mtDNA test

So, after years of preaching to everyone about the wonders and limits of genetic genealogy, I ordered an mtDNA kit for myself from ArgusBioSciences. Their prices are very competitive, and for $125 I'm getting both HVR1 and HVR2 tested, for the maximum amount of information for that price. Their full mtDNA genome sequencing is also relatively reasonable, but not reasonable enough to justify right now.

Drying on my desk for the next 5 minutes, before I put it in its plastic tube, is a swab covered in myriad cheek cells, each with mitochondria, enough of which will be preserved for sequencing, the results of which I'll find out in a few weeks. I had a dream last week, on the eve of Chinese New Year, that I had sent in a swab after having eaten some pork ribs. The test came back and told me I was a pig. This may be auspicious for the year (though scientifically very silly), but in any case I rinsed my mouth out thoroughly before swabbing.

I share this sequence with my mother, grandmother, and about 60 other people in my genealogy database, living and dead. As I like to point out at The Radical Genealogist, who carries the sequence doesn't matter (I'm equally interested in patrilineages and matrilineages testable through cousins that lead to *other* ancestors), but it's easier to get my own done than to convince cousins, even when I'd pay (at least some or most).

The earliest woman in my matrilineage I know much about is Mary Alice Marsh, who was born in 1858 and grew up in Bloomfield, Iowa. She was the daughter of Emsley Parks Marsh, originally of Guilford County, North Carolina, and, reportedly, Mary W. Waddle (or Waddell), though my only evidence for this is another researcher's info posted without source. I haven't been able to contact her. The elder Mary, my current matriarch, died young, perhaps in childbirth, and the younger Mary was raised by her father and stepmother, Sarah F. Atteberry. In the 1880 census she is reported as having been born of a Missouri-born mother. This could be Mary Waddle, theoretically, but Sarah was born in Missouri, and this as likely, with the censustaker just filling in all children with Emsley's birthplace as father's birthplace and Sarah's as mother's. The 1890 census is lost to the world, but in 1900 and 1910, now Alice Manners of Pueblo, Colorado, she is reported as not knowing her mother's birthplace. In 1920 and 1930, all of a sudden (in genealogical terms), her mother's birthplace is Indiana. Did she do her own genealogical research and find out in the 1910s?

Part of my father's family took the same route out of Guilford County, NC, through Indiana to Southeastern Iowa. It was a common one for Friends/Quakers like the Marshes and Mills in my genealogy. Jean Creswick, who is the source for Mary Waddle's birthdate, posted elsewhere on a forum that she knows of Cherokee ancestry somewhere coming into that marriage, and she thinks it's Mary, presumably because Emsley's family was Quaker on both sides with Leonard Marsh and Hannah Thornburgh. Personally I doubt Emsley was their son, more likely grandson given ages. I know enough about claimed Cherokee ancestry to be skeptical. I also know enough about the reality of North American frontier biracial and triracial mixes in general that I would not be at all surprised that my test or one of a relevant cousin would come up with a typically Native American or West African haplogroup rather than a typically European one. I would also be pleased, though I would not be displeased with a typically European result for the same reason. The reality of close global interrelatedness is mathematically provable, and also historically demonstrable, given a bit enough data set. At this point in my life studies, it's also at the very core of my personal identity, It would be good though to have a personal story of such a lineage demonstrated through my own test. Statistically unlikely, but good.

That said, any haplogroup is great, any positioning in the clades of the deepest discernible human family tree. It will be the first of many such placements.

EDIT: I found a later post that Jean Creswick made that shows the family living in 1860 in Scotland County, Missouri, with an Indiana birthplace for Mary!

Fading away

Here's a funny screen capture from Google Earth, which I use to plot the births, deaths, and residences of my ancestors. It's talking about folders, but it works with genealogy as well.

At 25, still a miner

I have only very recent and very old connections to New York City residence—my own 7 years of living here, and some Beekman residents of Nieuw Amsterdam and Midwout. A few more passed through on their way to other places, including 2 through Ellis Island.

One, David Wilson, managed to get enumerated the one day he was here, 1880-06-23, when the censustaker came to Castle Garden. He and his brother Peter, moving from the coal mines of Stirlingshire to the coal mines of SE Iowa, took the Bolivia out of and were processed by New York state immigration officials, then again by the censustaker, asking many of the same questions. That must have been annoying.

RootsChat: Wilson/Aitken family of Polmont

print "Hello Cousins"

Welcome to No Kings Attached. This blog is part of my ever more distributed and ever less frequent online presence It is intended to be a space for thoughts on my own genealogy, as opposed to thoughts on the juncture of kinship, migration, identity, genetics, social history, and genealogical construction, which go at The Radical Genealogist, random and personal entries at my Livejournal, a few individual and group blog projects (genealogy/migration related and not), Flickr, Facebook, and more.

I figure it's easier to write things here and point particular relevant family members along to the posts than to try and create websites or book projects centered around the particular parts of the global family tree that are particularly near to us. There would have to be countless such websites, as I'm not just interested in one or two of "my" lines, or even just interested in "my own" lines at all. In addition, a blog will be frequently indexed by Google, searchable, and therefore findable by third or fifth or fiftieth cousins looking for names. I've had good experiences finding and sharing information on boards, and there's no reason why a blog cannot add to the overall amount of searchable and sharable data.

As soon as I bother to put my mountains of data into a GEDCOM, I'll edit this post to include a link to my PhpGedView database. Also by that time I will have transfered it to a server that doesn't break the PHP it doesn't like and then redirect me to the free hosting service's pages.