Walling Winterton Photographs

A cousin sent me a photograph that he found.  The back of the photo identifies the people as Joe, Sophia, and Wilbur Walling at 76 South Mentor Avenue in Pasadena, California in June of 1920.

Wilbur Clarence Walling (1891-1963) was the son of Joseph Walling (1859-1957) and Sophia Winterton (1869-1931).  Wilbur married Jennie Terhune Almond (1891-1953) and moved to California from New Jersey.

Wilbur's sister was Mildred Esther Walling (1895-1919).  Perhaps after the death of their daughter, Joseph and Sophia decided to move to California to be with their remaining child.

Sophia Winterton's parents were John Winterton (1831-1890) and Sophia Walling (1835-1906).  I do not know how Sophia's husband, Joseph Walling, was related.  But Sophia's and Joseph's families were living next to each other in the 1880 federal census in Holmdel.

Having an identified picture for Walling and Winterton is very exciting because I have a supposed Winterton Family Album of mostly unidentified people.  A potential match caught my eye.

Could this be Joseph Walling (born 1859), Wilbur Walling (born 1891), Mildred Walling (born 1895), and Sophia Winterton (born 1869)?

Is this an earlier picture of Joseph Walling (born 1859)?

Is this Joseph Walling (born 1859)?  The woman is not his wife because the eyes are too light.

Comparison of the three proposed matches to the identified picture of Joseph Walling.

Comparison of the woman from the older family picture to the identified Sophia Winterton, wife of Joseph Walling.

Is the boy Wilbur Walling?

This postcard from Aunt Sophia was among another photo collection given to me.

It was addressed to William Winterton of Keyport and mailed from Pasadena in 1930.

The sender is probably Sophia Winterton, the sister of William's father.

Mildred Esther Walling (1895-1919)

Daughter of Joseph Walling and Sophia Winterton

Yesterday I returned to Green Grove Cemetery in Keyport, Monmouth County, New Jersey.  One of the Winterton lots was cleaned up.  I found the gravestone for Mildred Walling.  It had been obscured by a large bush.  (There is still a stone face-down.)  Mildred's parents and brother are buried in California.

Ancestry Composition at DNA.land

If you want to see where your ancestors were from, you can get a general idea by testing your DNA and utilizing the ancestry calculators available from a variety of places online.  Your DNA reveals your ancestral make-up; however, different methods yield different results.

One difficulty in getting an accurate picture of your ancestry is because of biology:  not all of your ancestors contributed to your DNA.  Half was lost on the next generation until finally a mixture of DNA reached you- and many ancestors no longer have any trace of their DNA in you, their descendant.

Another difficulty lies in the process of calculating ancestry based on DNA: your values are compared against other people who claim ancestry from certain populations.  If they are mistaken, your results can be wrong.  If you come from a small population in a remote area, you may have no reference DNA for your ancestry.  Your ancestry composition will reflect a group you are genetically similar to but not necessarily descended from.

DNA.land is a website where you can upload your DNA results after processing at a testing company (23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, AncestryDNA).  I uploaded my parents and myself, enabling me to make comparisons from one generation to the next.  DNA.land recently enhanced its determinations of ancestral origins.  (The older projections can be viewed here.)

The colorful maps and graphs from DNA.land are below.  I plugged the values into the above table for easier side-by-side comparing.  My parents cannot give me what they don't have, but this happened for West Europe Ambiguous and North African.  At other sites, my mother usually has around one quarter Ashkenazi ancestry, which she shows here, but I show seven percent at DNA.land while I usually see ten to twelve percent elsewhere.

My father shows nine percent North Slavic, of which I inherited none.  If this came from one ancestor, which is something we cannot tell from this calculation, it is the equivalent of one great grandparent from this area of the world.  This does not fit his known family tree.  We would need to see a chromosome painting of the ancestry.  Long segments of a particular ancestry indicate a recent ancestor from this part of the world.  Multiple tiny segments indicate that the ancestor was much further back in time.

You can view my ancestry composition as determined by 23andMe and by FamilyTreeDNA.

GedMatch is another site where you can upload your DNA file and more fully analyze your ancestry with multiple calculators.

The number in the middle of my name is the GedMatch kit number.

This enables matches to analyze my DNA further and access my email address.

Advertising the GedMatch number demonstrates that I am committed to exploring DNA connections.

Triangulation soon at 23andMe?

One of the DNA accounts I manage at 23andMe finally received notice to update in preparation for the transition to the new website format, which has been promised for over six months.  The main function of updating the account is to complete a new survey on ancestry and confirm access to health results.

A new feature that I do not have access to is viewing relatives in common with other relatives and whether or not all three parties share on the same segment of DNA or different segments.  This triangulation is necessary to assign areas of one's genome to the proper contributing ancestor, so I would really like to be able to start using this tool.  (Read here for an explanation of how I did this with ancestors from Morris County, New Jersey.)