Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Diana’s Shults research project to determine if the parent-child link between Hickman Monroe Shults and Martin Shults is accurate. Today is part two of this series and we talk about her research plan to incorporate DNA evidence and documentary evidence into the report. We discuss Thrulines, locality research in Alabama, AncestryDNA communities, exploring DNA tools, and creating a research plan.
Transcript
Nicole Dyer (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 205. Proving the parent child link using ancestry thrulines. Part two. 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.
Nicole Dyer (42s):
Hello everybody. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.
Diana Elder (45s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you today?
Nicole Dyer (48s):
Excellent. How about you?
Diana Elder (49s):
I am doing well. Just recovering from having been in Sacramento for the national genealogical conference, which was so fun to be there with you and to see people in person. We really had a great time.
Nicole Dyer (1m 5s):
Absolutely. I really enjoyed the conference and I went on the clock. So now I’m working toward my one year of time to finish up my BCG portfolio.
Diana Elder (1m 16s):
That is so exciting and a good motivation.
Nicole Dyer (1m 19s):
Yep. Like I have been saying for like the last year that I’m working on it, working on it, but now that I’m on the clock, I feel like a rush, like, oh, I can’t do anything. I can’t say yes to anything. I have to only do this. So it’s given me that push. I need.
Diana Elder (1m 36s):
That’s great.
Nicole Dyer (1m 37s):
I hope so. I’m excited to have that time to work on it. What have you been reading lately in your family tree problem solver?
Diana Elder (1m 44s):
Well, I have been reading the section on probate records and the discussion of the different people involved. So whenever you see someone in a bond or an inventory, the point was that they pretty much had to have been associates of the person. And we know that, but it’s just always good to read it again. See some examples of, be reminded that anyone putting up the surety that’s part of the bond is going to likely be a relative or a close friend. So it’s always good to be reminded and, and get these things refreshed in our brains.
Nicole Dyer (2m 20s):
Absolutely. A great thing about that book is you can read it on Kindle, which is what I was doing on the airplane, ride home from Sacramento. And I forgot that I had both that book and genealogies standards on my Kindle app on my phone. So I pulled that up and I was kind of reading and thinking about my portfolio. Like whenever I have a free moment, I can just read the standards. This is great.
Diana Elder (2m 44s):
Yes. The standards are so important for you and your portfolio. So you’re going to have those memorized by the time you’re done with this.
Nicole Dyer (2m 53s):
So true. Well today, our announcements are that we have the research like a pro study group this fall 2022 beginning, September 7th meeting every week for nine weeks with one break during the week of October 19th for a little extra research time. And you can begin registering for that study group on July 20th. And the registration will wrap up on August 25th. And if you’d like to help us as a peer group leader, please go to our website and send us a report or a work sample. All right. So what are we talking about today?
Diana Elder (3m 28s):
Well, today we are talking about my study group project, which was proving a parent child link using ancestry through lines. And I’m using this to prove a longstanding parent child link. This is something that has been there in the family tree ever since we started in. So I didn’t feel a huge need to research the line all the way back, but now I have come to a point where I really want to use DNA evidence based on ancestry through lines and documentary research to prove it. So my research objective follows using DNA analysis and documentary research test.
Diana Elder (4m 8s):
The hypothesis that Martin S Schultz was the biological father of Higman Monro Schultz. Martin was born about 1800 and severe county Tennessee and died in 1854 in Johnson county, Texas. He married Sarah routing on 24, December, 1814 in Ray county, Tennessee Hickman was born on 13, June, 1821 in Alabama and died on 12 may, 1899 in falls, county, Texas. He married Rachel Cox on four July, 1848, Navarro county, Texas. So you can see, we have a lot of dates and places, Tennessee and Texas, and pick one a Monroe in the records that I have for both of them are not ever in the exact same place.
Diana Elder (4m 48s):
So how do I know that they’re really father and son, you know, there’s some good indirect evidence, but that’s why I’m doing this project. So in part one of this series, I discussed doing basic clustering for my DNA test taker, Lucretia using the leads method. And then I organized her DNA matches by diagramming the closest matches on the Schulte slang and creating that timeline and analyzing the sources and the DNA matches followed. And with those steps completed, I had a great foundation for the project.
Nicole Dyer (5m 19s):
Yeah, you mentioned in the previous podcast we did about this, you know, that you did the leads method for Lucretia and that clustering, but that you’re also using a through lines hypothesis to kind of help you verify that this connection is correct between Hickman and Martin. So with them the matches in the leads method, did you find them, some of them were found in that through lines hypothesis, and so they were in the right cluster.
Diana Elder (5m 48s):
Well, my through lines was picking up matches below what ideas for the leads method. I only went down to 90 Sena. Morgan’s four leads method, and the through lines had the largest match was I believe about 40. So they were in a genetic network of people, but this specific matches were not on my leads chart, but it was great because I could check the shared matches and see that they were in this cluster.
Nicole Dyer (6m 16s):
Right. Did you add colored dots to her DNA results?
Diana Elder (6m 20s):
I had done some of the color dots and Lacretia actually done some of the color dots herself. So it was pretty easy to figure out where these people all went because some of them were my own cousins and I already knew who they were and how it was related to them. So that always helps when you’re sort of familiar with the matches
Nicole Dyer (6m 40s):
Yeah. Small families or less tester, test-takers. Well, so that was your first, like, that was your overview of the last, you know, few steps. So the next steps after doing the clustering and setting your research objective were locality research and exploring ethnicity, exploring DNA tools, and then research planning. So using that exploration of tools to help inform your research planning and knowing, oh, I want to use this tool to help me figure this out. Or these records are available in that location. So I’d like to plan to use them. So tell us about that locality research that you did
Diana Elder (7m 20s):
Well with my objective focused on proving Martin assigments father. I reasoned that I needed to find proof of Martins residence in Alabama in 1821, which is where everyone said Hickman was born. And that was the year. So I have an Alabama research guide, but I decided to learn about Bibb county. And that was a specific county that many online trees had. And I learned that Bibb county is located in the center of the state and there was no courthouse disaster. So marriage land and probate records begin in 1816. This was great news for my research since the Schultz family likely moved into the area, once the county was formed in 1818.
Diana Elder (8m 1s):
And then I also found a great map on the David Rumsey website that showed Bibb county. And at that time it was on the border of Indian lands. So the Creek nation had seeded the lands that became Bibb county, that part of central Alabama. And then in 1832, they seeded the section of east Alabama. So it was good to see that when the Schultz’s could have been living a big county, they were right on the border of the Creek nation lands. At that time in the 1820s. Now ethnicity estimates also play a part in this lesson. And I spent some time analyzing Lucretia’s estimate from ancestry and that showed all European regions.
Diana Elder (8m 43s):
So she also has a variety of communities that cover states where the Schultz family resided and the featured matches where those I’d already identified as matches on the Schultz line. And the suggested communities correlated exactly Martin Schultz migration path from Tennessee to Arkansas to Texas. So that all made sense. So that was fun doing the locality research and ethnicity portion of the project.
Nicole Dyer (9m 7s):
That’s good to know.
Diana Elder (9m 9s):
Well, when I was looking to explore some DNA tools, I had previously used the leads method of separating Lacretia’s closer matches on ancestry and to genetic networks. And we talked about in that the first part of this series, and because I already had a genetic network from through lines for me to test, I didn’t feel the need to spend a lot of time working with other tools for creating genetic networks. But I did make a list of some things that I wanted to think of for future projects. And so some of those are genetic affairs auto tree, my heritage auto cluster, and Jed match tier one tools because other projects I might need to dig a little bit deeper.
Diana Elder (9m 54s):
I may not have an ancestry through line that I’m using. And so those are always good tools to use also, just to pick up other matches on other websites for working with the segment data. I revisited the chromosome map on DNA painter that I’d been working on for several years. And currently I have 207 segments painted and have attributed 46% of my genome to some ancestral couple. So it was fun to revisit that and look at all the segments that I share with Lucretia and I’ve colored those dark blue. And what I’m really hoping is essentially I’ll be able to take pieces of those larger segments that belong to the ancestors further back in the pedigree.
Diana Elder (10m 35s):
So right now I know that those segments at least come through our shared her grandparents, my great-grandparents William Houston Schultz and his wife Dora algae Royston, but of course they inherited those pieces from others.
Nicole Dyer (10m 49s):
That makes sense.
Diana Elder (10m 51s):
So if you’re interested in seeing a snippet of my chromosome map on DNA painter, you can just go to the blog post that’s associated with this podcast and see how much I have actually got completed on that. And actually looking at it made me want to go back and see if I could paint some more.
Nicole Dyer (11m 10s):
Great. So the next step was research planning. So since you already had this group of matches from through lines to evaluate, what did you decide to do for your research plan?
Diana Elder (11m 21s):
Well, during the research planning phase, I created two tables summarizing the known facts about Martin and his hypothesized son, Hickman Schultz. So I did one for each man and I took the information from my, my air table timeline and distilled that into three columns. So one column was Dayton event, one locality, and one was the citation. And then I formulated my working hypothesis. It’s always amazing how, when you take your information out of your timeline and put it just into these succinct tables, which is what I like to do for the summary of known facts, it helps you remember everything that you know about them and you take the most specific and relevant facts.
Diana Elder (12m 3s):
So my hypothesis became this. Here’s what I wrote. Martin Schultz was born between 1790 and 1800, probably in Tennessee. He married Sarah router then moved to Alabama, Arkansas, and finally to Texas where he died, his son Hickman Monroe Schultz was born about 1821 in Alabama, and also moved to Arkansas and Texas with the family verifying Martins residents in Alabama by 1821, when Hickman was born, would add validity to the census record stating that birthplace authored sources on ancestry online trees give bib or Perry county, Alabama as the residence of the Schultz family Hickman lived in Navarro county, Texas by 1850 as did his probable mothers, Sarah Schultz and brothers Martin and Wade, a land record of 1857 names, the heirs of Martin Schultz as Sarah T.
Diana Elder (12m 55s):
Schultz, Martin V Schultz and Paulina K Hoggard. These are most likely some of his children. Hickman was not named perhaps because he’d already received his old land patent. Ancestry DNA Thrulines show, many DNA matches for descendants of Hickman Monroe Schultz, and his probable siblings. Verifying the trees, the documentary research and the amount of shared DNA will provide evidence of this relationship. So that was my hypothesis.
Nicole Dyer (13m 21s):
Fantastic. I like that in your hypothesis, you kind of go over the timeline and the place in time where you’re hoping to find, you know, Martin Schultz in Alabama in 1821 when Hickman was born. And that’s great that you had a land record with some of the errors of Martin Schultz and that those, you know, probable siblings were showing up as probable siblings in the through-lines hypothesis. So you had a lot of good stuff there.
Diana Elder (13m 45s):
Yes, I did have a lot of good stuff and because I, the research needed to focus on Bibb county. I first did Alyssa possible records that were in Bibb county during the 1820s. And then I prioritize those that could prove Martins residents in the early 1820s. And I also prioritize some DNA work. So if you look at the blog posts, I have a screenshot of my research project document that shows my strategy. And I like to add little check boxes that can be marked when I complete a step of the research and anything that I don’t complete during the research phase can go into future research. And I think that’s always something really good to think of that just because we put it in our plan doesn’t mean we always are going to actually do that piece of research.
Diana Elder (14m 35s):
Sometimes our plan goes in a different direction and that’s okay.
Nicole Dyer (14m 41s):
Yes.
Diana Elder (14m 41s):
So my prioritized research strategy for documentary research was first to take a look at the court records in Bibb county, Alabama, there was an author source on ancestry that stated that Martin Schultz was listed on a big county Alabama jury on February 18/19 with Kinnison Schultz, Martin Haggard and Nosh Haggard. So there’s those Haggard Hoggard surnames again. And so I found that there was actually a published record or a published abstract. The court records up at the family history library. And so I had planned on doing a trip there and figured that that would be a really great place to start, would be a published abstract.
Diana Elder (15m 26s):
So that was number one. And then I also had another book that was by family search about court records, then some county histories that looked really interesting. I always want to learn about the very beginnings of the county and Wiley boy ledger, which was a medicine and medical practice ledger for this. Dr. Boyd was also a published source at the family history library. And Boyd was actually cited in one of the authors sources for the Schultz family. So I wanted to check that because that sounded fascinating. And then I wanted to check some church records, which were digitized on family search. And I thought possibly, you know, the Schulz’s could, could have been Baptists in Bibb county, which was, was the denomination.
Diana Elder (16m 13s):
So that was my list of documentary sources.
Nicole Dyer (16m 17s):
And two of those, you’ve had a clue that from an author and source that you should look there. So that’s a really good research plan.
Diana Elder (16m 24s):
So I also had to come up with some DNA tools or a plan for the DNA tools. And so the first thing I wanted to work with were the ancestry DNA through lines for Martin Schultz, for my main test taker Lucretia. So I decided I would identify the matches with the largest segments and enter them into air table. And then I also have some other test takers that are descendants of Hickman Monro Schultz. And so I wanted to create a matrix for them as well and see the amount of cMs they shared with Lucretia’s best matches. So I could get a nice grouping of people and show this genetic network.
Nicole Dyer (17m 3s):
Yeah, that’s actually a really important step, I think because you have beyond one testing or you have two other test takers who are on the short side of the family. So in essence, you are ensuring that these matches who are in the through-lines hypothesis are in the right genetic network by checking to see if they also share with other people who should be, you know, in that network too, because you, you know, there are known cousins that you have gathered their DNA from that Schulte side. So if someone’s doing this, which is one, you know, one based test taker, like your own matches, and they’re looking at through lines and they haven’t checked to see if they’re in the right genetic network. There’s a chance that, that, you know, those people could be, you know, related to you on a different side of the family, but they’re just picked up by three lines because it’s just looking for people with that person in their tree.
Nicole Dyer (17m 49s):
So you have to be really careful with three lines to make sure that, you know, my article on our website about evaluating those three lines, hypotheses is a good thing to just check if you’re using three lines, because you never know, like it could be that it picks up a match who’s actually related to you on a different grandparent’s side. But since you’re using multiple test takers who you’ve target tested or gathered their DNA, who’ve already tested, then you can verify it that way.
Diana Elder (18m 15s):
That is absolutely right. Which leads me to my second part of my research plan, which is to verify online trees for the identified matches. So another thing we really have to be careful of with three lines is verifying the trees that are being used and through lights, we’ll kind of jump around between different people’s trees trying to connect people. And so you’ve got to do your own research. So that was important in my research plan. And then I also have a Gephi network graph that you did for me for Lucretia. And I thought if I have time, and if I feel the need to, I could also find the identified matches and look for connections to other clusters, perhaps more distant.
Diana Elder (18m 56s):
And so, you know, I put that in there. I probably will not get to that. That might be for a future project connecting, perhaps Martin Schultz to his father, you know, going back a generation, trying to find more distant clusters, but in a nutshell, that was my research plan.
Nicole Dyer (19m 16s):
Yeah. Another good thing to do with that Gephi network graph has just verified that the people you chose from through lions are in the genetic network of the Schultz family. So that’s another great thing you could do with that.
Diana Elder (19m 26s):
Well, with this research plan all completed, I was really excited to get, to start doing the research. It’s always fun to get to the point where you can do the research after doing all that planning,
Nicole Dyer (19m 41s):
Right? And this is a, you know, a pretty short research plan. And I think a lot of times people think that it’s required to make a really long list of 10, 20 things you want to look up in documentary records and then, you know, have all these ideas of things to do with different DNA tools. But keeping it simple is really important because you need to keep it a manageable project size so that you’re able to write up your results in a report without it taking you like another 30 hours, just to write it up.
Diana Elder (20m 10s):
Right. And I did want to focus just on Bibb county in the 1820s. You know, I mean, there’s obviously so much more I can do with this family, but I needed to focus in on something really specific for this project. And that felt like the best place to focus. So yeah, our plans need to be pretty succinct.
Nicole Dyer (20m 30s):
Yeah. I mean, you did either the basic clustering with the leads method, then you’ve had some matches through, through lines, then you’re checking them. Your plan is to check, to see if they match multiple people who are on the Schultz side to see if they, you know, are the right genetic network. So, you know, another thing to think is you don’t always need to use any DNA tools really beyond what you have in the company that you’re using the DNA match list. If you just do the leads method, that’s a simple, I mean, that’s like a methodology. And then another methodology that a lot of people use is just looking at shared matches. So not every project requires you to use third-party tool or something.
Diana Elder (21m 8s):
So this was a project where just using the trees and through lines should give me a nice body of evidence. And every project’s a little bit different and especially with DNA, different tools and things that you’ll want to use.
Nicole Dyer (21m 21s):
And you had mentioned DNA painter, and that is just such a helpful tool when you’re using any of the sites with segment data. So I love that one. Well, great job sharing your research plan. And next time we’ll talk about your research log and the results you found.
Diana Elder (21m 39s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.
Nicole Dyer (21m 42s):
Bye. 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.
Links
Proving a Parent-Child Link Using Ancestry DNA ThruLines and Documentary Research: Part 2
RLP 203: Proving a Parent-Child Link Using Ancestry Thrulines – Part 1
RLP 130: How to Evaluate an Ancestry Thrulines Hypothesis
How to Evaluate an AncestryDNA Thrulines Hypothesis
Research Like a Pro Resources
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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