DNA Cousins - Maternal Side

Although I am pretty careful with my privacy on websites and all (yes, even facebook!), apparently I could not care less where my DNA goes, so I've sent it off  to multiple companies for analysis.  Alas, no stunning reveals like on the TV shows, turns out my ancestry is "European" which matches exactly what my genealogy research has shown all these years.

My parents also sent their DNA in to one of the companies and amazingly the results came back knowing they were my parents without me having to tell them!  I know it's science and all, but to me that was really really cool.  Also it was nice to know my parents were really my parents because hey, you never know, I could have just been blending in after being switched at birth.

Guess which one is me

So anyway, lately I've been paging through all my cousin DNA matches in Ancestry taking a look at the common ancestors for those who list family trees, and taking wild guesses for those who did it for the DNA results only and didn't list a tree.  Sometimes it's easy to figure out when you look at shared matches.

I was looking through them all because I wanted to see if DNA matches would help me with any "unproven" ancestor connections.

For instance, I have an ancestor was in the Revolutionary War and I wanted to submit the lineage to the Daughters of the American Revolution.  However, there is one Father-Son connection where apparently everyone (including professional genealogists) have assumed paternity because there is no actual written proof anywhere.  I was pretty bummed and then thought well what if they really aren't father and son and I've been researching the wrong ancestry all these DECADES!

DECADES!  I'm OLD!

I finally decided that the father "Collins Mix" really was likely the father of son "Jonathan Collins Mix", because come on, "Collins!"

Then I just submitted for another ancestor who was better documented.

Thanks Kinsey Harrison and all his kids!!!

Anyway, back to DNA - so I thought, can I prove to my own satisfaction looking at cousins in Ancestry that the Collins and his son were really connected?

So here is how far back I was able to find cousin-connections for some of my lines - this is really cool in my opinion!

MATERNAL SIDE:

Thomas MIX, b.1678 and Deborah ROYCE, b.1683:

These two are my 7th great grandparents from Wallingford, Connecticut, and I had multiple cousins in my matches that had these 2 as our common ancestors.  So that answers the question of whether Collins was the Dad of Jonathan.  Though I don't think the DAR is ready to accept this kind of proof in their applications quite yet.

Richard BOWEN, b.1662 and Patience PECK, b.1669:

Same generation as Thomas and Deborah above (7th great grandparents), but they lived in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Again, I had multiple cousins with these 2 as our common ancestors in our trees on Ancestry.

Paul TOMULE, b.abt.1721 and Maria Anna KLEIN, b.abt.1738:

These 2 are my 6th great grandparents, as far from New England as can be, they were born in the Alsace-Lorraine region, then migrated south to Austria-Hungary to an area which later became Romania, though they are ethnic Germans.  Did you get all that?

Joseph MARCHAL, b.1755 and Margaretha PIERRE, b.abt.1760:

These are my 5th great grandparents who were born in what is now the Lorraine region of France.  Like Paul and Maria Anna above, they migrated south to Austria-Hungary to an area which later became Romania.

Johan REISER, b.1795 and Katharina SCHREIBER, b.1795:

These are my 4th great grandparents, their ancestors also migrated south to the Austria-Hungary region which later became Romania. All these people in Hungary and Romania but no actual Hungarians and Romanians in my ancestry, their ethnicity was mostly German, Luxembourgian and Lorrainian.  I made the last one up.  But it sounds cool.  Lotharingen?  Alsatian-Lorrainian?

William JONES, b.1793 and Sylvia BAIRD, b.abt.1797:

These are my 4th great grandparents who were born in Connecticut, but migrated down to New York state, first to Orange County, then westward to Tioga County and nearabouts.  I made that last word up too, but I think it really works, I'm keeping it.

Thomas WEAVER and Almira FINNEY:

These are my 3rd great grandparents, both born in New York state, Thomas was born in Dutchess County and Almira was born in Otsego County.  I wish I knew more about them, right now they are a brick wall!

Alonzo CHESLEY, b.1839 and Laura KIRBY, b.1849:

These are my 3rd great grandparents and this is a special case and is certainly something that DNA could help with.  We have a family story that my 3rd Great Grandmother, Laura, had an affair with her brother-in-law, Alonzo and produced a daughter, my 2nd great grandmother.  For the first time just a few days ago, I noticed a cousin in my Ancestry DNA who is a descendant of Alonzo and his wife Sarah Kirby (Laura's older sister).  So this could be it - this could be the first chance at prove that the affair did happen.  This will definitely bear watching to see how this turns out - am I related enough to end up being related to both Alonzo and Sarah, or is it just Sarah showing up, we'll have to see!!

Mary Ellen Cook has been Found

Back in December I posted on my 2nd great-grandmother, Mary Ellen COOK. She's been one of my brick walls since I started genealogy.

To sum up that post, it turned out that she wasn't Mary Ellen COOK after all. She was Mary Ellen WEAVER, who grew up living with a family named COOK.

After that, I sent away to New York State for a copy of her death certificate, and lo and behold, they sent it to me after only 3 months! Way faster than the last time I tried ordering something from them. Now I'm encouraged to order more stuff!

Anyway, her death certificate arrived last week and it was all I could hope for - it listed her parents names and where they were born. Joy! The informant was Mary's son Wesley who she had lived with for many years (her husband John MIX had passed away in 1906.

So here is the information I wanted all these years on Mary's parents:



"FINNEY" is a brand new surname to me, sounds Irish! I searched around to see if there was anything easily found on Almira and Thomas on ancestry and the internet and there isn't that I can see (yet). Both Mary and her mom Almira are listed as being born in Cooperstown, NY.

And Poughkeepsie as a birthplace for Thomas! That's also a new county for me, all this time I've been limited to a few counties in the Finger Lakes region of New York - now I have some interest way over in Dutchess county in southeastern NY (near the Hudson river).

There's a bit of confusion surround her birth year. The death certificate lists "Feb 19th, 1839" as her birth date. The age is listed out as "85 Years, 11 Months, 24 Days". I had had "1840" as the birth year from her gravestone. I figured the gravestone would be the one that had a typo but wasn't sure.


So I went to the super awesome WolframAlpha search engine site that does math and stuff for me and entered "feb 19 1839 - jan 13 1925". The death date is right off her death certificate as well.


So somebody was wrong somewhere. I have to admit, I would have messed up figuring out years/months/days for people as well. Whenever I do math I seem to lose interest somewhere in the middle and start thinking about flowers or sparkly things.

hmm...sparkly...


...things...


...things that sparkle...










I'm sorry, I've lost track of what I was writing about! :-)

Oh yeah, so I don't know for sure if Mary was born in 1839 or 1840. For now, I'm going to leave 1839 in my records with a notation about the chance of it being 1840.

And so with all that, I no longer have a Mary Ellen COOK brickwall! Now it's time for some new research on my new surnames!