Find potential siblings, check for DNA cousin matches

Historically, people rarely emigrated alone. Life was too precarious and difficult to handle without the support of a family network and this is especially true for populations undergoing group displacement, like the Loyalists who resettled in Canada after the US War of Independence. If you have a brick-wall ancestor, read up a little on the community they lived in and ask yourself, how likely is it that none of their relatives lived nearby?

For most North American cases, it is not likely your ancestor was a true "stray," unconnected to everyone else. In the past, many genealogists were not particularly focused on identifying collateral relatives because they were trying to get a generation further back, records tend to run out at specific points in time, and they assumed this stranded everyone in that generation without clues (not in itself a great strategy, as land records and the death registrations of the long-lived often prove). 

However, the advent of DNA testing changes the potential return-on-investment to be had from spending time identifying your brick-walled ancestor's siblings.

Firstly, if you know your ancestor's surname, it takes only a few minutes searching FamilySearch tree/records, FindAGrave, and Ancestry to locate people in the community of interest with that surname, born at the right time. If the name is rare the list will be short. Short lists and rare names are always easier to work with, so if your brick wall has that attribute, don't waste the opportunity to exploit it.

Identify the spouses of these potential siblings and check all their vital records and attached sources to see if other researchers have identified legitimate clues about the origins of these people. Then, add the potential siblings, their spouses, and their children to your DNA-test-connected family tree. Assuming your brick-wall is within about seven, maybe eight generations (4th/5th-great grandparents), if at least some of these newly-found siblings are in fact your biological relatives, some of their descendant testers (if they have descendant testers) should show up in your DNA matches. If you are using Ancestry, you would find new ThruLines suggestions in support of any correct theory after waiting a day or two for the tree additions to recalibrate with your match list (with the caveat that you need to check for additional relationships explaining the DNA shared).

Now, I'm writing this blog because last week someone submitted an incorrect FindAGrave memorial edit (thinking they had found an ancestor's burial, but cemetery documentation indicated it was an infant with the same name). Looking into the situation, I discovered a cluster of people with a moderately rare surname in the community who had been born from 1797 to 1811 (and in a consistent sequence of one born every year or two). They were all American and by checking my local genealogical history books for the area, I found three of them were closely associated (although not explicitly identified as family) in a chapter documenting one of their spouses. These three, plus a couple of others, had considerable name overlap showing in their children, as well as potential naming of children in honor of their married-in aunts and uncles. Looking at the documentation across the entire group, there were three vital registrations suggesting an origin in Dutchess County, NY. No online tree considered these people as siblings. 

In fact, a couple of them have been assigned to family origin groups that have nothing (else) to do with this particular community and there is a notable absence of name repetition across the generations in their current placements. None of these assigned family relationships have an evidentiary source to prove the connection (and none are from Dutchess NY) — in all cases researchers have simply selected a surviving American baptism record from roughly the right year of birth and decided it was for the person in question who ended up in Canada.

Having developed this tantalizing theory of relatedness, there is nothing else I can do because these are not my biological relatives. However, if descendants knew of this theory and have DNA tested, they could check its merits within 72 hours, just by following the steps above. If the theory of siblingship is supported by DNA, then they would have a specific place to go to for further records checks (Dutchess) and a list of significant personal (and potentially maiden surnames) to be on the look out for. They'd also have other unexplained DNA-group matches to potentially help find further back generations. This is a much better investment of time and resources, as compared to the ole' throw-a-dart-at-the-coincidentally-similar-baptism-record-and-pray method of the pre-DNA testing era.

Beware doppelganger places

There is a tranche of Ontario birth records on Ancestry with birth location indexed as "Prince Edward Island." PEI is a province. Ontario is also a province. They are both in Canada, a few hundred miles apart. Ontario did not register any births that happened in Prince Edward Island. It was not their business.

As it happens, Ontario has a county called Prince Edward. In the nineteenth century PEC (the county) had about a quarter the population of PEI (the province). If a Canadian moved to the US and told their children or a US registrar that they were from "Prince Edward, Canada" there was a one in five chance they meant the county, not the province.

About once a week I send in data corrections on FamilySearch or Ancestry for records indexed as "Prince Edward Island" when they should be Prince Edward County. Recently I was linking up FindAGrave memorials and hit this very problem, a birth location listed as PEI when it should be PEC. I sent a message to the memorial manager, who requested direct proof of the birth location. I explained that Ontario did not start registering births until 1869 but that (fortunately) this individual appeared on the 1861 Canada West (Ontario) census with his family group, birth location "CW" (Canada West). His US death registration gave his birth place as "West Prince Edwards, Canada," and I explained that had to be a mangled version of "Prince Edward, Canada West," which was the jurisdiction he left when he emigrated to the US in the 1860s (and which became Ontario in 1867, a name he was possibly never familiar with). 

That modest piece of evidence, coupled with the linkages to memorials for his ancestors who remain "permanent residents" of the county, convinced the memorial manager to process the update. I didn't begrudge him the delay — places are a tricky business, and not every genealogist has geographic aptitude. However, if you want to be a competent genealogist, geographic aptitude is definitely something you should develop.

The cardinal sin of genealogy is confusing two people with the same name and confusing two places with similar names is the next most serious problem on the list. 

To avoid both, you must do the same things: 

1) You must check for doppelgangers. Are there two people (or three, or four, or — if you are researching Ireland — fifty) people born at roughly the same time with the same name in the place of interest? Similarly, are there multiple places with the same or similar names in the country or region you have identified?

2) You must use contextual information and other clues (up to and including DNA matching) to pinpoint the correct person or place. Avoid making loose assumptions or guesses because if you make an incorrect choice it will probably become an apparent "fact" about the person you are investigating and this is the quickest and surest way to build yourself a brick wall.

Use atlases, google searches, regional and local archives and library content (in Ontario, this is Archives of Ontario), and published genealogy guidance for the region to identify place names and check to see if you could be confusing two similar-sounding places. You also need to tailor the search to the time period you are concerned with, as place names change over time. For researching Ontario in the 1860s, it would be important to review the census enumeration districts, any city or county directories, Wikipedia articles which include historic place names, the McGill County Atlases project and local historical society websites. Do not rely on Google Maps as it only reflects our current reality and is easy to misinterpret — it also skews to "most relevant" results, which tends to misdirect people to larger population centers.

Of course, the first step in this process is incrementally narrowing it down using documentation. There's no way someone should be indexing Ontario Birth Registrations to places in Prince Edward Island,  they shouldn't even be working with a list of places outside Ontario. Equally, for the FindAGrave memorial, he did appear on the 1861 census with birth location as "Canada West" and his descendants just needed to perform one key step (identifying that "CW" means Ontario) to be pointed — literally — in the right direction.

10 most deadly Great Lakes maritime disasters: Identifying the lost...

... and collecting stories of survival (updated)

Recently, I read of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum's success in finding lost wrecks. An article explained the museum is seeking contact with descendants of those who perished. However, no listing of names was provided and there is no cemetery for these shipwrecks on FindAGrave, so the society is relying on the local news piece to get the word out to people who already know about their connection to the wreck. While they might connect with some people in the area, realistically, most of those directly linked to these hundred-year old tragedies are living further away. A significant portion of descendants won't even know their ancestors were involved.

There are over six thousand known shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, starting with the Griffon of 1697. The most famous is the Edmund Fitzgerald which sank with twenty-nine crew in 1975 and was immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot the following year. Over the decades, I've discovered several people  I could not trace in vital registrations appeared in newspaper searches, having drowned in the lakes or nearby waters. Anyone researching family in the provinces and states surrounding the lakes is probably going to find a maritime tragedy somewhere on their tree.

Here are the ten most deadly Great Lakes shipwrecks and following the list, some observations on what can be done to commemorate these tragedies and connect people to their stories:

1. SS Eastland, 844 passengers and four crew lost on 24 July 1915

Not always considered a Great Lakes shipwreck as this disaster occurred while the ship was docked in the mouth of the Chicago river. Nevertheless it was chartered to travel across Lake Michigan to Michigan City, Indiana, for a corporate picnic and, without question, constitutes the largest loss of life in any maritime disaster associated with the Great Lakes. About as many passengers died on the Eastland as the RMS Titanic (the later also losing almost seven hundred crew). In a cruel twist of fate, the ship rolled when lifeboats were added in the wake of the Titanic disaster and the extra weight exacerbated its top-heavy design. User DM47 has done excellent work to create a virtual cemetery on FindAGrave of over 800 who lost their lives. (See Wikipedia)

2. PS Lady Elgin, about 300 lives lost on 8 September 1860

A sidewheel palace steamship rammed by a schooner in Lake Michigan, this maritime disaster led to rules requiring running lights. The passenger manifest was lost with the ship, but Elgin is considered the greatest loss of life on open water, in a single-ship disaster, on the lakes. There are a couple of people attempting to compile virtual cemeteries for this disaster on FindAGrave. (See Wikipedia) 

3. SS G.P. Griffith, at least 241, and perhaps 289, lives lost on 17 June 1850

Carrying over three-hundred people, mostly immigrants from England, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia, in the early morning a fire started in the smoke stacks and was fanned by the momentum of the ship as the captain attempted to reach shore. Unfortunately, she struck a sandbar and the ensuing panic as the fire progressed caused many to drown in the attempt to get to land. Not a woman or child was saved except for the wife of the ship's barber. The ship's records were destroyed in the fire and only about twenty-five dead could be identified at the time. The recovered unidentified were buried in a mass grave on the beach near Willowick, Ohio, which has since been reclaimed by Lake Erie. The wrecksite.eu website has identified 123 people who were aboard, including the twenty-five known deceased. (See also Wikipedia)

4. SS Phoenix, 190-247 lives lost on 21 November 1847

Carrying mostly Dutch immigrants, Phoenix departed Buffalo for Chicago with about 275 passengers and 25 crew, and shortly afterwards the captain fell, injuring a knee. The first mate took over command of the ship in bad weather. A fireman reported boiler pumps were not working properly but his concerns were ignored by the adjusted chain of command. In the early morning hours a fire started in the engine room and it quickly spread out of control. With only two lifeboats, a near-maximum capacity of thirty-nine people were evacuated, rowing five miles to shore. Exhausted, the boats could not return in time to rescue more, and as the ship burned, people died from the fire or from hypothermia in the frigid November water. Rescue ships moved towards the fire but only arrived in time to find three survivors. Wisconsin Maritime Museum reportedly has a 1693 Dutch Bible which washed ashore shortly after the disaster. The ship owners claimed no more than 190 died but the ship's clerk put the number closer to 250. (See Wikipedia)

5. SS Noronic, at least 119 lives lost on 17 September 1949 

The SS Noronic was a 600-passenger cruise ship unfortunately fated for yet another Great Lakes dockside disaster. This time it happened in Toronto harbor on Lake Ontario, where the Noronic burst into flames in the early morning while passengers slept and much of the crew was off the ship visiting friends and relatives in the city. Most died from smoke inhalation, burning, falling, or crushing injuries as they tried to escape the ship while only four people actually drowned after jumping overboard in desperation. This disaster saw the first use of forensic dentistry to identify victims. It also marked the end of the cruise ship industry on the lakes for more than seventy years. (See Wikipedia)

Inspired by DM47's work creating a virtual cemetery for the Eastland, and considering this year is the 75th anniversary of the disaster, I created a virtual cemetery for SS Noronic on FindAGrave. (Given the excellent day-specific search available on Ancestry, running a search for everyone who died on 17 September 1949 (exact to year) in Toronto was not difficult, and all but 16 already had a memorial on FindAGrave).

6. HMS Ontario, approximately 80 people lost on 31 October 1780

Built in 1780 on Carleton Island in the St. Lawrence, she sank in a storm while underway from Fort Niagara to Oswego in Lake Ontario. "Approximately 80 men perished with the ship, comprising an estimated 31 sailors (two of whom were officers), three members of the Royal Artillery (one being an officer), three privates and one officer of the 8th (King's) Regiment of Foot, 30 men of the 34th (Cumberland) Regiment of Foot (one being an officer, two serjeants, one corporal, one drummer and 30 privates), two rangers, one passenger and four Native Americans" (Wikipedia). The fully-intact and well-preserved wreck was discovered in 2008 and is the oldest wreck in the lakes found to date.

7. PS Alpena, 60-80 people lost on 15 October 1880

Unfortunately, after a promising start to the voyage, the Alpena sailed into the “worst gale in Lake Michigan recorded history,” a storm also known to history as "The Big Blow." Carrying passengers and cargo, it went down with the loss of everyone aboard and a debris field stretching twenty miles. The main wreck has not been located. The only passenger list was aboard the vessel. (See Wikipedia and michiganshipwrecks.org where enthusiasts and descendants are actively investigating who was aboard.)

8. Niagara, more than 60 lost on September 23, 1856

Niagara, another palace steamer, caught fire and sank in Lake Michigan in 1856, taking the lives of more than sixty, including a former congressman. However, nearby boats were able to effect a rescue of many aboard and it is likely many families have stories of surviving this disaster. No online commemoration appears to exist. (See Wikipedia) 

9. Northern Indiana, 56 lives lost on 17 July 1856  

Transiting Lake Erie from Buffalo to Toledo, she caught fire mid-morning while under the charge of the first mate. Many were able to survive by jumping into the summer waters and waiting for rescue ships. The passenger list was lost with the boat but bodies were recovered from the lake for several weeks (unlike the cold deep of Lake Superior, shallow Lake Erie usually gives up its dead). Northern Indiana is the shipwreck on this list with the least amount of online content and commemoration.

10. SS Algoma, 48 lives lost on 7 November 1885 

The worst loss of life on Lake Superior, Algoma was designed to accommodate 240 first class passengers and 500 in steerage and was built in 1883 for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to run between Thunder Bay on Lake Superior and Owen Sound on Lake Huron. Built in Glasgow, it was too big to go through the Welland Canal in Niagara and had to be cut in two, sent through the canal on pontoons and then reassembled in Buffalo. By some miracle, when it departed Owen Sound on November 5th a year later, only 37 passengers were aboard, the fewest ever (it was late in the season and a rail route around Lake Superior had just opened). On November 7th, it ran aground in a snowstorm and pounding waves split the ship in two. The bow section drifted away and many of the passengers and crew were swept into the frigid breakwater. Three people made it to shore and eleven survived by staying in the stern section until making shore on Isle Royale the next day after the storm abated. Only two of the survivors were passengers. The wreck was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and I have created a work-in-progress cemetery at FindAGrave, using 2009 research posted on rootsweb by Barbara Lewellen. 

My experience with Ontario death registrations of this period is that they are unlikely to offer a complete and easy-to-access register of victims of Algoma, unlike the situation with Noronic in 1949. Additionally, some of the bodies may have been recovered on the American side. (See Wikipedia.)

Notable mention: Great Lakes Storm of 1913, loss of about 250 lives from 7-9 November 

Also known in local lore as the "Big Blow," the "Freshwater Fury," and the "White Hurricane" this storm wreaked havoc for three days and ultimately sank ships on four of the five lakes on November 9th, leading to the loss of approximately 250 lives. While there do not appear to be any FindAGrave virtual cemeteries for this event, several who lost their lives have memorials mentioning it, which come up in Google searches. Those who lost their lives were on: Isaac M. Scott, Charles S. Price, John A. McGean, Argus, Hydrus, Henry B. Smith, James Carruthers, Regina, Wexford, Leafield, Plymouth, LV-82 Buffalo. (See Wikipedia)

***

Domestic shipwrecks like these are less documented than international events accompanied by customs and immigration paperwork. In the list above, the three 20th-century events are much better recorded than those in the century before, exactly in parallel with generally improved government recordkeeping. Of the other seven, much less is currently known of the earlier events. However, it would be a mistake to assume it is impossible to reconstruct near-complete lists of the dead or identify many survivors, for two reasons:

Firstly, we now have advanced newspaper searching of huge tranches of publications around the world. Many local historical societies and maritime enthusiasts previously scoured newspapers in the vicinity of these disasters, collecting what information they could. However, enhanced global search capabilities offer more. These disasters involve travelers, and names and details of victims were often reported in local press in their home communities. Using the ship name and date of wreck, and perhaps a partial name if available, obituaries, burial notices and other content can often be found, further developing the story.

Secondly, we now have the means, via FindAGrave and online trees, to permanently record family lore about relatives involved in historical disasters. If you were told of such an ancestor -- even if you don't have good details -- add the information you know to as many online trees as you can. Eventually, you could link up with a maritime enthusiast who can use their knowledge and expertise to help you fill in the details, while you are helping them investigate and commemorate what happened. I was impressed by those working on the PS Alpena at michiganshipwrecks.org, as they are successfully doing just that.

Never ignore rare names...

... and always investigate namesakes

FindAGrave image (inset) Grave of Joanna Nald Dickson

I made a mistake recently. While working on researching and linking some FindAGrave profiles, I came across a married woman whose birth place and maiden name, once discovered on a sole surviving record, indicate she is likely my previously untraced first cousin (born 1807 and six times removed). The grandmother we share is unknown, born in the early to mid 1700s, probably somewhere in the Thirteen Colonies. Our grandmother died shortly after arrival in the Bay of Quinte in the 1780s and rests in a lost and undoubtedly unmarked grave. 

While happily adding my cousin's husband and children to the family tree, I found a daughter whose first and middle name was transcribed, possibly from a gravestone photo, as "Joanna Nald." Looking at the photo, the stone was encased in lichen and it was very difficult to make out the letters. I googled "Nald," and put it in the surname search field on FamilySearch. The nominal number of returned hits seemed to indicate it wasn't really a name. I changed Joanna's name on the tree to "Joanna Maud" making a note to the effect that "Maud" seemed a more reasonable read of what was visible.

Fortunately, I continued adding her siblings from census and other records and within minutes hit a baptism record for her older brother, with an original scan where his first and middle name was clearly recorded as "John Nald." Going back to Joanna, I corrected my mistaken middle name and got to work hunting down the Nalds.

Given that "Joanna" is a much rarer name than John, I entered "Joanna Nald" into all the usual genealogy sites and after scrolling through some useless results, managed to hone in on the only really relevant hit, a Mrs. Joanna Nald who lived in New York State in the early to mid-1800s. The location was a little off, as my first cousin was part of an Ontario family, but explainable, given NY borders Ontario. Joanna seemed to have a mother-in-law born in New Jersey and there were signs Nald might be a truncated-in-America version of a colonial Dutch name like Van der Nald.

The dates were also interesting, as NY Joanna Nald was one generation older than my first cousin's daughter and therefore, fit as a potential namesake. Joanna's death year was in the NY index and with that year, 1855, I Googled and found a brief death notice listing her as the widow of John Nald. With both a Joanna and a John lined up, I knew I was on to something important. 

I hoped the "Nald" name might reflect relationships from my cousin's side of the tree (particularly her father's, which would be directly relevant to my own ancestry) but knew there was a fifty-fifty chance it reflected a namesake on her husband's side (if it was a relation at all). He had a very common name, John Dickson, and all that was known about him from Canadian records was that he was born in the U.S. at the turn of the 19th century. Without any information about his relations, such people in Ontario are usually extremely difficult to trace

From directories, censuses, and the death notice, it was clear Joanna had at least a little property (which would also explain why a younger generation was named in the Nalds' honour). I looked for a NY Will and discovered Joanna died intestate and the papers were scanned and available online through FamilySearch. And they contained a crucial nugget of information.

It was Joanna's mother, Elizabeth Raynor, who was made executor of the estate, in conjunction with Raynor R. Smith (who had to be Raynor Rock Smith). Furtling about on FindAGrave and FamilySearch I tracked down all the Elizabeth Raynors of the right age living in Hempstead, Long Island, NY in the 1850s.There was only one that really fit and crucially, she was the second wife of Benjamin Raynor and the daughter of Archelaus Doxsee, who I recognized. He migrated from NY to the same township in Ontario as my cousin around 1800.

Now, NY Joanna Nald was born about 1801 and Elizabeth Doxsee did not marry Benjamin Raynor until 1821, and they reportedly had no children. Joanna was not born a Raynor. Elizabeth was forty-one at this marriage and so it is reasonable to assume she had at least one earlier marriage, but the name of this first husband and Joanna's surname was in no way documented. 

Looking at Raynor Rock Smith, the second executor of Joanna's estate, I noticed his wife was Elizabeth "Dixon" born about 1811 in New York. Hmmm. Could Elizabeth Dixon Raynor be the daughter of Elizabeth Doxsee, making her husband the brother-in-law of Joanna Nald and explaining why he was appointed an executor of her estate? Could she also be the sister of the John Dickson born about 1805 in the U.S. who married my cousin and managed to name two of his children John Nald and Joanna Nald Dickson? Could both John Dickson and Elizabeth Dixon Raynor be at least half-siblings of Mrs. Joanna Nald through their shared mother Elizabeth Doxsee? 

They could. This would mean Elizabeth Doxsee married a man named Dickson, at least before 1805 when John Dickson was born, and possibly before 1801 when Joanna was born. However, if she married three times, Joanna would not necessarily be a Dixon and finding the sequence of marriage records, if they survive, would be very difficult. I did extensive searching looking for Elizabeth Doxsee's marriage to a Dickson/Dixon and found no genealogical records. 

I took a break.

A day later I dropped "Elizabeth Doxsee Dickson Hempstead NY" into Google. In the list of hits was a Long Island genealogy page on the Doxsee family and from that very long page, showing in the results was a brief transcript of "The Dickson Family Record" (probably from a bible) giving the following information: 

Elizabeth DOXSEE  

Born 12 July 1780 Merrick, Nassau County, NY

Md. 4 Feb 1800 near Merrick, Long Island, NY

John DICKSON, Sr.   

Born 2 June 1774 in Dalkeith, Scotland   

Died 4 August 1815 

Given the place is exactly right and the dates are perfect, the odds that this is the right couple are quite high. Joanna must be a Dickson given she was born no earlier than 1801 (after this marriage). John Dickson of the U.S. was probably visiting his maternal grandparent(s) and cousins when he met and married my cousin, staying in the township afterwards and naming two children after his brother-in-law and his sister. It will take further searches in specific archives, and possibly some DNA match analysis to prove, but it would be something worth doing for any interested descendants.

I hadn't solved the mystery of my direct ancestor, but I probably solved the mystery of John Dickson (father's origins Dalkeith, Scotland!) who married into our family, and, I'd traced another line descending from Archelaus Doxsee, a well-known pioneer on the Bay of Quinte frontier. A good day's work, once I discovered the mistake of my "correction" and stopped ignoring the valuable clue of a rare and unexplained name.