RLP 198: Identifying John Wilson Part 1 – DNA Evidence

Nicole (10s):
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 authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Hi everybody. Welcome toResearch Like a Pro Hi Diana.

Diana (49s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you doing?

Nicole (51s):
I’m doing good. I should call you mom. I know some people wonder why I call you Diana, of all people to know your name.

Diana (59s):
That’s right. And it’s okay. I know what you mean.

Nicole (1m 3s):
I do actually usually call her mom. So what have you been doing and working on?

Diana (1m 10s):
Oh my goodness. So many different things. I’ve been reading though. Such a fun book. I think I talked about this maybe last week. I don’t know. I’m going to talk about it again today. Cause I’m just loving it. It’s Marsha Hoffman Rising’s book on breaking your brick walls down, The Family Tree Problem Solver. But it’s been so fun. I just went through the 10 biggest mistakes that genealogists make and I totally saw myself and others and each one of those and it was fun. She gets great case studies and good examples. So I’m really enjoying that. It’s always fun to learn from other experts.

Diana (1m 50s):
So I would recommend that book to anyone who wants something new.

Nicole (1m 53s):
I’m guessing one of the common mistakes was combining two people of the same name. And I know I’ve done that before in the past. All right. So for announcements, we just wanted to let you know that we’ll be at NGS, the national genealogical society conference coming up in may. So if you want to come and stop by the exhibit hall, we’ll be there at the family at booth. So we hope to see you there.

Diana (2m 15s):
Great. I’ll be so to see people in person again,

Nicole (2m 18s):
And we’re excited to have our guests here today. We’re welcoming Rick Wilson to the show.

Rick Wilson (2m 23s):
Hi, Nicole and Diana. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Nicole (2m 27s):
Thanks for coming. We’re really happy to have you here to talk about your Wilson research. And just by way of introduction, Rick joined us at our Research Like a Pro study group number seven, and he is a skilled researcher and writer. After working with him, we were very impressed and he’s sharing his research today to identify John Wilson’s origins using some DNA evidence and historical context. So it’s really fun. Rick has been researching his family for 30 plus years and he’s worked with wide DNA since 2006 and autosomal DNA since 2011. And he actually also has a blog and a website it’s called myfamilypattern.com and professionally Rick teaches marketing at Texas State University.

Nicole (3m 13s):
So Rick, before we jump into talking about the Wilsons and tell us how you got started in genealogy research.

Rick Wilson (3m 20s):
Well, I started at a relatively young age. I was living in DC for a period of time and I knew the national archives were there and I’ve always been fascinated with my own personal history. And I immediately went to the archives, looking for an ancestors whose name I didn’t even know, but yet I wanted to find evidence that an ancestor had served in the civil war. I always quickly disappointed in the fact that I couldn’t find anything, but I was invigorated to learn something more about my family. And my father quickly sent me an obituary for his grandfather, which really just sent me down the path of investigating my family and kind of developing my own process for how to do research, which to be honest, fits very well with Research Like a Pro.

Diana (4m 10s):
Wow. It’s so fun to hear everybody’s backstory and there’s always that little hook isn’t there? It’s something that gets us wanting to research.

Rick Wilson (4m 18s):
Yes. Yes.

Nicole (4m 19s):
Well, let’s talk about the Wilsons now. So tell us about your research problem.

Rick Wilson (4m 24s):
Well, I was investigating my six times great grandfather, John Wilson, who was born about 1716, and died in 1799 in Pennsylvania. And I think like many of us, we all have a favorite ancestor. And for me I’ve always over-identified with, you know, any ancestor carrying my current surname. And I wanted to know where in Europe he was likely from, with a name like Wilson, you know, he could be from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and even parts of Scandinavia. So I had no idea where he was from, but I really wanted to investigate it.

Rick Wilson (5m 5s):
And so that was the purpose of my research.

Nicole (5m 8s):
Wilson is a common surname. And so I’m not surprised at all that that was a big challenge and researching that far back in time, that’s a big obstacle as well with not as many records. So

Rick Wilson (5m 19s):
It was very much a challenge and I’ve always been frustrated with a Wilson surname cause they, the least at that point in time seem to be really prolific. So it was difficult to always match up, you know, my surname and the forename of my ancestor to any other records. But I will have to say, you know, after participating in the Research Like a Pro study group, the structure that you guys provided really gave me the confidence to tackle this research problem and really organize it in a way that really helped me convey the information I was looking to do.

Diana (5m 54s):
You know, it’s interesting you say that the idea of the structure, I think it’s doing just one little piece at a time, you know, you have this assignment dive in and do your best on that rather than just sitting down and trying to solve it in one session. I think that makes a huge difference.

Rick Wilson (6m 10s):
I really agree because I mean, I know you’ve read my report and it’s not necessarily a simple report. There’s a lot of moving pieces in it, but that structure gave me the confidence to kind of put it together and tackle one piece at a time and then synthesize it in a way that hopefully, you know, makes sense to readers.

Diana (6m 31s):
Yeah. It’s just an amazing thing. When you break it up into little pieces, well, let’s go through your research strategy. I mean, how did you evolve this challenge of a common names so far back?

Rick Wilson (6m 45s):
Well, I tried to tackle this from many different directions. I really utilize DNA quite heavily. I used why DNA, because that is one of the areas that made it makes sense if I’m tracking the origin of, you know, my ancestors surname. So why DNA really kind of helped me focus on that and that has more deeper roots that can take you back further in time. I also used autosomal DNA in part, because that would allow me to also then look more recent with matches, hopefully kind of triangulating those two. And then once I felt like I would have a better direction of where I would be looking, you know, where the DNA matches are pointing me to, I then look to documentary evidence as my, kind of my third pillar of trying to understand, you know, where my ancestor was from.

Rick Wilson (7m 36s):
And then finally, and I know both of you talk about, you know, research context a lot. And I, and I couldn’t agree more that this was an important part to really understanding not only the story of my ancestor, but making sure I was interpreting records correctly based off of, you know, what was happening in the time periods, where my ancestor was likely immigrating. And for those DNA matches I had when they were immigrating and living either in Ireland or here in America,

Diana (8m 9s):
That was such a great explanation. I want to respond to a couple things, especially, I know we’ll talk more about the Y-DNA, but just the front of this. So many people take that Y-DNA test in hopes that it’s going to just give them their ancestor and it doesn’t work like that. Most of the time. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a case where that actually worked. You have to combine it with autosomal. And I love that you really talked about the documentary and the historical context because I’m sure there were a few people at the same name, you know, John Wilsons and that historical context that helps you say, okay, mine is this one and this is the other guy over here.

Diana (8m 50s):
So I love how you put that all together.

Rick Wilson (8m 52s):
Thank you. It was certainly a challenge kind of sort out the John Wilsons and then frankly, all of the Wilsons that were in the area where my ancestor lived. And so that really did kind of help me separate them, especially when we think of the different origins where Wilson can come from, the historical context helped me to kind of separate them. And so I, I did find that very useful on the Y-DNA you’re right. It won’t pinpoint this as my ancestor, but it does help separate Wilson lines into well-defined groups. So I could easily kind of eliminate others and include others to, you know, to further research

Diana (9m 33s):
And all that is a great explanation. And of course that takes a little bit of knowledge about how to use Y-DNAs. So I’m glad you’re going to share some more of that with us, but before we get to that, tell us just a little bit more about John Wilson, put him in some historical context for us.

Rick Wilson (9m 51s):
Absolutely. So John Wilson was likely born around 1716, and he first shows up in any records in the us in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Philadelphia. He advertises in 1747 that his horse has run away or been stolen and puts out a 20 shilling reward in the Philadelphia newspaper at the time. And so that was his first mention. What was key about that is that he says where he was living. He was living in Soulbury Township, Bucks County near Thomas Pryor’s mill.

Rick Wilson (10m 31s):
And I was able to link him to that particular newspaper article because that was where his wife was living, probably like one mile from there. So I was able to kind of pinpoint that with him. And other than that, he married a Quaker woman about 1745 or 46. And the records track him moving from Soulbury Township, Bucks County to Franconia Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania around 1752. And he lived in Franconia from that point onward until about 1799, when he, when he died.

Diana (11m 9s):
Wow, that’s great. And I noticed that you were able to use some Quaker records, which are so great in that period. You know, the 1700s, those records can be kind of sparse. So that was providential that you had the Quaker records.

Rick Wilson (11m 25s):
Yes. The Quakers records, I think have been so helpful in my own research. If anybody is fortunate enough to have any Quaker ancestors, they often give you a route of where they moved from, from town to town, because they were required to, you know, bring a letter with them. So to speak, to kind of say, in their new community, we are upstanding citizens from the old community. Will you please accept me into your local community and church where we’re moving to and so easily able to track ancestors, you know, as they moved at a point of time when records are very sparse

Diana (12m 1s):
That’s great. And you also mentioned in your blog posts that you use to track his fan club, all the associates that were named in those records, and that helped to really put him in a family grouping as opposed to another person of the same name

Rick Wilson (12m 16s):
That is true. The Quaker marriage records are fantastic. If you ever see one, they basically, you know, say somebody who’s been married and then they list everybody who’s in, in attendance. And those that are listed in attendance are usually family and friends and the family is listed often close to. And oftentimes below the two individuals who are getting married and usually the parents are actually listed directly below the two getting married. And it’s just fantastic for providing that level of detail.

Diana (12m 49s):
Oh, that’s so awesome. Well, that gives us a good basis. So now we can dive into DNA.

Nicole (12m 57s):
Yes, let’s do this. So Rick, tell us, how did the Big Y-DNA analysis helped with this case? And if you wouldn’t mind just explaining some of the, the terms that you’re using as you go.

Rick Wilson (13m 10s):
Absolutely. So Big Y-DNA is a Y-DNA test that tests markers that are only passed down from father to son. So it’s really a male type of test. And I use Family Tree DNA’s most advanced tests, which is they call the Big Y 700. And it’s because they test 700 markers and we’re looking for patterns within those markers that can separate all males into a particular branch of the human family tree. And so I use this to basically figure out, okay, where does my John Wilson fit?

Rick Wilson (13m 53s):
And I tested my own Y-DNA. And since I have an unbroken male line to John Wilson, and the results from this is, is you get a couple of different things from Family Tree DNA, one, it gives you your list of matches of those who have a Y-DNA signature if you will, meaning you have few mutations in your DNA suggesting that you are more closely knit. I had a total of 17 DNA matches that were really close to each other. Family Tree DNA suggested that was probably about 300 to 400 years ago, that the common ancestor for these 17 DNA matches where they were they kind of represented on the family tree.

Rick Wilson (14m 41s):
I really looked to kind of investigate these seven closest matches. And what I ended up finding out is that nearly every single one of these 17 DNA matches were they had origins to county Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. And that really kind of helped me pinpoint, you know, as a compass, so to speak as to where to begin to look for my ancestral origins for John Wilson.

Nicole (15m 12s):
That’s wonderful. So can you tell us how close were they like, was there a genetic distance of 0, 1, 2?

Rick Wilson (15m 18s):
They kind of varied. And I, at the Big Y 700 level it’s, you know, it can be quite dramatic in terms of, of their genetic distance and still be a close, big, wide match. But across them, the 17 group, they varied from about five genetic distances or different haplogroups haplogroups are, are really like a smaller branch of the Y-DNA family tree. And so they differed from about like, I would say anywhere from five to those in my own branch, really only like a couple

Nicole (15m 59s):
That’s such a good explanation. And it’s good to point out that it’s different with the Big Y matches versus like a Y 37 test where there’s only 37 markers, right? So you’d only expect to see a distance of 0, 1, 2 and 3 and 4 at 37. But when you test so many more markers, there’s going to be more differences.

Rick Wilson (16m 20s):
Yes, absolutely. And I think what is interesting is, and I won’t claim to know everything about it, but what is really impressive, what FamilyTreeDNA provides is what they call a block tree, which I kind of equated to the large branches that come off of a trunk of a tree. And the block tree that they show is this branch that comes off of the trunk. If the trunk is every male in the planet, the big branch that comes in are those that are in my haplogroup, or I-one-a, which is the kind of word my Wilson group fits. And this larger branch is in broken up into smaller branches.

Rick Wilson (17m 2s):
And those smaller branches are aware of my DNA matches are, and we can map those to that larger branch and FamilyTreeDNA can provide an estimate based off of, you know, how many years ago that likely was. And I have to stress that it is an estimate. I mean, I, I feel that there’s probably in as much art as there is science into kind of determining the number of years back in time that the connection lies.

Nicole (17m 31s):
Absolutely. I do like the block tree for that purpose of showing, you know, maybe these are each of these blocks could represent a range of years. And then going back, seeing where you meet up with different branches and back to the trunk. One thing that I think a lot of people might get confused about are the different names of the haplogroup and, you know, some are really higher level and some are more specific, but even if they’re different, that can still mean that you have a common haplogroup further back in time. You know what I mean?

Rick Wilson (18m 4s):
Yes, that’s exactly it. I mean, if genes keep mutating at a regular pace there, they’re going to create separate branches that follow certain generations down one line, but there is one point where they all meet and they don’t have mutations further back in time. And that’s what that block tree really shows. And it’s a really good visual to kind of accompany what I think can be overwhelming is looking at, okay, so we have this many mutations different. What does that mean? That block tree really helps, especially for those of us who are visual learners. It’s great.

Nicole (18m 41s):
Right. So all of your matches were Wilsons except for a couple Toners.

Rick Wilson (18m 47s):
Exactly. I think a lot of people, when they get Y-DNA tests back, they’ll see many different surnames and it’s kind of hard to understand. Okay. Why would that be nearly all of my, of the 17 were Wilsons except for four, which was Toner. I have a couple of research collaborators who’ve done really amazing work with the Wilsons back-end county Fermanagh and Northern Ireland. And they really kind of helped point me in a direction like, who is this Toner and why are they in our Wilson group? And I was able to discover the actual birth and baptismal record for the Toner individual, who is the ancestor for this group.

Rick Wilson (19m 28s):
And basically what the baptismal records showed is the birth record, sorry, was that the mother gave her surname to her son who was Toner and the father was not listed and was likely probably not unknown, but it was probably out of wedlock more than likely. And that’s how that line developed,

Nicole (19m 52s):
How neat that you were able to find that and document that mis-attributed parentage or whatever you want to call that event where the man’s surname isn’t passed down. So often we see this in the Y-DNA results, but we have no idea when it occurred. So congratulations to you for finding that baptismal record and, and putting all that together. That’s neat.

Rick Wilson (20m 12s):
Thank you. Thank you.

Diana (20m 13s):
Yes. And I love that you went to documentary evidence to figure that out, because we don’t realize that those types of things are in the records, but I’ve seen lots of cases where a court order books and they have to name the biological father because they want him to step up and provide some help for this woman. You know, the bastardy bonds and illegitimacy. It can be right there in the records. And if you didn’t know that you wouldn’t go looking for it so it can help explain some of these things.

Rick Wilson (20m 45s):
I agree. I think it’s really important. You, I mean, you find your own path, but for me, what really works is you, you work with DNA, you follow those leads there, then you work with the documentary evidence. Then you come back to your DNA and see if it kind of helps explain it better. So I really feel like it’s kind of bouncing back to the, both to kind of build your story.

Diana (21m 7s):
I completely agree. Well with that, let’s shift gears and go to autosomal DNA because I know the Y-DNA pointed you to the specific location in Northern Ireland, but now you’ve turned to autosomal DNA to get a little bit closer. So tell us how that helped.

Rick Wilson (21m 28s):
Well, that was really helpful for kind of taking what Y-DNA was, which was really that compass pointing me to, you know, county Fermanagh and Northern Ireland. You know, obviously Y-DNA points you back a little further in time. And I wanted something that would allow me to pull a little bit closer to where we probably have more records available. And so I use autosomal DNA to look for a DNA matches that potentially were connected to my Wilson line that also had origins and county Fermanagh. I used not my DNA, but I used another cousin of mine. She’s a third cousin who I’ve been working with for upwards of 20 years.

Rick Wilson (22m 9s):
She has a closer connection to our common ancestor, John Wilson than I do. There were longer generations in her particular line. So she is actually John Wilson is her fourth great-grandfather. And within that kind of that sweet spot of what autosomal DNA really helps us to identify, which is, you know, potentially up to eight generations backwards. So she allowed me to potentially access some DNA matches that I wouldn’t have access to. I mean, the fact that she’s got two more generations potentially gives her 75% more of the original DNA of our ancestors than I would have.

Diana (22m 53s):
You’re very fortunate to find a tester like that. Well, and it was someone you were working with. So, but for someone who maybe doesn’t have a connection, you know, that might be a little bit more difficult, but I think it’s well worth seeking out someone who can take the test that is closer. I love that you gave us that number that she had potentially as much as 75% more DNA, that’s pretty striking.

Rick Wilson (23m 18s):
It is pretty impressive when you, when you think about it. And you know, I’ve worked with her DNA matches for upwards of 10 years. And I just see the patterns are so much richer with her DNA matches than they are with mine and some of my other cousins. So it really is valuable.

Nicole (23m 37s):
I just have to ask Rick, did you ask any other testers to share with you or did you just focus on yours and, and hers?

Rick Wilson (23m 47s):
That is a very interesting question. I have over the years developed many different relationships with cousins to help identify some of my ancestors that the Wilson line has plagued me for a very long time. And it was only by me recruiting some of my cousins and I focused on cousins that were like second and third cousins. So I wanted greater distance. So we wouldn’t have as many common ancestors together and I recruited them to participate. And I’ve met a lot of other people online. Who’s already tested with ancestry or other places, and they’ve been very generous to share their list of matches with me.

Rick Wilson (24m 31s):
And I have probably access to upwards of two dozen people who have shared their DNA matches with me that really has helped to identify potential clusters of DNA matches for whichever line I’m working on. It’s been really, really valuable.

Nicole (24m 48s):
That’s fantastic. I think that’s one of the keys to really finding out more about our ancestors that are further back in time, you know, that whole concept of autosomal DNA coverage, where if we just do their own results, we maybe only get a tiny piece of the picture of that ancestor. But once we add in more, more and more descendants of those further back ancestors, then we can really find more and more clusters like you said,

Rick Wilson (25m 12s):
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think the amount of success that I’ve had breaking through brick walls, I directly related to having access to a number of kits that are triangulating back to that common ancestor. And we all know we inherit DNA randomly from our parents. So it only makes sense logically that the more people we include in our scoping of potential ancestors, the more likely we are to find those clues.

Nicole (25m 45s):
All right. Well, tell us how you worked with the, all these matches. How did you separate and filter them to find the relevant clusters? Okay.

Rick Wilson (25m 53s):
That was an interesting process. And I’ll admit that it took really several years to kind of hone in and truly identify these clusters. But the one thing that the process that I use is something that I’ve kind of called the EGGSSS method, which is an acronym for earliest generation group of siblings search strategy, which is really to say that if I’m going after trying to identify John Wilson’s parents or something beyond that, I’m going to focus in on the siblings of my ancestor, who directly descended from John Wilson. So, you know, his son, William Wilson was my ancestor.

Rick Wilson (26m 34s):
So I look to his siblings and my DNA matches. I have to them to look for shared matches that I have, or my cousin in this case had with those siblings or through those sibling lines. The, the point being is that when I do that, I know that the matches that we share in common through those siblings should be related to the ancestral couple of John Wilson and his wife, Anne Skellton. So they should be there now, not 100%, but the likelihood is that that should be. So I use that kind of sibling search strategy to find those clusters and in doing so, I actually didn’t find any at that immediate generation of John Wilson’s children, all of those DNA matches that I had in common.

Rick Wilson (27m 23s):
There were through the Skellton line, which I was able to identify based off of those shared matches that I had with those cousins. So I went down one more generation to my William Wilson, who is the son of John Wilson, his children. And I looked through those matches that I had through the siblings of my ancestor through William Wilson. And it was there that I struck that goal. I found a couple of the siblings if John Wilson is my oldest ancestor, William Wilson was his son William’s son. John is my ancestor. And so I looked to John’s other siblings to find those shared matches that could potentially help me identify that.

Rick Wilson (28m 5s):
And that’s where I found them. And I had several strong matches that identified these clusters of matches, who had county Fermanagh ancestral origins. And so I was like, they have to be either related through my William Wilson line that links up to John or through his wife, Phoebe Penrose. And so I had to basically do the leg work to find out whether it was on the Wilson side or the Penrose side. And that really comes down to, you know, doing traditional genealogy of mapping out those family trees and, and, and finding those potential links between those matches and either my Wilson or the Penrose side at that point.

Nicole (28m 43s):
So it sounds like to separate out the Penrose matches, you were looking at family trees to separate them out. Did you have some Penrose matches as well, that helped you filter the list?

Rick Wilson (28m 51s):
I certainly did. I had a number of Penrose matches and I compared the Penrose matches to the other shared matches that I was thinking that, okay, this is on my Wilson side and they didn’t cross, which suggested to me that those were two distinct clusters.

Nicole (29m 8s):
And you mentioned in your article that you had used at Gephi network graph as well. So tell us about that.

Rick Wilson (29m 14s):
Yeah. So when I was looking at the Ancestry matches these, these clusters that seem to be on the Wilson side, I wanted to visualize them in another way. I mean, I could kind of see the pattern amongst my matches within Ancestry. And I know Nicole, you’ve done some great blog posts about using DNA GEDCom and Gephi to visualize your matches. So that is what I did. I downloaded my Ancestry autosomal DNA matches, I’m using the DNA GEDCom client. And what I did is there’s obviously thousands of matches that are in there.

Rick Wilson (29m 55s):
But what I did is I took only those that were part of the cluster that I was seeing in Ancestry. So I filtered out everybody else and I just concentrated on those. Then I used Gephi visualization software to show the network or the pattern of these matches and thankfully, and not surprisingly, it really showed what I was seeing in those Ancestry matches, but in a much clearer form. And I saw that there were two distinct clusters of DNA matches that appear to be on, on my Wilson side.

Nicole (30m 29s):
That’s fantastic. And I love that you were able to filter out the matches that you didn’t want, you know, in order to make your network graph more clear. I think that’s a challenge for those of us who’ve tried Gephi.

Rick Wilson (30m 40s):
It was a process I’m not going to lie, but it was easy enough to do when, you know, the matches you’re looking for the DNA GEDCom file can sort by those and you can easily remove those and keep those that you want. So,

Nicole (30m 54s):
Yeah, I think everyone who’s listening should go look at the blog post. It’s called identifying John Wilson’s, Irish Origins, part two Autosomal DNA Analysis. And you can see a screenshot of the, the network graph here, and you can see the green cluster, which is the Pennsylvania cluster. And then the, the yellow cluster, which Rick identifies as the New Haven cluster.

Diana (31m 16s):
You know, as you’ve been talking, what is really coming to my mind is your familiarity with these matches, you have spent a considerable amount of time learning about these DNA matches and who they belong to, because if they are just names and you have no idea, nothing jumps out at you, but you have sounds like you spent years working with this DNA. And so you can finally come together. Is that right?

Rick Wilson (31m 44s):
I, you know, I partly laugh because, you know, my family says sometimes I spend more time with dead people than I do with live people, but I’m a very analytical person. And I love to understand these patterns. And, and I do know their family trees and to be honest, most of these matches I’ve actually built their family tree for them. As I know we all do. So, yes, I do know them intricately and I’ve spent years doing it and it bears repeating your class, gave me the confidence to take what I already knew in my head and organize it in a way that I hope readers can both digest and kind of appreciate it.

Diana (32m 26s):
Oh yeah. Your article is so clear and the visuals, it’s just a joy to read through it and understand how you did this. So at this point, you are returning to documentary evidence and working on these clusters, you’ve got the Pennsylvania and the New Haven clusters nicely separated out, but then you have to find the common ancestor of each cluster. So how did you approach that part

Rick Wilson (32m 54s):
As a preamble, the Pennsylvania cluster seems to be an earlier cluster in America, arriving in the 1700s where as the New Haven cluster was more recent immigrants in the 1800s. And so I was able to kind of separate them that way and help focus in some of my documentary evidence, but it was something that I discovered actually many years ago that didn’t come into focus until I really started analyzing the data is that one of these clusters, I found evidence in one of the county histories that said, I’ll actually read it. They were talking about one of the descendants that was actually featured in that county history.

Rick Wilson (33m 37s):
And they said that this individual who was named Robert J. Wilson, who was born in 1845, this is what they said about his grandparents, John and Mary Burgess Wilson natives of the Emerald Isle, but of Scotch descent. They were born in county Fermanagh Ireland, immigrated to America shortly after the revolutionary war settling in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where they resided for several years, thence, they removed to Mifflin county, Pennsylvania where most of the children were born and raised subsequently they moved to Ohio. It was this passage that really kind of helped me to kind of see that migration path because I found these ancestors in, in Ohio.

Rick Wilson (34m 25s):
And then I started seeing the pattern amongst the other matches. This was the Pennsylvania cluster. I started to see Mifflin county, Pennsylvania showing up in some of these other matches. And as a research them back further, I actually found another Wilson ancestor in that it’s like the pieces started to come together. And it was really that, that key finding that really kind of helped focus that together.

Diana (34m 50s):
Okay. I just have to make a comment looking at your blog posts, that the source of that great little piece that you read us was actually from a portrait and biographical album of Linn county Iowa. So that wasn’t even in any of the locations mentioned.

Rick Wilson (35m 7s):
Absolutely.

Diana (35m 7s):
How’d you find that?

Rick Wilson (35m 8s):
I’m not gonna remember the correct term, but it’s basically when you kind of build your tree for somebody else, not backwards, but forward in time. And it was following their descendants and building that tree out that allowed me to find that record to kind of link it back further in time.

Diana (35m 27s):
Oh, that’s great. And that’s so important in DNA work, building the descendancy tree, looking every clue in those descendants. So what a great example.

Rick Wilson (35m 36s):
Thank you.

Diana (35m 37s):
So you’re starting to identify clusters. And I also had to mention that that was fun to read that they were natives of the Emerald Isles Ireland, but a Scotch descent. So these are part of the Scotch Irish group that were there in Northern Ireland and because of persecution at that time, wanted to come out to the new country. So that’s fun because, you know, I’ve talked a lot about when I was reading the book on the Scotch Irish and their migration to Pennsylvania. So it’s fun to see that play out and in your family tree.

Rick Wilson (36m 13s):
Absolutely. And that was a good clue that really helped my documentary research that comes later. So I have to laugh because I was, as I was writing this report, I was listening to your podcast where you were actually talking about the book you were reading, which was, you know, the Scotch Irish in America. And I immediately ran to the library and grab that book because it was valuable resource for me to kind of provide the historical context to, you know, what comes next in this research project.

Diana (36m 45s):
Oh, that’s awesome. Isn’t it a fun book? I mean, it was written so long ago, but I just found it pretty fascinating. It was fun.

Rick Wilson (36m 52s):
It was great. I mean, there’s a read about not only the reasons for the immigration or immigration, but also to understand their migratory paths within the US you know, it really corroborated a lot of the evidence that I found within this, my Pennsylvania cluster and my New Haven cluster.

Diana (37m 13s):
That’s great. Once again, bouncing back and forth DNA, historical context, the documents, it just all works together

Nicole (37m 21s):
For our last discussion today. Let’s talk next about some more DNA bouncing back to that. So tell us what segment data were you able to use in your research and, and how did it help?

Rick Wilson (37m 32s):
This was actually a very enlightening process. So once I knew my two different clusters that were focused on the Wilsons, I, I had to look at potentially, did they all show up on the same DNA segment? And so we all know that Ancestry doesn’t provide that level of detail, but we can download our raw DNA and upload it to other types of DNA software that can allow us to visualize that. So I uploaded my cousin’s DNA to several different sources, GEDCom, FamilyTreeDNA, and drawing a blank on the third.

Rick Wilson (38m 13s):
But when doing it, I was able to not only visualize where her matches were, then I found some of the matches that were in Ancestry were also in some of these sites. And there were enough of those Ancestry DNA matches to show up, to really pinpoint the chromosome and the location in the chromosome where these DNA matches were found. And they really triangulated down to chromosome number seven. And it was where I found the Pennsylvania cluster was adjacent to this New Haven cluster. And they were right there on the DNA and kind of straddling across both clusters were DNA matches descending from my John Wilson ancestor.

Rick Wilson (39m 2s):
So it was a really good visual to see how these clusters were next to each other and how my group of ancestors really kind of brought those two clusters together.

Nicole (39m 13s):
That’s great. And it’s wonderful that you could find matches that you already identified at Ancestry at GED Match and the other companies, you know, because people are often in more than one database.

Rick Wilson (39m 23s):
Yes. And thankfully people are consistent and you know, what they call their user ID in Ancestry is often similar to the, what they use in the other sites, or thankfully they also post their family tree, which also helps.

Diana (39m 39s):
Right. Did you use DNA Painter to paint those chromosomes?

Rick Wilson (39m 43s):
I did not. I have used DNA Painter in the past, but for this one I actually used for my visual. I just use PowerPoint because I didn’t want to get too complex, but I could show where these segments appeared on the chromosome seven, just as easily. Cause I really didn’t have that many to include.

Diana (40m 6s):
Interesting.

Nicole (40m 6s):
Once again, go and look at his blog post because there’s a wonderful visual that he created in PowerPoint that shows the start and stop points on chromosome seven. And it’s, it’s really nice.

Diana (40m 17s):
Yeah. The vigil. It’s wonderful.

Rick Wilson (40m 19s):
Thank you.

Nicole (40m 21s):
All right. Before we end, but at this point of the research with the Y-DNA and autosomal DNA analysis, what was your intermediate conclusion at this point?

Rick Wilson (40m 29s):
At this point, I felt extremely confident that John Wilson’s ancestral origins were in county Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, but I wasn’t quite sure exactly where I also, because of that, that wonderful county history was believing that potentially his roots were beyond Northern Ireland were probably in Scotland and that his ancestors were part of the, the Ulster plantation of Northern Ireland. Most likely from Scotland.

Nicole (41m 3s):
Well, you’ve found a lot of great things so far. So we look forward to talking with you again next week about documentary research and historical context.

Rick Wilson (41m 12s):
Thank you.

Diana (41m 13s):
All right. Well, everyone have a great week and go make some discoveries. We’ll talk to you next time.

Nicole (41m 57s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.