RLP 217: Joanna West Case Study Part 2

Nicole (2s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 217 Joanna West Case Study Part to 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.

Nicole (41s):
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. Hello everybody. Welcome to Research Like a Pro. Hi mom.

Diana (47s):
Hi Nicole. How are you today?

Nicole (49s):
Fantastic. I’ve been working on a network graph this morning, and it’s been just really fun to analyze that and figure out all the clusters.

Diana (58s):
I love network graphs. They really are fun. It’s like a puzzle.

Nicole (1m 2s):
It is. It’s like a puzzle. It’s I get so excited when I can figure out the relevant clusters to the project and then isolate them. And what I had done with this test taker, he’s one generation closer to the research objective. So I, I did the leads method to really figure out who all of his close matches were. And then, you know, I made the network graph after that, and I used my results from the leads method to help me figure out the relevant clusters. And then once I had, you know, one of the relevant clusters, I compared that cluster to each of the other clusters, you can isolate just looking at one cluster at a time, and then I’ll click on each of the other clusters.

Nicole (1m 44s):
And then I can try to notice if there’s a lot of connection between those two or just random connections. And what’s crazy is that when you go down to 20 Santa Morgans, every cluster has got a few random connections to every other cluster, but then some clusters have like significant connections. And that’s what I was looking for. So once I found like the four clusters that had significant connections to the one that I had identified, it was relevant. Then I kept all those and made a special network graph with just those five clusters re clustered it recolored it. And now I’m working through each of those clusters to try to find the common ancestor of that grouping. So it’s been really fun.

Diana (2m 22s):
Oh, wow. Great. You’re just getting so much experience from all the different network graphs you’ve done. You’re sounds like you’re really getting your methodology down for using a new one.

Nicole (2m 31s):
Yeah. You know, this time it’s been really helpful to have the leads method results to compare with because it’s not a family I’m familiar with. And so whenever I wasn’t sure if the connections between a cluster were significant or not, I just looked at the largest matches in that cluster and then compared them with the leads method. And I could see, oh, this is actually on the maternal side. So these connections are probably just kind of random and people happen to be shared on different lines or whatever.

Diana (3m 1s):
Right. That’s a great way to use both of those together.

Nicole (3m 5s):
Yeah. It’s really helpful. What about you? What have you been working on today?

Diana (3m 9s):
Well, I’ve been working on some client work and, you know, kind of referring back to our episode with Roberta Estes on Native American DNA, it was fun because one of these new client projects involves, you know, seeing if there really is some truth to the story for this client that his ancestor or ancestors was a Native American. And it was great because we have that good methodology that Roberta taught us that we can trace down the mitochondrial line. You know? So for the most part, women, women, women, women, and then have a test taker, do the mitochondrial tests because there are actual haplogroups for native American ancestry that they have determined.

Diana (3m 59s):
And so then we could see, so that was just really fun to look at that project kind of with new understanding and that new idea of how best to use DNA, because so often those DNA segments get lost in the AutoZone mold testing, and nothing shows up something might. So one of my other recommendations for this project was to have the client’s mother test who is a direct descendant. She doesn’t follow the mitochondria line, but she is a direct descendant. And because she’s a generation closer, I’m hoping that having her test on 23 and me, they might be able to isolate some native segments. So I’m curious just to see what will happen with the DNA, but of course, we’re going to tackle the project, first of all, with documentary work and, and see where we go from there.

Nicole (4m 47s):
How great is she the, the great-granddaughter or second Creek granddaughter of the supposedly native American woman?

Diana (4m 54s):
Yeah, I think great granddaughters. So cool. You know, so close enough, this would be Cherokee. Probably the only problem is that sometimes, you know, the ancestor might have that native American ancestry, but they very often may not be full either. You know, they might be just half native American because the Cherokee married with the whites through the years. And so, you know, so the, the DNA might already be watered down with European DNA and not have as much native segments to path on. So that’s one of the tricks to also consider

Nicole (5m 33s):
That is tricky. Yes.

Diana (5m 35s):
Well, let’s do our announcements. So research like a pro eight study group is starting soon. We’re so excited to get going. It’ll be from September 7th to October 19th, and then we are going to start registration for research like a pro with DNA, our spring studies group. And that will begin December 1st. So if anyone is looking for a Christmas present for yourself, that’s a great suggestion. And that one will start on February 1st and go through May 10th and we’ll have three break weeks in there. We’ve found that it’s just really nice to have some breaks, especially with the DNA group, to give everybody a chance to regroup, you know, catch up on assignments, you know, have a little break because it gets kind of intense.

Diana (6m 18s):
We all need a little break once in a while, and then we’ll have peer group leader applications on our website. And we’d invite you to take that out. See if you feel like you’d want to do that for a complimentary registration and then always join our newsletter for any coupons or deals that we are having.

Nicole (6m 36s):
Great. Well today, our episode is a continuation of last time. We’re going to continue talking about my case study on Joanna West to see if she was the biological mother of bar Shiva Thorpe, just as a recap bar. Tshuva Thorpe was the wife of John Robert Dyer. And this is my husband’s their great grandfather and grandmother. And they resided in Hawkins county, Tennessee from 1830 to 1880. And I’ve tracked them in all the census records and found a whole bunch of records about them and their children. I then found that BARR Sheba was the daughter of Louis Thorpe through a lot of DNA matches to him through both of his wives. He was married twice first to Joanna West in 1805 and Fauquier county, Virginia, and second to Judy Vernon in 1817 in Hawkins county, Tennessee.

Nicole (7m 25s):
So originally I would set out to prove who was parents were, but I got stuck because it was tricky with birth year range going from 1813 all the way to 1818. I wasn’t sure which wife of Louis was the right one. So this project was to test the hypothesis that Joanna West was the mother, because I had seen some clues in the DNA evidence and naming patterns that pointed to her being more likely, even though the DNA matches to Louis DARPin his second wife, Judy Vernon were stronger. I found that it was still possible for them to be half fourth cousins. And so this project really focused on finding out if Joanna could have been the right mother and the way that I decided to approach it was by comparing DNA of descendants of Joanna West parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents to VRSII with AARP’s sentence.

Nicole (8m 21s):
What I had found through another researcher was that Joanna West was the daughter of John West and Bathsheba Arnold, and then going back even another generation Bashi, but Arnold was the daughter of Humphrey Arnold and Harriet and Smith. So last time we talked about kind of the preparatory work and the clustering finding matches that were relevant and making a research plan. And then this time I’m going to talk about the results of my research plan.

Diana (8m 49s):
I think this is such a good project to talk about for a lot of reasons. One of the things that stood out to me as you were doing a recap for us was that the DNA was pointing to this other wife, but then there were some red flags. And I think that’s so key that we just don’t ignore red flags. And that really points to confirmation bias if you had just decided, because there were so many matches that she had to be the daughter of duty Vernon. So, you know, we’ve gotta be so careful with our hypothesis, not only in DNA work, but also in just our traditional genealogy, even if we don’t add DNA that we really have to examine every one of those little conflicts or red flags and try to resolve things so that we feel really good about our conclusion.

Nicole (9m 38s):
Yes. I just felt unsettled about the Judy Vernon hypothesis. It just didn’t feel quite right. And, and bar Sheba would have had to have been born after the marriage in 1817, which was like the very end of her birth year range. And she would have been only like 12 years old when she got married. And as hard as I tried to make that fit, it just it’s just still felt like a conflict. So it just seems so much more likely that she would have been the daughter of the first wife. And there were several reasons. One of them was that, you know, the first wife had another son, which would have been a full brother to bar Shiva and his name was William Tharp. And William therap was a close associate to the dire family and Hawkins county.

Nicole (10m 21s):
And so, and it just seemed like if they were just half siblings, why would they have been so close and also Louis DARPin, Judy Vernon left and went to Arkansas. And so why would have bar Sheba not gone with them or kept in touch with them if she was the daughter of Judy, like, it just didn’t make sense. And also there was the kind of this oral history that bar Sheba was orphaned at a young age, and that would’ve made so much more sense if her mother had died, Joanna West who died and the father remarried and they moved away, then that would make more sense that the oral history was that bar Shiva was orphaned, even though her father was still alive, her mother had died and her father had remarried and moved away.

Nicole (11m 7s):
So she was in essence alone except for her brother William Thorpe.

Diana (11m 12s):
Oh, see, that’s really good reasoning. And I also wanted to point out that you had a birth range for bar Shiva from 1813 to 1818, which I’m guessing that you discovered just by looking at every census of her life or any other record that could possibly give a clue to birth. And that was really important to have that pretty clear about a birth range.

Nicole (11m 35s):
Yeah. Sadly it didn’t point to any one data’s being more obvious than the other. I tried and tried to say, oh, it’s more likely that she was born. And, you know, after Judy Vernon, just because this census was more accurate, but in the end, all the births were all over the place. No one census seemed more accurate than the next and the informants didn’t seem to know a lot. And then the year that was passed down by the family and recorded in the family, history is, was 18, 13. And so often, you know, it’s easy to discount that as secondary information from an authored source, but what’s probably a more accurate than some of the censuses that said she was born in 1818.

Nicole (12m 17s):
Cause she would have been only 12 when she had her first child. So it makes a little more sense to be a little older when you’re married and having children.

Diana (12m 25s):
Yeah. That does make sense. And that’s a good point that, you know, what sometimes an authored source is right on. It’s not always the fact that they didn’t remember. Right. Sometimes it is exactly right.

Nicole (12m 37s):
Yeah. And I just think that, you know, this family probably didn’t keep records. Maybe they weren’t too literate and maybe brushy, but didn’t even know when she was born. You know,

Diana (12m 47s):
That’s always possibility.

Nicole (12m 49s):
It just doesn’t seem like the people who are reporting her age ever gave the same date.

Diana (12m 54s):
Hey, I’d like to forget how old I am and revert back a few years.

Nicole (12m 60s):
Right. Well, once I decided to dive into this hypothesis, that bar Sheba was the daughter of Joanna West. I started Tracy and Joanna’s tree back in time and thinking, you know, if I can find matches who descend from Joanna’s parents and grandparents, then that would definitely provide strong evidence that I’m on the right path. The goal of this research plan was to verify documentary research and then find more matches descending from those people and then verify the parent child links from those parents and grandparents too. So kind of the first thing on my research plan was to find originals for the deeds and wills that my friend and collaborator Mike was sharing with me.

Nicole (13m 39s):
And he had a bunch of deeds showing connections between John West and his supposedly father-in-law Humphrey Arnold. So I went and found those originals on family search and the catalog going to fuck your county, Virginia, and looking at the land section there. And I found the original of a deed that showed John West and his first wife Bathsheba and the identity of his wife was inferred through that deed. The deed was July 10th, 1792, between the heirs of Humphrey Arnold and Samuel Fisher.

Nicole (14m 19s):
So the deed says that Isaac Arnold and Mary, his wife, Benjamin Arnold and Sarah, his wife, George Arnold, and Anna, his wife, John West and Bathsheba, his wife, Seymour Arnold, and Mary, his wife have granted bargain sold, aligned and confirmed. And by these presents do grant bargain, sell alien and confirm unto the said Samuel Fisher, one certain tract or a parcel of land situate line. And being in the said county of FOC year being part of a tract formerly the property of Humphrey Arnold deceased. So through that list of the errors who were selling Humphrey Arnold’s land, you can see that everyone there is an Arnold except for John West Ambasz Shiva.

Nicole (15m 3s):
So the inference then is that Bathsheba is an Arnold and she was the wife of John West. So this gave me good evidence that Joanna West father John West was married to best Shiva Arnold when Joanna was born. So Joanna was born. I had a birth year range that I estimated for her based on her marriage date, that she was born in 1786 or sometime before then looking at the 1792 deed if John West was married to bashy. But Arnold, at that point, then she was almost certainly the mother of Joanna West who was born a few years before that.

Diana (15m 43s):
Oh, that makes perfect sense. I think it’s so interesting in these deeds where they only name the man by his surname. And then the woman gets to just be the hanger on there. You know, that’s

Nicole (15m 58s):
His wife

Diana (16m 0s):
Don’t we wish they had always given their maiden names in these days, but at least they named them. I mean, I’ve seen some dates where they just say like John West and his wife don’t even give the name so good point.

Nicole (16m 13s):
Yeah. I’m glad we have her name because that name is like the one time where I’ve ever even seen her name listed. And it’s really strong evidence of a naming pattern that Joanna West named her daughter by Sheba Thorpe after her mother Bathsheba. And I don’t know if the bar Sheba and Bashi are just interchangeable. I think maybe they are.

Diana (16m 36s):
Yeah. And that’s, that’s a more unusual name, you know, it’s not like Mary or, and it’s a little bit distinctive. So I think that is excellent evidence. So the naming patterns.

Nicole (16m 51s):
Yeah. So I was going to read the paragraph from my report about my estimate of when Joanna West was born, because I really didn’t have her on any censuses because those early Tennessee censuses don’t exist anymore. So all I really have is her marriage. So here’s what I wrote about that Virginia law required the individuals under age 21, received permission from their parent before marrying and then the footnote for that is early Virginia marriage records, research notes, number 26 from the library of Virginia. And the next sentence of that paragraph says, because permission was needed for this marriage.

Nicole (17m 33s):
Joanna was under age 21 indicating she was born after 1784. She was probably at least 16 years old when she got married. So she was likely born between 1784 and 1789. And then the next part of that is talking about how going to determine the mother of Joanna West. And so searching records about John West and the deed John West got married to Sally web in 1805. So that was obviously a second marriage for him later because that same year Joanna got married. And then that deed that I read to you that shows that in 1792, John West wife was Bashi, but Arnold.

Nicole (18m 13s):
So that is how I figured out Joanna West mother.

Diana (18m 17s):
Oh, great work. And putting together all those little tiny pieces of evidence.

Nicole (18m 21s):
Right. I had to figure out when she was probably born from her marriage permission and then figure out who he was married to at that time.

Diana (18m 30s):
And you had to use the law and reasoning. Yeah.

Nicole (18m 33s):
Oh, so that deed from 1792, it took a long time to transcribe the whole thing. It was really long. One thing that I noticed is that in the list of errors, it didn’t name Jamaima Arnold who married a knolling. And what was funny about that is that there was just a blank spot at the end of the list of the heirs who were granting the land. And so I wondered why they didn’t fill in her name there it’s like, they knew there was one more person, but they didn’t put her name. And so have you ever seen blanks in deeds like that before?

Diana (19m 10s):
No, but maybe they didn’t know her husband and you can’t list the wife unless, you know, the husband

Nicole (19m 15s):
That’s a good point. But what also was interesting about that is that at the very end where the grantors signed the deed, she did sign it. So it was signed Jemima knolling, but it didn’t include her name in the list of people. So that was interesting. And from the research that I had done, I knew that Jemima Arnold had married John knolling and another one of the Arnold children also married a knolling. So Seymour Arnold had married Molly knolling so the families were associated anyway. So the list of people who signed the deed included all the Arnold children, and then it included John West and Beth west, and then it included Jamaima knolling but not her husband.

Nicole (20m 3s):
So maybe he had died by then already, and then CMR Arnold and Mary Arnold. And I wonder if there was something about her being a single woman that prevented them from listing her on the deed for some reason, or maybe they just didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

Diana (20m 19s):
Interesting. You know, the only thing that I can think of to discover more about that would be obviously to learn more about Jemima, but then also looking through the deed book and see if this was a pattern. If, if they did this, in other instances, you could get any clues from what the community was doing,

Nicole (20m 37s):
Right? Yeah. Now that I’m thinking about this, I’m remembering that I found Jamaima knolling living as a, a widow with her children and this line, this knolling Noland line is actually the one where I did the unrehearsed research video with Richard Miller on his YouTube channel about Clement Darnold. And he’s a descendant of Jemima Arnold knolling. And so I was trying to prove that connection between Clement Donald and his mother Fanny Noland, because it was part of this research project that I was doing so fun. That’s neat. So he’s the one match that comes down from Jamaima knolling Nolan.

Nicole (21m 19s):
There was only one that I had used in the report. Anyway, the next part of my documentary research plan was to find the original will of Humphrey Arnold showing his heirs. And luckily I had already found that deed that showed his heirs really well there, but there was some, one more air that wasn’t mentioned, indeed, Ruth Arnold brag. And so I was hoping to find evidence of a connection to her because she was in all the trees as a daughter Pumphrey Arnold, and a lot of the DNA matches, descended from her. Most of them did. And so I really was hoping to find evidence that she was also an heir and a daughter.

Nicole (22m 1s):
What I had heard from Mike was that his will, and there was like a derivative record on ancestry that Mike had attached to his tree that showed Humphrey Arnold, and then a list of just names of people who were included. So I had a date. So I went and looked in the Fauquier county probate records and found his estate administration. And he had passed away before January 1st, 1790, when his estate was inventoried for a total of 336 pounds had the pound sign, I guess, I don’t know if they were using dollars or pounds at that point, but I guess they were using pounds. And the appraisers included Thomas Porter and James Stewart and wa Willie, Roy, but Benjamin Arnold was the administrator.

Nicole (22m 44s):
He was one of the people listed in the deed from 1792 who was selling his land to Samuel Fisher. So I recognized his name in the inventory. Several enslaved people were appraised. And so it appears that they had plantations. They used enslaved people to raise tobacco because William Bragg paid the estate of Humphrey Arnold 500 pounds of tobacco and then Humphrey Arnold’s plantation and a state received 1200 pounds of tobacco for rent. So there was a total of 1700 pounds of tobacco as part of the estate inventory. Then another part of the inventory was that Mrs.

Nicole (23m 24s):
Arnold, supposedly the widow bought items at the sale, which were not itemized. And she was allowed to keep those as long as she lived. She also took Frank an enslaved person for her third of the estate. And also Mrs. Arnold is to have all the land of her lifetime, except some that George Arnold is to have. And some that John West has a deed for. So this was all written on the inventory and a lot of interesting things in there. Does anything stand out to you?

Diana (23m 56s):
Wow. That is really interesting. Kind of some unusual things like the listing of all the tobacco and then that third of the estate is that her dour,

Nicole (24m 9s):
Right.

Diana (24m 11s):
You know, the third is usually the dour, right?

Nicole (24m 14s):
Yeah. For her third. And I thought that was interesting that they talked about it, you know, it’s her third, you know, they knew the law that the widow gets one-third as the widow as right.

Diana (24m 24s):
And then it, and then she’s allowed to have interesting on this one to have all the land for her lifetime. So you do see that a lot with widows that they are allowed to have the homeplace or the land, you know, for their lifetime. And then after that, it goes to the heirs.

Nicole (24m 39s):
Yeah. Except for some that George Arnold has to have in some that John West has a deed for. So that tipped me off. There was another deed of Humphrey Arnold to John West that I needed to find. Then at the end of the inventory, the final accounting of it said, we also find according to the amount of sales and valuation of the Negros after all debt is paid, as stated above, there will be 110 pound, five shillings and nine Pence and 1,700 pounds of crop tobacco to be equally divided between Isaac Arnold, Samuel Arnold, Benjamin Arnold, George Arnold, Seymour Arnold, John Knowland and John West.

Nicole (25m 22s):
So there’s John Noland who sometimes is written as Nolan sometimes as no Lang Jemima’s husband. So in 1790, he was still alive.

Diana (25m 29s):
Interesting. So you’ve got the 1, 2, 3, you’ve got five sons and two daughters, but the daughters aren’t listed, they’re just a listing of their husbands names.

Nicole (25m 39s):
Right. But notably missing was the daughter. I was really hoping to find evidence for Ruth and Arnold who had married William Bragg. And so despite online trees stating that Ruth Arnold brag was a daughter of Humphrey Arnold, she was not listed as one of the heirs in this account who would receive the final division of the estate. However, William Bragg was listed earlier in the account and his entry was next to the 500 under rent of plantation, 1200 tobacco with pounds written above it. So I thought that this probably meant the estate received 1200 pounds of tobacco from whoever was renting the plantation.

Nicole (26m 19s):
And then William brags, 500 pounds of tobacco was added to that 1200 pounds. And the total pounds of tobacco is 1700 pounds. And then in that final accounting, it did say that there was 1,700 pounds of crop of tobacco that was going to be equally divided between the airs listed. So my question was, why did William Bragg pay 500 pounds of tobacco? The estate? Some ideas were perhaps he was living on the plantation, perhaps Ruth’s inheritance had already been given to her. She was there at the plantation already living there, taking care of it. And that’s why she didn’t receive a part of the estate division.

Nicole (26m 59s):
Sometimes I think that could happen. So what I decided to do is, you know, this wasn’t on my original research plan, but I had to be flexible. And I really needed to find evidence that Ruth Arnold brag was a daughter of Humphrey Arnold, so that I could use all those DNA matches that descended from her. So I took some time to continue researching her. And I found a revolutionary war pension file about her husband and her. And it was really long. So I didn’t have time to transcribe it all, but I did scan through it and looking for evidence. And I saw that one of the pages in the file was kind of like a Bible page or just to a page that someone had written probably Ruth with all the names and dates of her children and their birth.

Nicole (27m 41s):
And one of the children was Humphrey a brag. And I thought, oh, well, that’s great naming pattern, evidence on a mastic evidence that Ruth named her son Humphrey a or Humphrey Arnold Bragg after her father Humphrey. Arnold.

Diana (27m 55s):
Yeah. How praise another name that is a little bit less common. So that is really good evidence,

Nicole (28m 3s):
Right? Sadly, I didn’t have enough time to continue with that. So that’s all my future research suggestions to really fully research Ruth Arnold brag and find out, you know, why is everyone so certain that she’s the daughter of Humphrey? So I just needed to do a little more research on that, but there was a need from Humphrey Arnold through William Bragg witnessed by Anne brag. So I think Ruth Ann Bragg was probably the daughter of Humphrey Arnold and the deed was in 1789. So it was right before Humphrey died. So the estate inventory was January for 1790.

Nicole (28m 45s):
And this deed from Humphrey Arnold to William Bragg was May 25th, 1789. So probably what happened was he was dying. He distributed some land to some of his close children like and Ruth Ann, Arnold brag. And also there was a deed from Humphrey Arnold to John West the year before in 1788. So there was some land already given to John West. And so who knows, but that’s the current hypothesis is that they were father and daughter. There was also one more deed from 1786 from William and Ruth brag to Humphrey Arnold for 58 acres.

Nicole (29m 31s):
And so they were moving land back and forth between them. And this is pretty much all the evidence they currently have. So

Diana (29m 38s):
I think that’s a pretty good assumption that she would be a daughter. And this is such a good example of being really careful about those estates, that they don’t always name everyone in the will or in this case, it looks like she wasn’t even in anything in the probate. And so it would be easy just to discount her, but then, you know, putting together this information about the tobacco and William Bragg renting the plantation, you know, the naming pattern of Humphrey, having a son named after her possible father Humphrey just kind of says, show, we just can’t make assumptions.

Nicole (30m 20s):
Yeah. So in my report, I did an abstract of the Humphrey Arnold and Ruth brag deed. And then I also did an abstract of Humphrey Arnold sold to William Bragg, one Negro girl by the name of rose with all her future increase in 1789. So that was the deed from 1789. And it was only for five pounds. So one thing I wanted to do in future research was to search and see if five pounds is the normal amount to be selling, or if that’s like just a token amount, because this was more of like a inheritance, you know,

Diana (30m 58s):
You’re right.

Nicole (30m 59s):
And I, I know often back in those days that slaveholders would give enslaved people to their children as an inheritance.

Diana (31m 10s):
I think that would be a really good point to research.

Nicole (31m 13s):
Yeah. That’s another thing I could research. And then the deed from 1798 from Humphrey Arnold to John West is important because it shows Humphrey’s wife’s name. It says this indenture made this 25th day of November, 1788, between Humphrey Arnold of funkier and Anne, his wife. So all the trees say her name is Harriet and Smith, but all I have is that her name is Anne, the wife of Humphrey Arnold. So more research could be done on and to figure out, you know, why everyone thinks her name is Harriet and Smith,

Diana (31m 49s):
Right?

Nicole (31m 50s):
There were some Smiths in Fauquier county, so I could research them, but still need to finish all the future research on just proving the daughter, Ruth and all the lines of descent. So there’s just a lot to be done. And when it’s this far back, it’s a lot of work.

Diana (32m 5s):
It is a lot of work. It’s a lot of research,

Nicole (32m 7s):
But it’s really exciting to see it all come together and to see all the DNA matches in my report. I decided to do show the documentary research on Humphrey Arnold and his links to all of his children, and then go right into the DNA matches who descended from Humphrey Arnold in those children. So I had found one DNA matched to several Barsabbas descendants through Jamaima Arnold knolling and then one match from Benjamin Arnold, 13 matches from Ruth Arnold brag and one match from Isaac Arnold. So you can see how important it was for me to find that evidence for Ruth,

Diana (32m 45s):
Right? What the most match has coming from her. I wonder if it’s just because she had a lot of children, she did have more descendants.

Nicole (32m 51s):
You had a lot of descendants,

Diana (32m 53s):
But it’s great that you had matches from four independent lines to the sisters, two other brothers.

Nicole (32m 60s):
Yes. And let me tell you more about those matches. So the range of shared DNA with them and descendants of brushy with AARP Dyer was from eight Santa Morgans, up to 49 Santa Morgans. And I was using almost exclusively ancestry. Then seven of those Humphrey Arnold descendants matched more than one of the brushy with AARP descendants, but six of them only matched one of the brushy with AARP descendants. And so that would have been better. I think it’s better to have the matching more than one of the base test-taker group who are the descendants of brushy with dark Dyer. And the range of relationship was from fifth cousin once removed up to seventh cousins, but most of them were sixth cousins.

Diana (33m 42s):
Oh, my, those are right on the edge of whether DNA can be used, aren’t they?

Nicole (33m 48s):
Right. And that’s why I thought it was important to make sure they matched more than one of the brushy with AARP descendants. So since six of them only matched one that I could do more research and get more based test takers to share one of the ways that I checked that though was just checking their shared matches. And I can see that they match other people who are descendants of brushy with AARP, who I know who they are, but I just don’t have their DNA. So I know their shared matches. So I know that they share at least 20 Santa Morgans or more because they wouldn’t show up on the shared match list unless they did. So I can probably add those people in, even though they’re not technically like sharing their DNA matches with me, I know their descendants of our Shiva.

Nicole (34m 29s):
And I can tell that they share a 20 Sena Morgan’s with that Humphrey Arnold descendant.

Diana (34m 35s):
That is a great point. And you’re just building this network of people that are all related. And when you’re only sharing like one segment, because you only got that much from that ancestor so far back. And how likely is it that you’re all going to share that exact same little segment? Not very likely. So,

Nicole (34m 56s):
Yeah. And if you think about it, there’s probably thousands of descendants of Humphrey Arnold out there. And I’m finding matches of like 15 or 16 of them too brushy with AARP’s descendants. So it’s a small percentage of the thousands of Humphrey Arnold descendants out there, but it’s definitely something and it’s kind of what you would expect. It’s, it’s definitely fitting the hypothesis at this point.

Diana (35m 22s):
Right? Right. It’s giving you some evidence.

Nicole (35m 26s):
So the next step was that I realized I needed more DNA matches from the John West generation. I’d found evidence in documentary records that John West was bashy, but Arnold, and then I had found that bashy, but Arnold was the daughter of Humphrey Arnold and, and from the probate records and the deeds. So then I just really next wanted to find more matches who descended from John West, that intervening generation between Joanna West. I had a bunch of matches from Joanna West and Louis Thorpe. I didn’t have hardly any matches from Joanna West father through other children. And then I had a bunch from Humphrey Arnold.

Nicole (36m 7s):
So I was focused on that next. And I wanted to find matches from both of John West wives. He was married first to Bathsheba Arnold with no marriage record, just the deeds. And then I wanted to find matches who descended from John Weston, a second wife, Sally web, who I had identified their marriage record for in 1805. So first I used the documentary records to establish who the children of John westward and first identified William West as the son of John West and Bashiva Arnold. So he would have been Joanna West brother, and he was a bondsman on the 1805 marriage of Louis AARP and Joanna West.

Nicole (36m 49s):
So there, right away as a clue that he’s connected to Joanna and John West, then I traced this William West forward in time. I figured out when he was born by the 1850 census, because he was living in Blount county, Tennessee at that time. And his calculated birth year was 1785, which was pretty close to the range that I had for Joanna West in the 1780s, the late 1780s. So he would’ve been born during the same time that John West was married to Bathsheba Arnold and would have been a full sibling to Joanna West William West was also taxed in the same district as John West and Hawkins county in 1809.

Nicole (37m 29s):
And William West witnessed John West purchasing land in 1808 from John Shropshire and Hawkins county, Tennessee when he arrived there from blockier county. And then I traced William forward when he moved to Blount county, Tennessee in 1824, he bought land there and he was a numerated there in Blount county in 1830 and 1840. So from all this evidence, I concluded that he was almost certainly the son of John West and Bathsheba Arnold and a full sibling to Joanna West. So any descendants who I found of his and the DNA match lists would have been full cousins, not half cousins.

Nicole (38m 10s):
So I was looking for like, you know, like fourth and fifth cousins. And so in his 1850 households, it included himself William West age, 65, born in Virginia and his inferred wife, Eliza west age 61, also born in Virginia and then some inferred children, Mary West, Joanna, West Armistead, west and Eliza west. So isn’t that interesting that Joanna’s brother William named a daughter Joanna West. We just have a lot of strong naming patterns in this family.

Diana (38m 42s):
Yes you do.

Nicole (38m 43s):
And all of these Munford children. So it says they were born in Tennessee, so it it’s really lining up. Then I went ahead and looked in Blount county and found marriages for these children of William West, kind of tracing them down for the sake of proving the parent child leagues and the DNA match evidence. And then I was able to find six DNA matches as I searched through, you know, the relevant clusters of the network graph and found 60 and eight matches to Williams children, Louis West Elizabeth Ann, west O’Connor and Sarah West hair. And so I had found some of those marriages and then chase them down and found those matches.

Nicole (39m 25s):
So that was exciting. So now I had really beefed up this John West is the father of Joanna West, and they’re all matching descendants of Barchie with AARP, but also I added in two more based test takers who were Joanna West descendants through her other daughter, Elizabeth parrot. And that really helped because I had already found them in my previous research project about Louis Thorpe. And when I asked them to share their matches with me, it increased my coverage of Joanna West and John West. And I was able to find more matches who were descendants of John West, said their son, William West,

Diana (40m 8s):
Well, you are just building a big web here of all this family and the DNA and their descendants and the documentary evidence. That’s pulling it all together. So how exciting. Yeah. I’ve been working on this for a while, but it really is coming together to send it.

Nicole (40m 26s):
He says, I also was able to document John West sons by his second wife, Sally web, who all lived in Hawkins county, Tennessee. I had seen that there were in Mike’s tree. Mike is a descendant of John West through his second wife. So he had more information about the second wife’s children, which was really helpful. And so there was supposedly at the sons where John West Jr. Abraham west Hezekiah, west and Harmon west, and in the 1840 census, I found all of these sons living in close proximity to John West and Hawkins county. And then there was the murder trial. So in the Hawkins county circuit court minutes, there was a murder trial and vibing involving John West Jr.

Nicole (41m 9s):
With Louis Thorpe and John West senior posting bond. Also Abraham west was charged for murder at the same time. So he must have been involved somehow. So that kind of tied them all together as well, and you know, more indirect evidence. And so then I was able to find 60 and new matches who descended from two of the sons by John West second wife through Hezekiah west and John West Jr. And so I made a table in my report showing all the people who I found descended from John West and his two wives and how they matched Joanna West and brushy with AARP descendants.

Diana (41m 48s):
So the descendants through the second wife, Sally web would all be half relationships.

Nicole (41m 53s):
Exactly. Yes.

Diana (41m 55s):
So that’s why we draw it out in a diagram because it would be impossible to keep track of this in your head or even on a tree, you know, to see exactly how everybody connects. So all those half relationships, which you’re going to have if you’re working far back in time, because our ancestors had, you know, second wives, second husband’s people died early and they married again. And sometimes more than one.

Nicole (42m 19s):
Yes, absolutely. So most of the people, so the people who descended from William West who are Joanna West full brother, they were all like fifth cousins, fifth cousins once removed six cousins. Then those who descended from John West second wife, those ones were half fifth cousins, half fourth cousins once removed half fifth cousins. Once we moved half fifth cousins and half six cousins. So they were half and those ones were sharing between eight Sena Morgans up to 27. So they weren’t sharing much. And that’s why it was hard to find them because they were just sharing a lot less, but all of them shared with multiple of the base test takers.

Nicole (43m 4s):
So that was great. Then the full relationships, those ones were also small sharing. We’ll see, from nine Santa Morgans, up to 32 Santa Morgans, for some reason, not a lot of this John West DNA was passed down in the DIYers. There was just more of the Bashi of Arnold, mine and Humphrey Arnold. More, just more segments from that side of the family were passed down to birth Sheba Thorpe. So it was easier to find matches to Humphrey Arnold since he had so many more descendants and partially with AARP seem to have inherited more of that DNA.

Diana (43m 44s):
Wow. That’s really just so interesting hearing you talk about that helps us understand the randomness of recombination with the DNA and speaks to the importance of having a lot of test takers, getting a lot of coverage of the target person you’re trying to connect to and doing a lot of documentary research. It’s been a great case study, really showing how you can use DNA for an early 1800 late 1700 project.

Nicole (44m 17s):
Yeah. And in my report, I did include a table showing the, the match amounts between the DNA matches and then a figure, which was a diagram of the DNA matches descent from the common ancestral couple. And so those are important parts of the report. And then at the very end of the report, I included the relevant attachments, the documents, which were, you know, Louis, Tarpon, Joanna West marriage, the deed from the heirs of Humphrey armed to Samuel Fisher and the transcriptions of these documents were in the attachment area. And then in my future research suggestions, I talk about all the different things that need to still be done.

Nicole (44m 60s):
And there’s, you know, even though I’ve found so much evidence, there’s still a lot to be done. And the main bulk of that is going to be verifying all the parent-child links for the DNA matches who descend from John West and from Humphrey Arnold. So I have a lot of work to do on that, but it’s usually pretty easy for the first few generations, because you can use the 1950 to the 1880 census. All of those census records give evidence of parent child relationships. Then once you get back to those other generations, it’s harder. And some of those have to be proof arguments like Clement Darnold. So that’s my future research.

Diana (45m 38s):
You still have work to do. It sounds like you’re getting close though. Are you going to write up a proof argument on this when you have finally solved to your satisfaction

Nicole (45m 47s):
On a couple of years when I’m done with my portfolio?

Diana (45m 51s):
Well, we can look forward to reading about this somewhere in a journal, because this will be such a great case study.

Nicole (45m 57s):
Yeah. A lot of good stuff.

Diana (45m 59s):
All right. Well, thanks for walking us through that. Thanks everyone for listening. We hope that you learned something about how to use DNA with proven ancestry far back in this case study. So have a great week everyone, and we’ll talk to you next time. All

Nicole (46m 15s):
Right. Bye bye.

Diana (46m 17s):
Bye bye.

Nicole (46m 18s):
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