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.

Where to go from here? Rambling part one.

Having delved into autosomal testing and followed many leads I can safely say that I'm related to a lot of people...but not very closely.

Autosomal:

My DNA is a genetic quagmire of humanity here in the states. Having my dad tested gave me a narrower field to search (for both sides) but personal revelations like sharing an X match with my father have made me realize that I need to narrow it even further. The X match isn't surprising given that my parents historic families live in the same towns on the east coast and intermarry a few times, it's just frustrating because it makes things a bit messier from a data standpoint. It means that my mom and paternal grandmother are related, which I can see in  my tree.

Beside that hurdle I have a huge problem teasing my "Thompson" family from my "Seelye" family. I can't disentangle my Dad's parents without some way to break it down further back in time. So where does this leave me?

With both my paternal grandparents dead, I could ask a sibling of my paternal grandmother to test...not looking forward to that. I could also as a cousin of my father on that side to try to pull away what it means to be a "Seelye", but that would only do part of the job.  Siblings don't carry the same mix of DNA so they aren't exact matches. The Seelyes are pretty well known and also well looked after by other researchers so, although the results would be meaningful, it would be like adding water to a lake when the  Thompson puddle is drying up.

So that leaves finding someone on the Thompson side of my family. There are many options but none very close. My grandfather had no known siblings so I can't go to one of them to even try to get close. It would have to be a cousin or a descendent of a cousin.

In a way this would be very helpful. There is a known relationship and a known last common ancestor (Albert Thompson and Ida Williamson) and whatever portion of DNA these extended cousins shared with my father would be a pretty good indicator of "Thompson/Williamson-ness".

Why pretty good? Well, the down side is that there would be a lot of DNA missing and the very real possibility that the Thompson cousins are also genetically related to the Seelye family (made even more likely in my mind given that my own maternal family proves to be related to them).

With unlimited resources I would do both as that would give more pieces to play with but currently I can't support that kind of testing. In a perfect world I would pull samples from the Indiana Thompsons as well as Williamson and Blades related people to get a really good cross section of genetic relatives that I could play off each other to narrow down possibilities. In effect, I would hire ringers.

YDNA meandering Elmers and Thompsons

After having been accepted into the R1b-U106 yahoo group, I used my access to contact a verified U106 person who shares a lot of my more off-beat strs. He and I are in much the same boat. There are a lot of people generally like us in R1b but on closer inspection we're part of a pretty small group of individuals who are similar to each other.

He and I have discussed some of our autosomal matches in common too, which is also pretty interesting considering the nearness of Y DNA. It's near enough to make us wonder about family convergences.

He in turn sent me a close match for both of us among the Elmers. Well one Elmer in particular. I've had a match with a single Elmer at SMGF for a while and have included them in my maps. They match at about the same level as the Knowltons at SMGF.

The Elmer he was showing me is from a different branch of the same family and where the Elmer at SMGF mismatched me on 3 markers..this Elmer only mismatched on 1. Now that is very interesting.

The Elmer at SMGF is a 34/37 match and because the other (Daniel we'll call him) Elmer is tested with FTDNA we have fewer numbers to match on, but he's a 31/32 match.

31 markers isn't enough to prove a shared family without some really good paper trails but considering that this Elmer matches me where the other Elmer does not, he could well be a 36 out of 37 match.

Not too shabby.

Flipping back over to Autosomal DNA for a minute, I believe I've seen these Elmers before. One of the autosomal matches for my father who lists Thompsons also has this Elmer family in her tree. They marry into her Thompsons in New Jersey. The scary thing is that this Autosomal match also has Seeleys in her tree from the same area and I'd guess that these Seeleys are probably related to my Seeleys..although that should definitely be looked into.

These same Elmers marry into a local Seeley family.

So there are a lot of options left open by something like this. We could be Elmers who at some point became Thompsons through all the myriad ways that can happen. I could be seeing a tie to my father's Seelye family and through the interconnectedness of all things, be seeing these Elmers that we are also related to a couple different ways. I could also be seeing a group of interrelated people from the same area in Britain who came to the new world.

It turns out that the home town for the Elmers in Britain (Braintree) is something like a hundred miles from Knowlton in Britain semi-mythical home of the Knowltons who are also 34/37 DNA matches.

All of that is really interesting, but I want to take a moment to look at those Thompsons again. While researching the Elmers who are pretty well documented, I of course ran into those Thompsons from the autosomal match. They seem well documented but the problem is, there are too many documents.

I've found 3 or more different trees for the same Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer in the 1700s. One goes to Ireland and on to Yorkshire and another seems to be a mixed tree that eventually leads up to the same Thompsons who marry into the Hollingsworth family for Judith Heald's family (although a different branch). A third leads back to William Thompson, reverend in Massachusetts in the 1600s.

This is the family I'd like to look into a bit more because William Thompson has a son Benjamin Thompson who is born while William is away in Virginia. William later becomes estranged from Benjamin and his melancholia is sited as a source.

This Benjamin Thompson is not the same one who marries Elizabeth Elmer, but in some trees is his ancestor. So William Thompson leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Susannah Kirtland, who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Elizabeth (unknown) who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Anna Newcomb who then leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer.

This is not the most popular tree for these Thompsons by far. The Thomas Thompson 1677 from Ireland tree is more popular. The thing that interests me about it is the proximity to these other families, the story of melancholy and estrangement which can lead to uncertain trees and the fact that Reverand William Thompson is from Winwick, Lancashire England in the 1690s less than 45 miles from Malpas, England where the (top tier YDNA match at Ancestry.com) Edwardsons are from.

All very interesting and in need of more research.

Paternal Genome Analysis

My dad was recently tested at 23 and me as well, which has been a great tool for finding both relatives on his side and on my mom's and there were a few surprises.

One of the people that I could definitely match trees with on my father's side turned out to be a genetic relative for my mother. Several of my Hollingsworth related genetic relatives went to my mom as well as most of my Swedish matches and a chunk of the Finns.

Both sides have a German contingent which was unexpected for my father and my father has more "All" Irish matches than I would have thought because I wouldn't have thought there were any. My dad carried the few Danish matches that I had.

In the basic tools his Genome analysis is much like mine. 100% Northern Europe. Not worth posting the graphic.

His Ancestry Finder results were kind of interesting too. I would have assumed he would carry my French matches because of August Michel, but he doesn't. That goes with my mom as well. He does have someone from Jamaica though...which is interesting and would be good to contact.

I would be the Netherlands was a bit unexpected but then when I look at my Seelye family (paternal grandmother) it begins to make sense.

I asked Dr. McDonald to analyze my father's results and he said that he tested totally British with the tiniest probably insignificant amount of African.

So it would seem to me that most of the continental diversity I had, I got from my mom. I don't think that means my father's family doesn't have it, it's just that he may not have inherited it from his parents in the way that I didn't pick up a bunch of matches from the Netherlands and Jamaica.

Here is his map:

All the dots overlap in Britain. Here is his scatter plot:

Where I was in the soft spot between Britain and France my dad lines up as more English.

Shifting over to DIY Dodecad here is my father's admixture:

---------------------------

FINAL ADMIXTURE PROPORTIONS

---------------------------

10.70% East_European

52.89% West_European

27.20% Mediterranean

0.09% Neo_African

5.57% West_Asian

0.82% South_Asian

0.65% Northeast_Asian

0.02% Southeast_Asian

0.00% East_African

1.33% Southwest_Asian

0.74% Northwest_African

0.00% Palaeo_African

And here is his Dodecad Oracle result:

[1,] "CEU" "2.7351"

[2,] "Orcadian" "4.5262"

[3,] "Orkney_1KG" "4.8476"

[4,] "N._European" "5.1663"

[5,] "Argyll_1KG" "5.3784"

[6,] "German_D" "8.1553"

[7,] "French_D" "9.5645"

[8,] "French" "9.7545"

[9,] "Mixed_Germanic_D" "11.0269"

[10,] "Dutch_D" "11.4072"

[11,] "Kent_1KG" "13.6581"

[12,] "British_Isles_D" "15.5764"

[13,] "British_D" "15.603"

[14,] "Cornwall_1KG" "16.3898"

[15,] "Slovenian" "18.3699"

[16,] "Irish_D" "18.9789"

[17,] "Swedish_D" "19.1611"

[18,] "Norwegian_D" "19.8417"

[19,] "French_Basque" "21.5444"

[20,] "Hungarians" "22.599"

[21,] "Portuguese_D" "24.2288"

[22,] "Spaniards" "25.0297"

[23,] "Spanish_D" "26.2921"

[24,] "IBS" "26.5104"

[25,] "N_Italian_D" "27.6466"

[26,] "FIN" "28.1464"

[27,] "Tuscan_H" "29.143"

[28,] "TSI" "29.3426"

[29,] "Tuscan_X" "29.6094"

[30,] "North_Italian" "31.4779"

Again, like me "white people from Utah" are at the top. Orcadian and Orkney are next where I registered as Northern European. Then he hits Northern Europe and Argyll, German, French etc. Bearing in mind that Orkney is a melting pot for Norse and Scots, it seems to be in line with what I would expect about my father's family. Orkney seems to be a designation for a lot of British people and that's probably because of it's position as a crossroads for different colonizations and invasions. I don't think it would be too surprising if people with a lot of New England roots were compared to Orkney or Argyll.

Having uploaded his results to Gedmatch.com there were some interesting twists. He has matches with those people who first made me suspect Thomas Jacobsson the Finn as well as a few new Finns not in my list. He also carries my Ashkenazi matches and my Irish matches who also themselves seem to have Ashkenzi matches.

And, because Gedmatch shows smaller segments than 23 and me I can see that my dad and I share the largest X match I have.

For those of you familiar with highschool biology and sex ed...that shouldn't happen. I guess I can't say "shouldn't" it's just not expected. A man gets his X from his mother. So my father got his X unchanged from his mother and I got my X unchanged from my mother. In effect it would mean that my paternal grandmother and my mother are related...distantly.

That is completely reasonable because both my families have a similar background. Migrated to the U.S. in the same time periods, lived in the exact same communities and hung around with the same people. The real question would be "how could they not be related?".

This brings me to another interesting thing that I've been noticing. Hyper-relatedness. I read a lot of people saying that matching beyond 5th cousins is unreliable, yet I seem to only be able to reliably match with people as far away as 6th and 7th great grandparents and 8 and 9th cousins.

The reason I'm able to match up at all seems to be because I can take a family tree to the 1700s...even into the late 1600s. Even to me that seems a bit old to be showing up. None of these are close matches mind you. My dad and I don't match with anyone more that 0.43%..so less than half of one percent of our DNA is shared with anyone else.

I don't think it's any accident that I'm finding these matches in old East Coast, colonial families that are well documented but it makes me wonder if I'm going to be able to connect with someone who is related to my 1834 Thompsons or 1840 Williamsons. How can I find them if I'm overshooting the mark by 100 years?

Also, most of my matches to date have been indirect. Meaning they're not people who appear in my tree. Most family trees have parents and siblings, somtimes just one child and their parents in a line back to the past. Autosomal DNA is relevant for cousins, wives of cousins, step siblings and moms only listed as "mary" or "elizabeth" so I have to effectively make new trees for my matches with branches that reach wider than tall. I also have to do the same for my own tree. Each mom without parents or siblings is a loss of hundreds of years of information.

The other danger that I've seen is in being labelled a "collector". I've contacted genetic matches only to have them ask how many people are in a tree. When I answered thousands they were done working with me. That's because when people think of genetics they think of their parents and siblings. Some might stretch it to cousins. Rarely will their patience go beyond that.

Trying to use our genes to gather information has been at the same time, fascinating and frustrating. Every step I take leads to more steps.

Now I have my dad to use as a wedge to split out my mother's family. The next logical step is to find a relative that is outside of one or the other grandparent to split matches even further.

For instance. If I was able to get a Seelye cousin or known Thompson (my dad has no Thompson cousins my grandfather is an only child..as far as we know). I could then split out hits based on matches that overlapped with my dad and that cousin. The same goes for my mom's family. Finding a known Price or Hutchinson outside of my grandparents family could make matches more meaningful.

Meaningful is "expensive". In times like these it's hard to come up with hundreds of dollars to spend on frivolous pursuits. People have families right now they need to take care of, third great grandparents can take a back seat.

Needle in the Needle Stack, Pioneer Style

Butler county Pennsylvania has presented a conundrum. I can't find any references to Levi Thompson. There actually seem to be very few Levis at all. I did find a Levi Campbell who would be much younger than Levi Thompson, living with a Thompson family, but that's about as close as I've gotten.

The other side of the coin is that Butler county is thick with Thompsons. Thompsons are early settlers in the county and by the 1870s there are so many it's hard to keep track. The unfortunate issue I have is that Levi was born around 1834-9. So the first census he would appear in would be the 1840. Assuming that he knew he was from Butler PA because he had some waking memory of living there, he's probably listed with his family then. The issue is that the 1840 census doesn't list everyone in a household. Just the heads of households and number of people in the household between certain ages.

So I will probably end up making a survey of the Thompsons there in 1840 who have children between the age of 1 and 10. The thing is that there are so many and there are enough origin stories to make your head swim.

Several sources say all the Thompsons of Butler are related to a single John Thompson born around 1755 near Juniata who is the son of John Thompson a Scot.

Others say there are two different Thompson families in Butler that are unrelated one straight out of Ireland with three brothers, James, Anthony and Moses and another from Lancaster county with it's own three brothers, John, James and Matthew. Still further in the same history of Butler it relates that one of the first Thompsons in the area was from Cumberland and of Scotch Irish heritage named William Thompson. All of this is taking place around 1796, but a quick glance at the 1803 tax list for Butler will tell you there are more Thompsons than these.

Connoquenessing Township:

THOMPSON, Andrew        ---

THOMPSON, James         400     (single man) 

THOMPSON, John          400     (B.G.) 

THOMPSON, John          400     (Muddy Cr.) 

THOMPSON, Matthew        50     (single man)
THOMPSON, William       400

Middlesex Twp., Butler Co., Pa.

THOMPSON, Anthony       400
THOMPSON, Hugh          ---
THOMPSON, John          400
THOMPSON, John          400     (blacksmith)
THOMPSON, John          400     (Con. Creek)
THOMPSON, John          400     (weaver)
THOMPSON, Martin        400
THOMPSON, Moses         400     (single man)
THOMPSON, William       100
THOMPSON, William       400     (single man)

These are not the lists from all the townships, but you can see that you have several John Thompsons to try to keep track of and little more identifying information. Some could be sons of those first settlers, or totally unrelated.

That is the thing I keep running into. Most of the histories of a place assume they are written for the current residents not for someone in a different state a hundred plus years in the future. They assume you can tell John Thompson from Lancaster from John Thompson from Slippery Rock or Dr. John Thompson who owns the furnace and mills. You would know which one you belonged to because it's 1895 and you're looking back fondly on the awesomeness of your family over that last hundred years.

These guys didn't have DNA testing and excellent paper trails. They were hunting wolves and fighting natives on the frontier and for their grandchildren, myth and legend was just as reasonable as a tax list.

So I'm working at gut feelings. I think Levi was likely there in 1840 but probably gone by 1850 because in 1855 he's married and having his first child. Where he is in 1850 is hard to say. He could be in the next county over still in Pennsylvania, he could be in Kentucky or Ohio he could already be in Indiana..he could be farther west.

What the histories do give me is an idea of what was happening at the time and how people felt about themselves. These were largely Irish, Scots Irish and German frontier people and they owned that. They fought and died, spied and killed, farmed and paid taxes. They also intermarried, a lot and had a lot of children. One of the Thompsons had 11 kids. Imagine if every one did that. No wonder the place is awful with Thompsons.

There in lies the hope of the genetic testing my family has done. So far, even through genetic testing it's hard to tease out the Thompsons (everyone is related to a Thompson), but I may be able to pull out members of these other families that married in and through them and the histories I can find, be able to match my Thompsons with their "John Thompson from X".

Several families mentioned in the history of Butler also move on to Indiana and may, in the end, be the key to a migration route from Butler PA to Alexandria IN.