Surviving Genes of Walling and Dey

I have figured out the most recent common ancestors of a DNA cousin.

A new Shared Ancestor Hint appeared for me at AncestryDNA.  This system compares the family trees of my DNA cousins, looking for the same ancestors from my family tree.

The shared ancestor suggestion was William Walling (1770-1824) of Monmouth County, New Jersey.  He is one of my 5X great grandfathers.  (His transcribed will can be found here.)  I don't know why his wife, Rebecca Dey (born about 1770), my 5X great grandmother, did not appear also.

Based on our family trees, this DNA cousin is a fifth cousin of my father.  AncestryDNA reports that I share some DNA with this fifth cousin.

Here is the step where a lot of people stumble:  this scenario does not prove that William Walling and Rebecca Dey are our biological ancestors; nor does it prove that the DNA we share is from William Walling and Rebecca Dey.

We need to see how much DNA and which segments of DNA are shared with this DNA cousin so that we can triangulate the match.  You cannot triangulate with AncestryDNA.

To triangulate, we need to look at other DNA cousins who match on these same shared segments of DNA and determine if they too trace ancestry back to William Walling and Rebecca Dey, or one of the ancestors of either of William Walling or Rebecca Dey.  With AncestryDNA, you have no information about where any of your other DNA cousins match you, so you cannot know if they match on the same segments as any other DNA cousins.

I remembered the name of this DNA cousin from 23andMe, where we had corresponded two years earlier.  We had discussed the idea that the common ancestors were not too far back in time and were likely in Monmouth County, New Jersey because this DNA cousin matched my father, his siblings, and their father's cousin from the Winterton/Dunn line in Monmouth County.  If this segment can be further identified as a Walling/Dey segment, then we know that the segment came to my father via William Winterton's mother, Sophia Walling.

We can see the shared DNA at 23andMe.

Note that one of the matches, a sibling of my father, shares a very tiny segment of only 5 cM.  Most people would disregard such a small amount, but as you can see in the graph, this small segment is in line with the larger segments shared by other close relations.

Prior exchanges with this DNA cousin at 23andMe did not lead to William Walling and Rebecca Dey because his family tree had not yet grown that many generations back.  Two years later, his family tree at Ancestry was more robust and prompted the discovery.

The next step is to look at the other DNA cousins who share this segment.  I maintain Excel spreadsheets for my closest relatives.

This snippet is from the spreadsheet of my first cousin, twice removed.  I list his DNA cousins by chromosome of where they share identical DNA.  The Walling/Dey cousin shares an identical segment on chromosome 7, starting around 91,000,000 and ending around 127,000,000.

I checked all of these smaller matches against the Walling/Dey cousin to see if they match him as well as my first cousin.  All of them do.  If this shared DNA is from the Walling/Dey couple, then all of these DNA cousins will also descend from Walling/Dey or from one of the ancestors of either William Walling or Rebecca Dey.

This is where you need to depend on others for information.  Some of these DNA cousins offer family tree information; most do not.  I reviewed their surname and location lists and family trees, if they had any, and saw nothing in common with Walling/Dey.  I sent them all a note, describing what we need to look for.

So far, nobody has replied.  Without finding a connection to Walling/Dey in these other matches, we cannot triangulate to declare that this segment of DNA is from Walling/Dey.

Holiday Access to Ancestry.com

From July 1 - 5, 2015 Ancestry.com offers free access to help you celebrate the 4th of July.  Go to the homepage, click on the "Search Free" box.

I entered "Ezra Dunn" for the name and "New Jersey" as the birthplace.  This brought me to a darkened page of results, asking for my email address so that I could be issued a username and passcode.  I clicked "No Thanks" and the list of results brightened.  There were 27 records, most from New Jersey, and just a few with the first name "Ezra."

I clicked on the first record and was brought to the page below, requiring registration to view the record.  Again I clicked "No thanks," but was returned to the list of results and not the actual record.

With my paid account, I searched for "Ezra Dunn" born in New Jersey and returned over seven million records.  (Over 99% of those records are irrelevant, so more specific search parameters would be more helpful.)

If anyone tries out this free access, please let us know what record types from which countries result.  Someone told me that a credit card is required for Free Access, which people are understandably hesitant to provide for a free service.

If this is truly free access to all of Ancestry.com, then you have a great opportunity to explore the site to see if continued access via paid subscription could help your research.

Book Review: Orphan Train

I enjoyed reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.

The book intertwines the stories of two unwanted teenagers- one in the 1920s and 1930s and the other now.  (Reminded me of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg.)  When the modern-day teenager started sleuthing, I knew I had to tell blog readers about this great genealogical novel.

The teenager of the 1920s and 1930s, Niamh, immigrated in 1927 to New York City from Kinvara, County Galway, Ireland with her parents and siblings.  In 1929 a fire in their squalid tenement killed her father and brothers.  With no one to care for her, Niamh was placed on a train by the Children's Aid Society and sent West in search of a family to take her in.

Such a system really existed.  Children did not have to be orphans to be sent away.  Their parents could be in prison or an asylum; homeless; or poor.  The program lasted from 1853 until 1930, when the Great Depression made placement unlikely.

Rules were lax about taking in such children.  Most children became indentured servants on farms.  Niamh's experiences were terrible and caused her to feel no attachment to anyone or thing.  She ended up in Minnesota.  Her name was changed to Dorothy, easier to pronounce than the Irish Niamh, and later to Vivian, to replace a couple's deceased daughter of the same name.

By chance, Vivian reunited with a fellow train rider, Hans "Dutchy," renamed Luke, and married him.  I thought the book would have a fairy tale ending, but Vivian's misfortunes continued.  Luke was drafted in 1943 to fight in World War II.  Shortly after his departure, Vivian discovered she was pregnant.  Luke was killed and Vivian gave her baby girl up for adoption.

"I sob uncontrollably for all that I've lost- the love of my life, my family, a future I'd dared to envision.  And in that moment I make a decision.  I can't go through this again.  I can't give myself to someone so completely only to lose them. . .  Then I do it.  I give her away."

The modern-day teenager, Molly, performed the genealogy research that I was silently screaming for.  Molly found the ship record of Niamh and her family arriving at Ellis Island.  Molly located a newspaper article about the fire that killed Niamh's father and brothers.  Niamh's sister, Maisie, survived the fire.  She was adopted by neighbors, who had lied to young Niamh that Maisie had perished in the fire.  Maisie, renamed Margaret, married and had a family of her own- but died five months before Molly searched.  Molly presented Niamh/Vivian with a picture of Maisie- a face she had not seen for over eighty years.

"[Molly] feels a vertiginous thrill, as if fictional characters have suddenly sprung to life."

This is how I feel when I find documentation of a family story.

Molly discovered that over 200,000 children rode on trains similar to Niamh's journey and that there are databases of names and possibilities to reconnect with lost family.

Molly also sought out an online adoption registry.  Vivian's daughter had submitted her information years earlier.  Vivian submitted her own information to confirm the match.  The book ends with the daughter, now in her 60s, arriving to meet Vivian.

As you research a family, if a child goes missing when the family came upon hard times, you may wish to consider researching orphan train records.  The same is true on the other side.  If a child appears with a family as a farm hand or domestic, you may want to consider that the child arrived on an orphan train.