Boring Genealogy Stuff.....Not Real Long Tho

I've been spending quite a bit of time with my genealogist's hat on lately.

*  I am sad that this season of TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" will be over in only 2 more episodes.

Last Wednesday evening's episode was neat because the first ancestor of guest Valerie Bertinelli had lived near were I am living now. 
Her great grandfather Gregorio Mancia tried to kill her great grandmother, Mary Possio Crosa Mancia, and then turned the gun on himself in a little town outside of Scranton, PA back in 1931.  Before removing to Lackawanna County, PA, Gregorio and Mary had lived in western VA, near Wytheville as his draft card noted.  He was a coal miner so both areas make sense for them to be living in during those times.

Anyway, after her paternal ancestor search, they moved on to her maternal ancestors and soon were revealing how one of her lines stretches back to Edward I of England and beyond to William the Conqueror.
Edward Longshanks happens to be my 23 x Great Grandfather too.
Thus Ms. Bertinelli and I are some sort of cousins.
Imagine that!

*  Then later in the week I was doing some deep ancestor hunting on my PARHAM line.  On my maternal grandfather's line I have Thomas Parham Sr. and Susannah Hunt as my 9 x GGrands.  I discovered that it appears that Susannah married twice, with Roger TILGHMAN being her second husband.
I know a fellow blogger who has talked about her TILGHMAN(later changed to TILLMAN) connection over the years so I wrote to her to let her know that we may be related through allied families(related by marriage of one line to another, but not directly by blood).  My blood relation ancestor, Susannah's son Thomas PARHAM, is not a TILGHMAN.
So we hashed it out and my 9 x Great Grandmother married the brother of my friend's 8 x Great Grandfather.
Are you confused yet? lol

I had seen that TILGHMAN name on my tree yet had never thought that it would be connected to fellow bloggers TILGHMANS, because mine came to/were based in Virginia and she kept mentioning Maryland in connection to her TILGHMANS.

But on further investigation her TILGHMANS were part of the Virginia branch of that family that ended up heading into Maryland early on after their immigrating to the New World in VA.
There are 2 different TILGHMAN lines in Maryland it seems--The piece of the Christopher TILGHMAN line that removed to Maryland and a line sprouting from a Dr. Richard TILGHMAN, for which TILGHMANS ISLAND and other areas in Maryland on the Eastern Shore are named.
And this is more than anyone reading this ever wanted to know about the Tilghman family I am sure. lolz

Having found that connection by marriage she led me to some more family Tighlman ancestry information going further back on the TILGHMAN line showing that Christopher/Gideon/Roger/et all descend from the Plantagenet line of the kings of England.
And this line is the same line that I and Valerie Bertinelli's have on our trees.

So fellow blogger and I DO share bloodlines after all, just further back in our respective ancestry.
Our most recent shared common ancestors are Ralph de NEVILLE and Joan de BEAUFORT as we are each descended from a child of this couple.  My 19th x Great Grands are also fellow bloggers 17th x Great Grands.  I guess my family is a bit sooner to jump into bed than hers.  ;-)

*  Then I got bored last week....after all, all the college prep was finished......so I started doing a family tree on the next TLC "Who Do You Think You Are?" guest, Kelsey Grammer.
I have never really been a fan of his but what the hey!  I am always up for a genealogy challenge.

I wanted to see if I could do this(without cheating and googling his line, other than his parents names and dates to get me started), tracing his ancestors back before the show aired on tv.
And I think I did fairly well.
I got back into the late 1600's on 2 of his paternal lines and 2 of his maternal lines, as well as back to late 1500's on 1 of his mother's lines.  I am not saying that there might not be errors in the information because, after all, I haven't documented all this information, but it's fairly accurate.
I found lots of English, some French, some German, even some Nova Scotian Canadian ancestors.

And the tv promos sound like the show will be investigated a "patriot" on one side and a "pioneer" on the other side of his family during his episode.

And I know EXACTLY which ancestors they will talk about now, since I found them too.  8-)
So stop reading this and don't scroll down to the end of my post if you don't want to spoil the surprise when you watch the show, ok?
Because I am gonna end this with the names but I won't give any other clues or information about them.  I just want a record of me having found this myself.  8-)))

*  Then late last week, I got an email from someone asking about a certain line of my ancestors.  This person manages DNA accounts at FamilyTreeDNA for, I am assuming, are other family members who have had their DNA tested.  She let me know that one of her subjects/members matched me in the autosomal testing they had done(about 50cms)and we also have one surname in common on our respective family surnames lists, DUDLEY.

It didn't take long to track down our common ancestor--Edward DUDLEY, my 10th x Great Grandfather.  Their ancestor William, and my ancestor Richard were the sons of Edward DUDLEY and Elizabeth PRITCHARD.
While it's not common to match DNA with someone when your shared ancestor is so many generations far removed, it IS possible and highly likely if the ancestors are affected by "Founder's Effect", and if you have ancestors who were very early (usually English)settlers to America and intermarried within their social circles.  You may be able to match DNA on those lines of your ancestry going further back than the standard 6 or 7 generations.

Keep scrolling for the Spoiler--

































SPOILER ALERT--
The patriot ancestor for Kelsey Grammer is probably Jacob Grammer, a First Lieutenant in the Maryland Militia/Revolutionary War, and the pioneer ancestors are probably Joseph Dimmick and his wife Mary Frances Kriechbaum, in 1852.  You figure out what state they removed to...it's out west and has a shoreline.  ;-)

Sluggy



 

The Good & Bad About Sharing Genealogy

If you don't remember my post HERE about my purported 10 x Great Grandparents, you may want to refresh yourself on that, as it comes into play during this multipart saga I am beginning here.  8-)

Being an amateur genealogist is akin to being a masochist at times.
You work and work and work and finally find a connection to someone or some line and just when you are all happy and excited, you hit a brick wall.
Which makes you work and work and work and hope to make another connection, which in turn gets your face slammed into yet another brick wall.

This is how genealogy works for the most part for most people.
Unless you had nerdy ancestors who loved doing genealogy before you and left you a clear, documented paper trail of all your generations of family.
That my folks is a genealogist's wet dream.  8-)
But that is very rarely the case in the genealogical life. 

As I have said before most amateurs at this will use Ancestry dotcom at some point as it's an easy source for finding records without leaving the comfort of your home.
It's great this age of technology!

But all the sharing on Ancestry dotcom also has it's ugly side.
Being able to share and see other family trees can aid you in your own search but it's a double edged sword.

Mainly because you don't know how or where the other people have gotten their information from to assemble their tree.  Other trees can be riddled with mistakes and down right lies. 

Sluggy's axiom of wisdom--"If the tree you are copying leads to famous, notorious or royal people in history, view it with an extra dose of suspicion.  Everyone wants to be related to famous/infamous and royalty and will baldface LIE to make it appear that they do."

It is never good to just blindly copy information off of someone else's family tree and then leave it at that and walk away.  But sometimes a less than professional genealogist may resort to this, lacking their own resources or knowledge or time or money to do the job.

I am guilty of having "lifted" family members info. from other family trees.  Given my resources and level of skill, plus add in the fact that frankly I don't have 20-30 years to hunt down clues at this age in my life, I do use information off of other family trees at times. 

Usually I will use them as a last resort or take the information and then try to document it, so it's using that information/person in the tree as a "hint" around which I try to substantiate their place in MY tree.
What I don't do is blindly just lift a person and cut & paste them into my family puzzle, even when the corners aren't even close to fitting.

If I am not within my core at least 50% sure that a particular person finds into my puzzle I will keep them there for the time being, with a notation that this person could possibly be a mistake so that other's looking at my tree(and I can't keep others on the site from seeing my tree unless I make it private)know that I know that some links I have forged in the family chain aren't 100% accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Sharing information in this way can be a good thing as it may give another genealogist an idea or a hint, but it can also be very damaging as it can lead to people spreading around erroneous information or innocent mistakes in the recording of facts.
So I am on the fence over this practice.

Now this sharing information comes into play in regard to my Packer/Isgar line.
I initially used other family tree's information to build parts of this line. 
I started at the known end.....the generations closest to me and worked via documents I could find online back.

I got to a point where I could find no public documents readily(as I don't have access to any European records at this point...too much $$$ to access) so I made some "leaps of faith" by following the people trail via other's family trees that jived up to that point with mine.  That brought me back to England and Ireland and Phillip Packer and his parents and Sarah Isgar and her parents.

Then I went about digging up documentation to substantiate the claims of dates and people which I had lifted from other trees.

And I hit an obvious error.
And it's an error that every public tree on ancestry dotcom seems to have, so I am thinking either someone made an honest mistake at one point with a date and then everyone else has lifted that erroneous information into their trees OR worse, that the person in question does not fit into this tree at this juncture and someone just lied about it.

Here is how the Packer Line I am on, descends from Phillip Packer/Sarah Isgar as is purported on hundreds of family trees on Ancestry dotcom.........see if you can find the error.......

Phillip Packer 1618-1686
Sarah Isgar   1625/26-1677
who begat--

Phillip Packer immigrant 1656-1739
who married--
Hannah Sessions  1665-1689
who begat--

James Phillip Packer  1686-1764
who married--
Ann Coates  1699-?
who begat--

Susannah Packer  1664-1728
who married--
Robert James Baker  1660-1728
who begat--

Douglas Baker  1688-1764
who married--
Jean Jane Thompson  1717-1762
who begat--

Douglas Baker, Jr.  1743-1778
who married--
Mary Elliot  1743-
who begat--

Elliot Baker  1775-1836
At which point I could find written records.

I have since substantiated up to Robert James Baker on the Baker line and their wive's line and the Sessions and Coate's lines as well.  Plus I have been able to document the Packer line down to James Phillip Packer.

Which leaves us at James Packer and Ann Coates' daughter-Susannah Packer.....the square peg in my round hole as it were. ;-)

You will notice that this line, as does EVERY single family tree on Ancestry dotcom has Susannah Packer being born the YEAR BEFORE HER GRANDMOTHER!
Go look, I'll wait.......

The few folks I have contacted who have this family tree with this obvious error have either ignored my email or said they just copied the information from another tree but then they never did any research or questioned the obvious error here.
Argh.

As Susannah's supposed mother, Ann Coates was not born until 1699, this Susannah couldn't possibly have been born in 1664.
Upon further research I have found that Susannah's father had a sister named Susannah as well, which means there could be confusion between the Susannahs here.  My Susannah Packer may be in reality the Aunt of the Susannah that has been place in my direct line.
This would change the line of descent from James Packer to Susannah Packer-his sister and down to my generation.

This would change my line of descent to this.....

Phillip Packer 1618-1686
Sarah Isgar   1625/26-1677
who begat--

Phillip Packer immigrant 1656-1739
who married--
Hannah Sessions  1665-1689
who begat--

Susannah Packer(sister of James Pillip Packer rather than his daughter)  1664-1728
who married--
Robert James Baker  1660-1728
who begat--

Douglas Baker  1688-1764
who married--
Jean Jane Thompson  1717-1762
who begat--

Douglas Baker, Jr.  1743-1778
who married--
Mary Elliot  1743-
who begat--

Elliot Baker  1775-1836


This change basically takes out one of the generations but the birth date for Susannah is still incorrect if Hannah Sessions is now her mother rather than her grandmother.

Then I found 1 tree with Susannah being born in 1728 rather than dying in that year, which is impossible because the marriage to Robert Baker is documented as occurring in 1709!

And then I found another tree with Susannah Packer with dates of 1688-1764 and this Susannah being James Phillip's sister.  It is looking at the moment like THIS is MY Susannah Packer but there are still questions and inconsistencies.

I tell you my head is about to explode sometimes from all this! lol

So this line, as laid out, is still not "firm" with factual documentable evidence that my line goes back to Phillip Packer/Sarah Isgar in this descent.
There are still questions(and it's possible My Susannah Packer may not even be blood related to this Packer line now) and until I find the missing links, or the right person to ask or someone comes forward to connect with me on this issue, the voracity of this family tree will have concerns for me.

And then this week another window opened in this brick wall.
To Be Continued.....

Sluggy