Amy Johnson Crow of the No Story Too Small genealogy blog suggested a weekly blog theme of '52 Ancestors' in her blog post "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks." I decided to take up the challenge of the 52 Ancestors blog theme as a means to prompt me into regularly sharing the stories of my ancestors. So over the course of 2014 I will highlight an ancestor, sharing what I know about the person and perhaps more importantly, what I don't know.
William Emmett O'Neill, one of my great grandfathers, entered this world on 26 February 1849 in Barrie, Ontario, Canada - or as it was known at the time of his birth, Canada West. He was the son of Irish immigrants, John O'Neill and his wife, Mary Murphy. They were a Roman Catholic family who lived in a one-storey log house on land that John farmed.
When William was a young man of twenty-two, he found work as a labourer in Tay Township, close to Georgian Bay. By the time he was thirty years of age, he was caring for his widowed mother in Barrie, Ontario while working as a store clerk. William continued working for others in the Barrie, Ontario store into the early 1890's and then decided, through an unknown inspiration, perhaps the death of his mother, that it was time to strike out on his own.
He moved to Toronto, found work again as a store clerk, but also found love. He met and married Margaret Graham on 4 June 1894 in St. Mary's Church. Neither William nor Margaret were 'spring chickens.' William was 45 years old when he married, although he claimed to be only 42 perhaps in an effort to be closer in age to his bride Margaret who was 39 when she married. William and Margaret didn't let age deny them the opportunity to have a family and so in 1895, just more than a year after their wedding, they welcomed their first child, and my grandfather, John Graham O'Neill into the world.
Two daughters would subsequently join the family. First, Kathleen Marie O'Neill, who would later join the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph and be known by her religious name as Sister St. Edwin, in 1896, and then Avila in 1898.
Early in his married and family life, William would change careers. No longer content working as a store clerk, he became an insurance agent, the source of employment for the remainder of his life. He moved his family into a house on Claremont Street in Toronto from where my grandfather told me, they would push their children in a baby carriage through muddy roads to attend the annual Canadian National Exhibition, a little over a mile away. Later, William and Margaret moved to a house further west in the city on Golden Avenue.
On 24 July 1924, at the age of 75, William Emmett O'Neill died in St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. His cause of death was listed as "uremia" or kidney failure. At the time of his death, William and Margaret were living at 189 Pickering Street in Toronto, a home they had purchased from their son's father-in-law John Foley. This was the same house that I would live in for the first nine plus years of my life. On 26 July 1924, William Emmett O'Neill was laid to rest in Toronto's Mount Hope Cemetery where he would eventually be joined in the family plot by his wife, youngest daughter, son and daughter-in-law, and their infant son.
As a tribute to his father, my grandfather named his youngest son, one of my uncles, William Emmett O'Neill. Uncle 'Bill' as he is known to me, has told me often how creepy it is to visit the cemetery and see the headstone at the family plot bearing his name.
I posted previously about having my DNA tested and some of the results that I received from those tests. I tested with Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and yesterday I received an email notification from FTDNA that they were launching a new tool called "myOrigins," a feature that maps my ethnicity based on my autosomal DNA test results.
The mapping also shows, with dropped pins, the location of individuals who are close DNA matches. Close matches in this case appears to mean either 2nd-4th cousin or 3rd-5th cousin. As far as know, no one else in my known family circle has tested with FTDNA but presumably, if they had been tested, they would be mapped and seen based on their relationship to me.
Below is the map of my ethnicity. No real surprises. My ethnicity is 100% European - 67% UK and Ireland (dark blue colour), 30% European Coastal Plain (light blue colour on France, Germany, Belgium, etc.), and 3% European Northlands (pale green colour on Norway and the Scandinavian countries).
I am admittedly no DNA expert so I cannot expertly interpret these results but they do make some sense to me. I have a lot of evidence of my ancestors coming from Scotland and Ireland. The influence of the European mainland is not surprising as that represents typical migration patterns to the UK and Ireland. Similarly, from an historic perspective, Norwegians, a.k.a. Vikings, used the north-east of Scotland as a base from which to launch further forays into the world.
The dropped pins feature is something that I found interesting even though it is certainly not conclusive evidence because it is based on the locations of living persons (I think I'm safe stating that). What I found interesting is that the map allows me to pin the closest paternal side matches or the closest maternal side matches from the FTDNA database. In my case, the database generated 17 paternal matches and 16 maternal matches.
These matches can be seen in clusters on the map. Of the 33 potential cousin matches, 11 are located in Ireland, 6 are located in Scotland, and 9 matches are located in the United States. Matches in Scotland and Ireland do not come as a surprise but I'm curious about the matches in the United States as there is a cluster in the Carolinas and Tenessee. Who knows this may well be a good clue for further investigation on where ancestral family members may have migrated at some point in history.
Amy Johnson Crow of the No Story Too Small genealogy blog suggested a weekly blog theme of '52 Ancestors' in her blog post "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks." I decided to take up the challenge of the 52 Ancestors blog theme as a means to prompt me into regularly sharing the stories of my ancestors. So over the course of 2014 I will highlight an ancestor, sharing what I know about the person and perhaps more importantly, what I don't know.
This week I am turning the spotlight on one of my paternal great-great grandmothers, Dorothea Carson.
At the corner of Patrick and Ardgowan Streets in Greenock, Scotland, there stands a small church. Looking down Patrick Street, you can see the mouth of the River Clyde and the various Greenock shipyards along it's banks. It was in this church that on 6 April 1869 that Dorothea Carson stood beside her maid of honour Margaret Forrest and married Thomas Commisky.
The marriage record of the event describes Dorothea as being 22 years of age. Both she and her 21-year old groom Thomas recorded that they lived at 4 Sir Michael Street in Greenock. Thomas listed his occupation as contractor's carter. He appears to have learned his carting trade from his by then deceased father Terrence who is listed in the marriage record as having been a master carter. Dorothea's parents are listed as John Carson, a contractor, and his wife, Sarah Ann Jones.
As happy as the wedding day was for Thomas and Dorothea, it wasn't to last long. Just four months later, on 11 August 1869, Thomas died of smallpox. Dorothea was left a young widow with a baby girl, a daughter that she and Thomas had in January 1869 before they were married. They named their daughter Annie.
I don't know what happened to Dorothea following the death of Thomas as neither she nor Annie appears either under the name of Commisky or Carson in the 1871 Census of Scotland. But Dorothea may have been used to tough times. Dorothea was born between 1846 and 1848 in Ireland, at a time when the infamous famine was ravaging that country. Dorothea first appears in the Scottish records in the 1861 census as a young teenager, working alongside two presumed Carson sisters as cotton mill workers. Dorothea and her presumed sisters, Susan and Janet, were boarders in the home of an Irish farmer in Bridge of Weir, Renfrew, Scotland.
It is known, however, that on 30 April 1878 Dorothea married for a second time in Kilbarchan, a small village outside of Bridge of Weir in Renfrew County. Her new husband was James Little. Although the record of this marriage states that James was a 30-year old forester, it is more likely that he was closer to 37-years of age.
Over the years, James and Dorothea settled into life together with James working in the nearby shipyards and Dorothea working working as a confectioner. On 2 April 1911, when the enumerator came to their door conducting the 1911 Census of Scotland, they recorded, I suspect with some pride, that they had been married for 33 years, had seven children (I know the names of six) of whom five were still alive. Just one week later however, James Little died. Dorothea followed James in death on 18 December 1916, a victim of Brights Disease.
Last year I decided to venture into the unknown, at least to me, realm of genetic genealogy by completing a DNA test. I completed both a Y-DNA and autosomal test using the services of Family Tree DNA. I shared an overview of the Y-DNA test results in November and the autosomal test results in December.
I really had low expectations about the test results connecting me with a lot of new cousins. Rather, I was just plain and simple curious. What haplogroup did I belong to? What would my DNA test results indicate about my deep ancestral past? I found the results to be useful and perhaps even mildly amusing.
All of that seems to be changing now. I have been contacted by researchers who are very seriously examining the possible, maybe likely, connection between the Hadden family in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and the Hadden family of County Tyrone, Ireland.
A connection between the two families has been at least anecdotal based on references in old family letters written by the Irish Haddens to visiting the home of their 'old ancestors' in Aberdeen. As it appears likely that the 'Irish Haddens' may have left Scotland about 400 years ago, there are no written records found to date that can confirm the family connection.
That's where my DNA comes in and may prove it's worth. I can confirm my Hadden ancestral roots in Aberdeenshire. My grandfather left Aberdeen with his parental family in 1923. Many generations of my Hadden ancestors lived in or around Aberdeen, Scotland and there are fortunately plenty of paper records that verify these facts.
Family Tree Finder test results indicate that there are 978 matches of my Y-chromosome DNA with the Y-DNA of others in their database. Only six of the 978 are an exact Y-DNA match and bear the Hadden surname. Interestingly, three of these six individuals can trace their roots to County Tyrone, Ireland in the early 18th century. Of the remaining three exact Hadden matches, two do not list their most distant Hadden ancestor and one has traced his Hadden ancestry to mid-18th century Pennsylvania in the United States.
So did one of my Hadden ancestors move himself and possibly his family from Aberdeenshire, Scotland to County Tyrone, Ireland sometime around 1600 - 1650? I don't know right now but working with other researchers, who fortunately are much more knowledgeable in the field of genetic genealogy than I am, I may find out, and soon!
On November 18th, 2012, I shared the the results that I received from Family Tree DNA for my Hadden Y-DNA test, including my Haplogroup. I have now received the results for my autosomal DNA test, called Family Finder by Family Tree DNA.
Family Tree DNA states "Family Finder uses autosomal DNA (inherited from both the mother and father, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc.) to provide you a breakdown of your ethnic percentages and connect you with relatives descended from any of your ancestral lines within approximately the last 5 generations." Autosomal DNA is from the 22 chromosome pairs beyond the gender determining X and Y chromosomes.
The first thing I wanted to review was the breakdown of my ethnic percentages. Having a paternal ancestry firmly rooted in Scotland and a maternal ancestry similarly rooted in Ireland, I saw little room for surprises.
My ethnic breakdown, by percentage, is 96.64% Western Europe (Orcadian), that is from the Orkney Islands, and 3.36% South Asia (Southeast Indian, North Indian). Huh? Where did that come from? The genealogy paper trails have led me to Ireland, Scotland (and from there to England) but nothing has suggested India but it seems like there might be an intriguing story somewhere in my ancestral past. The Orkney Island might also contain a great Viking warrior ancestry.
Family Tree DNA has also provided me with a list of individuals who have also been tested and who share DNA segments, measured in centiMorgans (cM), with me. A quick review of the list and the ancestral surnames associated with each of the matches doesn't immediately reveal any 'hits' to me. There are a couple of individuals who may likely be cousins, second to fourth cousins, but I need to take a closer look at how we match up before I can really understand how I can best utilize this new information.
