Hi Ruth, >You've had a lot of DNA experience, Linda — does a 66 out 67 match >imply, in your mind, that the intersect would be within a certain >number of generations? I am not a DNA genealogist and can never really be one: I never took statistics! Family tree DNA and other firms have this matching software on their websites that will give you a guestimate. However that software doesn't take into account fast and slow moving markers. So a 'real DNA genealogist' would look at the marker that doesn't match and be able to make a better suggestion. Each is known to have a different rate of mutation. You can get some info by googling for that marker or asking in the DNA-genealogy list. Lots of 'principals' are there and they can give you really good feedback. However this ol' liberal arts major thinks one marker off is pretty good. However again I'd want to see the Smiths that do and do not match. My one client who had such success -- he has 6 or 7 markers off with known relatives on the American side of the Pond! Fast moving DNA. He's a closer match to the guy in Australia than to some of his own cousins. The ones that are 'off' are the faster moving, less stable markers. A couple of them, randomly selected by the scientists, are so unstable that people who know on the DNA genealogy list have theorized that they should be 'thrown out' and never considered at all. Or that is what this liberal arts major understood <grin>! To me statistics is right up there with channelling fairies .....though I think I am better at channeling fairies..... There are plenty of Pennsylvanians who went to the Carolinas. Of course you read about this in the lit but I have seen the wills so I believe the books now <grin>. Early will abstracts for Cumberland CO PA are on the Internet. They often mention property in other colonies, most frequently, of course, the southern ones and yes, I have seen estates in NC. One was a McCamey family in Londonderry, PA, who willed land to a daughter in NC. She was then an Alexander but I never did figure out which Alexander. This is also from memory...... I'll look and post the info in the hopes that someone can make a connection. Deeds/grants are good too. The first deed will often identify where the person was living. One latest find was a Johnston family I was working on. They arrived circa 1821 (tax records) in Westmoreland Co, PA. Irish Catholic. Bought a few thousand acres of land, so not poor Irish. These ones lived in Derry but I have also established a connection to the Catholic Johnstons in Unity Twp. The known ancestor was named Constantine, but he died at a time when the county kept records and they ID'd his father as Thomas and his place of birth as Co Down, Ire. So...big party! However in the early censuses living with him was an older man. Thomas? Tax records had Thomas living there all right and indicated his occupation was salt merchant and that he owned a few thou acres. Ten years later he was gone, probably dead. Checked through all the early grants and deeds -- more than one Thomas Johnston. Found a couple for a man involved in salt manufacturing. The earliest indicated that he was a merchant of Baltimore, Maryland. Maryland of course had many Catholics. The one son (Constantine) married a woman who was raised by Mother Seton and her father was a Marylander. So we know this family had Baltimore connections. So the first deed can be very important. The deeds I viewed (there were many, many) didn't show Thomas leaving his land to his son, but he could have done so and not recorded it. No will either. Hard to prove a whole lot. Maryland wills and deeds need checked and even Irish and Canterbury wills because this man was probably from a Catholic merchant family in the Belfast area. DNA? It matches descendents of a Johnston sept of the O'Neills, and they have family history of a branch who moved to Co Down. So another big party!! It kinda shows how if you do methodical work you can win big. Another genealogist cherry picked deeds for my client in the county courthouse and didn't find what I did. She failed to get Constantine's death record and so didn't have the n ame of his father either. I used indexes when I was in Salt Lake and have a long list of deeds to check. My client can check them by ordering microfilm at a small price and then spend a month perusing them at his leisure. We also didn't check the early deeds of the Unity Twp family but probably their first deeds will show a connection to Thomas. The founder of that family is named Thomas and they had a grandson named Constantine and from the indexes they engaged in land transactions with Thomas/Constantine in Derry. So many of the Johnstons around here descend from an ancient sept that gave Queen Lizzie great heartburn! The geneticists and the genealogists were not sure exactly which O'neill these guys descend from. Usually the Aussies do have better paper trails than us. They usually have immigration records and the death records even in the later 1800s ask for the year of migration, the place of birth, the names of surviving children, all kinds of info. You sure your Aussie cousins can do genealogy? I found a heap of such info on the Internet at the district websites (or whatever you call the parts of Australia... we don't seem to have discussed that in history class!!). Linda ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ruth McLaughlin" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 6:39:09 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [S-I] Migration of 1718 group from Casco Bay to Northampton Co., PA That concept of 'chain migration' is something that *has to* be thought about but trying to get a handle on some connections in American history, for the moment in terms of theorizing seems infinitely easier than late 17th-early 18th c. County Londonderry!! <groan> The for-sure common ancestor of the so-called Group 26 Smiths within the Northeastern Smith Project who came to America in 1718 is a Thomas Smith, born Derry 1688. You've had a lot of DNA experience, Linda — does a 66 out 67 match imply, in your mind, that the intersect would be within a certain number of generations? All the TN connection seems to be very East TN—Carter and Sullivan and seemingly from NC more than VA. There is a Jarvis Smith family who oral history says may have come to Wilkes Co. NC from York Co. PA and established iron bloomery. Could this family be the family we need to find a connection to —or not? A road we have to go down and hopefully have already found a willing DNA testor which will save time barking up a wrong tree. This Jarvis family also clearly has connections within Carter Co. TN! Jarvis and his siblings and many of his sons including Caleb fought in the Revolutionary War, including all of them fighting in the Battle of Kings Mountain, 1780. Jarvis' will is extant and a team member (we are lucky to have a strong team) is going to try and see the original in the next two weeks where its now resides in Raleigh. But what catches my eye, Linda, is your reference to land records. Will be back in time to wonder about that and the indexes etc... to find a land grant that had been lost—somebody was looking out for you! If it weren't for DNA, we would know nothing of related Smiths in Tennessee. I'm into matches in Australia too, but for my Ulster Croziers. The Aussies just don't have paper trails and I do, and so how to connect?! Arrrgh! Ruth On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:10 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Ruth, thanks for this information! I alas have not researched anyone in this Casco Bay to PA > migration, though it is believed many left New England for Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. Not only was > the climate improved, but Pennsylvania offered freedom of religion and, in the early 1700s, welcomed them. > So wonder is any remained. Once in PA, the next generation moved down the wagon road into Virginia. Many VIrginianas moved to Tennessee after the Revolution, esp. eastern TN. Depending on the area of TN, > they might have gotten a grant due to military service in North Carolina. Virginia soldiers received land in > the future Kentucky, not TN. But by the time the soldiers came to TN, eastern TN was largely in private > hands so the military grants are in the middle and west, with some federal land grants as well. I had to do > some research in the area. I'm no expert. A lot of the indexes are microfimed and in LDS, but in the end > we had to use an expert to search the original North Carolina landgrants, which he found. The grant > was missing from the TN state copy. The guy charged us $3 or some such amount to send us the grant. > (not $300 like we were charged for a probate packet once....grrrrrr.....). > > However your experience where a surprising DNA match sets you off on another direction is somewhat > typical. In my one situation, where we were looking for matches to Virginia (To TN) settlers from the 1770s, > our match was to an Australian! He had excellent proof of descent from a man in a town in Tyrone. We > knew about this man but no proof of relationship till the DNA match half the way around the world. > > It's possible that the Londonderry family sent other sons to America independently of Casco Bay. This is called 'chain migration'. So you cannot create a link between Casco Bay and TN because the link is back > to Ireland. > > With a common name like Smith a good DNA match is really appreciated. > > Linda Merle ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message