Christopher Orr, Descendant of the Orrs of Orr's Island

     Hey everyone, long time no see!  Working on my PhD has really limited the time I have for genealogy, but I still have dabbled a bit here and there.  Recently I've been working on helping Brian sort out his family tree, so today's post covers one of his ancestors: Christopher Orr, descendant of the Orrs of Orr's Island in Harpswell, Maine.  Today I'm investigating some questions around his parentage.

Christopher Orr

One of Christopher Orr's wives, most likely Sally Quimby

     Christopher Orr was born in Durham, Maine [1] on May 23, 1800 [2,3,6].  He married first Catherine Freeman of Farmington, Maine [2].  After her death, he married Sally Quimby, who hailed from Starks, Maine [2].  His third wife was Margaret (Burbank) Foster, from Farmington, Maine [2].

     According to an ancestor sheet [4] compiled by one of Brian's relatives, Christopher and Catherine had one child:

i. Ebenezer, b. November 21, 1819 in Phillips, Maine.

     Christopher and Sally had five children, all born in Phillips, Maine [4,5,6]:

ii. Newman A., b. April 5, 1824

iii. Christopher Jr., b. September 1, 1827, m. Phoebe Whitney

iv. Katharine F., b. May 5, 1829

v. Emmons G., b. June 5, 1831

vi. Daniel Tracy, b. September 4., 1836, m. Annie Melissa Inman in Exeter, Maine on August 22, 1868, d. September 4, 1922.

     Christopher and Margaret had four children [4]:

vii. George G., b. June 7, 1848, m. Sophia True, d. May 20, 1924.

viii.Mary, b. November 17, 1850, m. Edmond Whitney, d. June 22, 1905.

xi. Margaret A., b. about 1850, m. John McKenney.

x. Hannah B., b. about 1854, m. a Calden.

     When I was looking over Brian's tree, I realized I had not put in parents for Christopher Orr.  According to the ancestry sheet [4], Christopher Orr was the son of Joseph Orr, descended from the Orr's Island Orrs, and Hannah Tracy.  However, when I tried to verify this, I ran into some difficulties.  While some references list Joseph Orr as the husband of Hannah Tracy [e.g., 7], others list her husband as Henry Orr [e.g., also 7].

     According to his son Daniel T. Orr's death certificate, Christopher was born in Durham, Maine.  I looked through Durham's vital records [8], and while I could not find a birth record for Christopher Orr, I did find a marriage record for Joseph Orr and Hannah Tracy, who were married in Durham on November 28, 1799 (intention filed November 16, 1799), which I've included below:

     Additionally, I found mentions of a Clement Orr in Durham's records.  For those of you who are familiar with the Orrs of Orr's Island, you may recall that Clement is a common name among the Orr's Island Orr families.  Thus, it seemed feasible that Joseph and Clement were brothers from Orr's Island who had moved to Durham.

     Orr's Island is part of the town of Harpswell, Maine, so I looked up the Harpswell vital records.  While scans of the original Harpswell vital records are not available digitally yet, I found a transcription of Harpswell's birth records [9].  While there were many Orr births recorded in Harpswell, the Joseph Orr born in 1780 seemed to match the Joseph Orr on the ancestor sheet [10].  As the record shows, Joseph had an older brother, Clement, born in 1772.

     I scanned through all of the birth records (the above image was only the first page) and found no children listed for either Joseph or Clement Jr., which would make sense if Joseph and Clement raised their families in Durham.  Mystery solved?  Not quite.

     There was one more confounding factor.  Note that next to Joseph's birth, his death date is given as November 11, 1860.  However, Hannah (Tracy) Orr married Asa Gould on November 16, 1806 [8], suggesting that her husband had died sometime before 1806.  I wondered whether the 1860 death date could have belonged to another Joseph Orr and been falsely attributed, and indeed there seems to be reason to believe this is the case.

     If you look at the Harpswell birth records above, you'll notice that there is another Joseph Orr, born July 1, 1802.  Notably, he also has the same parents.  I'm not an expert on nineteenth century naming traditions, but one thing I have noticed from researching my own family tree is that in some families, it was common to name a child after a sibling who had died.  Another possibility is that the elder Joseph may have gone by another name, which could explain the Joseph/Henry confusion.  However, if he did go by Henry, notice that his parents had a son named Henry in 1805, which would suggest he probably was no longer living at that time.  This does not of course prove that the elder brother Joseph died about 1802 or 1805, but it does lend credence to the possibility that he died much earlier that the date typically attributed to him.  However, whether Joseph was alive at the time of his brother's birth does not actually matter; the key takeaway is that there was another Joseph Orr.

     On FindAGrave, someone had uploaded a photo of the tombstone of the Joseph Orr born in 1802 [11].  His death date is given as November 11, 1860, the same date attributed to his elder brother.  His tombstone is in Harpswell, so it would make sense that his death would be recorded among the Harpswell vital records.  While I have not seen the original Harpswell vital records, it seems likely that whoever recorded his death accidentally attributed it to the wrong brother.
     Here is how I see things.  Christopher Orr was most likely born in Durham, Maine [1].  Hannah Tracy married a Joseph Orr in Durham in 1799 [7,8].  According to at least one record, Hannah Tracy had a son Christopher Orr [7], and according to other sources [e.g., 2,4], Joseph Orr, who hailed from Orr's Island, had a son Christopher Orr.  Christopher is not a name you see amongst the records of the Orr's Island Orrs [9], but Hannah Tracy's father was Reverend Christopher Tracy [7,8].  Thus Chrisopher Orr most likely was the son of Joseph Orr and Hannah Tracy.  Furthermore, the Joseph Orr who died in 1860 was not the Joseph Orr who settled in Durham, but rather a younger brother by the same name [9,11].  The Joseph Orr who settled in Durham likely died around 1802 or perhaps 1805.
     If you have further information about Christopher Orr's parentage, I'd love to see it.  Some of my references are still a little tenuous, I feel, so additional sources would be nice.

Note: To view the records from FamilySearch, you will probably need a free FamilySearch account.

[1] See son Daniel T. Orr's death certificate, in the Maine Vital Records, 1670-1921 database on FamilySearch.

[2] See The Orrs of Maine - The Family of the Golden Shield by Charles N. Sinnett, published in the Lewiston Evening Journal on February 18, 1922.

[3] See the 1850 and 1860 censuses for Phillips, Maine.

[4] See ancestor sheet for Christopher Orr.

[5] See Phillips, Franklin, Maine computer printout; births or christenings, 1756-1871 from FamilySearch.

[6] See Phillips, Franklin, Maine Town and Vital Records, 1822-1851, from FamilySearch, image 150.

[7] See Genealogy of the Tracy Family: Based on the Historical Address Before the Fourth Annual Reunion of the Tracy Family: Held at Gouldsboro, Maine, August 19, 1899 by N. B. Tracy, with additions by Mrs. Lucy M. Tracey: 

[8] See Durham, Androscoggin, Maine Town and Vital Records, 1789-1931 from FamilySearch. 

[9] See Harpswell, Cumberland, Maine computer printout ; births and christenings, 1735-1862 from FamilySearch. 

[10] See ancestor sheet for Joseph Orr.

[11] See headstone of the other Joseph Orr.

My AncestryDNA Journey Part V: AncestryDNA Update

     On the evening of October 17 I went to Ancestry's website and saw that they had finally released their updated version of AncestryDNA.  These are the genetic ethnicity estimate results I received:

As you can see, they are quite different from my previous results and much closer to what I would have expected.  I was very excited to see Europe West appear in my updated DNA results, as it was entirely absent in my previous results, despite the fact that my maternal grandfather's lineage was largely Dutch and German.  Seeing this I wondered, why did it show up this time when it didn't before?  Several other questions came to mind as well, such as why do I still see percentages that don't necessarily make sense (e.g. the 7% Irish result)?  What is the meaning of the range given to the ethnicity estimates and where did it come from?  To answer these and other related questions, we have to take a closer look at the updated AncestryDNA.
     First, let's examine the ethnicity estimates and their associated ranges.  To estimate your genetic ethnicity, Ancestry compares your DNA to the DNA of a "reference panel".  The reference panel consists of 3,000 DNA samples from people from 26 distinct global regions who not only are native to their particular regions, but also whose ancestors for several generations were native to that region.  Ancestry is operating under the assumption that if a person's parents, grandparents, etc. lived in a particular region, then it is probable that their more distant ancestors also inhabited this region.
     The way Ancestry calculates your genetic ethnicity in this updated version is they run 40 analyses on your DNA using randomly selected portions of your DNA.  They compare your DNA to their reference panel, looking for genetic markers specific to a given region.  Since different segments of your DNA may contain varying percentages of traits specific to a particular ethnicity, Ancestry's results may vary from one test to the next.  So my DNA results from the 40 trials may have yielded results like this (note that this chart I just made up for illustrative purposes):

Ancestry then averages the results of the 40 trials, which is where the percentages come from.  So, out of their 40 tests on my DNA, the average amount of Europe West genetic traits in my DNA was 34%.  They create the range by figuring out upper and lower bounds wherein most of the results from the test fall, although I'm not sure of what computations they perform to determine the range.  My range was 12%-56%, meaning that most of my results fell between these two percentages.  On my fictionalized chart, these results could be represented in the following manner, with the black line giving the average result and the blue shaded region representing the range:

You could still have some tests with results that were a bit lower or higher than what the range covers, as is the case with my made up chart, but those results would be in the minority.
     That's a basic overview of where the ethnicity estimate and its associated range comes from.  Now let's take a look at some of the other features of AncestryDNA 2.0.  Below the map which you see in the first image I posted, Ancestry provides a comparison of how my results compare to a person native to Europe West along with some examples of results for people native to Europe West, as shown in the picture below:

The first thing to notice about this is the size of the reference collection, that is the number of people Ancestry used to come up with their estimate.  In this case, it's 416 people, which is not all that large, and in many regions Ancestry used an even smaller number of people to generate their results.  Using a small number of people to determine the unique traits of a population can leave some room for error.
     Another thing to note is that even people native to Europe West on average have more genetic markers from other regions (52%) than they do genetic markers specific to Europe West (48%).  From the examples they provide of results for people in their reference collection, we can see that in some cases, people native to the region didn't have any of the Europe West Genetic markers or very few.  This highlights where some of the difficulty with determining genetic ethnicity stems from.  Although there are a few regions in the world that are fairly insular, most populations have intermingled over time, which can make it difficult to determine from people living today which traits are specific to a given region.
     You may be wondering what other ethnicities are prevalent in the populations of a given region.  The chart below the Genetic Diversity chart provides some insight:

If there are some other ethnicities often found in a group of people, then it seems plausible that traits could be misidentified or something like that, which could explain some of the unusual results.  This just goes to show that genetic ethnicity is an imperfect science.  Fortunately it is one that is constantly evolving as new techniques are developed and I am all in all pleased with Ancestry's update.

Photo of the Day

Lucy Clifton Biggs with brother Walter Joseph Biggs Jr.

Lucy Clifton Biggs

Lucy Clifton Biggs

Lucy Clifton Biggs (on right) with cousin Kate Southall (see the Photo of the Day from this post for more on Kate Southall)

Lucy Clifton Biggs

     Lucy Clifton Biggs was born February 9, 1880 in Norfolk, Virginia to Annie (Southall) and Walter Biggs (profiled in the Photo of the Day segment of this post).  By the time Lucy was two, her family had relocated to a farm near the town of Big Spring (today known as Elliston) in Montgomery County, Virginia on land purchased by her paternal grandfather Kader Biggs.  According to the 1940 census, Lucy attended four years of college.  She married, probably between 1910 and 1920, Lewis W. Langhorne.  However, by 1923 she had been widowed.  She lived out the remainder of her years in Salem, Virginia.  She died in Salem on September 14, 1967.  She was buried in Sherwood Memorial Park in Salem, Virginia.

     Walter Joseph Biggs was born on June 4, 1886 near Big Spring, Virginia.  He attended the New York School of Art (according to the 1940 census, he spent one year there) and became a renowned illustrator, being inducted into the Illustrator's Hall of Fame (here's a link to the induction speech and here's a link to some of his illustrations.  And another link, with some biography.  Also, if you do a Google image search you will find all sorts of paintings of his).  He married probably between 1920 and 1925 Mildred Armstrong, whom he divorced sometime between 1930 and 1940.  Although he spent much of his adult life living in New York, he died in Roanoke, Virginia on February 11, 1968.  He was also buried in Sherwood Memorial Park.

Sources for Lucy Clifton Biggs:

"Descendants of the Reverend Daniel Southall of Eastern North Carolina" by Seth Warner, The Genealogist  Vol. 22, No. 2

1880 census
1900 census
1910 census
1920 census
1930 census
1940 census
1923 Directory for Roanoke, Virginia (on ancestry.com)
Find A Grave

Sources for Walter Joseph Biggs:

"Descendants of the Reverend Daniel Southall of Eastern North Carolina" by Seth Warner, The Genealogist  Vol. 22, No. 2

1900 census

1910 census

1920 census

1930 census

1940 census

1925 New York Census (on ancestry.com)

Wikipedia (yes, he has his own Wikipedia page)

Find A Grave

My Ancestry DNA Journey Part IV: Member Matches

     In my last post I discussed the Genetic Ethnicity Summary component of Ancestry's DNA test.  However, there is another component to Ancestry's DNA test.  On the AncestryDNA results summary page beneath the Genetic Ethnicity Summary you will see what is called "AncestryDNA Member Matches" and below the heading a number of member profiles, like what you see pictured below:

     These profiles are for other individuals who have taken the AncestryDNA test whose genetic makeup is similar enough to yours for Ancestry to speculate that you are related.  There are several key facts you can learn about a match from this page.  Below an individual's user name, Ancestry provides an estimate of a person's relation to you, such as in the profiles pictured above in which Ancestry hypothesizes that these individuals are 4th-6th cousins of mine.  Underneath the possible relationship range, Ancestry includes an estimate of how likely it is an individual is related to you, such as the 96% confidences in the picture above.  There is no guarantee that the people who show up as matches are related to you, but the higher the confidence, the more likely it is that an individual is related to you.
     The middle column tells how many individuals a user has in her or his family tree.  If there is a lock next to the number, like in the case of M. in the above picture, this person's tree is private.  I would have to send her a message if I wanted to view her tree and she would have to confirm me before I would be able to see it.  If there is a leaf next to the number, as with WABRYANT in the picture below, this means that Ancestry has found an ancestor in your tree who matches an ancestor in their tree.  This does not mean that all of the people without hints are mistaken matches.  The two of you may just not have traced your trees back far enough to find your common ancestor or one of you may have made a mistake in tracing your tree.

     Clicking on an individual's profile can provide you with some additional information.  If Ancestry has not found a common ancestor, when you click on the profile, the person's tree along with a list of surnames shared between the two trees (if there are any) will pop up, such as the list in the image below.

You can click on the surnames and a list comparing some of the people in your tree with a given surname to people in the other tree with that same surname will pop up.  So, for example, I clicked on Hathaway, and these are the results I received:

     These comparisons can help give you an idea of where a connection between your tree and this other individual's tree may be located.  Notice that TDanielsPA's William Hathaway and my Joshua Hathaway (born 1727) are two years apart and were born in the same town.  This is a strong indication that the two were related, perhaps as brothers or cousins.  Pulling out my copy of Hathaway's of America, I quickly located a William Hathaway, born June 6, 1725 in Freetown, MA to Ephraim Hathaway and Abigail Davis.  Ephraim's father was John Hathaway Jr.  In my tree, Joshua's father was the Isaac Hathaway listed in the above picture.  Isaac's father was Jacob and Jacob's father was John Hathaway Jr.  This would make William and Joshua first cousins once removed, according to this kinship chart. Comparing TDanielsPA's family tree with mine, I found that we are 10th cousins, so we're very distantly related on the Hathaway side.  Since Ancestry estimates we're 4th to 6th cousins, there may very well be another shared ancestor between our trees.
     Note that not all shared surname results will be as helpful as this one was and there is no guarantee that your link to this individual will be through one of the common surnames.  One or both of you may have yet to discover ancestors with the name that links you to your common ancestor.  So, for example, TDanielsPA and I both have Smiths in our tree, but there is not a clear link between my Smiths and his Smiths:

There are two Smiths in my tree born around the same time as his Elizabeth, but neither one was born in the same geographical area as Elizabeth.  This does not ensure that there is no connection, but it does diminish the likelihood that I would find a close relationship between my Smiths and his Smiths.
     If Ancestry has found a common ancestor, when you click on the other user's profile, you will receive a shared ancestor hint, like in the picture below.

The shared ancestor hint starts with out common ancestor, John Wheeler, and traces from him to me and from him to koestler, telling me how I am related to each person in her tree.  When you receive a result with a shared ancestor hint, you need only make sure it makes sense.  Once you have done this, you can look through their tree to see what sort of information they have about your shared ancestor and perhaps learn something new.

Photo of the Day

Annie Rebecca (Southall) Biggs

     Annie Rebecca Southall was born in September of 1850 or 1851 to Sarah Clifton (Wheeler) and James Hunter Southall.  In 1860 she was living in Columbus, Mississippi with her parents and siblings.  Her mother died on July 13, 1861 and Annie and her brother Jimmie (James Hunter Southall Jr., profiled in my Photo of the Day in this post) were then brought by their father to the plantation Mulberry Grove in Hertford County, North Carolina, owned by their aunt Julia Munroe (Wheeler) Moore and her husband Dr. Godwin Cotten Moore.  Their father died the following year in December.

     In 1870, Annie and her sister Josephine (my great great grandmother) were attending Wesleyan Female College in Murfreesboro, North Carolina.  According to the 1940 census, Annie completed four years of college.  On November 10, 1874 Annie married at Mulberry Grove Walter Joseph Biggs, born in September of 1850 to Lucy A. (Myrick) and Kader Biggs.  In 1880 the couple resided in Norfolk, Virginia with Walter's parents and their four month old daughter, Lucy, one of two children to live to adulthood.  By 1900 they were living in Salem, Roanoke, Virginia with their two children.  By 1910 Annie had been widowed and was still living in Salem, where she resided for the remainder of her life, with Lucy.  She died in 1948 and was buried on August 23, 1948 in Sherwood Memorial Park, Salem, Virginia.

Children Annie and Walter:

      1. James Southall Biggs, born October 18, 1875 and died in August of 1876.

      2. Kader Biggs, born October 18, 1875 and died on September 16, 1876.

      3. Louisa Myrick Biggs, born March 3, 1877 and died August 23, 1879.

      4. Lucy Clifton Biggs, born February 9, 1880 and died September 14, 1967, married         
          Lewis W. Langhorne

      5. Julia Southall Biggs, born January 4, 1883 and died January 5, 1883.

      6. Walter Joseph Biggs Jr., born June 4, 1886 and died February 11, 1968, married 
          Mildred Armstrong.

Want to learn more about Annie and Walter's children Lucy and Walter Jr.?  Keep your eyes peeled for my next blog post, in which they will be chronicled in my Photo of the Day.

Sources:

"Descendants of the Reverend Daniel Southall of Eastern North Carolina" by Seth Warner, The Genealogist  Vol. 22, No. 2

1860 census

1870 census

1880 census

1900 census

1910 census

1920 census

1930 census

1940 census

My Ancestry DNA Journey Part III: The Results

     The results are in and . . . they're definitely not what I was expecting.  Here's what happened.  Tuesday morning I awoke to find an email in my inbox from Ancestry telling me that my DNA results were in.  I clicked a couple of buttons and arrived at the following page:

     As you can see, there is no Native American heritage in my ethnicity pie chart (which does not mean definitively that I have no Native American ancestry, but I'll discuss that more in a minute).  The British Isles result, which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, made sense because I have a lot of ancestors from those regions, particularly England.  I was initially a little confused about the Southern European result until I realized that it included Portugal, which I have some confirmed and some unconfirmed lines that trace back to this country.  The percentage seemed a bit higher than what I was expecting to find, but I could accept it.  

     There were, however, two things that baffled me about this result: the 18% Scandinavian result and the absence of results from other regions that I was expecting to see.  I have not traced any ancestors to any of the Scandinavian countries and I have found ancestors born in countries not included in this chart, such as the Netherlands and Germany.  My initial reaction was that Ancestry had to be wrong, that they must have swapped my DNA test with someone else's or messed up the test somehow or something like that.  Then I started questioning my own genealogical research, scrutinizing the branch of my tree containing my Dutch ancestry, searching for mistakes.  I began to worry that I had traced my family tree incorrectly.

     While it is possible that my tree has errors, when I finally sat down and took the time to investigate the meaning of my DNA results, I learned that I did not have any reason to be panicking.  Apparently, it's fairly common for people to get results different from what they were expecting using these DNA tests and, because of this, Ancestry put together an excellent video explaining what it means to get unexpected results.  I'm including the video below in case you are interested.  It's a bit long, but explains things really well, much better than I can in this short blog post, although I have tried to summarize the key ideas below.

     One thing I learned from this video is that I've been thinking about ancestry in the wrong way, as I'm sure many of you have.  We tend to ascribe to ourselves ethnic heritages based on only a few recent generations.  For example, I have a second-great grandmother, Ella E. (Smith) Rice whose traceable maternal ancestors all were born in the Netherlands.  Because of this I would like to claim that she is 50% Dutch and that in turn I am 1/32 Dutch, or about 3%.  But what if some of her ancestors, the people with Dutch surnames but whose parents I have not traced back to their country of origin, what if one of them had a mother who was, say German?  And what about her ancestors born in the Netherlands?  For how many generations had they been in the Netherlands?  Did any of them migrate from some other region in the past thousand years?  Our DNA carries information about where our ancestors lived thousands of years ago, farther back than most of us can trace our trees, so it should not be surprising that we would find some unexpected ethnicities encoded in our genome.

     Here's another example.  Many people who have taken Ancestry's DNA test, such as me, have found that they had Scandinavian ancestry that they were not expecting to find.  One probable reason why so many people are finding this result is because the Vikings invaded a number of countries, including Germany and England, intermixing their genetics with the native populace's.  So you could have ancestors who lived in Germany for hundreds of years who descended in part from the Vikings.  You're not going to be able to catch that by tracing backward from yourself, but the DNA test will catch this.

     The other major reason why your results may not come out exactly as you would expect has to do with the way genetics work.  Let's suppose that we have a person, Abigail, whose father was born in England, maternal grandmother was born in the Netherlands, and maternal grandfather was born in Wales.  It would be tempting to say (assuming we did not know what we learned in the previous paragraphs) that Abigail is 50% English, 25% Dutch, and 25% Welsh, but genetics don't work exactly like that.  

     We receive 50% of our DNA from our mother and 50% from our father, but that does not mean that we get half of of every single trait our parents carry.  So Abigail's mother, inheriting half of her DNA from each parent, would be genetically 50% Dutch and 50% Welsh.  However, since Abigail is only inheriting part of her mother's DNA, she could receive all of the Dutch genetic traits and none of the Welsh genetic traits, all of the Welsh genetic traits and none of the Dutch, or some combination of both which may not be in equal proportions.  While it is unlikely that Abigail would receive none of the Welsh DNA, as we look at Abigail's children, grandchildren, and so on down the line, it becomes increasingly likely that these individuals could receive none of the Welsh DNA traits.  So this test does not say definitively that I have no Native American ancestry, as I initially assumed.  I could still have Native American ancestors, but over time these genetic traits have disappeared.  I could get a much stronger result if my father or grandmother took a DNA test, as they are much more closely linked to our purportedly Native American ancestor than I am.
     After doing some searching on the internet I also found that the high percentages of Scandinavian ancestry in DNA results may be a flaw in Ancestry's test.  The Legal Genealogist mentions it in this post and numerous people have blogged about it, comparing their AncestryDNA tests with other DNA tests they have taken.  Ancestry is going to be releasing a major update to their DNA package here soon, so hopefully this will help correct any issues there are with their Scandinavian percentages.  Their description does say they will provide "more refined ethnicity estimates," but their description of the update is very vague, so I'm not sure what exactly this entails.  You can read about the update here.

     That's the basic idea of why your DNA results may not match your expected results.  Hopefully if you are planning on taking the test, this post can help you better understand what you'll be seeing.  I know I wish I had taken more time to research the meaning of the results before taking the test so that I could have avoided panicking this morning over whether I had done my family tree completely wrong.
     There is another really interesting feature of AncestryDNA, in which they compare your DNA results to other members to predict whether you are related.  Since this is already a rather lengthy post, I'll discuss that feature in more detail in my next post.

Photo of the Day

Albert Weston Seybert with grandson Grant Weston Seibert

Christmas greeting from Albert Weston Seybert to Grant Weston Seibert

     Albert Weston Seybert was born in June of 1846 in Pennsylvania to Cassandra (Stall) and Henry D. Seybert.  In 1850 he resided in Salem, Luzerne, Pennsylvania with his parents and two siblings and in 1860 he was living in Salem with his parents and five siblings.  In census records, he was listed as a farmer and as a laborer.

     Albert married about 1867 another Salem resident, Lydia Alice Hosler, born in September of 1841 to Phoebe A. (Gensel) and Jacob Hosler.  In 1870 Albert and Lydia were living in Briar Creek, Columbia, Pennsylvania with a young son at the home of Albert's maternal grandmother, Ann T. (---------) Stall.  In 1880 they resided in Berwick, Colombia, Pennsylvania with four children.  On April 19. 1885 Albert, Lydia, and their daughter Lizzie joined the United Methodist Church in Berwick.  By 1900 Albert and Lydia were living in Centre Township, Colombia, Pennsylvania with three children.  

     Lydia died in 1904 and was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Berwick.  In 1910 Albert was living in Center, Columbia, Pennsylvania with his youngest daughter.  According to his son Ernest, Albert suffered paralysis during the summer of 1911, which left him unable to work.  On November 5, 1911, Albert and his daughter Ella joined the Wesley United Methodist Church in Bloomsburg, Columbia, Pennsylvania.  In the 1920 and 1930 censuses, Albert and his daughter Ella were living at 702 South Catherine Street in Bloomsburg, Columbia, Pennsylvania.  Albert died in 1931 and was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Berwick, Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Albert and Lydia had several children:

      1.   Forrest E. Seybert, born in 1868 and died in 1877.

      2.   Elizabeth H. “Lizzie” Seybert, born in July of 1870. 

      3.   Mary C. Seybert, born in 1872  and died in 1880.

      4.   Harry R. Seybert, born in 1875  and died in 1880.

      5.   Clark A. Seybert, born in 1878  and died in 1881.

      6.   Ellen M. “Ella” Seybert, born in January of 1882  and died in 1952.  She married 

            sometime after 1930  but before 1940  William James VanDine, born February 

            10, 1880  to Charles Everett and Anna Louisa (Grittner) VanDine.  Ella and 

            William lived at 702 Catherine Street in Bloomsburg, Columbia, Pennsylvania  in the 

            house that Ella’s father had owned.  William married (about 1906) and divorced  

            Agnes Ingertha (Strom), a Norwegian immigrant , born about March 7, 1887 and 

            died May 30, 1959, with whom he had at least one child.

      7.   Ernest Grant Seibert, born November 15, 1884 and baptized at United Methodist 

            Church in Berwick, Columbia, Pennsylvania on December 22, 1886.  He was admitted 

            into Harvard and attended from 1909-1911, leaving prematurely to care for his 

            father and siblings.  He and a gentleman by the last name Hall founded Scranton 

            Dental Company.  He married in Brooklyn, New York on May 5, 1916 Mildred Rice, 

            born in December of 1889 to Ella (Smith) and  Charles LeRett Rice.  Ernest died in 

            1920 or 1921.  Ernest and Mildred had two children, one of whom was my 

            grandfather, Grant Weston Seibert, pictured above.

Sources:

Gravestone of Albert and Lydia Seybert

1850 census

1860 census

1870 census

1880 census

1900 census

1910 census

1920 census

1930 census

Harvard Class of 1913 Second Report

Pennsylvania Church and Town Records, ancestry.com

1921 Scranton, Pennsylvania Directory

My Ancestry DNA Journey Part II: The DNA Test

     My DNA test kit arrived today!  The test itself was pretty simple, not much more involved than spitting into a vial.  The instructions were short and easy to follow.  I activated the test on ancestry.com and mailed it back in and that's all there was to it.  Now I just have to wait.

     Here are some facts about the test itself.  Ancestry's DNA test costs $99, which is not an insubstantial amount of money.  Whether or not it is a worthwhile expenditure really depends the person buying the test.  Ancestry has an explanation of how the test works and what it can offer you on their DNA page, so if you are considering buying a test from them, make sure to check out their page and see if the test will accomplish what you want it to.  If you're curious about your ethnic background, it can provide you information on that.  If you're hoping to connect with relatives, this test can do that, but only if your relatives have also taken Ancestry's DNA test.  So if you come from a large family, your odds of connecting with relatives might be a bit better than if you come from a small family, as you will have more relatives who could potentially have taken the test.

     If you don't already have an Ancestry account, you will have to make one.  According to their website, they do have a free option, so you won't have to pay any additional money to create an account.  You'll get all of the benefits of the DNA test with the free account; you just won't be able to access the parts of ancestry.com that require a subscription.  I have a paid subscription to Ancestry, so I don't have any experience with the free account, but if any of you do and would like to share your experience, describe it in the comments or email me at hathaway.amber@gmail.com.

Photo of the Day

     Rather than share only one photo, this time I decided to share pictures I have of a family.  Below are the pictures I have of Kate (Rumney) and James Hunter Southall and their daughter Kate.

James Hunter Southall Jr.

James Hunter Southall Jr.

Kate (Rumney) Southall

Perhaps photo of Kate Sr. and Kate Jr.?

Kate Southall Jr. and Lucy Clifton Biggs

Kate Southall Jr.

James Hunter Southall Jr.

     Catherine "Kate" R. (Rumney) Southall was born on May 27, 1853 in Detroit, Michigan to Harriet Larned, born in Michigan, and William  Rumney, born in New York.  She purportedly was a descendant of Captain Simon Larned, who served in the American Revolution.  In the 1860 census she was living with her parents and three siblings in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan.  In the 1870 census she resided in Detroit with her parents, maternal grandmother, Catherine (---------) Rumney, and five siblings.  James Hunter Southall Jr. was born in November of 1848 in Colombus, Mississippi to Sarah Clifton (Wheeler) and James Hunter Southall Sr., both born in North Carolina.  (James's sister, Frances Josephine "Josi" (Southall) Bowen was my great great grandmother.)  In the 1850 census he was living in Lowdnes County, Mississippi with his parents, four siblings, and an aunt, Amy M. Wheeler.  In the 1860 census he was living in Colombus, Lowdnes, Mississippi with his parents and five siblings.
     James and Kate married in Wayne County, Michigan October 24, 1874 (marriage record here).  In the 1880 census they were living in Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia with their daughter Kate C. Southall.  James was listed as a clerk cotton merchant.  In the 1900 census Kate was living in St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota with three children, including Kate Jr. and in the 1900 census James was in the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater, Washington, Minnesota.  Kate died on January 1, 1903 in St. Paul, Minnesota.  The 1930 census stated that James was living in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota.  He died there on July 26, 1939.
     James and Kate's daughter, Katherine Clifton Southall married 1st on October 16, 1901 Allan Porter Abbot, 2nd in Chicago, Cook, Illinois on March 19, 1904 Charles R. Corning, born in September of 1874 to Mary E. (---------) and John W. L. Corning.  In the 1910 census she was living in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband, who served as vice president of a building material company.  In the 1920 census she was still residing with her husband, now the president of a lumber company, in St. Paul.  She died on August 27, 1928.
     Besides the records mentioned and/or linked to above, I also used the book The Family of Daniel Southall by Seth Warner.

The Beginning of My Ancestry DNA Journey

     It's been a long time since I've written a post for this blog, but when I finally decided to purchase an Ancestry DNA test, I figured that this experiment would be worth chronicling.  I have considered off and on for some time now buying a DNA test to find out whether the rumor of Native American ancestry in my family tree held any merit, but knowing of no evidence to substantiate the tale, I did not bother to.  I had poured over record after record, only to find that each person listed was white, so I figured that my relatives must have been confused.  However, on memorial day, my father and my aunt and uncle began rehashing what they knew about our supposed Native American heritage, reigniting my curiosity.
     Here's how the story goes.  Supposedly, my great great grandmother, Lucy Iola (Perkins) Graves was full blooded Native American.  The problem with this theory is that on census records, her marriage record, her daughter's birth certificate, etc., she is listed as white.  Furthermore, both her parents, Rosa Ellen (Delano) and George A. Perkins, are listed as white many times over as well.  Her mother's lineage includes Mayflower passengers Richard Warren and Francis Cooke, and Phillip Delano, who came to America on the Fortune in 1621.  Her father descended from Jacob Perkins, who settled in Wells, Maine.  His tree does not seem to contain any illustrious figures, but from the branches that I can trace, it appears that everyone is white.  That of course does not rule out the possibility that some of the branches I have not been able to trace may contain Native American ancestors, but it does indicate that if Lucy really was the daughter of George and Rosa Perkins, she was not full blooded Native American.
     Pondering the claim Friday afternoon, I began wondering if perhaps Lucy was not a biological child of George and Rosa Perkins, as this is the only way possible for her to be Native American if the Perkins's were not.  I know of only one piece of evidence that could potentially support this theory, although it is rather flimsy evidence.  In 1892, the state of Maine mandated that all municipalities begin collecting vital records.  While birth records for her four siblings and a record of a stillborn son born to her parents are on file at the Hampden town office, no birth record for Lucy exists.  While it is entirely possible that her birth was not recorded for one reason or another, if she was adopted then that would also provide reason why her birth record would not be there.  I'm not sure how common adoption was during this time period, but I have come across two instances of adoption while researching side branches of my family tree.
     With these thoughts in mind, I decided to turn to ancestry.com's DNA test to find out if I have any Native American heritage.  While the test cannot tell me directly who my Native American ancestors are, if I have them, it can tell me approximately what percentage Native American I am and can connect me to other users who are related to me.  Hopefully if it does turn out that I am part Native American, I will be able to utilize these and other resources to find out who in my tree is Native American.  I don't care which outcome the test produces; I just want an answer to this mystery which has plagued me for so long.

Photo of the Day

     Photo of the day is a feature I started in my previous blog post, in which I share photos and scans of portraits and photos in my possession.  My hope in sharing these is that you will find pictures of your ancestors that you may not have seen before.

     This is a photo of Margaret Belle Peebles.  I suspect she is the Margaret B. Peebles, born in October of 1899 to Nancy E. "Nannie" (Shook) and Henry Bruce Peebles (Henry Bruce Peebles's younger brother Calvert Goosely Peebles was my great grandfather).  She was presumably born in West, McLennan, Texas, which is where her family was living when the 1900 census was taken.  In the 1910 census she was ten years old and living in Woodward, Woodward, Oklahoma with her parents, her eight-year-old sister Mary C. Peebles, and her seventy-four-year-old grandmother Margaret A. (---------) Shook.  At the recording of the 1930 census she was living with her widowed father on Texas Avenue in Woodward, Woodward Texas and working as a public school teacher.  The census lists her as married.  If you have further information about Margaret Peebles or about this photo, share it in the comments below or email me at hathaway.amber@gmail.com.

Using Google and Google Books for Genealogical Research

     Where is the first place you turn when looking for information?  For many people, myself included, it's Google (or another similar search engine).  In fact, it was Google that started me on my genealogical quest, identifying for me the woman in the portrait.  As a novice to genealogical research, I Googled every name I came across in my quest to understand my ancestry.  Google can be a great aid in genealogical research, but only if it is used properly.  Below are some tips to help you get the most out of Google and Google Books when doing genealogical research.

What Should I Search For?

     A basic Google search is fine to start off with.  Begin by typing in the full name of an ancestor, maybe including the state (or even town) your ancestor resided in as well.  If searching for a female ancestor, it may be helpful to include both her maiden and married names in the search.  You may wish to try a number of variations with and without an ancestor's middle name, maiden name, and married name.  For more information about how to get the results you want using Google, I recommend this website.  As an example of the type of information that comes up, I googled my great grandmother Mary Alice (Ellingwood) Hathaway and this is what I found:

     As sometimes happens, it turned out that the only result relating to my great grandmother was the first one, but this first result provided me with information about my great grandmother's high school graduation, something I had not known anything about previously.

     You may also want to try googling the name of a married couple, as this may provide you with some information that you might not find by typing in one name or the other.  Again, it is helpful to try searching using full names of your ancestors and also omitting middle names, as you can get different results.  For example, I did not find any useful results when I searched using the names Mary Alice Ellingwood George Warren Hathaway, but when I googled the names Mary Ellingwood George Hathaway, I found this:

Google News 

    
The first link brought me to  my grandfather's obituary, in which his parents' names were mentioned, which is why it came up as a result.  This obituary is from Google News.  I had never heard of Google News prior to this, but apparently they have digitalized and made searchable a number of newspapers.  They have a list of newspapers they have available and the number of issues they have available from these newspapers.  Also, if you do not know what newspaper information about an ancestor might be featured in, you can try searching for an ancestor's name in the archives, and if they have any results, it should pop up.  It looks like this part of Google is just getting off the ground, so you may want to check back on the occasion to see if they have updated things. 

Internet Family Trees 


     The most important thing to remember, which is the same for anything else you search for on the internet, is that not all the information you come across will be true.  When searching for ancestors, you are likely to come across family trees, such as this one:

     The information provided in these trees is not always accurate.  Many trees do not list any sources, thus leaving you with no idea where the information came from.  These trees can be helpful in providing you with new avenues to explore, but you should confirm each piece of information for yourself.  The problem of reliability is not limited to family trees, however.  You should check the documentation for any ancestral information that you discover while searching the internet.  We'll talk about what constitutes a legitimate source more in subsequent blog posts.

  Google Books

     Google Books has proven to be one of the most useful tools for me in my quest to uncover my family's history.  Through Google Books I have been able to access numerous town histories and old genealogy books that have aided me immensely in my research. 

     Searching for ancestors in Google Books is similar to searching for ancestors in Google.  In fact, when googling an ancestor, you should be able to access any results from Google Books, though they may be pages away.  The advantage to searching directly through Google Books is that it provides you all of the book results in one place.  For example, I Googled my great grandfather, Ernest Grant Seibert:

     This first result is a report published by Harvard detailing the members of Harvard's class of 1913.  It provides brief biographies of each of the members of the class.  For my great grandfather, it provided his parents' names, his wife's name, his marriage date, his occupation, and a brief description of his life since Harvard. 

     There are several types of search results you can get when using Google Books.  The best type of result is a full view, in which the entire book is available in digital format on Google.  The first result I found for Ernest Grant Seibert is an example of this.  You can download and print anything from these books.  The books that are available in full view are ones in which the copyright has expired, which means that almost anything published 100 years ago that comes up in Google Books will be accessible in its entirety.  You will find many local histories and family genealogies in this category.

     Another possibility is a book may come up that has a preview only.  This means that a limited number of pages will be available for viewing online.  Whether the information you are looking for in this book will come up in the preview is really a hit or miss.  Also, since this preview is copywright protected, you will not be able to download or print any of the pages you see, though you can of course type out notes for yourself of pertinent information in the preview.

     You will also find books that have only a snippet view available.  This means that you will only be able to see a snippet of any page.  This snippet may or may not contain the information you are looking for.  Similar to the preview, you cannot download or print any of the information you find.  Finally, there are cases in which no preview is available.  In these cases you will not be able to see anything from the inside of the book.

     Similar to the problem with Google, the books included in Google may not always be accurate.  Many old genealogies are unsourced and, while probably more reliable than random internet sites, could contain errors.  Check the information you discover in these books with other sources when you can.

What Do I Do if I've Found a Promising Result, But Cannot View it in Google Books?

     Make friends with WorldCat.  WorldCat is a catalog of books in libraries across the world.  Just type in the name of the book you are looking for and it will provide you with a list of libraries containing this book, ordered by how near they are geographically to your zip code.  For example, I searched for the book Ancestors and descendants of Josiah Garland and Miriam Moore, early settlers at Union River, Hancock County, Maine and this is what I found:

     You may find your local library posesses the book you are looking for, in which case it should be easily accessible.  However, if it is not available in your local library, you can try accessing it through interlibrary loan.  There may be restrictions on the book, thus making it impossible to obtain through interlibrary loan.  For example, the Bangor Public Library copy is for library use only.  In that case, you may need to travel to the library to view it.  Call the library ahead of time to find out if there are any restrictions or requirements to accessing the given material. 

Photo of the Day

      Photo of the day is a feature which I hope will provide people with a face of their ancestry.  I am using photos and portraits I own, some of which are labeled and others which are not, in hopes that people will find them useful. 

     My first Photo of the Day is a portrait of Reverend Daniel J. Southall.  Rev. Southall was born on August 9, 1768 in Virginia to Elizabeth (Coleman) and James Southall.  He moved to Gates County, North Carolina and married 1. Julia Riddick, daughter of Leah and Seth Riddick and 2. Patience Watts Branch, daughter of Mary (Bradford) and John Branch.  Daniel and Leah had 7 children together and Daniel and Patience had 5 children together.  Rev. Southall was visiting relatives in Washington D.C. when he died on October 26, 1830.  For more information on Daniel Southall and his descendants (and to find out if you're descended from this man), check out this site.  It's a tree, but at least it is sourced.  Of course you should confirm everything for yourself rather than simply accepting it outright.  I got most of my information from ancestry.com and from The Family of Daniel Southall: Four Generations by Seth Warner, which used to be available online (it is no longer accessible through the site I got it from but maybe it is available elsewhere).



     Enjoying this genealogical journey?  Next time we'll examine some other free internet sources that can make your genealogical search much easier.