AncestryDNA Reference Post

I've decided that it would be beneficial and convenient for me and my family to have a page where all our AncestryDNA results are listed together, for reference. I also decided that I will make it public because this information is more or less public on Ancestry.com already, and perhaps it will be informative to my readers if you are interested in the AncestryDNA test and what the results look like. I've included the modern-day locations of each of these ethnicities, as provided by Ancestry. Results also come with a bunch of information about each of these regions, including details on migrations into and out of the region to help you understand how your ancestors might have ended up where you are.

Some people may wonder what will happen if they get the test and do it wrong. Well, it turns out that I can answer that question. If the sample received in the lab doesn't contain enough genetic material, they will send you an email with a link to order a replacement kit free of charge. We've had this happen with one of our samples, and Ancestry was very good about it. We are currently awaiting the replacement kit.

I will continue to update this page as more results come in. If you are one of the people I have ordered a test for and want to know its status, these are listed at the bottom of this post, below the results. I will update it as soon as something changes.

If you are one of my friends and I manage a family tree for you on Ancestry.com and you are interested in this DNA test, please let me know. The test costs $129 when ordered by a subscriber (like me) and $199 when ordered by a non-subscriber so the advantage is obvious. The downside is that the results will be linked to my account and not yours, but I will definitely keep on top of the information and keep you updated if you choose to do the test.

Photos of Couples, 1852-1974

So this isn't a terribly substantial post, but it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. The semester is coming to an end and I find myself incredibly busy, so this is the relatively simple project that is getting tackled this month. I put together all the photos of couples in my family tree. Many are aunts and uncles or cousins, but several are my direct ancestors. They are arranged in chronological order.

Mary Elizabeth Redding & Russell Howard McKee

married on October 13, 1852

James Wilkinson Gammon & Armilda Eliza Myers

married on November 19, 1852 in Monroe, IA

Isaac Newton Morrison & Lydia Josephine Gammon

married in December 1879 in Centerville, IA

Anna Mary Seufer & Newton Franklin Gammon

married on February 14, 1880 in Decatur County, IA

Katharine Rebecca Wilson & John Overington

married on November 5, 1889 in Philadelphia, PA

William Overington, Jr. & Claudia Wetherill Fries

married on November 16, 1903 in Philadelphia, PA

 

Walter Smart McKee & Willie May Maxson

Albert Clate Gammon & Abigail Ruth Lester

married on January 1, 1907 in Ringgold County, IA

James Mathias Gammon & Carrie Bernice McKee

married on November 9, 1921 in Los Angeles, CA

Edgar Percival Jones and Claudia Overington

Howard McKee Gammon & Claudia Overington Newman

married on June 3, 1944 in Roswell, NM

Gisele & Walter Leonard McKee

  

Jack Leroy Upper & Claudia Overington Reid

married in 1950

Shirley Bubadias & Victor Carl Fetzer

married on August 2, 1953 in Neptune, NJ

Jim Gammon & Wanda Starnes

married on November 25, 1974 in Bel Air, MD (shown)

and on July 16, 1983 in Belmar, NJ

My Incredible AncestryDNA Story

A few weeks ago, I spit in a tube and mailed it to Ancestry.com. No, really. It's part of their new program, now in the beta stage, called AncestryDNA. I won't go into the details because their website does a much better job of it here. It's just become available to the general public for $199 or to Ancestry.com subscribers for $129. The test traces your genetic code back hundreds of years. I am not in any way compensated for my promotion of AncestryDNA, I simply find it a very worthwhile investment. My results were, to say the least, shocking.

Screenshot of my actual AncestryDNA results. Click to enlarge.

I'm almost three-quarters Scandinavian! If you'd have asked me before I took this test, I would have told you I was three-quarters British and one-quarter German and who knows what else. As you can see on the map, sixteen of the ancestors in my family tree were born in the UK and two in Germany. Everyone else that I know the birthplace of was born in the United States or Puerto Rico.

As baffling as this was at first, it has come to make a certain amount of sense. Over the last thousand years, Scandinavians made various invasions into the rest of Europe. The most likely scenario is that my ancestors were Scandinavians that migrated into central and southern Europe, married the locals, and then moved, as many people did, into the UK in later generations. It seems a colossal coincidence that they then married other people of Scandinavian descent, particularly once they made it the US, but it's not impossible. I hope to get my parents and grandparents to take the DNA test as well to get a more detailed view, as my DNA contains only a selection of each of theirs.

Now, I promised you an incredible story and although so far it's been a strange and unexpected one, I wouldn't call it incredible. The real story here is in another feature of AncestryDNA, which shows you a list of members that share genetic markers with you and are likely to be your cousins. They're sorted by the estimated distance of the relationship. My very first result was a user named Terry_Cott. I didn't even think twice about his name until after I clicked on it and Ancestry suggested that, based on our trees, we shared a common ancestor - Joseph Cott.

Joseph Cott has always been something of a mystery to me, and someone I thought I'd never know the full truth about. That's probably still true, but in the past week I have learned far, far more about him than I ever thought I would. So, a little background is required. Joe was my great-grandfather - my mother's mother's father. We knew him as Joseph Cott Bubadias, a truck driver. He was my great-grandmother's second husband, and they had six children together before he abandoned the family. He moved to north Jersey, changed his last name to Cott, and had another family, including two daughters. I knew from my research that Joe was married to a woman named "Kath" after my great-grandmother. I knew his birth year varied depending on the record, as did his birthplace - sometimes it was Oklahoma, sometimes Puerto Rico. On one record, he even indicated his race as Cherokee. I was hopelessly lost in contradicting information. I felt like he was laughing at me from beyond the grave, as if he had intentionally muddled the trail to stop me from knowing the truth.

We thought that was the end of the story until Terry got back to me. As it turns out, Joe's birth name was Jose Cott, and he was born in Puerto Rico. Terry is Joe's grandson through his first marriage, a marriage that my family didn't know anything about. His father is my grandmother's half-brother. He is my mother's first cousin. Terry and I are still exchanging emails and photos. It will take some time for both of us to adjust to knowing one another. Maybe someday we will meet.

For now, this is just the incredible story of how my DNA connected my grandmother and the brother she's never met.

My grandmother Phyllis in 1952.

My great-aunt Shirley in 1953.

Terry's father Allen Cott in 1943.

The Possible Duplicity of Lulu Johnson

Lulu Johnson is the daughter of Rebecca Johnson and sister to my great-grandmother Florence.

Lulu was born in 1895 in New Jersey and died about 1971. Her childhood is rather interesting - she is apparently listed on the 1900 and 1910 Federal Census twice, both with her biological family and an adoptive family.

You may recognize this image from my earlier post about her mother - this is the family in Bradley Beach, NJ in 1900 when Lulu was five. 

At the same time, on Atlantic Avenue in Neptune Township, we find the Landin family:

Lulu Johnson is listed here as George Landin's niece.

Now, in 1910 she is again listed with the family:

And also with the Landins, although here their name is spelled Landis. Now she is listed as an adopted daughter.

I'm not completely sure that this is the same Lulu, particularly because the one with the Landin/Landis family is listed as being black and because they have different birth months in 1900 - the one that I know is my relative is listed as being born in February 1895 while the other says May 1895.

However, there has been talk among my mother's family about Lulu being given away as a child so it seems odd that she would be listed with her parents at all. It's not impossible that her adoptive family didn't know her birthday. And the census taker could have assumed that George Landin's niece/adopted daughter was black because he and his wife were; perhaps he never saw Lulu himself.

I wonder if we'll ever conclusively solve this mystery.

Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca Johnson was my great-great-grandmother. One of her daughters, Florence, had a daughter named Phyllis, who had my mother Wanda.

Ancestry.com has a feature on the profile page of everyone in a family tree; when you add an event with a date attached, it automatically displays the age the person was when that event occurred. I noticed today that Rebecca Johnson's profile listed her marriage in 1888 - when she was just fourteen years old. This is indicated by the 1900 U.S. Federal Census (click to enlarge):

There is the family living in Bradley Beach, NJ in 1900. The third-to-last column on the right is "number of years married;" Rebecca and George reported 12 years. Their oldest child, Helen, was eleven in 1900, and was therefore born the year following their marriage. The last two columns are "Mother of how many children" and "Number of these children living." As you can see, by the age of 26 Rebecca had already given birth to five children and lost one. This snapshot of her life is very meaningful to me, at twenty-two. I'm not married nor do I have children, and I cannot imagine the struggles and joys of this woman without whom I would never have been born.

Rebecca's maiden name and married name are the same. I don't know her parents' names but have been assured by family members that she was a Johnson before she married George Washington Johnson, who was eighteen at the time of their marriage. He died at the age of 56 in 1926. Rebecca at least matched his age; I don't know when she died but the 1930 Federal Census shows her living with her son Walter in Belmar, NJ.