Jeremiah’s Lineage Confirmed

On March 18, 2020March 20, 2020 By jenbumannIn smithLeave a comment

I have two ancestral relations by the name of Jeremiah Smith. The one on my father’s side is my 4x great grandfather, of New York and Michigan. The one on my mother’s side is, most likely, a 5x great uncle of Ohio.

A cousin of ours, who also descends from Jeremiah of New York and Michigan, recently contacted me with the information that recent DNA testing has proven that our Jeremiah Smith is indeed a son of Jeremiah Smith, senior, born 1755ish in New York whose wife was Sophia Herder. This also means that our belief that this line originates from George Adam Schmit of Rossbach, Germany, a Palatine German immigrant, is true!

Over the years our cousin has been in contact with a couple of researchers who descend from the same Smith line, and in one case the paper documentation just couldn’t be found to prove the connection of an unknown son of Jeremiah Smith and Sophia Herder. The DNA testing has proven that while the paper documents don’t exist, the results can’t be denied. So I also have another son, Benjamin, I can add to the list for this couple, a previously unknown uncle.

With more and more folks getting their DNA tested to help solve puzzles just like this, I am hoping that the future will bring more confirmations and affirmations to my own research.

Stay safe and healthy!

DNA revisited

On May 20, 2019 By jenbumannIn amund, amundson, dna, FAMILYTREEDNALeave a comment

I am afraid that I haven’t really been paying attention to my DNA accounts recently. Too much on the ‘lots of other things I have to do’ genealogy list. But this last weekend, between celebrating my old man’s birthday, reading up on the Whiskey Rebellion, going to Avengers, and catching up on my latest game, I had to answer an email from the wife of a cousin, who was looking for his ancestors. I was very happy to help anyway I could, because in his case it was adoption of his mother that was the brick wall.

In the process of answering the question, I started looking around at all the new matches on a few of these accounts, and saw some surnames that were of much interest to me. But one in particular stood out –Amund and Måkestad. “How intriguing”, says my brain to me, “must click.”

I have always had this tiny nugget of doubt that my research had actually found the right Amund Amundson in Norway, and that sometime in the future his whole line would have to be wiped off the board. But, thanks to this one DNA entry in the FamilyFinder matches, all that doubt, as small as it was, has been put to rest.

The reason the entry seemed so intriging was I could see both ‘Amunds(datter)’ and ‘Måkestad’ , (along with other places of common intestest in Norway), entered in this person’s list of ancestors that they were researching. According to my research Måkestad is where Amund had been born.

This is their list of Ancestral Surnames that they have added to their account, not everyone does this, so it was very helpful in determining commonalities. Not only does Måkestad show up in the list, but: Bleie, Børve, Måge, Nå, Reiseter, Sygnistveit, all these places are common to my Amundsons.

Thankfully, they also have added a familytree to their account, so I could better make the connection.

My tree. The common ancestors are in the red boxes on both trees

So our common ancestor is this couple — Amund Grepson and Guro Sjursdatter, both born in the late 1700s. We descend from their son Amund, and the other person descends from his brother, Greip.

This is very exciting for me and I am so glad to share this great news. I have also been confirming in my mind other connections because of DNA matches, like: Buchanan, Mobley, Lemasters, Shepard, George, Shaw, Goble, McQueen, etc.. While we have pretty much known that these surnames are ours, the DNA further confirms that the research is right.

I love science!

DNA strikes again…

On March 16, 2016 By jenbumannIn dna, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Very rarely do I repost articles on my blog, but sometimes a subject of particular interest just cries out to be shared. In this case the article of interest is discussing DNA and the history of the human race. The headline pretty much sums it up:

Oldest Human Genome Ever Has Been Sequenced & How It Could Rewrite Human History

sima_de_los_huesos1 — This image is from the Bradshaw Foundation website with no citation.

This is what I love about genetics, with each new discovery we are learning more and more about our origins, how we migrated across the planet, when we started passing on the traits that make us different from each other, yet how we are all still the same. Fascinating stuff.

Thomas Cain, still a mystery…

On February 10, 2016February 10, 2016 By jenbumannIn cain, dna, FAMILYTREEDNA, kane, robert cain, Uncategorized, ydnaLeave a comment

For Christmas last year I took advantage of a sale going on at FTDNA and upgraded my cousin Robert Cain’s DNA results. I upped his yDNA to 111 markers, added the FamilyFinder test, (which will help find cousins), and had some refining marker tests done to suss out more precise information on his haplogroup.

Because Robert passed away a few years ago, his DNA is all we have left of him. And in honor of his memory. and generosity in helping us to find the origins of the CAIN line through DNA, (along with the possibility of his DNA going bad due to time), I wanted to do these tests.

Robert has many yDNA matches, however none of them are less than 5 markers off and none of them are the same surname. So our common ancestor is way, way, way back in time. His updated refined haplogroup designation is:

R-FGC20561

I added Robert’s yDNA results to the R1b Haplogroup Project a few years ago. Recently one of the group’s administrators provided me with a chart that shows Robert’s new place in this project. All the green cells show how his DNA is being refined until we get to the latest test results. Over time yDNA testing will get even more precise.

What does all this mean? Because the haplogroup R1b is such a huge pool of humans, refining the tests helps group results so that DNA matches are more manageable and more accurate. You can see that none of the group of men with Robert have the same last name. It is assumed that the common ancestor of these men was around about 1100AD, before last names really existed in historical documents. So we know who our CAIN ancestor is, just not his name or where he was from or anything else for that matter, just what his yDNA tells us.

The FamilyFinder test, which finds cousins and other relatives, I had done on Robert’s DNA so that I could see where our DNA was matching. This also helps when comparing it to other relatives and cousins to see where we are matching on our Smith/Cain/Rosa lines. Here is an example:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 11.13.59 AM

The solid blue/black is Robert, he is the base DNA being compared to. The orange is myself and the light blue is my dad. So you can see what DNA I inherited from the CAIN line that my Dad didn’t, and vice-versa. Ignore the gray bits.

I am not sure how many more tests I will be able to subject Robert’s DNA to, but for now this is a nice improvement on his results. So in a nutshell, we still don’t know the specific origins of Thomas Cain, but we are getting closer.