The Siderfin Family of West Somerset © 2023 by Elizabeth (Blake) Kipp is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Interesting Autosomal DNA Results
Entering into the adventure of Surname Studies, I arrived perhaps a little differently than others. Although my husband Edward was deeply involved in genealogy as long as I knew him (we were married 54.5 years) I was never actually interested in genealogy. I could not see how one would really trace people based only on Parish Registers, Census and the like. I needed more proof that I was actually related to people. When my third cousin George DeKay asked me to write a Profile for my Pincombe Family in Westminster Township, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada to be included in the History books he was editing for Westminster and Delaware Townships, I said I do not think I could take that on. He tried again a little later and a few more pushing statements. I decided to take it on and took 42 courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies which was then at St Michaels part of the University of Toronto and it was online. Great news, love online things. That was the summer of 2003 and the Profile was due the summer of 2005. Without being too wordy, I accomplished both – The Profile and my Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies (PLCGS); the first in 2005 and the second in 2007.
I was such a newbie though and it showed as I naively worked my way through myriads of data, experienced serendipity finding my 2x great grandmother Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe with her siblings at Wootton Courtney on the 1841 census as she was missing from the Molland Census where her husband and two of their three children were located. But that isn’t a story for the Siderfin book just interesting how I gradually evolved from being an onlooker to being an active participant in this backwards journey through time to find one’s ancestors although I call it Surname Studies as I have little interest in Genealogy which is more of a cousin finding study.
But definitely it was the advent of DNA into the life of Surname Studies initially as y-DNA studies and mtDNA studies and finally autosomal DNA studies took their appropriate place in the world of Surname Studies and Genealogy since these three types of DNA are free standing ways to look at families. I first tested in 2006 at Sorenson Research and the results were most interesting but have nothing to do with the Siderfin family as this was mitochondrial DNA inherited strictly down the female line. I did not at that time know anyone with the Siderfin surname tracing back to our mutual line in West Somerset nor do I now so that study does not exist except as a name on the FT DNA website which I did set up when I was doing the one-name study for Siderfin back in 2007. But autosomal has proven to be an interesting way to look at DNA and has pretty much dominated the DNA studies since 2014 although one continues to utilize yDNA for its value as a straight line male search back into time and mtDNA as a straight line female search back into time. Y-DNA studies are perhaps easier as the surname doesn’t change in general whereas the female surname changed with every marriage that occurred in a generation making this research rather difficult. But autosomal is dependent only on sharing a common ancestor and surprisingly 2nd and greater cousins (3rd especially) offer a huge insight into how we inherited our autosomal DNA. As we, my six siblings and I, do not have any first cousins although we do have second cousins, the lack of first cousins does not heavily affect the acquisition of knowledge as five of the seven siblings (myself included) have tested and when these results are all put together and examined in DNA Painter one discovers that only a very short piece of one chromosome is not completely covered except by one of the siblings of our inheritance from our grandparents although the inheritance does end up being known just because of the sheer number of siblings testing and subsequent matching with known cousins.
My siblings and myself have tested at all the common testing sites – 23 and Me, Ancestry, FT DNA, Living DNA, and My Heritage. It is our gift to the generations that follow to have this material at their disposal. As it turns out one of my brothers and myself are the least alike and so I tested this brother and myself at every one of the testing sites except My Heritage where only I have tested and the rest have tested at many or most of the same so a lot of data available to me and the plus, a lot of matches are available.
Siderfin was no exception; on Ancestry alone, of the four siblings tested, one has 33 Siderfin matches in common, one has 32 Siderfin matches in common, one has 25 Siderfin matches in common and, myself, I have 13 matches in common. Many of these matches are with our Pincombe cousins (we share 3x great grandmother Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew ) but also with descendants of the siblings of our 2x great grandmother Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe with the bonus that she had a twin sister Charlotte. These matches are much closer simply because of the twin effect. Going back to Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew herself and matches with her first cousins is more difficult since the most recent common ancestors are Robert Siderfin and Grace (Kent) Siderfin our 4x great grandparents and so these are fifth cousins and one must be careful to ensure that we do not have other matching possibilities with these matches. In some cases these matches are surprisingly large (30 to 60 centimorgans on Ancestry which does use a program TIMBER to eliminate atDNA shared in common because of ethnicity) and I continue to sort through these results. I will share some of that material with the readers in this chapter.
Having now prepared a large flat file in Excel looking at every chromosome I can now report back to the readers that I do not yet have sufficient material to name lengths as passed in common from a Siderfin ancestor down through the lines. That will come likely but for the moment I am unable to do that.
However, recent matches on Ancestry have revealed descendants of Thomas (brother to Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew) and my siblings and myself do have sufficiently sized matches for comparison and these range between 30 centimorgans and 60 centimorgans. This is a sizeable match for fifth cousins and not expected actually. Looking at the Shared cM Project (Version 4.0) the average shared by fifth cousins is 25 cM with a range from 0 to 117.
Looking at the two cousins:
First individual is descendant of Charles Colwell and Hannah Elizabeth Siderfin (+ 242 F v. Hannah [Ann] Elizabeth 11 Siderfin (Joseph 10, Thomas 9, Robert 8, John 7, Robert 6, John 5, Robert 4, Robert 3, William 2, John 1). The descendant is five steps from Thomas 9 Siderfin son of Robert 8 Siderfin and Grace Kent. My siblings and I are also five steps from Elizabeth 9 Siderfin (sister to Thomas). Since the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) pair is Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent (our mutual 4x great grandparents we are exactly fifth cousins). I did write to this individual to see if he was interested in taking his results from Ancestry into one of the companies where we could share data. We will see.
Second individual is descendant of Henry 10 Siderfin (Thomas 9, Robert 8, John 7, Robert 6, John 5, Robert 4, Robert 3, William 2, John 1) and Elizabeth Johnson. The descendant is five steps from Thomas 9 Siderfin son of Robert 8 Siderfin and Grace Kent. Hence this individual is also a fifth cousin but is the larger match of the two individuals. I also wrote to this individual who was actually born on the African continent so one never knows where one’s cousins are!
My purpose in adding this particular chapter was to show the relationship between Thomas’ descendants and his siblings (only Elizabeth in the case of these two matches) since Thomas moved to Derbyshire in the late 1700s early 1800s and disappeared from view so to speak. It simply brings all the descendants together in the one book. There are numerous matches with descendants of Elizabeth Siderfin’s other siblings in the databases.
At some point in the future I will do some anonymous charting on the many matches along with some genealogy charts but adding them to this book will make it too large as a suitable download from my website. So an addendum is promised in the future as I work away on other projects.
Elizabeth (Blake) Kipp
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