Ebay Mitchill Family Documents

Ebay auction listing for papers of the Mitchill family of Long Island, New York

Ebay has a listing for what appears to be a collection of papers of the Mitchill family of Cow Neck, Long Island, New York.  Included are the family bible with names and dates of birth, marriage, and death; deeds; wills; ledgers; and more.  The price is rather steep at $1,500.

Picture of Mitchill family paper collection at ebay.

The Mitchill Family Bible containing important life dates.

Cow Neck, Long Island, New York is a peninsula on the northern coast of the Island.  When these records were made, Cow Neck was in Queens, but now lies in Nassau County.

1848 map of Long Island, New York by J. H. Colton
LongIslandGenealogy.com
Cow Neck is circled.

The Mitchills are an old Long Island family.  I hope that the possessor of these old papers donates the collection to a local repository if these items do not sell.

Spring Seminar 2012 in Newton, New Jersey

Saturday (May 19, 2012) was the Spring Seminar of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey at the First Presbyterian Church in Newton, followed by a tour of the Sussex County Historical Society.

The Presbyterian Historical Society told us about their physical repository in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 425 Lombard Street. The records are not indexed, so you will need to know names, dates, and specific churches to conduct an effective search.  Records may also be maintained at the original location, so check before driving to Philadelphia.

Joseph R Klett discussed how to use the records of the East and West Jersey Proprietors, which were incorporated original landowners.  These early records are now housed in the Archives at Trenton.  Some are searchable online, but most are not digitized, indexed, or abstracted.  (You can't find everything online!)  I did not realize that in the 1600s, Burlington County stretched as far north as the New York State border; or that the East Jersey Proprietors dissolved in 1998 while the West Jersey Proprietors is still an active organization.


Online link to the index for some early proprietor records at the Archives.

Gerald H Smith advised us to use a property description in a deed to draw the lot and then use land maps to locate ancestors and the neighbors that they often married.
 

Typical property description.  Although the trees are likely long gone, use the lengths, angles, and neighboring properties to draw out an approximate shape for the lot.  Main roads and rivers as borders may still exist.



Old property descriptions use a length of "Chains." The Historical Society had such a measuring device on display.

The Historical Society has files on many local families from Sussex County and neighboring counties of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Your original family photographs could be waiting for you here.

DNA Updates: Three Companies Want Your Business

Message received when requesting autosomal testing kit from Ancestry.

Three companies are competing for your genetic genealogy business.  If you have not tested your DNA yet, you are approaching a great time.

Ancestry has offered DNA testing of Y-DNA and mt (mitochondrial) DNA for years.  They recently acquired GeneTree and have announced that they will offer autosomal DNA testing.  This will bring them into direct competition with 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.  I requested additional information and received the above message that there is an unspecified waiting period for ordering the autosomal kit.  I do not know how much Ancestry's autosomal testing will cost.



Current pricing at FamilyTreeDNA for autosomal testing.

FamilyTreeDNA offers the three main tests:  autosomal (they call it "Family Finder Testing"), Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA.  Autosomal testing is currently $289.  You can order the whole testing package for $837.  The advantage of testing Y-DNA at FamilyTreeDNA is that they offer surnames studies.  You can discover if your Y-DNA matches someone else.  You can also do this at Ancestry, but they do not offer the comprehensive surnames studies.  Another advantage at FamilyTreeDNA is that your matches are not anonymous, unlike 23andMe.

Current pricing at 23andMe

23andMe has also made some changes.  Its current price is $299 for autosomal testing.  They have eliminated their criticized subscription plan, which was $5 or $9 per month.  You will receive your Y-DNA haplogroup (if male) and your mtDNA haplogroup, but you will not be able to identify who else in their database is a precise match along those specific lines.  You can upload your results to other free sites, such as GEDmatch and Ysearch, to possibly locate exact matches.  A disadvantage at 23andMe is that most of your matches are anonymous and will not answer your request to compare family trees.  Whereas Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA are solely for genetic genealogy, 23andMe offers health reports based on DNA.  This dual offering has genealogists chasing genetic matches who are only in the database to discover which diseases they may develop.  23andMe launched a new feature about two weeks ago, allowing you to compare all of your genetic matches (who have consented to "share") to one another.  You may possibly be able to group your matches into working branches of your genetic tree.

I have used all three sites.  The Y-DNA and mtDNA testing at Ancestry led me nowhere, and I am hoping that they offer some kind of a reduced upgrade to their autosomal testing.  I have promising leads at FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe, but to date I cannot confirm any genetic matches with a paper trail.  I have so far uncovered two known distant cousins of the same branch in the 23andMe database and we do not share any identical DNA.  The new comparison feature allows me to compare these two distant cousins to my other matches to perhaps place them in the same branch as the known distant cousins.

I have worked on my family tree for years.  I traced up and back down.  I can identify several lines to the 1500s and have names of many living cousins as far as the tenth degree.  It is very disappointing to be presented with hundreds of genetic matches and have no idea how they are related.