Wedding Wednesday - John Meredith and Elizabeth Hall

Marriage license books from the Circuit Court of Queen Anne's County, MD are available online through the Maryland State Archives. The licenses are in scanned books and cover most years from 1817-1906.

The following license is for John Meredith and Elizabeth Hall. The date on the record is Feb. 5, 1823 and the officiant was Rev. Reed. A fee of $4.00 was paid. According to the information on the Maryland State Archives site, the date recorded by the clerk was the date of the marriage.

The entry is number 191 on page 64 of the book. The entries on this page are for 1824, so it appears the clerk may have made a mistake in recording the date.

According to a comment I received on a post about Francis and Mary Councill, John Meredith and Elizabeth Hall were the parents of Francis' wife Mary Meredith. They would be my 3x great-grandparents.

The commenter also mentioned that Mary's grandfather was Richard Hall and Mary had a brother named John Thomas Meredith. Mary and her brother were raised by Richard Hall after John Meredith died in 1830 and Elizabeth died in 1833. Thanks to H. Meredith for the information!

Mystery Monday - Making Sense of DNA Ethnicity Results

A few years ago I created an ethnicity chart based on what I knew about the origins of the main lines in my family tree.

This chart assumes that percentages were passed straight down through each generation, so a great-great grandparent represents 6.25% of my ancestry. I know the DNA passed down is much more random than that, so this was just a guesstimate at best.

For this chart, I put my Mom's origins at 100% British, but I've since found out that she may have some other European and Irish roots. My Dad's heritage was about 64% German, 12% Irish, 12% French, and 12% British/Unknown on paper. That gave me the following percentages:

British  - 55%
German - 31%
Irish  - 6.25%
French - 6.25%
Unknown - 1.5%

My Mom and I had our DNA tested through Ancestry.com last year, so I was curious to compare the DNA results to my original estimates based on my paper tree.

Here's my breakdown from Ancestry.com:

The first mystery was what happened to my Irish and German heritage? The second was where did all the Scandinavian DNA come from? I can guess that at least some of my German and Irish heritage is showing up as Scandinavian and/or British.

Even more surprising was my Mom's chart which looked more like what I expected mine to look like. She came up with 54% Great Britain, 27% Europe West and 13% Ireland and only 3% Scandinavian.

Given, that 50% of our DNA comes from each parent, this seems to indicate my Dad had a much higher percentage of British and Scandinavian roots than I can account for. Even if all of the DNA I inherited from my Mom was from her British lines, that would mean 23% of the British came from my Dad.

I transferred my results to Family Tree DNA and got the following breakdown:

Their definition of British Isles includes Ireland. This looks closer to what I expected, but shows an even larger Scandinavian percentage. On this chart, I have 22% Western and Central Europe vs. the 3-6% from Ancestry.com.  My British Isles percentage dropped from 73% on Ancestry.com to 50%. That's quite a difference!

I also took a look at some of the Admixture tools on Gedmatch.com. For another comparison, here are my results with the Eurogenes EUTest:

Interesting that my Mom's results are very similar to mine on the Eurogenes EUTest admixture. We both had around 30% Atlantic and 25-27% North Central Europe. Finding out exactly what the groupings mean on this chart is another challenge which I'll save for a future post.

So, what does any of this mean? Each admixture chart is based on different algorithms and population databases, so comparing them against each other doesn't mean too much. According to Ancestry.com, the number of reference samples for a region and the similarity of one region to another can affect the accuracy of the results. In particular, they state that their results for Great Britain and Europe West are less accurate than for most of the other regions.

I would think the results will become more accurate as more people get tested and the reference populations for each region are refined. While the charts are fun to look at and can provide some clues on your origins, I wouldn't draw any conclusions from them.

Follow Friday - Changes to Google Friend Connect

Google announced last month that a Google account must be used to follow blogs hosted by Blogger. Users that signed up with other providers won't be able to sign in and see their reader's list.and bloggers may see a decrease in their number of followers.

Full details were posted by Blogger here: Update to Google Friend Connect.

I know some people don't want to register for a Google account, so I've provided other options on my blog. Beneath my followers list, there is a form to subscribe via any email account. The emails are sent out once a day when there is a new post, but don't contain the formatting and colors present on the blog web page.

I've also provided a button to subscribe via the Feedly reader.

For other bloggers out there, what options are you providing? I don't think this has affected me or my readers that much, but let me know if there are other reader options you'd prefer.

Friday's Faces From the Past - Celina, Ohio Eagles Lodge

I was contacted by someone that rescued this picture from a flea market and wondered if I had more information on it. Luckily, the names were written on the back. My great-grandfather Charles Creeden is standing on the right in the middle row.

I knew from Charles' obituary that he had been a member of the Celina Eagles Lodge for many years and served as president at one time. My guess is that this is a picture of the Celina Eagles Lodge members taken when Charles was in his 30s or 40s. Charles lived from 1886-1958.

The following names were written on the back:

Top Row: Geo Detrich, Albert Schuck. Arsen Wenning. Vern Sacher. Ken?, John Hassman, Zeno Sacher, Fred Stemmer, H.J. Stelzer, J.P. Long

Middle Row: Clyde Myers. Henry Weisman. John Gast. Ben Ruschau, Joe Dierkes. Wm. Stein, Chas Cavender. Jake Puthoff. Chas Creeden

Charter Members Bottom Row: Wm Curry. Joe Schmidt. J. B. Schmidt. Jake Riesner. Oran Gillespie, John Schuyler, Frank Zender, Jake Gilcher. Frank Wolf.

A couple of newspaper articles from the Celina Democrat had several of the same names as members of the Eagles Lodge as those on the back of the picture.

December 10, 1915 - Celina Democrat newspaper

April 3, 1917 - Celina Democrat newspaper

Nice find at the flea market and I'm glad the photo was rescued!

Mystery Monday - Patrick William Creeden

I've run into a bit of a brick wall in trying to find information on Patrick William Creedan. He was born in Clinton County, Ohio around 1865 to my 3x great-grandfather Patrick Creedan and his second wife, Hannah Hoover. The family is in Clinton County, Ohio in the 1870 and 1880 census records.

Patrick is 5 in the 1870 census which was taken on June 23, 1870 in Wayne Township in Clinton County, Ohio.

Patrick W. is 16 in the 1880 census which was taken on the June 6, 1880 in Wayne Township.

In 1883, his father Patrick died and left a portion of his estate to his son Patrick William. That's the last definite trace I have of Patrick William.

I've found several more records that could be for Patrick William, but the name given is William or W. P. Creeden. My guess is he may have gone by William since his father's name was also Patrick.

The marriage record shown above states that W. P. Creeden married Mary C. Snyder on August 24, 1885 in Clinton County, Ohio. Several Ancestry.com trees have this marriage as May 16, 1885 in Ross County, Ohio, but there are no sources. I've been unable to find any Creeden marriage records in Ross County.

In 1887, Quaker records from Clinton County show that a John and William Creeden were received by request. The record lists John's wife Minerva and his son Hiram, but no family for William. In 1889, there is a disunity record for John, Minerva, Hiram and William, meaning that they left the Quaker group or were asked to leave for some reason. Although I can't tell for sure who William is, the John in the records is a match for the son of Patrick Creedan and brother of Patrick William Creedan.

In the 1900 census, William and Mary C. Creeden are living in Darke County with their children Minnie, Elsie, Orval, Ralph, Elzworth, William, and Mary O. They've been married for 15 years. The entry right above them is for a John and Ida Creedan and their children Flora and Stella. This is a match for Patrick William's brother John and John's second wife Ida. William's birth date is May 1864 according to this census record.

Kansas had a state census in 1905 and William and Mary C. Creeden are living in Sedgwick County as of March 1, 1905.The same children are listed, plus Violet. It looks like Mary O. from the 1900 census goes by Opal in this census. John Creedan lived out his life in Darke and Mercer counties in Ohio and died in Mercer County in 1923. William died in 1909 and is buried in Pratt, Kansas. His gravestone says he lived from 1862-1909, so that birth date is a bit earlier than any of the census records.

There is another William Patrick Creeden of about the same age in Ohio during this time. This William was the son of Timothy and Ellen Creeden in Hamilton County. A marriage record for him showed that he married Margaret Nolan in 1883 and consent was given by his father Timothy.

In the 1900 census record shown above, William and Margaret Creeden are living in Hamilton County with children Thomas, Michael, and Laurence. William was born in Feb. 1863. Timothy and Ellen also had a son named Laurence, so that name seemed to run in their family. I mention this William since I've seen records for him confused with the William who went to Kansas.

A death certificate and/or obituary for the Kansas William might help clear this up, but so far, I've been unable to find one online. According to the Kansas Historical Society, death certificates weren't kept by the state until 1911. Records before that may have been kept at the county or city clerk's office, but not all of these survived. The historical society has microfilm for some vital records, but I don't see anything for Pratt or Sedgwick. I'll post an update if I locate any additional records.