Thompsons Thompsons Everywhere

So now I have another ball in the air. These Berks PA Thompsons. Without more details on where their information comes from, I can't say what to do with them. Is it a story, does it come from a church record, are there siblings for Levi? With a birth and death date for Albert E Thompson it seems like it has some source, but what is it? Were they passing through Butler PA when Levi was born? Is that baptismal record for Albert the right Albert? I just can't say, and there it hangs. I can't add them in.

I also can't add in any Thompsons from Butler PA. There are great candidates, but there are too many candidates and without some tangible proof like a church or census record..there's nothing I can do with those. The only thing I can think to do is go through any church records I can find in Butler PA for some sort of baptism record for Levi. 

With my results from FTDNA in, I'm left to think that we're most likely from Southern or Southeast England and with all my Danish candidates falling away, it would appear that we're Saxon English, or at least that my father and I are. Then all my other English matches fell away and left just one single Elmer match. Along with that record comes the realization that I still don't match any Thompsons on the Y in any database. In fact, I've only gotten further away from the ones I had hoped to get closer to. The idea of an NPE becomes more likely.

As was pointed out to me in the past, The Elmers do overlap with a Thompson family in the 1700s in New Jersey. I have some autosomal matches who are related to that Thompson family and the Elmer family with them. What to do with them? If I recall, some of those Thompsons do make their way to Pennsylvania. I probably should do a survey of them to make sure of it. The time between those New Jersey Thompsons and Elmers and Levi gets kind of tight though especially if I am to consider the Berks PA Thompsons (Albert E's parents) who were likely born in the 1780s. That is assuming that an NPE would occur between those families. 

There is also the point to consider that an NPE can happen at any time. I'm definitely related to my father, but now I would need to search for possible Elmer parents at every generation back along my male line. From the advice of others in the genetic genealogy community, I should consider this seriously and proceed accordingly. 

So, genetically speaking, I need to figure out when this may have happened. Of course that requires still more testing. On the Y side, the advice is to test other known Thompson relatives. For instance, my father and I match, but what about the Indiana Thompsons. If they don't match then we could suspect an NPE between Albert 1870 and my Grandfather 1925. There is also the possibility that if they don't match me, that they match a group of known Thompsons, which would be nice. If they do match then we would suspect an NPE from Albert 1870 back. 

Also, I should continue working with the Elmer family to see if our match gets closer over time. So I would need to order more SNP testing to make sure we're still on the same branch of R1b-U106 and the 67 marker test at FTDNA to make sure we don't diverge too much. All of that is because there is still the possibility that even that match falls apart and we are then probably just men who are related way back beyond any records I'll find. At that point if the Elmers fall away, it would be good to have those other Thompson results, matching or not to continue with.

Autosomal testing comes into play too. I should have at least one of the Indiana Thompsons tested at 23 and me (which has been my plan) to see where they overlap with my father. It could be very telling if they share the same autosomal matches that contain Elmer related people. It would, also remove my paternal grandmother (directly but not indirectly as they are probably also related to her like everyone in america). They may also have some matches that my father does not, that further point us in a good direction. 

It seems that every time I lop a head off this thing, two heads grow in it's place. No one said it would be easy, to the contrary, I was absolutely told it could not be done. This day at least, I'm starting to feel the sting of that statement. Every possibility from the past is still open and more are being added. 

Will I be able to pull this swirling miasma into some sort of shape before I run out of resources?

FTDNA Results

At my last post  I was waiting for my "upgrade" to 37 markers with FTDNA. I'm excited to get news that they are in. Ironically, a project manager contacted me before the FTDNA company email went out. The shocking bit is that with these new results all the Knowltons and Emerys and Damerons completely disappeared. Even the Boettcher who matched at 24/25 was gone. At Ysearch they all dropped like flies as well. The only one left was the Elmer. At FTDNA I match an Elmer at 35/37 and at SMGF I match an Elmer at 34/37.

With these results and the relative proximity of the two different Elmer families (one with a late 1700s brick wall in New York the other from Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts) I think it's highly likely that they are related. At this point the SMGF Elmer and FTDNA Elmer would only mismatch by 1. FTDNA and SMGF use different markers but it would probably be a pretty close match for them regardless.

Where does that leave me and Levi Thompson? Well, broadly speaking, I think it would be safe to assume that we're from the British Isles as the oldest man in the family says. It would also be safe to say that we're English like my father has always said. I would probably go a step further and say that we are most likely Saxon English.

Without something extraordinary cropping up, I think my Y DNA bids the Swedes, Danes and Finns farewell sometime between 2000 years ago and today. That's a lot of ground to cover of course but it's just my way of thinking about it. There are many Finns, Swedes and Danes in the Z18 project that I hope to also be a part of, it just seems to me that at the end we have been in a see-saw battle between Germans and English. For now, I think the English have won.

The odds for Thompsons in general are in favor of being Scots Irish and I think for the vast bulk of Thompsons that plays out. Early on, that seemed to be the way we would go too.

Having played this game for a while now though, it seems to me that even if we lived at some point in Ireland or Scotland we are more likely to be the stereotypical English Thompson that the (p) was added for. At this point I don't even think I can get us close to the border with Scotland, at least not with our Y. We look like some subset of people who live in Norfolk or Suffolk England. This is the reason my Y DNA brings all the Germans to the party.

What about my closest match? Well, the closest is the Elmer from New York, but that brick wall is pretty well in place. The oldest man in that line is listed as Daniel Ephraim Elmer. The other Elmers go back to John Elmer in Connecticut born 1778 and then a few trees run him back to Edward Elmer from Braintree England in the 1600s...and other trees run him back to Samuel (Aylmer) Elmer, b. 1546/1557, Tilney, , Norfolk, England .

Since that is not too awful far away from other matches of mine labelled "channel English", it seems reasonable enough.

What about Tilney? This from the Wikipedia article: The village of Tilney St Lawrence did not exist in its own right at the time of the Domesday Book although the settlement of Islington, which lies in the very northeast corner of this parish, is listed. Today very little is left of the settlement of Islington,^[5] which is thought to have been a populous and a valuable Late Saxon settlement.

Be sure to check it out and note the famous person listed in the article. From a different wikipedia article we get the etymology of the name Islington..this article was about Islington in London: Islington was originally named by the Saxons Giseldone (1005), then Gislandune (1062). The name means "Gīsla's hill" from the Old English personal name Gīsla and dun ("hill", "down"). 

So would I bet my life on it? No, the world is full of too many weird quirks and wonderful coincidences. Do all the signs seem to point in this direction? Yes.

John Thompson - the man of a thousand faces

This is a fools errand. The whole thing really, but especially this track of trying to find John Thompson from Centre Butler PA. Given my options, I thought it would be good to review my notes on John Thompson (listed here as a pioneer of the Pittsburgh area and moving into Butler county from Washington county.)

The reason I picked this one to try to follow up on is (from my last post) I have a couple of genetic relatives with ties to Washington PA and one of them is a Thompson while the other has Allisons. On this particular page of the history I found James Allison along with this description of John Thompson.

"John THOMPSON, also one of the Irish pioneers of the Pittsburg region, came from Washington county in 1796 with his wife and eleven children, and made his home here until death removed him, in 1845. "

Also listed here in a tax roll along with James and Matthew, Matthew has been a focus of mine in the past:

"John THOMPSON, 400, and James and Matthew THOMPSON, no lands taxed. The men named located in this township, while James, George and William MOORE, Lewis WILSON, Henry MONTOOTH, Eliakim ANDERSON and Charles SULLIVAN, who formed part of the company of sixty colonists, located in what is now Franklin township."

I included the next sentence as I've also tried to explore the relationships of Thompsons and Moores as well as trying to follow up on Eliakim Anderson who, if I remember correctly moves on to Indiana with the Coates family that I have also looked into because of genetic relatives. The city of Anderson Indiana where several of my Thompsons lived being named after Chief Anderson, himself from Pennsylvania I believe. Anyway, these are many of the names that swirl around when I start digging around in the past.

On that same page in the Butler county history is James Allison listed just after Nathaniel Stevenson:

"Nathaniel STEVENSON, mentioned in the history of Franklin township, located here with his wife Mary ALLEN in 1797.
James ALLISON, whose name appears on the first records of the county, came, it is said, after the Indian scare subsided. His son, William, improved upon the scythe by converting it into a cradle and leading all the men in the grain field. "

It's interesting to note that the Stevensons do marry into the Thompson family in Butler.

Unfortunately, James Allison doesn't come along with a description of where he came from.

So this one page had enough floating references to get my attention and made me want to check up on John Thompson again. I immediately ran into several problems. This particular John Thompson, or one very similar, is attributed to many families on Ancestry.com. 

 So what do I have for John Thompson, his wife and 11 children. Well, I have a letter from a researcher that attaches John Thompson to Judith Bodine both born around 1752 in Ireland. This family leads to James Marion Thompson and Sarah Gilliland and then on down to a Hogg family which caught my attention because of several Hogg genetic matches. Referenced here on another person's site and in the letter I have. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mooreorless/thompson.htm

This is great except that there is another John Thompson/Judith Bodine pair from New Jersey. They are born about 20 years earlier in 1734 (rather than 1752 listed for John Thompson from Butler PA) and instead of Judith being Irish like John Thompson from Butler, she is Dutch and French..ish. You can see some of this confusion in the file I linked above.

Here is more on the New Jersey Thompson Bodine Family:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bodine/n3956.html

and a tree listing John Thompson who marries Hannah Vansickle:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bodine/f6150.html

So we have two John Thompsons and two Judith Bodines. Ironically either of these scenarios works for me as I definitely have genetic relatives in that New Jersey Thompson family and, it seems, among the Monmouth NJ Dutch community.

James Marion Thompson reported offspring of a John Thompson in Butler has the only reference I could find to a Levi Thompson connection in the 1860 census in that Levi Campbell was living with the Thompson family then. It has been suggested that Levi Campbell could be a case of related families reusing names. 

But that's not all. I see the same John Thompson 1752 to about 1846 in family trees associated with Martha Park also listed at this site which is a text scan of a book on Thompsons:

"John Thomson, born ;
died May-June, 1846, near Butler,

Pa. He was said to be a "man of affairs" in 1824. In the "Thompson
Family" booklet it is stated that he "married and lived in Juniata County;
moved to Butler County, Pa. The Thompsons and Pattersons of Butler
County are his descendants. One of his sons married a sister of David
Allen and moved to Covington, Ind. ? Ky. ? where they lived in 1857."
It is said he owned a store and a tannery. In Book B, p. 383, of Butler
County Wills is recorded the will of John Thompson as probated June
22, 1846. In this will, declared by word to Benjamin Miller and Margaret
Turk on May 12, 1846, he gives his remaining estate to his wife Martha;
his sons and daughters have previously received their shares. — See notes
on deeds to sons 91, 92, and 99. He married Martha Park, daughter of
, of Chester County, Pa. (she was still living at

the time of his death. May, 1848). Issue (i) John Park, (2) James,
(3) Joseph, (4) Samuel, (5) Isabella, (6) Zelia, (7) Frances, (8) Wil-
liam Clinton, (9) Robert W ."

I found this bit in this e-book site:
http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/addams-stratton-mcallister/the-descendants-of-john-thomson-pioneer-scotch-covenanter-genealogical-notes-o-lac/page-23-the-descendants-of-john-thomson-pioneer-scotch-covenanter-genealogical-notes-o-lac.shtml

This one also works for me because it lists a son that may have moved to Indiana after marrying an Allen and it contains the name Frances which seems to be a recurring family name for a few generations of Thompsons (Rena Frances Thompson daughter of Levi and her nephew Francis Pearl Thompson)

But that's not all.  I see a very, very similar John Thompson from the history of Brady Township in Butler PA:

"The pioneers of 1790 included John Thompson, born in Ireland in 1752,
who moved into this township from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, in
the spring of 1790, and located a mile or so south of the Douglass
cabin. He married Martha Humes, who died in 1861, surviving her
husband fifteen years. James, William and John McJunkin, also natives
of Ireland, arrived in 1790. Daniel Carter came the same year."

found here in a description of Brady Township:
http://history.rays-place.com/pa/brady-pa.htm

I've seen a lot of trees for this John Thompson that contain pretty good accounts of the Thompson/Humes children.
 

So I have many references to John Thompson and circumstantially they would all be good possible leads.

It mentions in the notes on Judith Bodine that her story was read to the historical society at New Brunswick and that she is a huguenot. It also mentions that John Thompson had 11 children even though the story of Juda/Judith Thompson only lists one child for her at the age of 43. I'm not sure if the John Thompson in the notes of Judith listed with 11 children is John Senior or John Thompson of New Jersey who marries Hannah Vansickle.

The only thing that seems to be similar for all the John Thompsons is that they had 11 children and at some point lived and died in Pennsylvania and originated somewhere in the British Isles.

Genetic Thompson Fronts

I have two good Thompson fronts to work on genetically. One is with a person who has Elizabeth Thompson born in the late 1700s who marries Daniel Mickey around 1785 in Washington County PA. The Mickeys end up in Ohio. Unfortunately there is quite a bit of blurriness surrounding these Thompsons and Mickeys as evidenced by this discussion. Fortunately there is a third leg in the stool with possible other people to create even more legs. This link is interesting because in the history of Butler County Pennsylvania, in the section about Centre Township it says "John THOMPSON, also one of the Irish pioneers of the Pittsburg region, came from Washington county in 1796 with his wife and eleven children, and made his home here until death removed him, in 1845".

There is also a genetic link with a person who has a Thompson family coming out of Antrim Ireland. James Almond Thompson born 1789 in Ireland that leaves for New Brunswick Canada. There is a tiny bit of information on the ancestry.com site here. Nicely, there are also other legs for this stool as well. One of them is a person I've worked with before trying to figure out our relationship. She has Thompson relatives from Virginia in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

As always, it's good to keep in mind that DNA relationships seem to be mostly indirect for me. I tend to find people on the side branches who match up. So I have to be aware of entire trees. Also as always I'm so excited by  possible Thompson links that it's hard to focus on anything else.

Another thing to remember is that I have two distinct Thompson families now and these Thompsons (if they are related) could be from either family.

Albert E Thompson and the Silcotts

I recently found a listing for Levi Thompson that had parents assigned to it. Finding a listing for Levi is rare enough, but finding parents was very exciting.

This tree was designed from the perspective of the Silcott branch of the family and had wonderful pictures of Emma/Emily Thompson (Levi Thompson's daughter) her husband John Silcott and her daughter Nina (see the Silcott Puzzle).

Those pictures and the notes on the family were amazing all by themselves, but the icing on the cake was Levi's parents listed as Albert E Thompson and Nancy. The bonus was that Albert came with a baptism record from Pike, Berks Pennsylvania.  The baptism record is from St. Joseph Hill Church, Pike, Berks, PA which is a Lutheran Church. It gets kind of confusing with this church as it's also listed as St John's Church for the German Reformed Congregation. Two congregations used the same log church that generally served the Oley area, a stone church was eventually built replacing the log church.

The baptism record is from 1815 and it also lists names of parents, James Thompson and Elisabeth who had at least one other child baptised in 1812, Thomas Thompson.

I am cautiously optimistic because although there aren't a ton of details for these people and I can't find Albert E Thompson and wife Nancy anywhere else yet, there are enough details to make me think there is a source for this listing, even if it's a family story.

Given the German leaning of my Y DNA I can't ignore the tantalizing possibilities of a Lutheran or German Reformed Thompson family. Although, it may have been the community church serving the area and a good place for British Thompsons to have their children baptised, German Thompsons are definitely not out of the question.

The Slow March to FTDNA

I did it. I finally purchased the switch test to FTDNA from my Ancestry.com results. I ordered the slightly bigger test that adds markers to bring me in line with the standard panel for 37 marker matches. So when I'm finished I'll have more results than the typical 37 marker test, but I'll be better able to match with FTDNA customers using those four or so missing markers.

It took about three weeks but they did post my Ancestry numbers with the FTDNA conversion, presented me with matches and allowed me to upload my results to Ysearch. I already have an account at Ysearch but I went through the process anyway.

One major question was answered for me. It's the 458.2 thing again. I've never been comfortable with my 16.2 being represented well in Ysearch. It turns out it wasn't. I was counseled by Ysearch support to use 17 to represent my 16.2 but FTDNA set it at 16 and my FTDNA generated Ysearch account has 16 in that slot as well.

The good news is that I have a 100% match at Ysearch, the bad news is that it's me.

The list of matches presented at FTDNA goes to the 25 marker test limit as I'm waiting on batch processing for those markers that get me up to 37. It's been interesting to see that the matches there are similar to Ysearch. My Top match at Ysearch has long been the Knowltons, at FTDNA there are Knowltons but my top match is an Elmer. I believe the same Elmer from this posting in November. My other Elmer matches go back to England, but this particular Elmer is stuck in New York in the late 1790s.

My number 2 match, also one "step" away at 25 markers is a Boettcher, not a name I'm familiar with but his profile says it's German. World Family Names says it's very popular in Lower Saxony.

There are also a slew of Damerons and Damrons and a Jarrell who is really a Dameron. They range from one to two "steps" away.

I decided to make a map. I always decide to make a map. The Damerons are from Ipswich, The Elmers seem to be from around Braintree or a little town near Kings Lynn and the Boettcher is from Germany. I don't even have to show this map really because most of these places are in the East Anglia/Essex area and I can't really place "Germany" other than to say the name is popular in Lower Saxony.

Okay. I threw Sutton Hoo in there as "C" just for fun.

Other than those highlights, the bulk of my matches label themselves as English, which could be caused by the overwhelming majority of English world DNA testers. At 12 markers there are a few Danes at 25 they are replaced by Germans.

I have a single Thompson match at 12 none at 25 (if they fall below 2 steps they don't seem to be included).

My batch for 37 is supposed to run in later this summer so I hope to have new and interesting things come up from that. Also I plan to test for Z18 or further down Z14 under R1b-U106 to see if I actually do fit in with either of those groups and or the "cumberland" cluster that seems to match me really well.

All of this helps me identify patterns that may play into finding Levi Thompson's origins.

Where to Go from Here: Rambling Part 2

Since the last post focused on Autosomal DNA this one will be about Y DNA. I think it's been pretty clear for a while that if I want to have real hope of learning more from Y DNA I need to move my results to Family Tree DNA. My ancestry.com Y test gave me many markers but no haplogroup to speak of. My 23 and me test gave me the next step in my haplogroup (verifying that I'm R1b then taking it to R1b-U106) but they're done right there and don't offer any further testing for SNPs down the line. I've gotten the most connections from Autosomal DNA but none so far have helped me break through the Levi Thompson barrier.

With all that in mind I paid for the FTDNA ancestry transfer test. For a fee I was allowed to give them my ancestry results to be placed in their system (and they'll do the conversions) and for a little extra I was able to order a gap filler test to give me a standard 37 marker FTDNA result (my original Ancestry test had most of the markers but was missing a few). So in the end I'll have something like 47-ish markers to look at and compare.

It will be very interesting to see how they handle my odd 16.2 at DYS 458 and a few of the other conversions I made when I put my results in Ysearch.

More importantly, I'll be able to take advantage of further SNP testing to help me narrow my searches for my paternal line. So Ancestry gave me R1b and some results that match with a big swath of Northern europe about 10,000 years ago with a cluster around the North Sea. 23 and me confirmed my north sea suspicions and gave me U106 which brings us into the 5 to 6000 year range with a more defined cluster of "Germanic" people. Hopefully with results at FTDNA I'll be able to narrow the gap between 4000 BC and 1834 CE a little bit better and maybe turn up some new leads.

I have my eye on a group of men who rank high in my YDNA STR (markers) matches and fall into a cluster in R1b-Z18. Most of them are very familiar and appear on my maps as my closer matches. At the Z18 project they're called the cumberland cluster and they have many of the "odd" values I check for when I do my own searches. At this point it's highly likely that I belong with them and that we have a common ancestor in the last 1000 or so years, further testing is the only way to be sure.