Second Y-DNA Match for Duryea

Another bonafide Y-DNA match appeared in my Duryea cousin's matches at FamilyTreeDNA.  (You can read about the first match here.)  To find the ancestor in common for someone who shares an identical Y chromosome, we trace the direct paternal line.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the Y chromosome can be tested on 12 to 111 markers.  This new cousin tested at the 25 marker level.  When compared to my close Duryea cousin, only one marker out of 25 is different.  When compared to the first Y-DNA cousin, the match is 25 out of 25.  The variation on one marker possibly arose in my line.

This new cousin traces his Duryea line back to the immigrant Joost Duryea, as do the first Y-DNA cousin and I.  But we do not have to go back to Joost in the 1600s for the most recent common ancestor.  This newest cousin is related more closely.  He is my sixth cousin.  He is a fourth cousin, twice removed of the person who donated the DNA for my Duryea line.  He is descended from Joshua Duryea, a brother of Garrett Duryea (1777-1834), the former stray and link of my family to the larger Duryea family.

This DNA link does not prove that Garrett and Joshua were brothers, only that we share a common ancestor along our Duryea lines.  But it is great that the match is someone whose paper trail splits at the point previously in question for my line.

Family Tree Repair: Duryea

Before we explore the next Duryea Y-DNA match (you can read about the first one here), I need to clarify my branch of the Duryea family.  This is important because it took years to figure out and erroneous online family trees persist.

My Duryea branch traces its direct paternal lineage back to Stephen C Duryea (1814-1887) of New York City and Pound Ridge, New York.  Stephen's father was Garrett S Duryea and his mother was Ann Cornell.  The trick was fitting Stephen's father, Garrett, into the larger Duryea family.

The theory (thanks to RAM) was that Garrett S Duryea, the father of my line, was the youngest son of Jacob Derye (died 1781) and Sarah Smith of Jericho, Queens County, New York.  [His will is transcribed here.]

No other researchers had published what became of this Garrett.

The clue that linked my Duryea branch to the larger Duryea family occurred because the State of New York did not pay John Frazee (1790-1852), architect, for his work on the Custom House.  [His papers, including family tree diagrams, are digitized online.]  John Frazee's widow, Lydia Place, sued to recover wages due to her late husband.  My ancestor, Stephen C Duryea, testified on her behalf.  He stated that he was "distantly related to the petitioner; the claimant's father and my father were half brothers."

This testimony meant that my stray Garrett Duryea had a half brother.  Further research showed that Sarah Smith, widow of Jacob Derye, remarried to James Place in 1783 and had a son, Thomas Place.  Thomas Place had a daughter, Lydia, around 1815, and she married John Frazee.  See the diagram below for a picture representation of this.

Once this connection was established, additional interactions between PLACE and DURYEA became more apparent.

Garrett Duryea, the son of Jacob Derye and Sarah Smith, died in Jamaica, Queens County, New York, on 29 March 1834.  Settlement of his estate was disrupted two years later by the death of his son, John Horton Duryea, administrator.

This is not the same Garrett Duryea who died in Blooming Grove, Orange County, New York, contrary to what most online family trees assert.

Cousin from the Dunn and Dunlop Branch

A close cousin on my father's side appeared among the DNA matches at 23andMe.  This person also matches all three of his siblings, as well as their father's first cousin.

We do not have to look at my father's entire family tree for the connection to the DNA cousin.  We can concentrate on the branch that my father has in common with his father's first cousin.  I made a diagram and I hope this helps people understand how to do this with their own DNA matches.

As you may have read, the 23andMe site is morphing.  I manage several accounts and none of them have completely evolved.  What I see on my end are new matches, but I cannot contact them.  The ones with names lead to a "page not found," while the anonymous matches cannot be contacted.  This new close cousin is anonymous, but she left her year of birth and some family surnames that I can see.

Based on the surnames she provided, we may be fourth cousins.  I predict that we share a set of great great great grandparents, Ezra Dunn (1821-1898) and Hermoine Dunlop (1827-1900) from Matawan, Monmouth County, New Jersey.  I descend from Ezra and Hermoine's daughter, Katherine (1865-1944), while this mystery cousin descends from another daughter, Violet (1873-1931).  Dunn and Dunlop were not among the surnames she provided, though, so either I have the wrong cousin, or our common ancestors are behind a brick wall for her, or she did not list all the surnames she knows.

The point of continuing on this DNA journey with this close cousin is to utilize the identical segments of DNA.  She shares ten identical segments with my grandfather's cousin!  (23andMe used to require that people "share genomes" to see these identical segments.  I have no such option with new matches- I can't contact them.)  We can attribute those ten segments of DNA to our ancestors, Ezra Dunn and Hermoine Dunlop.  More distant cousins will also match on these same segments, usually in smaller pieces.  Just as I did in the above family tree diagram, we can look deeper into the trees of Dunn and Dunlop and work with the distant cousins to figure out their relation to my family.