Kipp Newsletter completed and moving on

 I completed the Kipp Newsletter yesterday but it came with a surprise. I have not worked on Edward's DNA matches since he passed away. The time simply escaped me and it was hard to fit it in. He has so many matches on the many testing sites (most of his ancestors (except for three who came in the 1800s - one from Norfolk, England (1832) and two from the Mecklenburg-Strelitz area (1849 and 1867) of present day Germany) were in the Royal British colonies and New Holland (Dutch colonies) beginning in 1620 with the later ones coming in the early 1700s (mostly by 1710)). But last issue of the Kipp Newsletter I had talked about looking at his autosomal matches on ancestry. There has likely been several hundred or more new additions to his site and with the new technique of separating into paternal and maternal there was a different way to look at these matches as I have learned on my own site and those of my siblings on ancestry. Not having any really close relatives testing, Edward had often sought to persuade cousins to test and had been successful with some.  He was trying to find his Kipp line back to Hendrick Hendricksen Kip since the yDNA matched known descendants. The reach back was in actual fact into the mid 1700s because his 2x great grandfather Isaac Kipp was born in 1764 which is pretty far back for just a 2x great grandfather but he was lucky as he was descended from the youngest sons in two generations. There were four rather interesting 4th to 6th cousin matches that were not in his Ancestry file. One of them was descendant of Isaac Kipp and Hannah Meed his 2x great grandparents so eliminated. The other three were all descendant of the second eldest son of Hendrick Hendricksen Kip and two of the three cross matched with Edward. The amount shared quite phenomenal for likely sixth cousins (28 cM and 22 cM). Given that Ancestry does eliminate DNA in common with their software package TIMBER this is likely a larger match. Edward did inherit a substantial amount of Kipp DNA in the cross between Kipp and Schultz although likely in the 25 to 30% range. The system is complicated because a Kipp male married a Schultz female and a Schultz male married a Kipp female so that his second cousins in that line are all double second cousins making the data difficult to manage. The match itself is significant because it is large. Shared that with my eldest last evening and she is keen to work on that when she has time. It was a dream of her father to find that elusive line back to Hendrick Hendricksen Kip. There are a number of Isaac Kip lines and other sons coming down that do not reach into the mid 1700s so one of them perhaps. Isaac Hendricksen Kip and his wife Catalyntje Hendricks Snyers were the parents of six sons and one daughter. He had placed the possible connection in this family line calling the line DNA-3 Kip as he felt it would be three steps back to this match from his 2x great grandfather. Definitely more to do as there are a number of matches in common with these two individuals and I have not yet looked at other matches within the 4th to 6th cousin range. My first search into the new matches was quite amazing. Although Ancestry does not provide any chromosomal details the size of their database and their search engine do make the results quite interesting and manageable in a different way from the chromosome matching. 

I did not expect to complete the Newsletter in just one day so that was a surprise and lets me spend the remainder of the month on the Siderfin book. I will work on the R matches today and perhaps complete them and move on to S. I had to go to that method because I reached the end of the search page numbers with a strictly Siderfin search. No problem it is actually easier not having to work my way up into the 70s by page number!

It looks like a lovely day today with some sun and some cloud. It is 4 degrees celsius at 7:00 a.m. Yesterday I did some yard work and discovered I have no idea where I put the garden paper bags so used the green bin instead since you can but that did limit the amount of work that I did! Will get bags soon. Although we cleaned up very well in the fall and before winter so not that much to do. I need to start the greenhouse soon for the bedding plants. That time of the year has arrived once again and I am not as enthusiastic as Edward was for that. It is nice to have fresh lettuce though for sure and especially fresh spinach. Spinach is by far my favourite vegetable I put it in everything almost. Edward liked it a little but did not have my enthusiasm for it but he did grow a lot. I need to order the bag of dirt soon probably just after the first of May. 

I always feel that the summer is so very busy; there is barely time to think with all the work although by the middle of July that has somewhat ameliorated and time returns once again. This year I shall buy a kayak and go kayaking as well as walking in the late afternoon break that we take. I generally work all morning and part of the afternoon so the break is a wonderful part of the day and full of exercise. I was and am an exercise fanatic. 

On to breakfast and the day but first a set of jumping jacks (75) the second lot of the day followed up by a shoulder stand for two minutes to let the blood run easily to the head. Then weight lifting (one day off between sets until I am used to the five pound weights) and more research time. Then my fourty minute run plus jumping jacks and a shoulder stand which is a highlight of my day as I use the time to think about my research. Lunch follows and a bit of television to see what is happening in the world (I eat in front of the television and do tend to talk to myself to express my thoughts on what is happening in the world). Alexa is handy and I can ask her queries about what is being published elsewhere. Then some research followed by calisthenics for about 30 minutes and then dinner. I made my favourite macaroni and cheese yesterday with carrots, onion, peas, corn and withered spinach (plus old cheddar; absolutely delicious). I am trying to just do two meals each time and gradually getting there. My daughter thinks every other day a change is good so will follow her advice.

Ancestry DNA Circles - # 3

Although I like all the testing companies for various reasons, Ancestry's DNA Circles are a real treat for me. When I started my research no one had researched my lines other than the work done by my Pincombe cousins as far as I knew. As I moved backwards in time, my parent's stories and then my grandparent's stories aided me when I had to make choices. When those avenues ran out DNA suddenly started to be rather interesting keeping me on the narrow path backwards.

With 3 DNA Circles I am now looking backwards to my 4x great grandparents and being assured that in those three lines I have been accurate.

That includes my Pincombe line which has Robert Pincombe as my 3x great grandfather and that is certainly true and my 25 cousins that have now tested very much verify our relationship. The matches recently with cousins have extended this line back to the late 1500s and my 9x great grandfather Richard Pincombe but more on him another time.

It also includes my Blake line which has Maria Jane (Knight) Blake my great grandmother and wife of Edward Blake. Her paternal Knight line goes back to Ellis Knight and Eleanor Knight (likely 2nd cousins) who were my 3x great grandparents and their line easily goes back another two generations with the parish records (and paper trails). In this case, my latest DNA Circle is capturing her maternal line with her mother having been Louisa Butt daughter of Charles Butt and Hannah Arnold. Charles Butt, my 3x great grandfather, is my third DNA circle.

Also including my Rawlings line with my great grandmother Elizabeth (Rawlings) Taylor daughter of  William Rawlings and Elizabeth (Lywood) Rawlings. With the help of the Lywood research project and other Rawlings researchers this is taken back quite readily to William Rawlins who married Mary Foord and they are my 5x great grandparents. The circle itself is based on Jeremiah Rawlings their son and my 4x great grandfather.

That leaves my maternal grandmother's line where I am able to trace her father back several generations but her mother is somewhat of a mystery due to the inability to locate the marriage record between Edward Denner Buller and Ellen Taylor. Perhaps one of these days a DNA circle will emerge as I have a number of DNA matches with Buller cousins but not so many at Ancestry.,

Size of your tree at AncestryDNA

Definitely the size of your tree at AncestryDNA is very important and especially tracing down the siblings of your various ancestors. My husband has over 80,000 in his main tree and with trimming to remove all the people born before 1940, he has 55,000 in his online tree. My tree is at 3800 and growing as I pull out all the descendants of my 2x great grandparents and 3x great grandparents. It is a slow process though creating these trees. My husband has been at it for 50 years and I have only been at it for 14 years now.

My tree at Find My Past is around 5000 and the hints that they make available to researchers have been quite handy. I always hope that one of these days my maternal grandmother's mother will pop up in one of the records in such a way as I will know it is her. I have all of her records from 1879 on knowing positively that it is her but before that time period I am being somewhat subjective. Of all the births for Ellen Taylor that I purchased for individuals with this name born between 1857 and 1862, the best choice is the daughter of Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts. But thus far I have not been able to positively identify any other descendant line of this couple other than my own.

Perhaps as this New Year dawns good luck will come my way in that regard.

Happy New Year 2018

Comparison of Family Finder Results with four siblings

Finally I was able to upload a second brother to Find My Past and open his results there including My Origins. It was somewhat of a surprise as I have tested him at 23 and Me, Ancestry and now this upload to FT DNA. The surprise was 94% British Isles. All of our ancestors are from England going back many many generations. I need to be back into at least the 1700s where I may have a German ancestor (not yet proven) and then back into the 1500s with known Huguenot ancestors. So 94% is not a surprise but most people living in the British Isles do not test at 94%.

Comparison of Siblings:

Sibling 1                  

94% British Isles
2% Scandinavia
4% Eastern Middle East

Sibling 2

84% British Isles
9% Southern Europe
8% Scandinavia

Sibling 3

60% British Isles
19% Scandinavia
15% Southern Europe
5% Western and Central Europe

Myself

51% British Isles
33% Scandinavia
12% Western and Central Europe
3% Asia Minor
1% North Africa

Looking at this with respect to where my five waves of ancestors who came to Canada actually lived  in the British Isles is also interesting.

My first wave of ancestors (Thomas Routledge his wife Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge) and their family which included their daughter Mary (Routledge) Gray) emigrated to Canada from Bewcastle, Cumberland in the summer of 1818. This family is found in the Bewcastle area back into the 1600s (and likely earlier). The mother of Thomas Routledge was from Lanercost which is slightly south of Bewcastle but still in Cumberland.

My second wave of ancestors (Robert Gray (Junior) came on his own actually) emigrated to Canada from Etton, East Riding of Yorkshire in 1832 as far as I can determine from his land records. This family is found in this area including, Etton, Cherry Burton, Kilnwick, Watton, Holme on the Wolds, Lund, Great Driffield, and Hutton Cranswick. This area all being around Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire slightly to the north and north west.

My third wave of ancestors (John Pincombe, his wife Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe and their family which included their son William Robert Pincombe) emigrated to Canada from Molland, Devon in the fall of 1850 arriving in the Port of New York 7 Jan 1851 and in Canada in the spring of 1851. This Pincombe family is found in Bishops Nympton going back to the late 1500s, Rose Ash, Merton, North Molton, Landkey and South Molton. The Rew family is found in Selworthy, Somerset back into the 1500s as well as Wootton Courtney, Minehead, Dulverton, Cutcombe, Porlock, Dunster, and Luxborough. These villages all being in west Somerset running west from Minehead towards the Exmoors.

My fourth wave of ancestors (again a singleton, Ellen Rosina (Buller) Pincombe) emigrated to Canada in 1908 from Birmingham, England but her father's family was from both Bermondsey, Surrey and Staffordshire/Leicestershire. This includes Newington Surrey and Rugeley and Lichfield in  Staffordshire and Ashby de la Zouch and Loughborough in Leicestershire. These villages/cities all being in an area roughly north and north east of Birmingham and south of London. Her mother's family is somewhat of a mystery although she was born in Birmingham according to her death certificate. However the Irish ancestry is a mystery and family lore does point that way for her ancestry.

My fifth wave of ancestors (Samuel George Blake, his wife Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake and their son Ernest Edward George Blake) came to Canada in 1913. The Blake family itself is from the Andover area of Hampshire including Upper Clatford, Penton Mewsey, and Knights Enham. My grandfather's mother was from Turnworth, Dorset and her families were found in this area including Winterborne Clenstone, Winterborne Stickland, Winterborne Whitchurch, Spetisbury, and Milton Abbas. Edith Bessie Taylor aka Ada Bessie Cotterill Rawlings families are from Kimpton, Hampshire and before that Enford, Milston, West Harnahan, Fugglestone St Peter, Odstock, Melksham, Fovant and South Newton in Wiltshire. These villages all being in the rural area running west and slightly south from Andover, Hampshire.

The Scandinavian is interesting and does point out a strong difference in inheritance between all of us. I am going to do the Living DNA on my brother and I and perhaps it will be possible to upload the other two sets of data to this site in the future to give me a well rounded look at the entire family.

 Ancestry DNA has produced an interesting chart in Science Tech

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3711040/How-British-Genetic-study-reveals-Yorkshire-Anglo-Saxon-UK-East-Midlands-Scandinavian.html

where they predict that the East Midlands has the most Scandinavian ancestry at 10.37%. The East Midlands according to their map includes: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire (not North and North east), Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland.

I do have three of us tested at Ancestry:

Sibling 1

76% Western Europe
17% Ireland
5% Scandinavia
1% Iberian Peninsula
1% Great Britain

Sibling 2

27% Great Britain
26% Scandinavia
21% Western Europe
19% Ireland
5% Iberian Peninsula
1% Italy/Greece


Myself

64% Great Britain
14% Ireland
Western Europe 11%
6% Scandinavia
1% Iberian Peninsula
1% Eastern Europe

I also have results from 23 and Me

Sibling 1

47.3% British and Irish
20.9% French and German
1.0% Scandinavian
28.0% Northwestern European
0.2% Ashkenazi Jewish


Sibling 2

58.7% British and Irish
21.2% French and German
2.9% Scandinavian
16.7% Northwestern European

Sibling 3

 51.0% British and Irish
15.7% French and German
3.4% Scandinavian
26.0% Northwestern European
1% Southern European

Myself

 54.2% British and Irish
14.4% French and German
2.0% Scandinavian
0.2% Ashkenazi Jewish
27.9% Northwestern European

The results are all somewhat similar but do not really concentrate on the British Isles which I hope to acquire when I test my brother and myself at Living DNA shortly.

Ancestry Ethnicity Estimate

With three of us tested at Ancestry I thought I would publish the Ethnicity Estimates which we received. Reading posts from others I had read that a lot of people who were testing in England were finding that individuals in North America were being given higher estimates of Great Britain Ethnicity than people who actually lived in Great Britain. Mind you our toehold here is small with just my mother, her father and his mother being born in Canada. Just going back to 2x great grandparents we have documentation for all eight couples with one set being from Devon and Somerset, a second set with both from Hampshire, a third set with both from Dorset, a fourth set from Cumberland and Yorkshire, a fifth set with one from Wiltshire and one from Hampshire, a sixth set with both from Warwickshire, a seventh set with Hampshire and Wiltshire and the eighth set both from Birmingham, Warwickshire (with one having London/Surrey roots and the other having Staffordshire/Leicestershire roots). We are coming from six distinctly different areas of England.

In my case I had received a high percentage of Great Britain ethnicity when I tested 3 years ago; these two results have just been received:

                                             Myself                            one Brother                       second Brother
Great Britain                             64                                      1                                          27
Ireland                                       14                                    17                                          19
Europe West                              11                                    76                                          21
Scandinavia                                 6                                      5                                          26
Iberian Peninsula                         1                                      1                                            5
Europe East                                  1
Finland/Northwest Russia            2
Italy/Greece                                  1                                                                                    1

I am actually the most different in my family so this difference may not be surprising.

I do like the analysis at Ancestry and their results fitted nicely into mine although I have far more 4th to 6th cousin matches then they do but they both fitted nicely into our one and only DNA Circle of the Pincombe family. We are the linch pin that brings the others into the group because we match both of them. Our mother was a Pincombe.

But having tested at five of the major companies FT DNA, 23 and Me, AncestryDNA, BritainsDNA and National Genographic, I can see a lot of value in all of them. It just depends on what you are looking for and how valuable you consider DNA testing to be.

Blake - Sedgwick and autosomal DNA

One of the most amazing extras of doing autosomal DNA is proving lines or at least finding matches that can best be explained because of a paper trail. I have five Sedgwick matches on my AncestryDNA account and all are Distant Cousins (5th to 8th cousins). The Sedgwick connection goes all the way back to William Blake Andover, Hampshire, England married to Dorothy Madgwick of Overton, Hampshire, England. Their son William is my ancestor and their daughter Johanna is the ancestor of the Sedgwick family. Johanna married Major General Robert Sedgwick 6 Jan 1634/35 at Andover.

We would be 9th cousins which isn't too far off the estimated 5th - 8th cousins.  Now I am assuming that Ancestry organizes people in terms of decreasing shared centimorgans and these five matches can be found on pages 6,  7, 14, 15, and 37. Looking at all the shared surnames in each of these five it is likely that I have other matches with the two on pages 6 and 7. For 37, no other matches likely. But finding Sedgwick matches is quite phenomenal.

I have been happy with the trace back on Blake this last couple of years as everything fits together very well. Finding others descending from other couples in this line would be very interesting. I really haven't looked that carefully yet at my Ancestry matches because they were primarily Americans but they have Irish and English matches in there now so must have a look. My number of matches has nearly doubled in the last couple of months at AncestryDNA.

Upcoming Presentation

Although it has been my stated intent not to do any more lectures I will be doing a Google hangout for The Surname Society next Saturday. The title  will be DNA and Surname Studies. I am gradually stepping down from my involvement in this society as well. The next issue of the newsletter will be my last. I would like to do some database work for both the guild of one studies and the surname society. But any involvement in either executive is ending.

In reality it has been the entry of DNA into genealogy that has drawn me into genealogy although the initial push came from my fourth cousin George Dekay. He wanted a
Pincombe profile for the Delaware and Westminster  history books published almost ten years ago now. I was reticent to take the project on. I did do so and my forays into genealogy began.

My husband and I first tested our DNA in 2006 in order to be part of The National Geographic Project. We were interested in our deep ancestry and my husband was keen to discover his Kipp line which has a brick wall at his 2nd great grandfather Isaac Kipp who was born in 1764 and came to Canada in 1800 as a settler with his wife Hannah Mead and four of their five sons. He has been studying his families for nearly 40 years.

I really expected to find that my mitochondrial line would be a fairly usual English one but surprises were in store for me. At the NG project I tested as H haplogroup with three differences from the Cambridge Reference Standard. The option to take my results into FT DNA was offered  and I did do that only to discover that I had very few matches - 5 actually. One of them had done further testing and was H11. Interest kindled  and so I did further testing and I have now done everything available. I have tested at Ancestry and 23 and me as well.

Very busy the rest of the day. Will share the presentation.

Newsletter to come

Commencing on the Blake Newsletter today and should publish by the end of March or early April. I will talk about the Blake family in Cornwall and my progress there with charting the families. I will also talk about the new England's Immigrant Database 1330-1550 - a fascinating new tool to work on the Blake Family. A third topic will be the family of Theophilus Blake with the work submitted by Susan Osbourne and thank you very much to her for that material. A fourth topic will be the extraction of information from Martin Blake's books on the Blake family of Galway.  Likely I will also mention the Blake yDNA study which continues, in my mind and that of the other administrators, another fascinating way to look at the Blake families of the British Isles. The Blake family is an ancient family in the British Isles and their surname can be found in early records dating back into the 1200s. It was an illusion to think that all of the Blakes were descended from one Blake and the records are proving that this thought was quite incorrect and that Blake has a number of origins both within the British Isles and from Continental Europe. The more people who test their yDNA the greater the opportunity to take these lines back to these early founder lines.

Since my my paternal line (Blake) belongs to an ancient haplogroup of the British Isles named Deer Hunters by BritainsDNA and I2a-IslesB4 by Ken Nordvedt, the surname Blake is likely an acquired one at some point distant in the past thus far prior to the mid 1400s. This haplogroup to which my paternal line belongs is designated as I-L161/L1498 at the  FT DNA I2a project. Other members of this small subset do not have the surname Blake but do trace back to ancient lines in southern England (Devon and Cornwall) with  my line being in the Andover, Hampshire area back to the mid 1400s thus far in my tracing. BritainsDNA has provided further information naming this particular haplogroup subclade as being commonest in the South to Southwest of Ireland at around 2-3% of their database and around 2% in Southwest England (including Hampshire). This particular haplogroup is also found in the Balkans giving one the thought that my ancient ancestor left the Ice Refuge in the Balkans after the last Ice Age and headed for the extremes of the land area as the ice fields retreated north and hence found themselves in Ireland and a path back towards England (although none in Wales) and Doggerland where they possibly made their way into the now British Isles. For myself, the ancient history of my peoples most fascinates me as both my maternal and paternal DNA lines are ancient to the British Isles. My autosomal results also predict a large British Isles ancestry but also some Northern European and Scandinavian (those two being the smaller components of the ethnic heritage that is shown at AncestryDNA, BritainsDNA, FT DNA and the Genographic Project). I am considering doing the entire genome of one of my brothers and will save up my pennies but now nickles for that endeavour as our penny has now gone extinct!