one of us is but the other is not, then I'll move forward on the assumption that we are incredibly similar Y chromosomes, but probably unrelated in a genealogical timeframe.

Like the Emperor in StarWars, I'm on both sides of this fight. Either way I win and either way I'm going to suffer some form of "loss".

On the one hand, I've been a Thompson all my life. I don't know any other way (you Thompsons will understand this because we DO have a way). I got into this to try to find my roots and specifically to find my Thompson family and learn about them. I have learned a lot, but I've also been snagged for quite a while. Am I ready and willing to concede defeat in the face of overwhelming unknown-itude? So, some part of me hopes that we're Thompsons from the beginning and that there were no Thompsons before us and that everyone else has been using our name without paying any royalties. Part of me wants to be THE Thompsons and to be able to say I did it. I did what people said I could not do. I found them and completed my mission!

Then there is the other part of me. This part is excited because there is something new to learn and it may mean an answer to why this entire process has been sort of an uphill battle. This part of me is excited to have a close match no matter how it plays out. I want to show that I was right to group all these Knowltons and Coens and Damrons and Elmers together because we are really part of a group and that group is labelled Z14 and it's particularly common near the channel in England. This part of me is seeking answers to my questions and learning to adapt to what is returned.

So when I look at most recent common ancestor models and I see that it's likely the Elmer and I share an ancestor within 200 to 300 years, which makes a crossover in the 1700s a viable option, I am at once excited and fearful. That is a lot closer than 2000 years ago as an estimate for Z18. 200 to 300 years is within record keeping here in the U.S.

Of course for those estimates to really play out, we have to be within the same haplogroup, which is where the Z14 test comes in. If we're both Z14 then we know we're related sometime between 2000 years ago and now and then we look at those STR values and the 200 to 300 year TMRCA and take it as a marker to look for such a crossover.

That evidence of SNPs and TMRCA plus the evidence of another Elmer at SMGF who is one away from the FTDNA Elmer and three away from me means that if the SMGF Elmer had chosen FTDNA, he would be in my match list as well. That creates a pattern of similar Elmers and at this point they would be the only people anywhere to match me at this level.

How could this all fall apart? Several ways I can think of and probably several more I'm not thinking of. The quickest way would be to have two different SNPs like I said above. He's Z14 and I'm not, something like that.

The next way I can think of is that our STR match is a fluke. We may well both be Z14, but if I'm reading all the results correctly, he and the Elmer from SMGF (utah to connecticut) are more closely related than he and I are. That leaves open the possibility that I've randomly mutated to have a closer match with this particular Elmer than I should, or that he's mutated away from that Elmer enough that he now matches me. At the very least, it would make me think that he and the other Elmer are closer to each other in time than he an I are. Of course it would be better if we were all FTDNA at this point, but I've got what I've got.

This is where it would be best for me to get some Thompson ringers to test. If I match with my other Thompson relatives at all, then we could figure out a modal and see how close the Elmers are to that. It would also be excellent to find the SMGF Elmer and get him tested with FTDNA so that we are looking at apples to apples comparisons.

The third way is if we upgrade to 67 markers and don't remain close.

Other ways revolve around actual genealogical records. What if the SMGF Elmer was wrong about their family tree and they don't go back to England and intertwine with Thompsons at all? That could blow my theory out of the water, although in truth it wouldn't make us any less related.

For the next month or so, waiting for results, I'm sure I'll waffle back and forth between disappointment and excitement as the possibilities in either camp grow in my mind. I'll probably see more pitfalls and find more holes in my own logic. That's good though. No matter what, this is a learning experience and even if we are Elmers, all that means is I have another cool family to learn about and people to work with in putting the pieces together.