Breaking Down Brick Walls with DNA

I'm going to detail one example of how DNA helped me break down a brick wall in my tree. This may be a somewhat unique case that might not always apply to every situation, but it's still worth detailing so people can get an understanding of how to work with your DNA matches in general.

Hope's baptism confirming her parent's names, but not her
mother's maiden name.

My 4th great grandmother was Hope Gibbs, b. November 3, 1805 in Philadelphia. I knew from her baptism record that her parents names were Caleb and Isabella (maiden name unknown), but I didn't know anything else about them. My grandmother had left notes with the names and some details of Hope's sisters, and indeed, research of some of them not only confirmed those details but also listed Caleb and Isabella as their parents, but still no details on those parents. I even found some DNA matches who were descended from those sisters, but none of those matches knew more about their parents.

I then found a marriage record of a Caleb Gibbs and Isabella Brannin in 1799, in Mt Holly, Burlington, NJ (Ancestry.com wrongly transcribed the location as Philadelphia), but given the difference of location, how could I know it was the right couple I was looking for? Further research on the couple married in 1799 revealed they were Quakers, and Isabella was the daughter of Barzillai Brannin/Branin, and the granddaughter of Michael Brannin/Branin, but I still was unsure about the connection to Hope Gibbs. Were these really her parents?

It took me a while to think of this for some reason, but I eventually decided to look for the surname Brannin in my DNA matches (well, my mom's DNA matches, since she is one generation closer to the ancestors in question). Theoretically, I figured if my Isabella was a Brannin, I (or my mom) would have DNA matches with people descended from her father or grandfather, I just hoped Brannin wasn't so common of a name that I got unrelated hits for it among my matches. It would be much more difficult if the name was something like Smith, and indeed, I had previously tried to search my DNA matches for the Gibbs surname, hoping to find people who descended from a father or grandfather of Caleb, but Gibbs was too common of a name and I was getting results for DNA matches with obviously unrelated Gibbs ancestors due to their location or time period (my DNA relation to these matches obviously lies elsewhere and the Gibbs surname is just a coincidence).

But the results and conclusions of the Brannin surname search were almost instantaneous - I quickly found 10 DNA matches descended from either Barzillai or Michael Brannin (two shown above), which would only be likely if I was descended from or at least related to them genetically. Not all recurring ancestors among your DNA matches will be your ancestors, some may be related to you in other ways, but combined with the existing question of whether my Isabella was Barzillai's daughter, the DNA matches conclude that the two Isabella's were indeed the same. Worth noting is the fact that two of the ten matches shared a segment with my mom of over 14 cM, which has over a 99% chance of being identical by descent, so these are not false positive matches. Also worth noting is the fact that some of the ten matches I found I had to uncover myself because their trees didn't go back far enough, but with a little digging, I expanded on their tree and trace their Brannin line back to Barzillai or Michael. Sometimes, you have to do a little of the legwork yourself.

Quakers are good record keepers, so confirming Isabella's identity was a huge breakthrough for me, and I then spend the next few days building this new branch of my tree, going back several more generations on both her paternal and maternal sides, something I couldn't have been sure of if I hadn't found the DNA connection. Of course, this also confirmed Caleb's identity as the man who married her, but unfortunately the Quaker records didn't go back as far for his ancestry. It at least confirmed his parents as Samuel Gibbs and Mercy (maiden name unknown).

By the way, if you're wondering about the notes showing simultaneously with both DNA matches in the screenshot above, that is with the use of Chrome extension MedBetterDNA. It allows you to always display notes so you can refer to them quicker and easier. It also has a lot of other useful tools, like the the hashtag option, which you'll see I'm also making use of - it lets you search your matches by hashtags in the notes field, so you can more quickly find the matches you're looking for. You may also notice the emoji icons I'm using - the green check mark and the black heart. There's no hidden meaning to the black heart, I'm just using it as a quick visual reference for that particular branch of my tree. Every one of my 2nd great grandparents gets a unique icon for their branch and I was running out of heart colors - that may seem excessive with 16 second great grandparents but it's working for me. The green check mark denotes matches with whom I've identified our most recent common ancestor. As a visual person (I am a photographer, after all), I just find the icons help my brain sort my matches. For non-windows users, you can also make use of flag emojis (the flags don't work on Windows for some reason) to identify matches with a MRCA from a known country.

I hope this helps illustrate how you can use your DNA matches to confirm questionable branches like this. Keep in mind that the further back the ancestors you're looking for are on your tree, the less likely you'll be able to reliably use or find identical by descent DNA matches descended from those ancestors. In this case, we were looking at my mom's 5th or 6th great grandparents, meaning she'd be around 6th or 7th cousins with those DNA matches, which is still within the realms of identical by descent.

Why Probate Records Are So Important.

Today, I made a remarkable discovery. Well, it's remarkable to me. It was accomplished almost entirely with the Pennsylvania Probate Records found at FamilySearch.org and is a testament to how important these records are and how much you can learn from them if you take the time to find and study them. It also proves research before the almighty 1850 US Census can be done.

Ann Sutch Will 1827 mentioning brother Richard
Shoemaker.

I had been searching for the parents of my ancestor, Ann Shoemaker, for a while. All I knew of Ann was that she married Daniel Sutch, had 4 daughters, and then died in 1827 in Gwynedd, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. I did not even know when she was born but I approximated it around 1760. But I did also know she had a brother named Richard. I discovered this from her will in the Montgomery County Probate Records, proved in 1827, which specifically named her "brother Richard Shoemaker" as executor of her will (shown above right). This not only gave me her maiden name but also a brother's name to research. It was difficult though, because all I knew of Richard was that he was probably alive (and an adult) in 1827, and likely lived in Montgomery County. But Shoemaker was a common name in that area and Richard was not uncommon either. Without knowing anything else about him, how could I confirm records to be the Richard I was looking for?

Well, in the Proceedings Index for Ann (Shoemaker) Sutch, there were some listings for Orphan Court Dockets. These are often records that have something to do with the will of a deceased person after it was proved. There were two dated 1838 which turned out to be a petition and answer for the replacement of trustee Richard Shoemaker, deceased, with someone else. The petitioners were E. Jones and Job Roberts (I promise this will be important later on). This suggested that Richard Shoemaker, brother of Ann (Shoemaker) Sutch, died sometime in or soon before 1838. So I went looking for a Richard Shoemaker who may have had probate records dated around 1838. There was only one in Montgomery County who fit with this and although there was no will listed, there was an Admin Bond date for Aug 5, 1837 in Horsham and the Admins listed were Job Roberts and Evan Jones. So I knew I had the correct Richard Shoemaker because Jones and Roberts were listed in the Orphan's Court record for Ann Sutch, sister of Richard Shoemaker.

But that's not all. Once I entered Richard's death year as about 1837 in Horsham, a Quaker record on Ancestry.com popped up for a Richard Shoemaker who died July 10, 1837 in Montgomery County (subscription required to view this record). I looked at it and although it didn't say he died in Horsham (there was no death location at all), it did say his father was Ezekiel Shoemaker who had died 1816 in Horsham. I already had a hunch this was my Richard Shoemaker because in the Estate/Proceeding Indices, there was only one Richard Shoemaker who died in or around 1837 in Montgomery County (and if he died in July, a probate record in August made perfect sense). But just in case there was another one who perhaps didn't have any probate listings at all, I decided to research Ezekiel.

Firstly, I noticed on the Proceedings Index right above my Richard Shoemaker there was another entry for a Richard Shoemaker who died around 1790 in Horsham and his executor was named Ezekiel Shoemaker. I looked at his will first and sure enough, Ezekiel was his son. Best of all, two of his daughters married into the Roberts family, which linked this elder Richard and son Ezekiel back to my Richard, because if you recall Job Roberts was listed in my Richard's probate records (who would have been this elder Richard's grandson). Granted, Roberts is a common name too but there's starting to be too many coincidences to ignore. Additionally, according to other family trees, my Richard also married a Roberts.

Ezekiel Shoemaker 1816 Will naming his daughter,
Ann "Such" (Sutch).

I looked up Ezekiel in the probate records and fortunately, he had a will and sure enough, in his will he names "my daughter Ann Such" (shown left). So not only do I now have proof that Ann was the daughter of Ezekiel, I also already have Ezekiel's father's name as Richard, and Ezekiel's siblings names as mentioned in Richard's will! A wealth of information, with the exception of one record, came entirely from these probate records.

To top everything else off, I then found a Quaker death record for Ann Sutch who died 1827 naming her father as Ezekiel Shoemaker of Horsham (subscription required to view this record). These must be new records added to Ancestry.com since I'm sure I scourged the internet looking for another death record for Ann once I found her will and knew she died in or before 1827. My search would have been a hell of a lot easier if I had just found this record first! Regardless, I still would have gone in search of Ezekiel's will to find out more about their family (like his wife's name) so the point still stands that probate records are important.

For some reason, there is a secondary record with no indication of the source or repository attached to some Ancestry.com member trees that claims Ezekiel's daughter Ann "died young". I hope I have been able to conclusively prove that this is not true with all these primary records I've mentioned and provided links to. Family trees put Ann's birth year as 1764, not far off the estimated birth I made around 1760, so if this is true she would have been 63 years old when she died in 1827. She married Daniel Sutch and had four daughters named Jane (b. abt. 1788, m. Charles Gilbert), Sarah (b. abt. 1791, m. William Davis), Ann (b. abt. 1792, m. Homer Dubree), and Hannah (b. abt. 1805, m. Joseph Amber). Some information on their family can be found in the Ambler Gazette.

So don't overlook probate records as an important method for finding that elusive previous generation. It may take a lot of digging and it may not always lead back to what you're looking for but you will likely discover something you didn't know before.

Colonial Facts and Stats: Culture and Life Part 2

The last installment of this topic involves less statistical information and is more focused on the roles within the family unit. Again, this is just a small portion of the wealth of useful information from Family Life in 17th and 18th Century America.

• Family feasts were popular to celebrate common milestones and events of life; there were feasts for a lying-in, births, baptisms, churchings, starting school or an apprenticeship, betrothals, weddings, anniversaries, house-warmings, recovery from an illness, and even after the setting of a gravestone. On the other hand, many Protestant sects were "hostile" to seasonal or annual feasts related to Catholicism like saints days but some could not be suppressed. 
• Younger sons were often able to follow their own path in life when the father could only afford to send one or two sons to college. However, it often meant they could only find work in "less desirable" careers like sailing, tailoring, blacksmithing, or carpentry. 
• In very rural areas, many children had only very basic writing skills with little more ability to spell out much more than their own name. In more populated areas, there were often laws requiring public schooling: in Connecticut every town of 80 families had an elementary school, and those with 500 families had to establish the equivalent of a high school. Similarly, Massachusetts required every town of 50 families to appoint a schoolmaster. Under Dutch rule, public schooling was not common in New York but under English rule the Dutch were more motivated to establish their own schools in attempts to maintain their culture in light of the increase in English residents. Higher education was still needed though and so college's began to be founded: In the northern and middle colonies were Harvard (1636), Yale (1701), Princeton (the College of New Jersey, 1746), the University of Pennsylvania (1751), Columbia (King's College, 1754), Brown (1764), Rutgers (1766), and Dartmouth (1770). In the south, there were William and Mary (1693), Hampton-Sydney College (1776), and Transylvania College (1780). 
• Prior to the American Revolution, Philadelphia had some of the best schools with the most comprehensive curricula. However, Quaker families were suspicious of any government-run organization and preferred to home school their children, providing them with adequate fundamental education.
• In the south, planters and merchants commonly hired private tutors or sent their children to private schools, often even shipping them back to England to attend private school.
• Just like today, college students would often explore their new freedom by behaving badly and binge drinking, even breaking the law. They would sometimes harass local women in town (the school body was all male) or take up with prostitutes. Students and sometimes entire classes could be expelled or dismissed for a term because of riots, abuse of the faculty, or vandalism.
• Unlike in some homes today where children are always welcome in their parent's home, once colonial children, particularly sons, left the home and established their own household, they would be expected to pay for room and board if they ever returned.
• A teacher's annual salary could range from around £75 to £150 depending on the level of instruction required.
• Men were expected to work to support their family and those who relied entirely on allowance or inheritance were often viewed with suspicion.
• The society was broken down into four classes: 
• Upper class, who were mostly politicians and plantation owners.
• Middle class, consisting of skilled workers such as tradesmen, craftsmen, and farm owners (not to be confused with large plantation owners).
• "Laboring poor" or lower class, who did mostly unskilled work (often on farms) such as digging ditches, rolling wheelbarrows, carrying timber, pitching manure and hay, etc but it also included sailors and fishermen. 
• "Miserable poor" or the unemployed, were often criminals and prostitutes. 
• The most abundant crop grown in the south was not cotton but corn (maize). However, the most profitable was sugar, adding about £3 million to Britain's wealth annually. Also common was tobacco, rice, and indigo. 
• Plantation owners, though members of upper class, were often cash poor and in debt, all of their money being tied up in their plantations.
• On average, farmers tended about 18 acres of crop per 100 acres. The rest was used as pasture and woodlots or left to recuperate after many seasons of over-farming.
• To solve the issue of coin shortage, each colony produced it's own paper money, Maryland's being most successful.
• Under Dutch law, marriage was an equal partnership with equal claim to their combined wealth. Upon the death of a spouse, the surviving spouse was entitled to half the estate and the right to administer the other half for heirs.
• Quaker women did not deal with business, economic, or legal matters but did carry authority in the community such as being responsible for approving marriage applications as a group.
• In English culture, a widow was entitled to 1/3 of the household goods and income of real estate but a husband could will her more. If he willed her less, it was often contested in court for the standard 1/3 and usually ruled in favor of the widow.
• Childbirth was the leading cause of death among women.
• 1 in 10 infants died within their first year and 4 out of 10 died before age 6.
• Once past toddlerhood, children spent the most time with their same gender parent, sons learning the occupational skills of their father and daughters learning domestic skills with their mothers. Girls as young as three were expected to help with the household chores and were taught to knit from age four.
• Diarying and gardening were among the most important of a farm woman's tasks (diary, especially cheese, was a more common source of protein than meats).
• Farm housewives spend their morning milking cows so breakfast was usually very simple and included toast and cheese or leftovers from meals of the previous day. Dinner, what we'd call lunch, was the biggest meal of the day and served at noon. Supper, an evening meal, was similar to breakfast. Southern plantations had bigger breakfasts with cold meats, fowl, game, hominy and hot breads.
• While many parents disciplined with physical punishment, not all parents condoned it.
• Many free black girls were apprenticed with another family to perform household chores where they would also learn to read. The indenture served as proof of their freedom, safeguarding them against being sold into slavery.
• Some indentured servants were criminals who were indentured for life, essentially an enslavement but one which did not pass on to their descendants. 
• Indentured servants had rights that slaves did not. When ill, they were entitled to care and the time of service lost could not count against them. They could not be sold out of the colony in which they arrived and could not be cheated out of the items due them at the end of their service. They could take their masters to court for neglect (not providing food or clothing). In many ways, they had a similar legal status to children.
• Colonial jails usually served only as temporary holding cells, not long term confinement. Whipping, flogging, branding, ear cropping, etc were preferred methods of criminal punishment than confinement.

Colonial Facts and Stats: Culture and Life

Continuing on from the post about immigration and settlement with interesting facts about the 17th and 18th centuries, the following are related more to culture and life in the colonies. Everything is from Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America by James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo, which I highly recommend buying, though the facts below may seem extensive, it's only a very small portion of this highly informative book.

Culture and Life:

• Puritans and Quakers were often literate and many Germans and Dutch may have been literate in their own languages too. In the 17th century, men on the frontier had a literacy rate around 50%, which grew to 65% by the early 18th century. German Protestants and French Huguenots may have been as high as 90% literate. By comparison, today's literacy rate is about 86% so the colonial rates were lower but not as low as what people might assume. Women were twice as likely to be illiterate in the south and mid Atlantic while the difference was not so great in New England but this may have only been an indicator of ability to write rather - reading rates may have been higher.
• New England Puritans and frontier Scotch-Irish supported schools, but southern aristocrats and sectarian Quakers and Pietists tended to "distrust" institutionalized instruction. So education ranged regionally from home schooling to university education.
• In 1625 Virginia there were about 460 indentured servants but only 22 blacks (some being slaves). Dutch farmers generally only owned a few slaves in contrast to the large numbers on Southern plantations.
• Autumn was the healthiest period of the year due to moderate temperatures and recent harvests. Winter brought rheumatic pains, consumption, and lung disease, then Spring was riddled with pleuresies, inflamatory fevers, distempers, and colds, and Summer had epidemics of cholera, dysentery, typhoid, assorted fevers, and both bloody and black fluxes. Scurvy was also a health problem through the winter. 
• In some parts of the Chesapeake, 25% of children would lose at least one parent by the time they were 5 years old, 50% by age 13, and 70% by age 21.
• Widows often continued to run the family business (such as shops or taverns) after their husband's death.
• Child mortality rates in the overall colonial period ranged from 20% to 30% (today it is only about 1%). Men who survived into their 20s had a good chance to living to about 70 years. Women who survived to adulthood had a lower life expectancy of 65, due to dangers of pregnancy and childbirth - women who survived past childbearing years could expect to live as long as men. Average life expectancies which quote 40-50 year age ranges include child and infant mortalities. 
• Reproduction was considered such an expectation that bachelors and spinsters were scorn and childless couples seen as disfavored by God. Though not as effective as today's methods, contraceptives were available but not well known, approved of, or used. As a result, some families had as many as 12 to 14 children and the population grew very fast. In New England, from 1700 to 1750, the population almost doubled to 400,000 and the average number of children rarely dropped below 7. Fathers quickly became unable to partition enough of their farm land among all their children which forced them to move out of the community and find land elsewhere. Women were reproducing so quickly that they would sometimes conceive again before fully recovering from their last pregnancy and either miscarry or give birth to underweight infants who died early. White women generally nursed for 2 years which can be a natural contraceptive (but it's effectiveness is reduced if not nursing full time) - plus some cultures banned sexual relations while the wife was still nursing. Slaves tried to extend the period of contraception by nursing for 3 years. 
• In the south, the average number of surviving children per family was lower, around 5 or 6, because the child mortality rate was much higher. Almost half of children never reached adolescence.
• The Dutch had large families but could expect about a third of their children to die young.
• It was not unusual for children to be farmed out to other families to learn a skill or trade, especially in Puritan homes and especially after the death of one of the parents (i.e. if the mother died, the daughters might be sent to other homes to learn domestic skills).
• The average age at first marriage for women in New England was about 22 to 23 years old. In the south, it was much lower, only 18. In Quaker families, it was 24 and within the Dutch communities, 22. Dutch men typically married between ages 23 and 25, especially in rural areas (those in the city tended to marry later). 
• Premarital pregnancy in New England was rare as long periods of privacy before marriage were nearly impossible but there are records of "seven month" births after marriage, of which there were more in the 17th century than the 18th. Rates were higher in the south, reaching 40% in some areas, as was fathering children out of wedlock (almost 12%). The Puritans often didn't record illegitimate births and the Dutch often omitted marriage or birth dates from records in attempts to brush such embarrassments under the rug.
• Families in the south tended to maintain closer ties to extended family than communities in the north and nepotism was common. Female relatives would often get together to trace their families lineages, especially those of aristocratic background. Intermarriage between second and third cousins was promoted in the south, to keep their money, power, and social standing within the family.
• Almost 60% of southern males owned no land and were instead tenant farmers or indentured servants or slaves.
• Initially, Quakers and other minorities religions were prosecuted in many colonies, Pennsylvania being the only exception.
• Unlike other communities, Quakers gave their women much authority, especially within the family unit but also in their religion - 12 female Quaker ministers could be found between 1690 and 1765.
• The Germans contained many different dialects and religions including Lutheran, Mennonite, Moravian, Baptist, Amish, and Calvinist. Lutherans and Calvinists were similar to most mainstream English Protestants but other pietist sects were viewed as radicals and closer to the Quakers. Germans were more hierarchical and patriarchal in their families with more children (average of 9 with about 75% surviving to adulthood) but otherwise very similar to Quakers. But Germans of all types rarely married outside their nationality.
• Baptists were known as "Dunkers" for their practice of total immersion during baptisms. There were about 300 original "Dunkers" in the colonies and 90% of them were from Schwarzenau, Krefeld, or Friesland.
• The Moravians paid Native Americans for the land they settled.
• In the 1740s, there were more Dutch families who owned slaves than English, typically no more than 6 slaves per household.
• Women slaves generally bore about 6 children in their lifetimes and were often shown indulgence a few week before giving birth and allowed four weeks to recover after giving birth before going back to work in the fields, taking their newborn infant with them.
• Marriage between slaves on different plantations was discouraged but more common among smaller farms where available partners were fewer. Husbands were generally given "weekend passes" to visit their wives, starting after a half day work on Saturday and returning Monday morning.
• Slave owners often made gifts of their slaves to their children, especially as a wedding gift.

Check back soon... yet more to come!