New to this Blog? Start here!

 The primary purpose of this blog is to convey to others an understanding of how I've gone about using autosomal DNA data to better understand my family history. I'll do this primarily using my research stories as examples. I'm a member of a FaceBook group addressing this topic and need a place to explain to others what I'm doing without having to use a series of brief posts. Beyond that, I'm hoping to learn from others who would like to weigh-in on the questions I encounter, so please feel free to make comments. 

I've had some success and it's exciting - so exciting that it is consuming a lot of my free time right now. I love having a mystery to solve. I love sifting through data and making discoveries. I love being able to use this as an opportunity to use what programming skills I have and develop those skills to analyze DNA data. While others, outside my family and closer cousins, have no personal stake in the final answer, they may still find the topic useful in their own work and, if nothing else, they too may just love a good mystery. It may also motivate others to get involved in DNA genealogy - getting tested, getting family members tested, posting pedigrees and sharing their information on services where it can be helpful to other researchers - which boosts the chances for success for all involved in this hobby. 

This whole adventure has so far been focused upon addressing one genealogical mystery - finding the ancestry of John Jacobs and his wife Huldah, born in 1731 and 1733, respectively. John first appears with Huldah around the year 1760 in Merrimack, Hillsborough, New Hampshire. These two people my first DNA genealogy projects and my progress on both will be blogged here with different labels - just select the project you are interested in on the cross-bar.  What follows is an introduction to both current projects. 

There is no written record of where John was born, however family oral history suggested he was either from Holland or Germany and was born just before or after his family arrived in America. No marriage certificate has been found for John and Huldah and we did not know Huldah's maiden name or have any idea where she was born. We got to this point by the very early 1980's and it was not until about 40 years later that we learned more. In the meantime, our best guess was that John was connected to one of the well-known Jacobs families that established themselves in the Colonies - John Jacob of Hingham, MA, who had a son who lived in Rehoboth that married a Huldah. Well, we were wrong and the first hint of that came from DNA data - though Y-DNA, not autosomal DNA.

I was able to find Y-DNA data from a descendant of John Jacob of Hingham and it wasn't anywhere close to a match. That data (37-markers at the time) did not show any very close matches that could clearly be said to be related. The closest were two matches to Hoover's, but they showed only some possibility of being related. There were no Jacobs names on the list of matches.

So, for about 40 years, we found out we were on the wrong track. It wasn't long after, in 2012, that another Jacobs cousin, Lorraine (who is my partner in trying to solve this mystery), made a huge discovery. In the History of Chester, VT, published by the Chester Historical Society, was the following: 

      "John Jacobs Hover was born in Holland. When but a lad he came to American and settled with his parents in the state of Pennsylvania. Being a young fellow and loving excitement, as all boys do, he started on a trip to the state of Vermont. On the way he was pursued by Indians. Night descended on the lad of twenty, and he crawled into a hollow log. The Indians crept up on him and turned the log around. All they found was a spider's web spun on the outside of the log. Disappointed, they went away. In the morning John Hover started again on his journey. He arrived safely in Chester without anymore thrilling experiences that we know. He settled here and built a place now owned by Charles Holden. He was a blacksmith by trade, and with the help of a son did a rather large business here. Mr. Hover married and had four sons. Mrs. Clara Howard Smith is a descendent of this family, her grandfather being one of the Hover sons. After Hover died, Jacobs lived in this house, then a man by the name of Henry Church occupied it."

   Searching further, Lorraine found another book: American Ancestry: giving name and descent, in the male line, of Americans whose ancestors settled in the United States previous to the Declaration of Independence, A, Volume 6. Lorraine wrote: In this book is an entry for the genealogy of George Lowell Fletcher of Chester, Vermont. George married Emily Cedoro Jacobs. "Her gt.-gr.-father, John, came to Chester from Penn., his name originally John Jacobs Hover, but the Hover was dropped . . ." Additional research proved that Emily Cedoro Jacobs (b. 1821) was a daughter of Cyrus Jacobs, a known son of John Jacobs, Jr., son of our John of Merrimack.

  So, two different great-grand daughters of John Jacob Hover (we will assume that the middle name had no “s”) tell a similar story. There were no other John Jacobs in Chester in that timeframe besides ours. That both John Jacobs and John Jacobs, Jr. were blacksmiths and that John had four sons also fits.

  We know that not all of the information in the stories John Jacobs told his great-granddaughters is true. Chester, Vt. did not exist when John Jacobs was twenty years old. We know that he was in Merrimack, NH before he finally moved to Chester, Vt. in the early 1780's. However, that he changed his name explains our decades-long frustration. It is also consistent with the closer DNA matches being Hoover's. 

   It was after 2012 that I got more heavily involved autosomal DNA testing and research. While it was clear that it was never going to be able to PROVE anything with DNA alone, what became clear was that it could be helpful. First, it identified other Jacobs descendants from which new clues could be derived. Second, it made it possible to find others who have segments of DNA matching ours, indicating that we have a common ancestor; once that is known, pedigrees (if available) can be researched to identify those common ancestors. What will it reveal about my Jacobs ancestors? Follow along with those labeled "Searching for Huldah" and "John Hover/Jacobs" as I learn and make discoveries chasing DNA segments through history.