Sometimes history provides us with a situation that is just too outlandish to be false, like this one on mDNA testing for genealogy by using ancient ponytails! In these lucky, true-to-life conditions, clues to help us unravel genealogical mysteries and tell our own crazy stories might just be found.
English Mutineers Create Endogamous Population
By Trailer screenshot (Mutiny on the Bounty trailer) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Do you know the story of the mutineers of the British HMS Bounty? Rewind back to the year 1789, three weeks into the 10-month journey to deliver their cargo from Tahiti to Jamaica. Twenty-five crew members, led by first mate Fletcher Christian, ousted their captain and loyalists. Then, they turned back toward the Tahitian paradise where they had spent the previous 5 months. For their crime of mutiny, they were hunted down. While 16 were later captured in Tahiti and returned to England, 9, including Christian, hid on the tiny island of Pitcairn.
And when I say tiny, I mean tiny. 1.75 square miles tiny.
But considering that 9 English mutineers, their Tahitian brides, and a couple Tahitian men were the founding population for this island, it provides an amazing genetic and genealogical view into endogamous populations.
The Proof is in the Pigtails
This fascinating tale is about to get richer, as ten pigtails of hair claiming to be from some of the original mutineers and their wives, have recently been acquired by the Pacific Union College’s (PUC) Pitcairn Islands Study Center in California. The King’s College London has contracted them to perform DNA testing.
Pay close attention to this next part: Researchers are going to conduct DNA testing on the hair samples. But this does not mean you are going to be able to test the locks of hair stowed away from one of your ancestors!
Why, you ask?
First barrier:Cost. This process of trying to extract DNA from a hair sample, especially a very, very old hair sample is meticulous work. It will cost the average consumer a pretty penny. And, you may not be able to find a DNA testing company who wants to do it for you. All major genetic genealogy companies will just flat out tell you “no.” Most paternity testing companies will require your hair has the root attached. In fact, in my quick search, I can’t even find one DNA testing company that will attempt to get DNA from your lock of hair.
Second barrier: Results. Even if you could get a lab to extract the DNA for you, the only available DNA type retrieved from a cut piece of hair is mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The mtDNA will trace a direct maternal line. This is opposed to the YDNA that traces a direct paternal line and the autosomal DNA which traces both sides of your family tree. Even if they do get mtDNA from your sample, it is likely to be damaged and incomplete. Therefore, the best you will likely get is an assessment of your deep ancestral origins.
For you, that might not be quite enough to determine and document your family history. But for those interested in verifying this story of mutineers settling in the Pitcairn islands, it might be.
Will it Work?
If they do get mtDNA from the 10 pigtails, they will get 10 mtDNA lineages represented. Those stemming from the mutineers should have their deep origins in Europe, while their Tahitian brides will have a very different mtDNA signature. Likewise, if an mtDNA signature can be obtained, then the mtDNA of those still living in Pitcairn and nearby Norfolk (where many went in 1857) should match these pigtails. If it does, they can measure how many of the current residents are directly maternally related. Of course, in order to truly verify the claims, some serious genealogy work must be completed.
I will be watching this story closely over the next few months as research progresses. If successful, this will be another victory for the rarely celebrated mtDNA. This study shows that if your goals are understanding deep heritage, or testing out a particular hypothesis on your maternal line, mtDNA can be a useful option.
While the DNA studies you read about in the paper won’t always be something you can learn from, others are. Take for example the stories I shared several months ago on the Genealogy Gems podcast and blog about DNA confirming the love affair of President Warren G. Harding and the story of how experts proved it was King Richard III buried under that parking lot. You can definitely learn about using DNA for genealogy from these very public examples!
So, you think there might be a missing census page? Whether it’s a missing census or a missing family, my special guest, professional genealogist Kate Eakman from Legacy Tree Genealogists has strategies to help you figure it out. She has just the answers you need to find your ‘missing’ family.
A Genealogy Gems reader doing genealogy research in New Jersey has lost her family! Well not literally, but she can’t find them in the 1940 U.S. Census. Here’s the email I recently received from her:
I am having a problem finding my mother and grandparents in the 1940 census. My grandfather, William Charles Opfer, was born on October 15 1900. I can find him in the 1930 census living in Glouescter Township, (Unincorporated Grenloch) Camden County, New Jersey. He is living with his wife Kathryn (Katharine) Opfer and three children: William C Jr, Robert, and Nancy (my mother).
When I search the 1940 census on Ancestry nothing shows up. So I went to the government web site and converted the 1930 Enumeration District to the 1940 Enumeration District. The 1940 Enumeration Districts were 4-57, 4-58, and 4-61. I then went through all of the pages for each of the districts looking for William C. Opfer. I did this on Ancestry, Family Search, and NARA. No William C. Opfer.
I then went back to the 1930 census and looked at his neighbors. I searched for each of the 13 heads-of-household neighbors from the 1930 census. Two had moved 1940 and I found them. I could not find the other neighbors in the 1940 census. I am wondering if a page from the 1940 census did not get scanned? Is there somewhere else I could look?
Missing Census Answers from Kate Eakman, Legacy Tree Genealogists
First, let me say how impressed I am with this Gem’s research and her dedication to finding this census report. She has made some very thorough searches and performed a number of advanced genealogical techniques in her quest for the 1940 U.S. Census page. It hardly seems fair that all that work didn’t yield the success she surely earned.
The government website she referenced is the National Archives 1940 Census page. The use of the page “1930 Records Search” allowed her to simply locate her grandfather in the 1930 U.S. Census. Then, by clicking a few buttons, discover the corresponding enumeration districts (ED) for the 1930 ED in which he and his family lived: 4-57, 4-58, and 4-61.
I, too, have scrolled through page after page searching for that one elusive name and we know how tedious that task can be! Using three different sites was a good strategy and one that we employ ourselves here at Legacy Tree Genealogists. Different images might be easier or more difficult to read, although in the case of these three EDs, the copies seemed to be uniformly easy to read.
The first two EDs were for Blackwood, an unincorporated part of Camden County, New Jersey. The third one was for the Lakeland Tuberculosis Hospital, unlikely to have housed the entire family, but certainly worth looking through in case one Opfer was a patient there.
ED 4-58 had an interesting variation at the end of the report. The last two pages were not 15A and 15B, as would be expected, but were 61A and 61B. This indicates these households were enumerated at a later date than were their neighbors. Because federal law requires every household to be counted, and because not everyone was at home when the enumerator arrived, the enumerator had to return on a different day and attempt to gather the necessary information for those families. They were recorded separately, beginning with page 61A.
People living in hotels, trailer camps, and other places normally designed for single-night stays were enumerated a week after the initial enumeration and those pages are numbered beginning with 81A. Not every ED has a 61 or an 81 page, but if you see one, now you know why the page numbers suddenly changed so dramatically.
The writer’s use of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ FAN Club was an excellent idea, too. FAN, an acronym for Friends, Associates, and Neighbors, takes advantage of the fact that people, in general, tend to remain geographically close to the people they know. [Read more about this in our post, “The Genealogy FAN Club Principle Overcomes Genealogy Brick Walls“] If a portion of a community moves, they tend to move together and relocate in the same general area of their new location. Her instincts to use this tool were excellent, even if they did not produce the desired results. This falls under the heading of “reasonably exhaustive research” and should always be included when someone, or in this case something, can’t be found, but should be there.
The fact that the researcher was able to locate only two of those neighbors could be explained, in part, by the fact that so many were in their 60s, 70s, and even 90s in 1930. They simply may have passed away in the intervening ten years. Another explanation, particularly for the working families, is that the Great Depression caused many families to move in order to find employment.
This may have been true for the Opfers. We noticed in 1930, William was employed as a supervisor for Reading Transportation. While supervisors were important to the operation of any transportation company, it is possible William found himself unemployed, as was true for millions of other Americans. If that happened, he and his family could have moved anywhere in the United States in an effort to find work. Alternatively, William may have left to find work while Kathryn and the children lived by themselves in reduced circumstances, or with family or friends.
To this end, I searched for William and Kathryn, and then each of the three children individually, in the hope of locating one or more family members. Using the “less is more” strategy which is often an important part of genealogical research, I searched with and without the family members’ ages, places of birth, and other family member’s names. Because the surname “Opfer” might have been misheard by the enumerator or grossly misspelled, I even searched for the various members of the family with no surname. Since we did not know where the family may have lived between 1930 and 1944, we included all of New Jersey, Delaware (the home state of Kathryn), as well as neighboring Pennsylvania and New York in our searches. The lack of positive results meant we needed to expand our search to the Eastern seaboard, and then the entire United States.
We also identified the names of William’s and Kathryn’s parents, William and Sallie Opfer and Raymond and Corrine Mason, and searched their households and neighborhoods for William and Kathryn. They were not there. Walter, William’s younger brother, was not hosting the family, either.
The writer had asked if it was possible that a page from the 1940 U.S. Census did not get scanned. Since the 1940 census has only been available for four years, it is still possible, although not probable, that there are one or more pages missing unbeknownst to anyone. Our research revealed only a few pages from a couple EDs in Ohio and South Dakota that were missing from the FamilySearch collection. There is no indication anywhere that there are missing pages from New Jersey. In addition, the pages in the three possible EDs for the Opfers were all included and in the correct numerical order, with no indication of any missing pages at the end. Therefore, I think we must conclude that missing pages do not explain the Opfer family’s disappearance.
Other Databases to Help
There are two other databases which might provide some insight into the location of the Opfer family. The first is the set of 1942 World War II draft registration cards. All men between the ages of 18 and 65 were required to register for this draft. The draft registration cards would have included the address at which William lived in 1942; however, there was no card for a man named William Opfer (or with only the surname “Opfer”) born between 1895 and 1905.
The final search was the database of city directories. A poorly-indexed city directory reported the Opfers lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1943, but there are two directories contained in the same book, and the listing was actually for 1947. It reported William and Katherine lived at 209 Washington Avenue with their children William and his wife, Robert, and Nancy. William’s brother, Walter, and his wife Edith lived nearby. Unfortunately, the search for them in 1940 revealed that 79-year-old widower William Pape lived at that address with his household servants who were not the Opfer’s.
The William Opfer family in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1947.Photo courtesy Ancestry.
Although the turmoil and upheaval of the Great Depression meant families were scattered, and it would have been easy to miss enumerating many households in the mid-1930s, by 1940 the U.S. was recovering from the effects of the Depression. Some agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), were in place to provide work for men. Many war-related industries on both coasts were revived by the Allies’ efforts to stop Hitler.
In other words, there should have been work and stability for the Opfer family by 1940, and they ought to have appeared in a census report. The evidence of the 1930 census and the 1947 city directory strongly suggest they remained in or close to New Jersey, but all of the efforts to locate them have failed to yield positive results.
One Last Scenario
One possible scenario which would explain the Opfers apparent absence from the 1940 census is a simple one: perhaps the family was in the process of moving from one location to another in the month of April when the census was enumerated. Although the census was supposed to be enumerated on 1 April, the reality is that it was simply impossible to knock on every door and obtain the necessary information in one day. Some enumeration districts were fully counted by the 4th of the month. Other places were not completed until the 30th. This was true even in the same town.
If the Opfers had moved across the street from 206 Washington Avenue to 209 Washington Avenue in Haddonfield, for instance, between the 5th and the 14th of April, they would have moved from one enumeration district to another. Because the 209 Washington Avenue address had been enumerated on 4 April, they would not have been counted in that new location. And, because the 206 Washington Avenue address was not enumerated until the 15th of the month, they would not have been included in that EDs census report. We have seen this happen in the reverse and a family was enumerated twice because they moved during the enumeration, so it certainly could have happened the other way around. This is the only explanation we can find to explain the absence of the Opfers from the 1940 U.S. Census.
More About Kate Eakman at Legacy Tree Genealogists and SAVE $100!
Kate Eakman grew up hearing Civil War stories at her father’s knee and fell in love with history and genealogy at an early age. With a master’s degree in history and over 20 years experience as a genealogist, Kate has worked her magic on hundreds of family trees and narratives.
Areas of expertise:
-Native American Genealogy
-U.S. Civil War & Victorian America
-Narrative Biographies
-Irish Genealogy
The team of expert genealogists at Legacy Tree Genealogists can help bust through your brick walls. They do the research and you enjoy the discoveries!
These two unusual genealogy sources may unlock secrets to your family history research! The Archive Lady Melissa Barker shares tips for finding and using these two little-known types of original manuscripts that you may find tucked away in an archive. Two unusual...
Writer James Joyce’s baptismal certificate; click to link to Wikipedia image.
As of today, the National Library of Ireland expects to launch a free, digitized collection of ALL its Catholic parish registers on its website (this link takes you to the English version; it’s also available in Irish). Nearly 400,000 digital images of microfilmed parish records comprise this collection.
According to a press release, “The parish register records are considered the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census. Dating from the 1740s to the 1880s, they cover 1,091 parishes throughout the island of Ireland, and consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records….Their digitisation means that, for the first time, anyone who likes will be able to access these registers without having to travel to Dublin.”
Catholic parish registers are a vital genealogical resource. In addition to the names of those baptized or married, they usually include those event dates, names of parents of baptized children, godparents and witnesses (who may also be relatives).
NOTE: This is a browsable-only collection. There are currently no plans to index or transcribe the records. However, the press release included a great suggestion for accessing indexes: look to local family history centers for that parish or neighborhood. “The buy diet medication online nationwide network of local family history centres holds indexes and transcripts of parish registers for their local areas,” it says.
Those unfamiliar with Ireland research may assume this means local FamilySearch Family History Centers, but a map shows only a few of these in Ireland. I would start first with the network of county genealogy centers, accessible online at Roots Ireland. According to that site, “The county genealogy centres are based in local communities, working with volunteers, local historical societies, local clergy, local authorities, county libraries and government agencies to build a database of genealogical records for their county. By using this website you are supporting that work and the communities from which your ancestors originated.” Several counties actually already have online records you can access through the Roots Ireland link above. Ancestry also has several databases of Irish Catholic parish registers.
For more tips on researching your Irish relatives, listen to the FREE Family History Made Easy podcast episode 21, in which we interviewed Irish expert Judith Wight. You’ll hear her tips on finding Church of Ireland records, civil registrations, estate records and how history helps us understand gaps in the records.
Thank you for sharing this post with those who will LOVE to know about these Irish genealogy resources!
Trace your British Isles genealogy! This week we report on new genealogy records online for England, Scotland, and Ireland. Read about WWI weekly casualty lists, free census records at FreeCen, English and Scottish burials, Scottish poorhouse–and a free British Newspaper Archive webinar on learning about migration and travel in old newspapers.
British Isles Genealogy: Free and Fee Records Now Online
NEW! Free UK census records website
The same team of volunteers who bring us FreeBMD and FreeREG have now launched FreeCEN, a free website offering free-to-search 19th-century UK censuses. “Transcribed entirely by volunteers, we have more than 32 million individuals available on our website that anyone can search without having to create an account,” states a press release. “FreeCEN2 also brings with it a host of improvements for existing and future volunteers, such as a members sign-in area and brand new messaging system.” NOTE: This site may not be comprehensive for every kind of record you’re looking for. But it’s free, and definitely worth exploring, whether you want to search its collections or volunteer to help add to them.
England burial records: Staffordshire, Lincolnshire
Findmypast.com subscribers can now access over 127,000 entries in its Staffordshire Monumental Inscriptions, providing information on burials in “168 churchyards, burial grounds, and cemeteries throughout the county. This record sets can help you discover an ancestor’s birth date, death date, and residence, as well as the name of other family members such as parents, spouse, or children.”
About 90,000 new records have been added to Findmypast’s Lincolnshire Burials 1754-1812, which now totals over 1.5 million records covering over 300 locations across the county. For each person, you might find age at death, birth year, burial date, and location.
Scotland, West Lothian
Findmypast.com has published new records relating to West Lothian, located in the south of Scotland. According to the site, the area was “known as Linlithgowshire until 1921. The county was home to the Scottish monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries.”
Linlithgowshire Poorhouse records, with details on more than 15,000 people admitted between 1859 and 1912. “The collection contains a variety of different record types including admissions, deaths, discharges, and sick rolls that will reveal your ancestor’s admission date, behavior during their stay, previous residence, and more.”
Burials, 1860-1975. Over 87,000 transcripts of burial records spanning 115 years. “Each transcript that will reveal the date of your ancestor’s burial, the location of their grave, their occupation, residence, death date, and in some cases the names of additional family members.”
WWI Weekly Casualty List at The British Newspaper Archive
The historically significant Weekly Casualty List (1917-1918, published by the War Office & Air Ministry) lists names of soldiers who were killed, wounded, or declared missing during the First World War. The War Office and Air Ministry updated and published the lists weekly and our current holdings cover the latter years of the conflict. Over 2,400 digitized pages are published in this collection.
More new collections at the British Newspaper Archive
East Sussex: For Brighton Gazette, additions include 1871-1910, for total coverage for this scenic seaside town now spanning 1825-1910.
Hertfordshire: New issues have been added for Herts & Cambs Reporter & Royston Crow, covering the town of Royston. Available years now include 1878-1882, 1884-1888, 1890-1898, and 1900-1910.
Lancashire: The Nelson Leader coverage now spans 1920-1957; it was published in Nelson.
Norfolk: Another new collection is Eastern Daily Press from Norwich. It’s already got nearly 40,000 pages of coverage for 1870-1876, 1878-1890, 1896, 1899, and 1901-1909.
Tynemouth, Tyne, and Wear: Now you can read Shields Daily News from 1870-1957, with the recent addition of pages for 1938-1957.
Warwickshire: New on the site is Alcester Chronicle, with over 17,000 digitized pages covering 1869-1888 and 1890-1910.
West Yorkshire: The years 1880-1888 have been added for The Knaresborough Post, for total coverage now spanning 1878-1912 (with a few little gaps).
Ireland, Tyrone: The Limerick Chronicle (1832-1868) gives historical news from the western seaboard of Ireland and their holdings cover both the pre- and post-Famine periods. The Mid-Ulster Mail was published in County Tyrone, with current coverage offering insight into the period before the Great War.
Scotland, Angus, and Kincardineshire: The Brechin Herald and Angus and Mearns News (1890-1892). This paper covers both of the historic eastern counties of Angus and Kincardineshire.
Free webinar from The British Newspaper Archive: News coverage of immigration and travel
“The topic of emigration is well covered by the newspapers. For instance, you can easily find advertisements that might have enticed your ancestor to leave Britain or Ireland to seek a new life in Australia or America. In the 1840s, The Limerick Chronicle carried advertisements for ‘fast ships’ and information booklets designed to assist immigrants travelling to the United States.” -The British Newspaper Archive
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