RLP 154: Barsheba Tharp DNA Case Study Part 1

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 154: Barsheba Tharp Case Study with DNA Part 1. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (39s):
Let’s go.

Diana (47s):
Hello Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (49s):
Doing well, just working on the client research project this morning with some really cool finds. We were tracing a guy who was a Jewish immigrant in the 1880s and found his marriage record back in Lithuania. So that was really neat.

Diana (1m 4s):
Oh, wow. That’s great. So exciting when you can move across the pond and find records and, you know, for sure it’s the right person.

Nicole (1m 11s):
Yes. We correlated his tombstone in the United States. On the tombstone it said who his father was. That’s apparently the tradition. And then on the marriage record and also said who his father was. So it all matched up really well. And the site JewishGen.com was really instrumental because it, it gave us the transcriptions and translations in English.

Diana (1m 33s):
So nice because they were in Hebrew or Yiddish?

Nicole (1m 37s):
Russian and Hebrew.

Diana (1m 39s):
So those translation websites are fabulous.

Nicole (1m 42s):
Yes. And so for the next phase, we’ll probably need to refer the client to somebody who’s an expert in Russian.

Diana (1m 48s):
Yeah. So, because that is something we are not expert in.

Nicole (1m 51s):
Yes. But it was neat to work on that project. What have you been working on?

Diana (1m 55s):
Well, I’ve been wrapping up my John Isenhaur project. I did this for the study group and wrote the report, found all these new documents and things. And so the final step after I’ve done that, as I like to update my FamilySearch family tree profile for the individual’s and then my Ancestry tree. So I’ve just been taking 30 minutes a day to work on that. And it’s been really fun because I feel like getting it out online will help other people to also understand. So I uploaded the report as a memory and also a source. And then I uploaded a tax list and a couple of deeds, but I felt like the report was really instrumental because it ties everything together. It’s one thing to have 14 sources up there, and they’re in a timeline because in FamilySearch, you can put in the date and it lines that up.

Diana (2m 43s):
But for someone just to look at it, they may not really understand all the ins and outs that my report explains. And I put the notes and the citations. And in my notes, I try to explain the significance of the record as well. So someone could actually look at the, but then they could read them my notes. And then because I have my Ancestry account attached to FamilySearch, all I had to do was just click a little box for those sources. And then it also sent them to Ancestry. So it was pretty easy. I decided not to do the full upload to the gallery for all these documents on my Ancestry profile. I just decided to connect them through FamilySearch, to make a little bit easier.

Nicole (3m 23s):
That’s a great idea. And it’s really nice that you can send the sources after you add them from FamilySearch to update your Ancestry tree that’s connected. So convenient

Diana (3m 32s):
And that’s it for announcement’s. We have our registration open for the DNA Study Group that we will start in September. So anyone who is interested in diving into DNA, we invite you to register for that. We are also taking applications for a peer group leaders. You would be in charge of a small group of your peers, running a session where you just get together and talk about your projects and you get a complimentary registration. So if you’re interested in applying, you can certainly do that. And then also, if you want to get coupons for deals on our, e-courses be sure you join the FamilyLocket newsletter.

Nicole (4m 8s):
Well today we get to talk about one of the research projects I did in the last year. So it’s my case study that I did for the ProGen Study Group, Professional Genealogy. We were asked to write a Proof Argument. So I kind of took this as an opportunity to practice for the case study element in my portfolio for certification through the Board for Certification of Genealogists, which I’m currently working on now. So it was good to have an opportunity to practice writing a case study and get feedback on it because I don’t want the first case study I write to be the one that I submit for my portfolio.

Diana (4m 46s):
That’s a very good idea.

Nicole (4m 50s):
So I also wanted to practice incorporating DNA evidence because I had really been studying that a lot and how to write a Proof Argument that includes DNA evidence. So we wanted to practice it. So after I wrote this for ProGen, I continued working on it and editing it. And now it’s part of our Research Like a Pro with DNA book as a work sample.

Diana (5m 11s):
I think it’s so helpful for people who or want to do something similar to have something to look at and get ideas about how to write up for Proof Argument. Now, and DNA it is essential that we write Proof arguments for our discoveries. We cannot just say, well, I looked at the DNA and it proves that this person is my great, great great-grandfather, you know, you have to have something in writing and you’ve got to explain the evidence that the DNA provides. Well, let’s get started on learning more about your proof study. So what was your overarching research question?

Nicole (5m 42s):
So the research question was who was the father of Barsheba Tharp Dyer. So her maiden name was Tharp, and that we had from some of her children’s records and she married a Dyer,

Diana (5m 54s):
But I’m guessing there was absolutely nothing that talked about her parents, or there was no proof because this is early in the 1800s. And that is one of our most difficult times in finding a father. So my second question is why didn’t you include both parents in your question? Why just the father?

Nicole (6m 12s):
So originally I did include both parents, but I actually don’t know that I am a hundred percent sure which one of the man’s wives is her mother. So I don’t actually know the answer to the question who are the parents. I have a hypothesis that one mother has more likely than the other wife, but I decided that rather than have kind of a shaky conclusion, I wanted to very like conclusively prove that this man is her father. And when you’re using DNA evidence, sometimes the advice is given that it’s best to focus on just one of the biological parents at a time. And in this case, I found that that was a good idea.

Diana (6m 53s):
I agree with that because then you just narrow down the DNA just from that person, like the father and all of his siblings and his lines. And you don’t have to worry about any of the wives and their lines. It just helps you to focus in a little bit more.

Nicole (7m 10s):
Yes. And another issue with this case study, as that it’s already very long and adding in more evidence for the wife’s side of the family and the DNA evidence for her side would add a significant number of pages.

Diana (7m 25s):
Yes. And it’s 30 pages. So it could easily be a 60 page proof argument, so better to have that be separate, right?

Nicole (7m 32s):
Yes. I’m sure I could edit it down somewhat. Probably if I submitted it to a journal, certain things would be removed, but since I don’t have a page limit for my own Proof Argument in case study, I didn’t worry too much about space. So I didn’t want to include things that weren’t pertinent to the argument, but I also wasn’t stressed about trying to fit it within 10 pages or something.

Diana (7m 54s):
Right. So in your Proof Argument, you always introduce the subject. So how did you decide what to include in that introduction paragraph?

Nicole (8m 2s):
I decided to include just kind of a general list of some of the challenges for solving this case. So that was the first half of the paragraph. And the second half of the paragraph, I just gave the methods that were used to solve the case. I’ll just read it because it’s short, Finding a woman’s parents and the early 1800s is challenging, no original record names the father of Barsheba Tharp Dyer, one son’s certificate of death provides her maiden name, 2 county courthouse fires in Tennessee and Arkansas complicate the search for parental connections, family records, proximity and naming patterns provide clues to Barsheba Tharp’s family of origin, DNA matches provide evidence of kinship between Barsheba and the Tharp family who migrated from Fauquier county Virginia to Hawkins county Tennessee.

Diana (8m 51s):
Well, that’s really nice and succinct. I like that you got all of that information and just one small paragraph, and it really gives the reader a hint why you needed to do a Proof Argument with those courthouse fires and the time period, but then also a clue that your methodology and what you’re going to use.

Nicole (9m 8s):
Right. Right. And that I gave a hint, you know, that we found the family of origin, who is this family who came from Fauquier county, Virginia.

Diana (9m 15s):
Yeah. I like to have a little bit of a clue what will be found.

Nicole (9m 20s):
Right. We probably should say that I read all of the DNA articles in the NGSQ and to get some ideas for how to write this. So they all have an opening paragraph that somewhat similar to this, where they talk about the challenges and then how it was solved. And, and they do always mention the fact that DNA evidence helped solve the case in that introduction paragraph.

Diana (9m 43s):
Yeah, that’s good. Well, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can certainly use others to get ideas and to kind of give us a pattern. So the pattern is, you know, we state the research question that we have the introduction paragraph, and then we go into the body of the case study. And that can be kind of challenging deciding how to organize that. So what did you decide to put that at the very beginning of the body?

Nicole (10m 7s):
I decided we need to focus on putting in kind of the family lore, like the family records and information that was passed down about Barsheba. We had a birth date for her that was passed down in a history written by, I believe it was like her great granddaughter, that birthdate wasn’t found in any other original records. So I wanted to include it, even though did conflict with the records, but you know, sometimes that family information provides clues. And it’s kind of like almost saying the starting point for the Research, like here’s what the family believes, because this is what must been shared in written documents about Barsheba. Then the next section I went into sharing what the original records about her actually did say.

Nicole (10m 52s):
So I shared some of this family lore, and one of the pieces of family lore was interesting. It said that Barsheba and her husband, Robert, were both orphans who met when they were both working. That was a really interesting clue that I didn’t know what to make of it at first, because I think they were married about 1830, no marriage records remained for them because Hawkins county had all this record loss. So I did include a short discussion of the fact that the place where they lived was a place that had record loss from a courthouse fire in1863 and that probably explains why there’s no information about their marriage.

Diana (11m 31s):
Yeah. We see that a lot in our Southern research where those records are missing. And I think that really helps to understand. I mean, you obviously can keep searching, I guess, like in family Bibles and things, but if it’s not there in the marriage books, or in any of the surrounding counties, then that can really help to explain it with the record loss. Well, I think the whole thing about that, both being orphans who met when working was really interesting. And I was trying to imagine what Barsheba would have been doing in 1830 in Tennessee. I would imagine it was a farming community or maybe she was working in a shop. I don’t know. What do you think?

Nicole (12m 11s):
So I don’t know. I just think they were farming, but yeah, that was an interesting thing. And I still don’t know anything about Robert’s family of origin. He’s been a big research question for me. Probably a lot of, you know, that I’m looking for John Robert Dyer’s family of origin in Hawkins, Tennessee. It’s actually how I came across this Barsheba Tharp case study in the first place in looking for my husband’s patrilineal line, we got to John Robert Dyer and couldn’t find any evidence for his parents. So I was looking at the DNA evidence and found this big cluster of DNA matches, who seemed to come through Barsheba’s parent’s side of the family. We didn’t really know her parents.

Nicole (12m 51s):
So I decided to take a break from John Robert Dyer and focus in on this side of the family. And then, now that I’ve kind of separated out all the Tharp DNA matches, now I can go back to the Dyer side and see what’s left.

Diana (13m 3s):
That’s really good methodology. Well, what else did you have besides this family history and the lack of a marriage record?

Nicole (13m 10s):
I thought it’d be a good time to talk about the fact that after Barsheba was older and her husband passed away, she was enumerated on the 1880 census as a widow. And that census said that her parents were Tennessee born and that she was also born in Tennessee. I also include the fact that she and a couple of her younger children actually migrated out to Sanford, Colorado, the end of the 1880s, where she died right after they arrived there. Unfortunately there was no civil death record or headstone uncovered for Barsheba there in Colorado. It was kind of the frontier. And I talked to a few different people on the phone and looked into different collections for a death record for her. And they just, they didn’t have consistent death records at that time.

Diana (13m 52s):
That is absolutely true. And you’re right. It was the frontier. So looking at your Proof Argument, I see that you’ve got all the negative searches though, put right there so anyone could know what you would search. And of course, we want to include those. We want to show we’ve done that reasonably exhaustive research,

Nicole (14m 10s):
Right? I did quite a long footnote there, footnote nine, a negative search for death record of Barsheba and my emails to various county clerks that came back with no death record. And then also my searches in cemetery of records Find a Grave, Billion Graves, a book about Conejos county, Colorado, the cemetery records. And didn’t find it.

Diana (14m 30s):
Yeah. My dad in talking about his Southern ancestors would just say, well, I’m sure they just buried him out on the farm. But I think that that probably happened a lot. And there’s nothing that survives to tell us where they were buried.

Nicole (14m 42s):
Yeah. Except that one first date that the family has and their written history, and which could have come from maybe a family cemetery in Colorado that we don’t know about, or that maybe doesn’t exist anymore.

Diana (14m 55s):
Well, I thought all, so maybe a family Bible.

Nicole (14m 58s):
Yes. I have heard of a family Bible for this family and I have tried to track it down and I’ve contacted so many people who were like, yeah, this cousin had it. And I heard that person had it and I contacted all of them and they’re like, oh, we don’t have it. It’s lost. So it’s really kinda frustrating. And that might, or something I should add to this, it’s hard to know and I’m done. I don’t feel fully perfect. I could go back and edit it forever. Probably.

Diana (15m 23s):
That is true. But you do have to move on sometimes. So it looks like the next section you talk about Barsheba’s birth and marriage and all the conflicts. So what did you find out the records

Nicole (15m 35s):
From Barsheba’s life in Tennessee have quite a few conflicts for when she was actually born. You know, we see that a lot with people who lived in rural areas that maybe weren’t fully literate or just didn’t have a reason to remember their birth year. So there were quite a few conflicts. So I went through all of that. I went through all of the census records and what they said for her birth, starting with Robert Dyer’s household in 1830. And they were just a young couple. He was 15 to 19 and there was just a male and a female and the female was aged 10 to 14. So I concluded this was almost certainly Barsheba because their first son Augustus Dyer was born in 1830 or 1831, according to the 1900 census.

Nicole (16m 19s):
And some of his other records, especially that family history that was written by the great granddaughter of John and Barsheba Dyer. So knowing that her son was born around 1830 or 8, 1831. And I’m pretty sure that that was her living with Robert in 1830 together as a young married couple very young.

Diana (16m 40s):
That sounds so young to us, doesn’t it. But I think that people married younger in those circumstances,

Nicole (16m 48s):
She was an orphan and was working, you know, it sounds like she made, we needed someone to take care of her or was ready to move on with her life.

Diana (16m 56s):
And especially if they were both orphans, maybe they just decided it was time to join forces and have that somebody else to take care of them since their families are not around. Right.

Nicole (17m 6s):
So that was an interesting thing to think about. So the fact that Barsheba was listed as age 10 to 14 in1830 means that her birth year range was 1816 to 1820, but the family record said that she was born in 1813. So right there, I have a conflict. So it’s possible that the 1830 census just had the mark in the wrong column, or it’s possible that the family, we just had the date wrong as well. So I needed more data, but I did look into Tennessee law about minimum age at marriage in that kind of thing. And they didn’t have a law about that at all. North Carolina had some laws about like, if you’re under a certain age, you have to have your parent’s approval.

Nicole (17m 46s):
And a lot of those marriage bonds and then permissions remain and I’ve researched on them and they’re great, but Tennessee didn’t have anything like that. And Hawkins county had a courthouse fire, so they didn’t have anything at all really. But I did find that an English common law, which early Americans followed when there wasn’t a state law about it, it suggested a minimum marriage, age of 12 years old for girls with the consent of their parents. So if she was an orphan who knows if that was even needed.

Diana (18m 15s):
That’s really good that you researched the common laws since she didn’t have anything for Tennessee. And that’s interesting that it was 12, that’s really young.

Nicole (18m 24s):
Right. And you know, when a girl is able to start having children, then I guess she could get married back then. Yeah. Then I have a table that goes through all of her ages in the census records from 1830 to 1880, just correlating the data to kind of show her age. And I decided to put in Robert’s age as well, because there were some discrepancies with his age as well. So in 1840, she’s listed as being 20 to 30, which is just a huge range from 1811 to 1820. They were both in that 20 to 30 category. And then in 1850, they were both listed as age 37. So I thought that was kind of funny. We know that they’re both those that have the same age or kind of gave me the idea that maybe somebody was just not thinking about it, just saying, oh, they’re both about 37…Dad’s 37 or maybe Mom’s 37 too.

Nicole (19m 15s):
I dunno. I just thought that that was interesting. And so 37 gives the birth year of 1813, which does match up with what the family lore said. And then in 1816 Barsheba was age 46 and Robert was age 50 on that 1860 census. So that gives Barsheba’s birthday year as 1814, and then in 1870 Barsheba’s 57 and Robert is 52. And I looked at that so many times trying to see if it maybe was a 57, so that they’re both 57, but no, it was very clear that Robert was listed as 52 and Barsheba was listed as 57. I almost wonder if they got the ages swapped for the parents because hat would make a lot more sense if she was younger and he was older, especially, you know, going back to that 1830 census where she was listed as age 10 to 14, it was all just all over the map, except for the 1880 census where Barsheba was a widow and was more likely to have been the informant because she was the head of household.

Nicole (20m 17s):
And that census, her age was 64 years old. And that gives us a birth year of 1816, which does match up with the 1830 census.

Diana (20m 26s):
Well, I think that it’s really nice that you put that all on a table because looking at your report, you’ve got the table and then you’ve got the citations included within the table below that you’ve got the narrative where you discuss this a little bit and try to resolve this conflict. So it’s nice to have all of that right there together so that when I’m reading the narrative, I can refer back to the table and kind of have that reference point,

Nicole (20m 50s):
You know, and the first draft of this report, where I was trying to answer the question, who are the parents of Barsheba, it was really important to know the exact year that she was born because her father married another woman in 1817. So if she was born after that second marriage, she was the daughter of the second wife.

Diana (21m 11s):
Yeah. So this is an important thing to figure out, well, I’m looking at the table. It certainly does seem that 1813 makes the most sense. And that, that first one where she was 10 to 14 is just probably an outlier, like you said.

Nicole (21m 26s):
Yeah. That’s what I thought at first. I think that’s what most people think too. But as I looked at it, I thought that 1880 census where she was 64 and she was the informant probably, and sh it was 1816, or that kind of gave me cause to think that it was more likely for her to be that younger age. So it just, I was really conflicted, but I ultimately came to this conclusion in my narrative that the 1830 and the 1880 censuses, we are more reliable because assuming that it wasn’t a stray mark in the wrong column, if that is actually what they meant to put there, when somebody is younger, like that age 10 to 14, they usually know their age. Yeah. And it’s harder to mistake a young teens age for something different because it’s more visually obvious.

Nicole (22m 9s):
And so that was my conclusion was that it’s probably more likely that she was born about 1816 or 1817 or so, but who knows, it’s still not concluded. And with some new evidence that I’ve found for who her mother is, I think she was definitely born before the second marriage.

Diana (22m 27s):
OK. Well, there you go. Yeah. I was just going to comment that I’ve seen some of our ancestresses get younger and younger as they age and you know, they’re supposed to be 70 and they’re 65 and they’re supposed to be 80 and there are 72. So they just keep losing years as they get older or whether they just don’t want to admit to how old they are or they just, honestly don’t remember.

Nicole (22m 49s):
I think it’s probably more of a case of just not needing to know their age and not keeping track. And especially if you’re not really good at math, like maybe, you know, you were born in 1813, but then you have to calculate in your mind. Well, how old am I now?

Diana (23m 4s):
So that’s true. The other thing that makes me laugh every time I think about it is from, I think it was Kathleen Hinckley’s book on the census where she has a little anecdote about census takers and this census taker went to a woman’s household, maybe 1880, and she really wanted to know the ages of all the other women in the neighborhood. That’s funny. And then the next section, you dive into the children. So why is this important to include the children of Barsheba if you’re just trying to figure out her father?

Nicole (23m 36s):
Part of it is just reasonably exhaustive research on everything about Barsheba and her children and their lives, because often the children’s records will give a helpful clue. So the step to using the children as a helpful clue, is finding out who our children actually were and making sure that matches up with the census records. So I correlated the 1840 census where they had five people living with them under age 14. Then I made a table correlating that with 1850 and the 1860 census. And between those three census records, I found that they had 11 children, which matched up with the written history that was written by the great-granddaughter those names that I found in the census records matched up with the names that were listed in the history of Robert and Barsheba Dyer.

Nicole (24m 21s):
The other reason why, including the names of the children was important was because the oldest child, his birth year helped estimate the marriage year for Barsheba in 1830. And then also the naming pattern that I discovered later was important to be able to talk about the fact that, you know, one of the sons was probably named after Barsheba’s father.

Diana (24m 41s):
Yeah, that’s really good. And we, of course, can’t ignore the children because so often the clues in the children’s lives lead us to that generation. But I like your table where you have the 1840 census with just the ages, male or female, then matched up with the 1850, where we actually get names of the children, matched up with 18 and 60. And it’s interesting that there are two children that only appear on 1860 and there’s no child that appears on all the censuses, oh, wait, there’s one. Mary is on all three. So I think that it’s such a good way to look at your information or to be able to display that. And then you have your narrative that explains it.

Nicole (25m 20s):
There was one son, the first son, who was only on the first census, 1840, so his name, we already knew because of the family history that was written. But I did find that he got married and that was one marriage record from Hawkins county that was remaining. He was living in his own household in 1850. This is Augustus Dyer. So in 1850 can see his inferred wife Cinda and his 11 month old daughter Josephine. So the marriage bond that is and remaining in Hawkins counties from 1849, 1 of the few that survived. And there was a very interesting tidbit of information on that marriage bond. And that’s the bondsmen for Augustus was a man named William Tharp.

Nicole (26m 5s):
And so we had Barsheba has made a name as Tharp from the death record of one of her sons. And so seeing the name William Tharp on Augustus’s marriage bond gives us another clue that there’s a connection with this Tharp family who lived in Hawkins county.

Diana (26m 21s):
Oh, that’s great. When you get a name of a person with the same surname, that such a good clue.

Nicole (26m 27s):
Yes. And then I later found that Augustus Dyer witnessed William Tharp’s deed in 1850. So this association and proximity to the Dyer family indicated that he was a close relative of that Barsheba

Diana (26m 40s):
Yes, indeed. The Tharps and the Dyers, were all tied up. It sounds like. So it looks like you’ve got some discussion on the naming patterns, which can be so helpful if they are strong. So when did you find out about that and

Nicole (26m 56s):
The written history of Barsheba and Robert Dyer by the great granddaughter it mentioned that there was a son of Barsheba and Robert named Louis Tharp Dyer. And in that history that was written, the author said that Louis was probably named after Barsheba’s father. So I did a little research on Louis Tharp Dyer, but I couldn’t find any historical records that spelled out his middle name. I just found him listed as either Louis Dyer or Louis T. Dyer. So did match up with the family lore, but it didn’t prove it sure, but it’s probably accurate that family probably did have a Bible that listed his full name.

Nicole (27m 41s):
The Bible has been lost in recent years, but I thought that was a pretty strong clue that the great granddaughter of Robert and Barsheba wrote down that his name was Louis Tharp Dyer, and that he was named after Barsheba’s father.

Diana (27m 53s):
And I would agree.

Nicole (27m 54s):
And so I had this name Louis Tharp now to kind of go and look at it.

Diana (27m 58s):
So now you’ve got this name and I’m guessing that you probably also look for Tharp candidates in Hawkins county who could be the father, because when we do this, we want to look at all the men that are probable fathers. And I like to eliminate them, you know, if I can one by one until there’s this one man left standing. So what did you find out when you were looking for all the Tharp men?

Nicole (28m 23s):
Well, I found in 1840 that there were just to Tharp men in Hawkins county named Louis Tharp, wahoo,

3 (28m 32s):
And William Tharp,

Nicole (28m 34s):
who we had already found as a bondsman for Augustus Dyer. So there were those two. So looking at their ages in 1840 Barsheba was born about 1816 to 1818. Her father was probably going to be born before 1800 if he was at least 18 years old when Barsheba was born, but William Tharp was born about 1809. So I found that he was too young to be Barsheba’s father, but he could have been another male relative. And I thought maybe a brother, but Louis Tharp was born about 1786, the 1840 census didn’t get that exact date, of course, but I did research him forward on the 1850 Census. And that was his estimated birth year from that.

Nicole (29m 16s):
So I found that Louis’s name and age and close proximity to Barsheba and Robert, you know, he was enumerated on the same page with Robert Dyer in 1840. I thought that made him a great candidate for Barsheba’s father. But then I went back in time, 10 years to 1830 and found five additional Tharp men living in Hawkins county. So that was a little bit surprising, but I found that only two of them were old enough to be candidates for the father Barsheba so I could easily eliminate the others because they were too young.

Diana (29m 51s):
That’s good. That’s great. When you can eliminate and especially when it’s based on age, because that’s pretty solid.

Nicole (29m 56s):
Yeah. So, I mean, it’s likely that a person younger than 18 wasn’t fathering children, but it is possible, so I could be wrong. Yeah. But

Diana (30m 4s):
What you do is you do your best to kind of eliminate and then you follow the most likely, which just sounds like what you were doing. So were you able to figure out where Louis Tharp came from?

Nicole (30m 15s):
I did find that out and unfortunately I couldn’t really eliminate the other candidate very easily tried, you know, before continuing on with Louis Tharp and his origins and things. I included a paragraph about this other guy named Robert Tharp, or Thorpe actually, and they’re just so we’re not very many records left and from Hawkins to work on that. So the 1800 to 1820 federal census records for Hawkins, were lost, there were no will or probate records for Robert Thorpe, but I did find that Robert Thorpe’s heirs, paid taxes in Hawkins county in district 16 in 1836. So he had passed away by then, but he still could have been the father of Barsheba.

Nicole (30m 58s):
But I did find that Robert Dyer was not in that tax district. He was in district 15 in that year. And so was William Tharp actually. And this Robert Tharp was in a different district. I don’t know how close it was. I guess I could have looked at a map, but he was in district 16, which probably indicates they were in neighboring districts.

Diana (31m 18s):
Yeah. And proximity is important because people didn’t have really nice roads to travel long distances. They married the girl next door literally, and so that does make a difference and it is good evidence having Louis be closer than this, Robert.

Nicole (31m 33s):
Yeah. He certainly was more likely. And ultimately that was the only thing that I could say was that my conclusion to this paragraph that was supposed to eliminate Robert Tharp was just that Robert Tharp did not live in the same 1836 tax district as Robert and Barsheba Dyer, nor did he live in proximity to the Dyers on the 1830 census. So he was in a different page at least. So we don’t really know for sure, but it wasn’t alphabetized. It still looked like it was listed by community. So I just put Robert Tharp can be eliminated because there is no evidence linking him as the father of Barsheba.

Diana (32m 4s):
Yeah. I think we’re beginning to see why you need a DNA evidence to really prove this because you always have to think, well, there’s that possibility it could have been that other guy or someone or those other men.

Nicole (32m 15s):
So to your question about where Louis Tharp we came from, I was able to trace him back to his origins before Hawkins county, which was really helpful in kind of figuring out who his first wife was. So Louis Tharp, he had first paid taxes in Hawkins county in 1810. By 1836 he wasn’t taxed. So he probably aged out of the poll tax cause usually they don’t continue taxing older men. So the 1810 tax list included Louis Tharp next to a man named John West. And I found a connection between Louis and John West when in 1829, Louis Tharp and John West Sr posted bond for John West Jr.

Nicole (32m 56s):
in a murder trial and Hawkins county. So that was interesting. Wow. So not only did they live next to each other, but they were associates. So I wondered if maybe these two came to Hawkins county together. And I had seen some family trees that said Louis Tharp was married to a Joanna West. And I did find that West connection in Hawkins that kind of linked me back to this marriage, to Joanna West, that I’ve found in Fauquier county, Virginia. And the permission was granted by Joanna’s father, John West . So I found these connections taking our Louis Tharp of Hawkins county back to Fauquier county, Virginia, and that Fauquier county, Virginia, there were a lot of Tharp connections and I was able to find Louis first appearing on personal property tax lists there in Fauquier in 1800.

Nicole (33m 48s):
And he was listed as a free white tithe over 16 years old with his inferred father, Jesse Tharp. And because the way that they did these tax lists was that, you know, if a person was over 16 and they had to be accounted and taxed, but their taxes, we usually paid for by their father or whoever the head of household was, you know, when they’re just 16, because they’re still living at home. So they were actually listed by name with that person where you can infer that it’s their father.

Diana (34m 16s):
I love those kinds of tax lists. Those are the best.

Nicole (34m 19s):
Yeah. So that was really neat. So if he was 16 years old in1800, he would have been born about 1784, which correlates pretty closely with the 1850 census that I’ve found or Louis later in his life. So I found Louis listed again with Jesse in 1802 and 1803 and ultimately found enough evidence that I believe Jesse was Louis’s father,

Diana (34m 42s):
Right. And having the two families moving out together from Fauquier to Hawkins county, Tennessee, that’s strong evidence. And that’s what we’re always looking for. And these migrating families to connect them back. That was probably really exciting when you were working on those records and Hawkins county and found that.

Nicole (34m 58s):
So it was, there was another researcher who had done some of this research. So I was able to kind of piggyback on what he had found and find some of the original, he had some things he didn’t have Louis’s first appearance on the personal property tax list, but he had Jesse Tharp and all of his children listed just, I had to do a little extra leg work to find out for sure, you know, the records pertaining to Louis Tharp, linking him to this Jesse Tharp and Jesse Tharp did not go on to Hawkins county. And like I said, I did find that Louis Tharp married Joanna West, the daughter of John West and John west and Louis Tharp, I went to Hawkins county together.

Diana (35m 37s):
Right. Well, now that you found this connection to Fauquier county, it looks like in your report that next you talked about the children of Louis Tharp and Joanna West who you introduced in that previous section. So did you find some additional children?

Nicole (35m 53s):
So I did. I found that the William Tharp, who was the bondsman to Augustus Dyer was likely a son of Louis Tharp and Joanna West. Although I could write a separate Proof Argument just for that, because the evidence is very sparse. So I did kind of a proof summary with bulleted list of evidence why I think that he’s the son of these two and the fact that they were enumerated on the same page of the 1840 census. Also the fact that William named one of his sons, John Louis Tharp, mm. That Louis name came through. And also the fact that William was born about 1809. So Louis was old enough to be his father. So that was kind of what I had.

Nicole (36m 33s):
I had some other associations where they were both associated with a Vernon family because Louis married Judy Vernon for his second marriage and William also married a Vernon as his first wife. So just a couple of little pieces of evidence, you know, not anything really strong, but proximity and possibility of being the right age.

Diana (36m 56s):
More connections. Absolutely.

Nicole (36m 57s):
So there was a daughter named Elizabeth Tharp who married John Parrott. And she’s the only other person that I could find that I thought was a child of this marriage of Louis Tharp and Joanna West. And she’s another one that’s really difficult to prove. She’s the daughter of Louis and Joanna, but she was born within the time where she would have been a daughter of this first marriage of Louis Tharp, you know, before 1817. I also found that she named a son, John Louis Parrott. So I think that they’re naming their children after their father Louis. Yes.

Diana (37m 31s):
Yeah. That is great evidence. And then it looks like John Louis Parrott had a death certificate that stated his birth in Hawkins Tennessee.

Nicole (37m 39s):
Yeah. So that was really helpful because Elizabeth Parrott and her husband ended up moving away from Hawkins. So it was a little bit harder to, to link them definitively. And there were a lot of DNA matches coming down through the Parrots. And so that’s originally how I found her was the fact that she was listed as a probable daughter in Thrulines for Louis Tharp because so many of her descendants match the Dyers.

Diana (38m 3s):
Oh, wow. So that was really good to get some clues from Thrulines. So that kind of leads us into some DNA after you’ve laid this foundation, it looks like you decided that’s when you wanted to put your DNA evidence. And did you have to do some playing with the DNA evidence and the documentary evidence to figure out how to put it all together?

Nicole (38m 26s):
Yes. At first I decided to talk all about everything in the documents first and then put the DNA evidence at the very end. But instead I decided to weave it in a little bit more at the advice of Karen Stanbary. So I kind of rewrote it at this point of the case study. I still have to talk about Louis Tharp’s second wife, Judy Vernon, and their children and Louis Tharp’s siblings, and their descendants. And all of these three groups have DNA matches to the Dyers. So I decided to start with Louis’s first marriage and the matches to those descendants. And then, and the documents I go back and talk about Louis’s second marriage to Judy Vernon, those descendants and the DNA match to them.

Nicole (39m 11s):
And then the third section is Louis’s siblings and the DNA matches to them. So I kind of go back and forth between the documents and the DNA matching.

Diana (39m 20s):
I like that because I feel like you get a sense of who everybody is, as you’re talking about the documents, and then you look at their descendants and see the DNA, and then you kind of go back and forth. I think if you present it all at once, it might be a little overwhelming and you wouldn’t remember what was going on. So .

Nicole (39m 38s):
True. Yeah. I kind of liked the idea of just talking about the matches from that group when I introduced that group of people. So yeah. So I have just introduced Louis’s first wife Joanna and the two children, William Tharp, and Elizabeth Tharp Parrot. Unfortunately, there were no DNA matches descending from William Tharp and it was so frustrating and disappointing because I actually had like a good connection with William Tharp and the documents ’cause he was that bondsman for Augustus Dyer. And there just were not any matches. So I don’t know why I’ve been trying to find out if any of them have tested and there’s just not a match or maybe none of them have tested.

Nicole (40m 18s):
So I ultimately would like to have one of them be tested, but I think there’s enough evidence without that. The other daughter of Joanna West and Louis Tharp, Elizabeth Tharp Parrot, she had a bunch of DNA matches who descend from her. So this section focuses on that. And so that, since this is the first time I’m talking about DNA, I did a paragraph just talking about Autosomal DNA and how it’s passed down and the, and inheritance of that and how it’s not a perfect percentage that you’d expect certain cousins to share, but recombination and that kind of thing. And I just talk about some of the methodology for not using small segments under 7 centiMorgans and that kind of thing.

Diana (40m 57s):
And that, that’s good to know that because these are ancestors that are far back and you are probably using sort of smaller segments. I mean, you know, you don’t have anything that’s over a hundred, I would guess, but I guess we’ll talk about that. I’m very curious.

Nicole (41m 14s):
I do have some over 100 but I don’t have any under 7.

Diana (41m 17s):
so that’s good.

Nicole (41m 18s):
That’s what I set the limit at. I noticed some other people do that too. And there are case studies in the NGSQ

Diana (41m 23s):
That’s great. And I liked that you have the methodology.

Nicole (41m 27s):
Yeah. So the next thing I did was just include a table with all of the base test takers that were descendants of Barsheba and actually had a lot. I had even more than what included it, but I included 15 of Barsheba and Robert Dyers’ descendants, kind of as the people that I’m using to compare with the Tharp DNA and show, yes, these Dyers match the Tharps. So I have descendants of Augustus Dyer, Mary Dyer, Richard, Elizabeth, and John James Dyer. And so I have not all the children are represented because some of their children didn’t have children. These are the ones who gave me permission to have access to their DNA results.

Nicole (42m 7s):
So I was able to view their matches. So we have a diagram showing how they descend from Robert and Barsheba Tharp. And then the next thing I did was just include a table showing how much DNA is shared between descendants of Barsheba and descendants of Louis and Joanna. Oh, before that I have a table showing the descendants of Elisabeth Tharp Parrot, who was the daughter of Louis and Joanna West. So I had five people who gave me permission to include them in this study who were descendants of Elizabeth Tharp Parrot. So I showed their descent from her. Then I had the table showing how much DNA they shared.

Nicole (42m 48s):
There was anywhere from eight centiMorgans, all the way up to 30 centiMorgans shared between Barsheba’s descendants and Louis and Joanna’s descendant. Oh, great. Yeah. And you know, these were probably going to be like fourth cousins once removed, fourth cousins twice removed, fifth cousins once removed. But I didn’t know whether they were full fourth cousin once removed or half fourth cousin once removed, because I still hadn’t decided if Joanna West was the mother or the second wife of Louis was the mother. So I had to put both in my column for hypothesized relationships, which was kind of clunky and I didn’t love it, but I ultimately just didn’t feel like I had enough proof or space in the case study to say which mother it was interesting.

Nicole (43m 33s):
And that’s true. Right. And so the other thing that was hard with this group is that because Elizabeth Parrot was like an older sibling or half sibling to Barsheba her descendants are further away. So they’re all like fifth cousins or fourth cousins once removed because of that, they’re not part of the Shared cM Project. So those relationships aren’t included there. So I had to just do a little discussion about that. There wasn’t data to compare it against, right. There is a DNA match there. The Shared cM Project does give data for full fourth cousins once removed, but they don’t give data for half fourth cousins once removed.

Nicole (44m 15s):
So the half relationships in the Shared cM Project, there’s less information about those, especially far back in time. So if you’re talking about like a half second cousin, yeah. There’s data about that, but there’s not data for half fourth cousins and half and half fourth cousins once removed. So they do fall within the expected range for, for all of the full relationships, you know, full fifth cousin once removed full fourth cousins twice removed all of the ranges, begin with zero and go up to about 80 to 126 and what you would expect for those relationships with this group. So they fell within the range, but couldn’t tell me if that was half or full or so

Diana (44m 57s):
At this point, I think we’re going to wrap up this episode and continue this in part two.

Nicole (45m 0s):
So, you know, I could talk about this forever, so we do need to wrap it up and continue. In the next episode, we will talk more about the second wife and the other DNA evidence that was found in a lot of it was surprising and caused me to change my original hypothesis.

Diana (45m 17s):
Oh, wow. I’m excited to go through that. Thank you for teaching us all so much about how to use DNA with these projects that are quite far back in time or something. I think we all need to learn how to do better.

Nicole (45m 27s):
Yeah. It was great practice. And I learned a lot in doing it and I’m still learning. We all are still learning, so. Okay. Well, we will talk to you guys again about this next week. Have a great week.

Diana (45m 37s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.

Nicole (45m 37s):
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