- H.A. is descended from Mary Jane Artis Artis, daughter of Adam and Lucinda Jones Artis.
- H.B. is descended from Henry J.B. Artis, son of Adam and Amanda Aldridge Artis. (We have two lines of connection — Artis and Aldridge.)
- M.S. is descended from Theophilus Simonton, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. She is, by far, the most remote match I have, and I’m astounded that that little stretch of DNA has persisted across 300+ years.
- E.H. and I share two lines of descent, from James Henderson and from John and Louvicey Artis Aldridge. On the Henderson side, we are 3rd cousins, twice removed (or a little less, as we descend from different wives of James Henderson.) On the Aldridge side, 2nd cousins, once removed. 23andme estimated our relationship as 2nd to 3rd cousins.
- G.P. and I are descended from two daughters of Urban Lewis and his wife Susan Casey Lewis — Susan Marinda Lewis Potts and Eliza Lewis Martin. Ancestry DNA estimates us as 4th cousins; we are actually 3rd, thrice removed. I also have an Ancestry match with “ead43,” who is descended from Susan Casey Lewis’ brother, William Casey. Estimated at 5th-8th cousins, we are 5th, twice removed. I also match D.P., a close cousin of G.P., but on a different chromosome. FTDNA identifies yet another cousin, K.S., who matches G.P. and I on the same stretch of DNA on chromosome 9. She is a descendant of a Lewis from Wake County NC, but does not know how he links to Urban Lewis, who was the son of William T. Lewis and Sarah Utley Lewis of Dobbs (later Wayne) County.
Category Archives: DNA
DNA Definites, no. 1: Aldridge & Artis.
I’m partial to the bells and whistles at 23andme and seldom check my AncestryDNA results. Today, though – eureka! An estimated 4th cousin with a Shared Ancestor Hint, John William Aldridge. I checked G.J.’s family tree and immediately knew exactly who she is – the granddaughter of one of my great-grandfather’s sisters. Our most recent common ancestors (MRCA) are John and Louvicey Artis Aldridge, and we’re actually 2nd cousins once removed.
DNAnigma, no. 6.
I recognized his name immediately and shot off a message to his Ancestry.com inbox. … And then another message. … And then another one. … And still, crickets. In the meantime, I had an email from his first cousin, and I shared news of the match with her. She was excited and said she’d prod him. Apparently, he is prod-proof.
In any case, this is another match between descendants of Adam T. Artis, with an Aldridge twist. H.B.’s great-grandfather was Henry J.B. Artis, son of Adam by his fourth wife, Amanda Aldridge, who was a daughter of Robert and Eliza Balkcum Aldridge. H.B. and I are roughly 4th cousins, which Ancestry correctly predicted.
DNAnigma, no. 5: Crazy coincidence.
Ten, fifteen years ago, I was immersed in the fascinating family tree of one of my best friends, who has roots in New Orleans and the River Parishes. One of her lines is Darensbourg, and I sought collaboration from several researchers who were also trying to tease out clues that linked the famille de couleur libre with the German-Swedish Karl Friedrich D’Arensbourg, leader of Louisiana’s early 18th century German settlements upriver from New Orleans. In particular, I corresponded heavily with M. Darensbourg, translating from the French several documents that she unearthed in her persistent sleuthing. After a couple of years, the trail went cold, and we gradually lost contact.
Not long after my 23andme results posted, I received an excited message from M., who believed that we’d found confirmation of our mutual descent from D’arensbourg. I was even more stunned though, because I’m not a descendant at all. I reminded her that I’d been researching for someone else, and: “This is a just a little too unreal, M.!! I’m guessing that we are linked on your mother’s side? I see you have VA and NC lines, which is where my family largely is from. I have NO Louisiana ancestry at all, though have found two RF matches to Creoles. Undoubtedly the link is someone “sold down river” in the terrible slave trade.”
M., my mother and I share a smallish stretch of chromosome 8. Neither my maternal uncle nor his first son inherited. As of right now, we don’t have the first clue to our connection.
DNA Definites, no. 4.5: Simonton.
Ten years or more ago, before repeated bad brushes with poison ivy wore me out, I was a member of the Georgia Native Plant Society. Atlanta’s economy was booming, subdivisions were sprouting like nutgrass, and GNPS was dashing across the city, rescuing ferns and trillium from the bulldozer’s scrape. I showed up for the last time at a site just southwest of the city, trailing plastic bags and a shovel. The owner of the parcel stopped by, and I stopped dead when I heard her name. “Simonton?” I said. “Your family wouldn’t be from Iredell County, North Carolina, would they?” She confirmed that they were, adding that they descended from a Theophilus Simonton. I laughed and exclaimed, “Hey! We’re probably distant cousins! I think I’m descended from him, too!” Small world, we agreed, and she went on her way.
A couple of months ago, my mother got a new match on 23andme — “M. Simonton.” Simonton! I contacted her and quickly established that she is descended from Theophilus Simonton of Ireland, then Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, then Iredell County NC. M. told me that her sister lived in Georgia and, on a hunch, I did a quick search of my Family Tree Maker tree. There — the very same M. Simonton and her sister S., who was indeed the woman whose family land I’d scoured for crane’s foot geraniums and astilbe.
——
My line of descent from Theophilus Simonton, who died in 1757: Magdelene Simonton > Theophilus Allison > Thomas Allison > Mary Allison > Thomas Nicholson > J. Lee Nicholson > Harriet Nicholson > Lon Colvert > Margaret Colvert > my mother. M. and S.’s line of descent from Theophilus: Robert Simonton > Adam Simonton > Abner Simonton > Albert Simonton > Adam Simonton > William Simonton > their father.
DNAnigma, no. 3: An Artis match, after all.
I was geeked. After all, my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis had 25+ children, and I have thousands of cousins in their descendants. (Not to mention the descendants of Adam’s many siblings.) I was crestfallen, then, when H.A. responded that he was descended from Absalom Artis, through Warren Artis, then Henry, then Alonzo, then William Henry Artis. I know the Absalom Artis line (though I didn’t know Warren was in it), and I have no known connection to them. Absalom was born in Virginia circa 1780 and was in northern Wayne County by the early 1800s. He and Adam lived in close proximity, but the record gives no clue to other links. Of course, ultimately, all of the free colored Artises in Wayne County – indeed, throughout Virginia and NC and out into Indiana and Ohio – were likely kin, but the links are so remote that reconstructing them is likely impossible. H.A. and I share enough DNA that our common ancestor had to have been within the last 5 generations or so. In other words, more recent than any common ancestor of Adam and Warren or Absalom.
But then….
While reviewing my notes for a post about Adam’s second set of children, I was reminded that his daughter Mary Jane Artis had married an Artis. Henry Artis. Son of Warren and Pearcy Artis. And mystery solved! H.A. and I are not related through his patrilineal Artis line, but via a wife whose father was my great-great-great-grandfather.
DNAnigma, no. 2: Armwood????
There was a woman at home whom we called Cousin Inez. She had been born down in Dudley a few years after my grandmother, and we thought that connection was what motivated her insistence that we were kin. When I began my genealogical sleuthing, I discovered that Cousin Inez had been born an Armwood — another link, though not a blood one. The second wife of my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Henderson had been Louisa Armwood. I am not descended from her, but many of my cousins are. So, cousin-ish, but not actually kin.
Then, a couple of months ago, Ancestry.com pegged me as a 4th-6th cousin to a woman I’ll call A.G. This surprised me on two counts. (1) I’d recently “met” A.G. on a cousin’s family page on Facebook. A.G. and my cousin D. are related via the Simmonses, a free family of color centered in southern Wayne County. I’m not a Simmons – that I know of – but D. and I are 3rd cousins and some change via Lewis Henderson. (2) A.G. is an Armwood! Her ancestor William Armwood, son of Major and Eliza Armwood and born about 1835, married Martha “Matta” Simmons, daughter of William and Penny Winn Simmons, in Sampson County. This is William:
So, what are the possibilities? What do we know?
- A 4th to 6th cousin relationship suggests a common ancestor in the early 1800s. (Ancestry estimates very conservatively, so we may be closer.)
- The relationship is almost certainly on my father’s side.
- All of A.G.’s mother’s lines, back to the mid-1800s, were in the Wayne/Duplin/Sampson County area.
- I have focused on her Armwood and Simmons lines because they are most familiar and intersect mine indirectly, but I may be making unwarranted assumptions.
- A.G.’s Simmons line includes Wynn/Winn and Medlin lines. And I don’t know the maiden name of Major Armwood’s wife.
- My Hendersons did not arrive in the area until the 1850s. I’ll eliminate them.
- For the time being, I’ll eliminate my Euro-descended lines.
- My Hagans line was probably from Nash County. I’ll eliminate them, too.
- A.G. has a Yelverton line from northern Wayne County. Perhaps an Artis or Seaberry connection?
- My Aldridge and Balkcum lines began with white women who bore children by black or mixed-race men circa 1820-1830 in Duplin and Sampson County. Is one of these unknown fathers the link to A.G.?
DNAnigma: Throwback Thursday.
First I wrote:
Just before I was about to pick up the phone again to lay into the African Ancestry people about my DNA results, the packet arrived in the mail. I’d had a mitochondrial DNA analysis done. In other words, AA examined a few cheek cells to isolate a segment of DNA that has passed consistently and unchanged from some distant ancestor through her daughter, and then her daughter, and so on, through Margaret McConnaughey (b. ca. 1820) and her daughter Martha Miller McNeely (1855-1934), and her daughter Caroline M.M.F.V. McNeely Colvert (1877-1957), and her daughter Margaret Colvert Allen (1908-2010), and her daughter, to me. It’s a bit of DNA from only one of innumerable and unknowable ancestors, but it’s the only genetic material that is absolutely passed on in women from generation to generation, ad infinitum. (For men, there’s also Y-DNA.) Theoretically at least, comparing an individual’s mtDNA to those in a database such as that assembled by AA yields a match with identical mtDNA sequences found in some part of Africa. So. Genealogy lunatic that I am, this whole process held exciting possibilities for me. I’m not silly enough to think that I look like I descend from people in Senegal or Guinea or Cameroon, or that my personality is shaped by some distant Nigerian cultural link, or that I’m on my way to discovering my own Kamby Balongo, but I was pretty geeked about discovering a little something about my personal connection to West Africa and the Middle Passage. Imagine my surprise, then, when I ripped open the packet to find a “Certificate of Ancestry” asserting that my mtDNA Sequence Similarity Measure is “100% the same as sequences from people in Sudan today.” SUDAN???? So I’m a DINKA? Not a Wolof or Igbo or Nupe or Asante? Not even a West African? Well, I’ll be damned. After my surprise wore off a bit, I did a little Wikipedia’ing and discovered that, while uncommon, an East African origin is plausibly explained by the trans-Sahara trade and the Fulani people who ranged well into western Sudan in ancient times. So, wow, huh? I’m not just a hyperbolic Nubian!
And then a few days later, after the wonderment wore off:
A little Internet delving into my mtDNA results reveals that my “Sudanese” match is, scientifically speaking, a variant of the d1 clade of the L2 haplogroup. Haplogroup L2 encompasses about 1/3 of all sub-Saharan African mtDNAs. The clades, labeled a-d, are further branches of L2, and the clades themselves have further variations, i.e. d1. Anyway, the most common haplotypes are shared by and within ethnic groups in multiple regions of Africa. In other words, because of thousands of years of migration (and consequent assimilation) among individuals and ethnic groups across the continent (or, at least, its broad midsection), a sample, like mine, may match L2d1 samples obtained from people living in modern Sudan, but it doesn’t mean that 50,000 years ago (or whenever my variation mutated), our common maternal ancestor was in what is now Sudan, and she certainly wouldn’t have been a Dinka or Nuer or any other ethnic group that exists as we know them today. She may not have been anywhere near Sudan, for L2d1 is also found in other modern-day tribes. Sooo?
——
I wrote this note in 2008. I’ve since tested at other sites and, though my haplogroup remains the same, have gotten different analyses of its origin. More on that later.
Walker’s people.
Amelia. Anthony. Caroline. Charles. Daniel. Eliza. Frank & his wife Charlotte & their children Townsend, Jere, Little Frank, Lewis & Ellen. George. Harry. Jane. Mary. Little Mary. Patty. Rachel. Robert & his wife Milly & their children Easter, Jack, Reuben, Edmund & Rachel. Sarah. Siller. Winny.
These are the men and women and children with whom my great-great-great-grandfather Walker Colvert lived in 1823, the year their master Samuel Colvert died and his Culpeper County, Virginia, estate was divided. Walker and Amelia were sent 300 miles south to Samuel’s son John Alpheus Colvert in North Carolina. Was Amelia Walker’s mother? His sister? No kin at all? Was he an orphan, or did he leave his parents behind? Who among these 30-odd slaves claimed Walker as their own?
Until I learned recently that I share DNA with descendants of Leonard Calvert, the first governor of colonial Maryland, it had never occurred to me that Walker might be blood-kin to his master, also a Calvert descendant. The news set me wondering. Not so much about which Colvert was Walker’s father, or maybe grandfather, but about Walker’s family in general. I’ve long known that four years after his arrival in North Carolina, John Colvert died, and Walker was hired out until John’s son William was old enough to control him. I know that Walker was married at least twice, and had at least four children, but age and circumstances suggest that he fathered even more. Who were they? Where did they go?
Genealogical DNA testing may yield answers to some of these questions. I have learned already that I am distantly related to those Calvert descendants through my father’s family, not my mother’s, and thus Walker was probably not related to his owners at all. I’m still looking for Walker’s children.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 