Hardy and Pyburn DNA what I hope to learn

Today I sent off four kits for autosomal DNA. Three of the tester's are descendants of a Hardy, Pyburn or both. This time I used Ancestrydna, mainly because it was on sale, and if I need to I can transfer tests to FTDNA an option no longer available for 23andme. (Though I hope it will be again someday). I know I want to send the fourth test off there, because it's my maternal grandfather's first cousin and is Choctaw DNA that I would like to get some more matches for.

Note to protect the privacy of individuals I am using the following format, their names are abbreviated to initials, first maiden married names. Thus if I were talking about my grandmother, Evelyne Hardy Barnes she would be EHB.

The tester's I am testing all descend from Gardner Hardy and his wife Harriet, last name unknown. We have some small matches presently with my father and fourth cousins, descendants of their daughter Rebecca. This time I am testing two descendants of  William Shepard "Shep" Hardy Sr and one from Robert Hardy. The first tester, MWE is a great granddaughter of Robert Hardy via his son George Gardner Hardy. MWE is also a descendant of the Pyburn's as George Gardner's maternal grandmother was Nicy Pyburn, a sister of my ancestor Benjamin Jacob Pyburn. The second tester, CPB is a great granddaughter of Benjamin Jacob Pyburn through her paternal grandfather and through her paternal grandmother she is a great great granddaughter of Shep Hardy Sr. There is more to why she's an invaluable tester, but as for my father's dna, her father was his grandmother's half brother, so they should have a good chunk of Pyburn DNA in common. The third tester, HHA is a great granddaughter of Shep Hardy Sr.

Tester	Siblings	Sibs/1st	1st/2nd	2nd/3rd	Once removed
HHA	Shep Hardy Sr	Robert Hardy	WS Hardy	HHA
CPR	Shep Hardy Sr	Rebecca Hardy	Hattie Campbell	Carlton Pyburn	CPR
JRB	Shep Hardy SR	WS Hardy Jr	Robert Hardy	Evelyne Hardy	JRB
MWE	Robert Hardy	George G Hardy	Mattie Hardy	MWE

Thus in the above table HHA and MWE are third cousins, HHA and CPR and my father 2^nd cousins once removed, and MWE and CPR and my father are 3^rd cousins once removed. It is important to note that genetic distance for a second cousin once removed and 3^rd cousin as for percent shared is in the same range.

For the Pyburn side we have the following

Tester	Siblings	Same/1st	Sibs/2nd	1sr/3rd	Once removed
CPR	Benjamin Jacob Pyburn	Archie Pyburn	Carlton Pyburn	CPR
JRB	Benjamin Jacob Pyburn	Archie Pyburn	Lula Pyburn	Evelyne Hardy	JRB
MWE	Nicy Pyburn	Elizabeth Fleming	George G Hardy	Mattie Hardy	MWE

So in the above table CPR and my father are half 1st cousins once removed and MWE and CPR are 3^rd cousins once removed.

So what is it I hope to find out? Well for starter's, we need DNA to another Hardy group to link Gardner Hardy to his parents and we have no idea as to the maiden name of Harriet. I have a tree for Sally Nelson, but I am not sure of it, so links there will be beneficial as well. On the Pyburn side, the rumor that either the Pyburn's, the Chitty's or both are native American has been in the family for decades (and is much stronger in my humble opinion than that rumor associated with Barbara Sunday). CPR may in fact show a higher percentage of native ancestry than my father's modest 0.1 percent and help answer that question. It's a long shot for sure, as we are talking CPR's ggg grandmother, but we still have no idea who the mother of Jacob Pyburn 2 is, only that she is from the Tensaw area, but in theory 3 percent of CPR's dna comes from this woman, so maybe we will get an answer.

In addition however, Hattie Viola Campbell is the granddaughter of Neil Campbell and Sarah Bowen. The common thought is that Sarah’s mother Nancy is a McCurdy because in 1870 she is living with Thomas Sunday and his wife, Anna McCurdy.  However we know believe that Anna is the daughter of Mattie Bowen and Elijah McCurdy, and because of this, Nancy was the aunt by marriage of Anna through her husband Joshua Bowen. The question remains still though, is Nancy a McCurdy.

With the plethora of testers now available, I hope to find out. We have enough double McCurdy’s running around that even a small amount of DNA should match. However, it is also complicated. If CPR matches three of the testers, SSM, CRB or PR then we can’t definitively say since all three descend from Joseph McCurdy, Elijah’s son by Mattie Bowen. If however they match one of the other (I believe we are at 10 or 11) testers, we can jump for joy, because CPR’s mother is in no way connected to the Panhandle DNA, and I pretty much have her paternal side nailed down.

To give you an idea on how the Bowen and the McCurdy side works, I will give you tables for the Bowen connected, my father and the doubles who share the most DNA with the other testers.

Tester	1st gen	2nd gen	3rd Gen	4th Gen	5th Gen	6th Gen
CPR	Joshua Bowen and Nancy McCurdy	Sarah Bowen	Wash Campbell	Hattie Campbell	Carlton Pyburn	CPR
SSM	Elijah McCurdy and Mattie Bowen	Anna McCurdy	Joseph Sunday	John Sunday	Sidney Sunday	SSM
CRB and her sister PR	Elijah McCurdy and Mattie Bowen	Joseph McCurdy	Anna McCurdy	Andrew Robinson	James Robinson	CRB and PR
JRB	Elijah McCurdy and Barbara Sunday	William McCurdy	Plina McCurdy	Lula Pyburn	Evelyne Hardy	JRB
SFM	Elijah McCurdy and Barbara Sunday	George W and William McCurdy	Charlotte McCurdy and Katie McCurdy	Florence McCurdy and DMF	Katie McCurdy and SFM	DMF (SFM would be next box to right)
GPK	Elijah McCurdy and Barbara Sunday	George W McCurdy	Elizabeth and Charlotte McCurdy	Admiral and Ola Morris	Blanche Morris	GPK
JVM/VMM	Elijah McCurdy and Barbara Sunday	George and William McCurdy	Jack and Carrie McCurdy	Child	JVM/VMM

It's all relative

I saw a post recently in a group on Facebook asking if she and her husband shared matches does that mean they were related. The answer of course is possibly, but not necessarily. I am going to use some of my family as an example.

Both my mother and my father have roots that go back to Colonial Maryland in Prince George and Queen Mary's county. For my father this is the Pyburns, for my mother it is her Traherns. Both families end up in the same area of Virginia, the Pyburns by the mid 18th century show up in records for Lunenburg and Bedford and the Traherns are in Pittsylvania county (formed from Lunenburg) by the 1780's. Additionally two collateral families who marry into my mother's family (not my direct line) take this same path, the Brashears and the Walker (Sylvanius Walker and Tandy family) family.

Things get even a bit more interesting when you look at the Pyburn family. My direct line arrives in Tensaw in 1784 where they end up being neighbors to my ancestor Peggy and her husband Charles Juzan. Well as neighborly as the wilderness was at that time. Turns out that Peggy goes on to marry James Trahern and my line is developed. Peggy and her husband Charles Juzan are the godparents of at least one child of Adam Hollinger and his wife Mary Josephine Juzan. One of their sons marries Teresa Innerarity, the illegitimate daughter of  Mary Pyburn and James Innerarity. Thus relatives I have in my Juzan line share relatives in common with my Dad.

Whenever I see a Brunson, Bronson or Brownson before 1810 I know that inevitably the line comes from one of two brothers who arrived in Connecticut in the 17th century. The same goes for the Copelands of Virginia, a name I see often enough in tree's for DNA matches of my mother, but oddly not for my father who is a Copeland. Funny how DNA works that way. That's not to say there isn't a handful of folks with small matches to both my parents, I just haven't figured those out yet.

If I start to talk about relatives on Dad's side, well it starts to look like I have a straight family tree. I don't, I don't even have cousins marrying cousins in my direct line in all the information I know about, (the closest is second cousins and only one of those), but we do have some first cousin marriages in the family. With Dad though, it's more that his family has lived in the same place for over 200 years. After a while, you just are related to about half the county who also descends from people who have been in the same place for 200 years. Which is why a recent DNA match matches my dad in two places, one from a match from his maternal grandmother, and the other, to a match through his maternal grandmother. Neither of us comes from consanguinity, we just come from families with a long history in the panhandle.

Take that in account with some of the rather large families Dad connects with, I mean he has one ancestor with over 100 grandchildren, 28 coming from my direct ancestor alone, and then make him a relative of another family who had 12 kids, and you get the picture. Before long you are kin to everyone, you just need a map to figure it out.

The funny thing is, Dad's family is so close and intertwined while my Mom's, aside from the Choctaw part, is not at all. And yet, she has some of the largest DNA matches with 4th through 6th cousins, and heck, sometimes with Dad it seems as if we are lucky to get a small one at 4.

So my point is, DNA is grand, but you have to take it in hand with genealogy and a grain of salt. After all, it's all relative.

Longhunter Roots and DNA

Update July 2016- we have had many more Wallen matches with the descendants of Doswell Rogers along this segment ( and on one other) since I wrote this blog. Also, we have confirmed DNA with one of Susie's sons with James Wallen (first cousin of Joseph.)

My mother is a linear descendant of Joseph Rogers and his wife Susannah via their son named Henry. Ydna has not only proven that Joseph Rogers was a son of Dauswell (Doswell) Rogers and his wife, but that Dauswell Rogers was a descendant of Adduston Rogers. While YDNA alone cannot prove definitively that Dauswell Rogers is the son of Adduston Rogers and his wife Catherine Dauswell, I am comfortable at this point in saying that these are his most likely parents, primarily because his name is the surname of Adduston's wife.

If in fact though Adduston Rogers and Catherine Dauswell are the parents of Dauswell Rogers, then the DNA matches on my mother's 11 the chromosome in the table below have to at least partly come from Dauswell's wife (unknown name but possibly Ann who signs release of dower in 1795.) I can say this because one of the matches in this section (over half of the 11th chromosome) matches in part to a descendant of Dauswell Rogers who does not descend from Joseph Rogers but his brother William. The table below lists some of the identified and larger segmental matches my mother has on the 11th chromosome.

Match	CH	Start	Stop	cM total	SNP	Ancestor
JM me	11	0	134	158	28796	My mom
MP	11	23	111	74.2	16167	adopted
JKP	11	23	70	36.8	7697	[i]
WM	11	22	75	42.1	4306	[ii]
CLR	11	27	51	20.1	4103	Blevins[iii]
DC	11	34	110	63.3		Wallens[iv]
RFW	11	35	70	23.0	2491	Wallen[v]
KRM	11	37	106	52.5	5954	Wallen[vi]
AB	11	78	108	27.9	6759	Rogers[vii]
JB	11	78	117	37.5	4223	Rogers[viii]
NP	11	80	111	27.3	6683	Rogers[ix]
LJR	11	80	120	41.4	8934	Rogers[x]
PP	11	80	113	29.1	7052	Rogers[xi]
LR	11	97	120	5	1462	Wallen[xii]
PM	11	80	115	30.8	6691	Wallen[xiii]

---

[i] No information

[ii] No information

[iii]  David M. Blevins born 1776

[iv] Margaret Wallens born 1836        

[v] No information on lineage, surname is Wallen

[vi] Elisha Wallen and Mary Blevins

[vii] William Rogers and Hurd, son of Dauswell Rogers and wife (Ann?)

[viii] Louisa Rogers, dtr of Joseph Rogers and Susannah, granddaughter of Dauswell Rogers and wife

[ix] Henry Rogers, son of Joseph Rogers and Susannah, grandson of Dauswell Rogers and wife

[x] Henry Rogers, son of Joseph Rogers and Susannah, grandson of Dauswell Rogers and wife

[xi] Henry Rogers, son of Joseph Rogers and Susannah, grandson of Dauswell Rogers and wife

[xii] Elisha Wallen and Mary Blevins

[xiii] Elisha Wallen and Mary Blevins

It is important to note that 3 of the above matches, sharing 5-52 cM in common have trees all descending from Elisha Wallen and his wife Mary Blevins, and that none of these three matches have another surname in common. The fourth Wallen match I have been unable to trace further back than Margaret Wallen born 1836. Three of the matches are large enough matches to be included here, but I have insufficient information to determine how they are connected. None of the Rogers matches listed match the matches at the beginning of this segment, but all match the crossover KRM who is a known Wallen and Blevins descendant who in turn matches the descendant of David M. Blevins born 1776 who resided in the same county in 1810 that the Wallen and Rogers lived in. Genealogy on the Blevins family does give him a father, but given the information I can find, and my lack of knowledge of the Blevins line in general, I am not comfortable stating how David M. Blevins relates to Mary Blevins the wife of Elisha Wallen.

What is clear then is that the majority of this 74 cM segment (63.3 cM) has a definitive connection to the Wallen/Blevins family line, and over half of it is definitively shared between descendants of Joseph Rogers and his wife Susannah, with almost all of that (27.9 of 37 cM) matching a descendant of one of Joseph Rogers brothers, William Rogers.

So what does this mean? The only logical conclusion would appear to be that the descendants of Dauswell Rogers (5 in total including my Mom) are directly related to the descendants of Elisha Wallen and Mary Blevins. If we rule Dauswell out as the source because there is no direct tie between his presumed parents and the Blevins or Wallen family, that leaves only his wife as the source of this connection. That would mean that the mother of Joseph and William Rogers had to be a Blevins if she was not a daughter of Elisha Wallen and his wife Mary Blevins since we have the one lone Blevins alone match in the mix.

Granted we don't know enough about David M. Blevins to say his mother was not a Wallens either, but in some way shape or form, Dauswell Rogers, who is of an age to be the son of Elisha Wallen and his wife Mary Blevins, is married to a daughter, niece or other close female relative of one if not both of these individuals.

What I can't explain is why this particular segment has stuck around intact for so many generations. Dauswell Rogers is my mother's 5th great grandfather, yes that is right, and so this dna segment has to come from a 6th generation or later MCA pair. Granted my mother's large segment could be a fluke, but the others almost as large are about equally as distant from the Wallen family. So in fact when I looked at the total cM as a guideline for when and where to look, I ended up looking too close and not far enough back. Even with the unknown's in my mother's family, Joseph's wife Susannah, his son's wife Mahala, and George Washington Adams, the intact match of half the chromosome makes it highly probable that this DNA doesn't come from one of them.

In order for the match to not come from the Roger's line we would have to have to many if's to complete. First, the descendant of William and one of my other lines would have to match. Then, they both would have to go back to the Blevins/Wallens within 2 or 3 generations. Then we have the segment length, other than the MCA pair of Elisha Wallen and Mary Blevins, it seems highly unlikely that a spouse of a Rogers could impart the exact same and missing DNA to the connection that is provided by the Rogers. For that reason it seems logical to me that the match is coming from the wife of Dauswell and not a more recent ancestor.

Genealogical facts put the Blevins, Elisha Wallen and Dauswell Rogers in the same place from the tithable list of 1765 in Pittsylvania up to Dauswell's death. This connection makes a lot of sense when you pair it with what looks to be a family connection by DNA.

What it means to me to be Southern

There has been a lot in the news lately about the Confederate flag. A lot of people claim that it's a representation of their southern heritage and not racist. I can't say I agree with that.

It is 146 miles from Pensacola, Florida to Troy, Alabama. If I use that as a radius and draw a circle, my father's family has been in this area for the last two centuries, the oldest arriving in Tensaw 230 years ago, and the youngest arriving 180 years ago. For that reason I named my defunct myfamily group Panhandle Pioneers, the name of my current group now on Facebook.

I was born in the south, but spent the majority of my life elsewhere. For some of my family I suppose, that does not mean I am southern. I couldn't disagree further. There is something that happens to me whenever I drive home to Pensacola. Once I start crossing Mobile bay, a feeling of coming home takes over. This place is in my blood, it is essential to my being. I will return to California where I spent the majority of my childhood after 25 years away, and I doubt that I will feel the same sensation. Simply put, some part of my psyche, my DNA knows where it comes from.

The epitome to me of a Southern woman would be my Aunt Becky. She embodies all that I think of as southern, from sweet tea to black eye peas, she welcomes everyone with the renowned Southern hospitality. I can still recall swinging on her front porch, or "helping" her at their gas station and store out on 9 mile road. I recall summers spent camping at Munson, or driving for a swim at the beach after dark. Fireflies, mosquitos, and water bugs. Sitting under the hundreds year old Oak trees at my stepmother's home, and dreading raking those leaves come fall. Riding in the back of pick up trucks and tubing down the Blackwater River. Family, cousins and meeting for Sunday brunch. This to me is what it means to be Southern. Family, friends, food, ultimately, a way of life.

Most of my ancestor's fought for the Confederacy. I am not ashamed of that fact. Nor am I am ashamed of the few who did own slaves. The truth is, most of my ancestor's were poor white farmers, crackers, who worked in the forestry industry or in turpentine. I also have family who were from large plantations, who owned numerous slaves. One ancestor had a family with his slave, and acknowledged it. I am not ashamed because though the concept that owning another person is alien to me, abhorrent even, I realize that from earliest recorded times, human beings felt that they had the right to own another. That there was some sort of natural order that made one master and another slave, or captive. That made someone noble and another common. I can't say that they were good masters, or bad masters, but to them, this way of life was acceptable. And though I disagree, I can't fault them for it.

On the other hand, if I knew of a family member who belonged to the Klu Klux Klan, who supported white supremacy, who championed the idea of segregation, I would be ashamed. What is the difference do you ask? The difference is these people had ideals built from a culture of hatred and violence. I can't say I had family members who belonged to such a group, nor can I say that I did not. I just know that in my view, these people had values that I could not share, and these are the type of people in my eyes I associate with waving the confederate flag, not as a symbol of a way of life, but as a symbol of white supremacy. I know there are many who disagree, but to me there is a difference.

 People who say the confederate flag represents the south aren't embracing the South of the civil war, they are embracing the south of Jim Crow laws, segregation and men in white hoods who thought nothing of hanging, killing and burning down the homes of other people, based not on the person but the color of their skin or their religion. It would also be an error to believe that those men, who hid behind their masks persecuted only people who were black, because they didn't. They had the same views against Jews, mexicans, and indians. They just didn't hate one people, they hated anyone who wasn't a representative of their white protestant ideal of supremacy.

A more accurate YDNA haplogroup from 23andme tests

While trying to find information about my family's Y DNA haplogroup, I ran across a post on a message board stating that the SNP testing at 23andme was accurate but that they used the 2010 tree. Hmm, I remembered reading a great blog about extra stuff you could do, and I went back to it. I thought I would blog about it so that other 23andme user's would know how to get the latest  haplogroup based on the 2015 tree. To be honest, I do not know if there are snp's not tested by 23andme that determine haplogroups.

1. Download your raw data from 23andme.
This is found under the Browse raw data option on the upper right hand drop down menu. Once the data is downloaded, you need to extract the zipped file.

2. Download the 23andme to y snp program.
This wonderful little program is found here.

3. Open the 23andme to y snp program and then open your raw data file from within the program. It will analyze the data. Save this new information to a txt file from within the program. I usually save it in the same file as the raw data that is unzipped so I can find it again.

4. Download the chrome extension, ISOGG Y tree add on, a link to it is found here.

5. Open the ysnp file you just saved. Select edit, select all and copy.

6. On Chrome, go to the three lines in upper right corner, and click on it. Select settings in the drop down menu. Then select extensions.Find the ISOGG Y tree add on in the list. Under it there will be a link for options. When you select this you will get a new window. A sample is already in slot 1. You can add up to 9 more people's y snp data. Put the name of the person and paste the ysnp file data you copied from the text file. Close the window.

7. Go to the ISOGG Y tree. You can find it here. You will see letters representing the first letter of the haplogroup. There are also links for the Y tree from previous years. The add on will work with all of them.
Click the letter that corresponds with the haplogroup you were assigned by 23andme.

8. Once you get to the haplogroup page, the add on will load. In the upper left hand corner when it is done you will find a drop down screen. Select the name you want to run the program on. When it stops saying loading, scroll down the page. The SNP's will be highlighted RED or Green. Green means you have the SNP, Red means you don't. Simply put, the last green highlighted snp on the page is the one that corresponds to the haplogroup to it's left, and that's the haplogroup your dna is at this time.

As a result of this, my mom's paternal line went from R1b1b2a1a1d at 23andme to R1b1a2a1a1c2 in the 2015 table.

Hope this helps.