Brick Walls

These are the people that are my main brick walls.  I can track back to them, but either have trouble confirming their parents are just can’t find anything about who their parents were.  There are obviously a lot more places I can’t track back, but these are in the closest generations to me.  I’ll add more info on them later.
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YDNA Testing — Walter was a Sawyer?

So, YDNA testing is completed after 5 month wait. Irritated but it seems helpful. It would appear most likely that Walter Evertton Long birth father was most likely named Sawyer, Sayer, Sauer or some variant (Sawyer most likely). You’ll recall that there has been some dispute over his birth being in 1909 or 1910 due to Ollie Whitney marrying Albert Long in 1911. He appears as Walter Whitney on the 1910 US census as a child of Oliver P. Whitney and Cordelia. His mother Ollie is listed as Ollie Whitney another of their children. The “legend” I was told is that Walter’s father was kicked in the head by a mule and died before his birth. The name my grandmother recalled was “Saunders” so Sawyer is pretty close. Closest DNA match is for a line from a Bertrand Sawyer — but of course so far it’s leading no where definite. However, the testing was useful and appears to have given a strong clue to follow.

It would be interesting to see if some a Moser or Whitney YDNA test could link those branches to someone definite. I may contact some of the males in those direct lines and see if they are interested.

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myFTDNA – Pending Lab Results

So sent my kit in just after the holidays — still no results. Not happy with the lack of communication and delays. It’s rather expensive for a product that seems to be undelivered…..

myFTDNA – Pending Lab Results.

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DNA musings

So, it’s been over a week since I got my DNA results. I’m….well, not disappointed…but kind of feeling blah about it. I’ve not broken down any brick walls (not that I was expecting to) and the sheer number of matches is a bit overwhelming. And I have absolutely no idea how to organize what I’m doing. So let’s do a Good/Bad rundown.

The good:
Confirmed quite a few family lines — I’ve found matches with common ancestors and we’ve got the same folks in the trees.
The ethnic breakdown was interesting.
New contacts.
There’s a lot of information.

The bad:
The lines in common seem to end right where I do already.
The information is really badly organized. Sorting by places doesn’t work well. Even browsing trees is tedious with poor search functions.
Way WAY too many trees are either private or not uploaded. It’s just really annoying to have an extremely close match and no idea how you connect because their tree is locked down.

I have been mostly using ancestry and familytreedna so far to look since GEDMatch is down. It stopped working the first night I tried to use it, so yeah…maybe that would be more user friendly.

ALso, I think I need a bit of studying as far as the technical DNA stuff. I’m a bit baffled by the 7.25 centimeter match on chromazome 48 with 95% confidence etc….lol.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded my GEDCOM to familytreedna and GEDmatch plus the tree is on ancestry and here (of course) so perhaps more experienced DNAers will find me if I can’t find them.

I’ll probably do a list of say great grand parent lines I can connect with DNA later on, as well as a post listing who I can’t find matches for. I’ve had at lest one match for all the genetic grandparent lines, so yeah tracking down the great grandparents would be next.

Anyone have suggestions comment here or on the Facebook page here

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DNA pt 2

So, uploaded the DNA sample from ancestry.com to familytreedna. Here’s their map of my ethnic orgins. Note it’s got some differences. Much more Southern Europe, less Ireland and Britain. Not much Germanic. And no central Asia. Still Basically it’s showing the same generalized pattern of European ancestry. I’d say it’s pretty much debunking all the legends of native american ancestry unless anyethnicft of that DNA completely missed passing on to me which is unlikely.

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DNA

So I did the autosomal DNA test. It’s confirmed a few things, but hasn’t yet solved any puzzles not that I expect it to. There are some close matches that don’t link anywhere so figuring that out might opens some doors. We shall see. If anyone else in the family has tested, let me know. I took the test at ancestry but I’ll probably try on of the others as well.

Here’s my ethnicity chart:

ethnic

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Annual Cleaning of spam etc

I was long overdue to clean up the user database. I’ve been getting about 30 -40 spam user sign ups a day lately and had to bulk delete around 5,000 spam users. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to do that without wiping a few real people’s user names as well. Sorry. If I deleted you by mistake just go ahead and sign up again. I’ve installed some anti spam filters but real people should have no problem getting through.

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Person Details for John William Musser, “Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950” — FamilySearch.org

Person Details for John William Musser, “Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950” — FamilySearch.org.

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Person Details for Rebecca Palm, “Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950” — FamilySearch.org

Person Details for Rebecca Palm, “Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950” — FamilySearch.org.

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Rebecca Moser

So, way behind on posting this, but frankly it’s about the only new thing.  Cousin Mo did some research and found deeds in Lebanon County PA for Samuel and Rebecca Moser’s home there.  In the process he narrowed down the location to search and I was able to Rebecca’s Parents through church records.  They are George and Sarah Palm of Lebanon County Pennsylvania.  She had at least the following siblings: Cyrus, Simon and Maria.  Of course, this is one of those families who all use the same 4 first names. The more famous George Palm who is easy to research isn’t ours.  And yeah, there’s multiples of all the other names too.  I have spouses and some children for her brothers who seem to have stayed there but that’s about it. (Palm of course gets spelled Palin, Palmer, Playmer, Palon, etc as well.)

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Leaving Phelps County

It seems I have at least part of an answer about why so many folks left Phelps in the 1890’s.  Crop failures.

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