Easter Day 2020

Blessed Easter. Another bright sunny day to start and it is Easter Sunday. The most important day in the Christian Calendar and follows by two days the saddest day in the Christian Calendar. Thus it has been for over two thousand years and God willing will be for thousands more. Mankind was meant to survive; we have no idea how long our founder species has survived with Homo erectus appearing about 2 million years ago. I feel honoured that in our family we are showing 1.9% Neanderthal and 3.5% Denisovan. That we carry so much of past human species is amazing. The average carried by most people alive is 2.1% Neanderthal and 2.1% Denisovan. Perhaps our mitochondrial DNA is the reason that our genetic complement of 3.5% Denisovan is higher than average. Our mtDNA (H11a2a1) is known to have wintered during the Last Glacial Maximum at Ukraina to the west of the Black Sea but probably along its shores. Still today many many people in Russia, Ukraine and other places in Eastern Europe carry the same mitochondrial DNA. My ancient ancestor though moved away from that area probably as long ago as 8 to 12 thousand years following the retreat of the ice sheets likely across the Scandinavian Peninsula as matches to me (at a distance of 1 or 2 steps) still live in this area. Eventually she came to Scotland and probably lived in Ayrshire/Argyllshire for thousands of years moving between Northern Ireland and Scotland as again this is the commonest location for that mtDNA.

I do not know a great deal about Ellen Taylor my great grandmother who passed on her interesting mitochondrial to all of us. I know that she died at the age of 37 years on the 27th February 1897 of pneumonia. She was buried at Witton Cemetery in Birmingham, England on the 5th of March 1897. My grandmother was almost eleven years of age when her mother died. She could remember her very well. She sang Irish lullabies and had dark auburn hair as she recalled. I think I know her parents as my grandmother went back to England in 1939 for a visit and the places she visited may tell me a story. She showed me all of her brochures so many times. I know where she stayed in Birmingham and she visited Coventry and Ashton under Lyne. Some of her first cousins lived in Coventry but Ashton under Lyne was always somewhat of a mystery. I did ask her whom she saw there but I realize that she never did tell me. I think Ellen probably was 37 when she died which meant she was born between the 27th of February 1859 and the 26th of February 1860. I purchased all the Ellen Taylor births in Birmingham between 1858 and 1862 and traced them back and forward. I only really found one candidate to be our Ellen and that was the daughter of Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts. That Ellen was born 9 Oct 1859 in Birmingham. Her parents married 29 Jun 1857 at St Martin Birmingham. They had seven children known to me from the records. However I have not had any luck tracing them down. None of the daughters (there were three) have descendants who tested their mitochondrial DNA as we have a private mutation and so far only my siblings are known to have tested although I do have sisters of my grandmother who had daughters and grand daughters who would carry this specific mutation likely (would be nice to prove that!). So I remain in thought on Ellen Taylor and her ancestry. Was she the descendant of Scottish Planters coming to Northern Ireland in the 1600s? There are matches that take me back to both Argyllshire/Ayrshire and County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

As it turns out both our mtDNA and our yDNA become extinct in this generation as my brothers do not have any sons and in our children's generation as my sisters and I do not have a daughter who has had a daughter. That was part of the incentive that set me on my DNA chase testing one of my brothers and myself at every company. Several more of my siblings also tested at one or more companies giving me a huge amount of data to look at and more importantly phase my grandparents. It has worked out reasonably well. I have now rephased the data several times and each time there is a little tweaking here and there but not any big changes. I have a lot more close matches (3rd and 4th cousins and even some 5th and 6th) but we personally do not have any first cousins which has limited me somewhat (it is a lot more work to determine which side a match is on unless known to you) but really what you need are your second cousins to test. They actually provide the best information with long running lengths of centimorgans. You can often look closely at their trees as they are close to your own and see if the only match that you share with them in the one that you know the most about. I have pedigree collapse in several of my lines making 4th cousins look like second cousins which has also been helpful but they are matching me on two or three and occasionally four lines going back so makes separating beyond the grandparent level more challenging.

Yesterday I worked a little on Chromosome 2 and discovering another interesting match on My Heritage. I tend to only use My Heritage matches that are 20 centimorgans or higher. I prefer higher, i.e. two segments around 40 centimorgans are the preferred. I am the same though with FT DNA and they do the testing for My Heritage as well. I have had some good matches at My Heritage. One of my Buller 3rd cousins (her Buller line goes back to a sister of my great grandfather) has provided a lot of good matches for this line.

Isolation Day 7 second stage and it will be broken this week as my husband needs to have blood work done. The usual process is to wear a mask and probably more people will be doing that now. When we get home wash our clothes and spray our shoes with lysol. It reminds me of visiting nursing homes with my grandmother and she would tell me with a whisper not to go near that person or this person (she knew the disease that they had and was suspicious that you could catch anything!). We may go back to that type of society wary of people when they cough.