A quick word of explanation

This is just a quick post to explain how I plan to proceed, my numbering, and how the blog functions. I am planning on working my way back through the generations creating biographies of each ancestor.  Some will have quite a bit more information then others and unfortunately, I only have a first name for some of my ancestors.  That will drive the number of post about a person.  I'll also slip in side posts about interesting facts and locations.  Additionally, I'll continue to post things like my Grandfather's World War I diary.  FYI, more entries on that soon.

Each time I post on an individual, I'll include numbering schema that should help tie individuals together.  As an example, my grandfather Ervin Earl Putnam will be P1 for Putnam 1.  His father Amos Putnam will be P2 and mother Cora Carpenter P3.  His wife, Mary Connelly will be C1.  The Wrights will start with a W and the Smiths an S.

I am also adding tags to all of the post.  They are either based on the Surname, location or grouping such as World War I.  I will also tag individuals who have a lot of posts.  If you look at the top of the blog, you can see a word cloud of these tags.  the bigger the tag, the more posts under it.  If you click on it, it will filter the blog to just those posts.

I am also trying to add a location to every posts.  this is on top of embedding maps where ever I can.

Now I'll drop the boring about stuff and get back to the interesting bits.

Remembering my Father at the Navy Memorial, Robert Ervin Putnam

Robert Ervin Putnam

My father, Robert Ervin Putnam, past away five years ago, next Sunday, March 27th.  His life and stories will take up lots of posts in the future.  This is just a quick post because of an experience I had last week. I was in Washington, DC for some meetings a came out of the metro at the Navy Monument.  It was random chance as I really should have stayed on and switched trains, but it was a nice day and I thought it would be nice to take a walk before my meeting.

As soon as I had gotten above ground, I realized where I was and I took some time to look around.  My understanding was that my father lied about his age so that he could join up during World War II.  He wanted to be a pilot, but some issues with his teeth caused him to redirect into the Navel Reserves.

I really don't have much information on his time in the reserves, so plan on doing some digging soon.

How Irish is she? Part Four, the Careys

Now, for the last post of this series I'll be talking about my Father-in-Laws ancestors.  He comes from good Irish stock on his fathers side, but his mother had a much more diverse ancestry.

John Francis Carey	Georgeana Orr
My Father-in-Law
My Wife

John Francis Carey was 62.5% Irish, 18.75% English and 18.75 % Dutch.  His paternal Grandparents, Michael Carey and Bridget Thornton were both from Ireland.  On his maternal side, his Great-Grandmother, Margaret Ellen McCoy may also have been Irish, but I haven't been able to trace it back far enough yet.

Georgeana Orr was 12.5% Irish, 75% English, 6.3% German, 3.1% French, and 3.1% Swiss.  Her maternal Great-Grandmother, Alice Brandy was Irish.  Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of information on either the Carey or Orr side and can't even tell you where they were born in Ireland.

If we take this down a generation to my Father-in-Law, he ends up being 37.5% Irish, 46.9% English, 9.4% Dutch, 3.1% German, 1.6% French, and 1.6% Swiss.  He has also had his DNA tested and it ended up showing:

• Irish: 47%
• Europe West: 46%
• Scandinavia: 35
• Iberian Peninsula: <1%
• Great Britain: <1%
• Europe East: <1%
• Caucasus: <1%

Now, we can put this all together to look at my wife's ancestral makeup.  She is 34.4% Irish, 23.4% English, 14.1% German, 12.5% Swedish, 10.2% French, 4.7% Dutch, and 0.4% Swiss.  That makes her about 1.4% more Irish then me.  

Taking this one step further, our kids end up quit a mix.  33.7% Irish, 44.1% English, 7.8% German, 6.3% Swedish, 5.1% French, 2.4% Dutch, 0.4% Swiss, 0.2% Welsh, and 0.1% Scottish.  Guess they really represent the melting pot that is America.  

How Irish is She? Part Three, the Welchs

Now I am going to move from my family to my wife's.  At the end I'll try and pull it all together for my kids.  When I married her, I was under the impression she was a Irish girl.  Turns out she has a more diverse heritage then I do.  But since the question I'm asking is about the Irish component, I'll target in on that.  To be consistent, I'll start with her Mother's side.  Unfortunately, I don't have as full a record here, but I'll do the best I can.

Micheal Phillips Welch	Dorothy E Johnson
My Mother-in-Law
My Wife

 

My wife's grandmother's father immigrated from Sweden and her mother immigrated from Germany.  Therefore, Dorothy Johnson ended up being 50% Swidish and 50% German.  

Micheal Phillip Welch is different story.  He was 62.5% Irish and 37.5% French.  The french ancestors, on his mother's side, came down through Canada. In that group, my wife's 3rd great grandmother, Catherine Cassidy is the only Irish immigrant.  Unfortunately, we don't yet know enough about her to say where she came from in Ireland.  His father's side is all Irish.

 

Connection	Name	Year of Birth	Location of Birth
2nd Great Grandfather	John Welch	around 1835	Galway
2nd Great Grandmother	Bridget Burke Hennessey	1829	Longford

Moving down the branch, that makes my Mother-in-Law 31% Irish, 25% German, 25% Swedish, and 19% French.  She has also had her DNA tested, so we can see how the results compare with the genealogical information.  

• Ireland: 24%
• Europe West: 26%
• Scandinavia: 26%
• Finland/Northwest Russia: 9%
• Great Britain: 9%
• Iberian Peninsula: 2%
• Italy/Greece: <1%
• Europe East: <1%
• Africa North: <1%
• Asia South: <1%

So what is going on here?  This is quite a diverse set of results.  The percentages from Ireland, and Great Britain likely come from the Irish ancestors.  The Scandinavia and Finland/Northwest Russia likely are from her Swedish Grandfather.  The Europe West and Europe East probably tie to her French and German ancestors.  I would put down the Iberian Peninsula, Italy/Greece, and Africa North probably to the effects of Roman colonization.  That leave the trace of Asia South.  It appears to be an oddball, but let's see if we can figure it out.  Ancestry.com identifies the Asia South results with primarily India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.  My suspicion is that this result represents the remnant of the early migration of people out of these areas into Europe.  Therefore, it is likely tied to her Swedish and German ancestors.  But really, that is just a guess!

Next post will cover the Carey side of my wife's background.

How Irish are we? Part One revisited, John McCann

This post demonstrates how I am continuing the find new facts that change my understanding.  I already have to make a correction to a previous post.  This morning I was doing some research and discovered John McCann's baptismal record, and we had his place of birth wrong.  Turns out he and his family were from what is now Northern Ireland.  I don't plan to go into a lot of detail here as I want to do a much deeper dive into that branch one of these days, so here is a quick correction.

John McCann was baptized as a Catholic on July 10th, 1831 in the village of Clonoe, County Tyrone.
  I have also found a record for a Mary Clasby's baptism on July 24th, 1835 in the village of Cappataggle, County Galway.  I am very confident that this John McCann is our ancestry, but not nearly as confident that this Mary Clasby is his wife.  I'll have to keep researching.

How Irish are we? Part Two: the Putnams

Last time I talked about the make up of the Wright side of the family.  Now I want to talk about the Putnam and Connelly branches.  As a start, the table below shows my father and his parents.

Ervin Earl Putnam	Mary Gertrude Connelly
Robert Evrin Putnam
Writer

Tracing my grandmother's ancestry back she ends up being 62.5% Irish, 30.5% English, 6.3% German, and 0.8% Welsh.   A few of the Irish immigrants are identifiable and I have listed them below.

Connection	Name	Year of Birth	Location of Birth
3rd Great Grandfather	Patrick Eagan	abt 1810	Waterford, Ireland
3rd Great Grandmother	Mary McDonald	Unknown	Roscommon, Ireland

All of this immigration occurred before the Irish Potato Famine, therefore it is likely they where
protestants.   This whole branch of the family ended up in Canada, some through direct settlement, and others having to move north after the revolutionary war because they where loyalist.  I'll try and tell their stories in other post.In some other posts.

 My grandfather, Ervin Earl Putnam also had some Irish blood.  I have calculated that he was 19.5% Irish, 80.3% English, and 0.2% Scottish.  The table below lists his know Irish immigrants.  Given where they came from and the years of immigration, these where likely Scotch-Irish.  In fact, John Patrick's father was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Connection	Name	Year of Birth	Location of Birth
3rd Great Grandfather	Lewis Mitchell	1738	Ulster
6rd Great Grandfather	John Patrick	1711	Tyrone
6rd Great Grandfather	Robert Patterson	1713	Manorcunningham
6rd Great Grandfather	William Lewis Hancock	1695	Londonderry
6rd Great Grandmother	Sarah Bradshaw	1713	Londonderry

If we take a look at the next generation we can see my father's makeup:

• Irish 41%
• English 55.4%
• German 3.1%
• Welsh 0.4%
• Scottish 0.1%

At this point, we can get back into the genetics.  Unfortunately, my father past away before the test was available.  Luckily, my uncle was willing to get tested and his results are listed below:

• Europe West 32%
• Ireland 28%
• Scandinavia 17%
• Great Britain 17%
• Italy/Greece 2%
• Iberian Peninsula 2%
• Europe East <1%
• Melanesia <1%

The % Irish is lower then predicted, but this really isn't that surprising given the number of generations involved.  The Scandinavian may represent our Norman roots, with the Italy/Greece and Iberian Peninsula tieing back to the Romans.  We ay be able to explain the Europe East through our German ancestors, though they could also tie to the Europe West result.  The most interesting result is the <1% Melanesia. I have assumed this was some sort of error, because we have no evidence of any of our ancestors being in that part of the world.  Recently, I have read a few posts that say that this actually could be signs of Native American ancestry.  There are plenty of missing branches of the tree where this link could be hiding,  which drives me to continue my research.

Now that I have talked about both my mother's and father's side of the family I can look at my own make up.  Genealogically, I end of being something of a mutt, though most of my ancestors came from the British islands.  

• Irish 33%
• English 64.7%
• German 1.6%
• Welsh 0.4%
• Scottish 0.2%
• Netherlands 0.1%

I also had my DNA tested.  Here are those results;

• Europe West 57%
• Ireland 25%
• Scandinavia 14%
• Iberian Peninsula 4%
• Great Britain <1%
• Italy/Greece <1%

So, genealogically, I am 33% Irish, but genetically I am only 25%.  Interestingly, the Melanesia component didn't get passed down to me.  Either because I didn't receive that DNA from my father, or he didn't receive it from his.

In the next couple of posts, I'll cover my wife's tree.

How Irish are we? Part One, the Wrights

With St. Patrick's Day coming up, I thought it would be fun to work on the question: How Irish are we? Thinking about it, there are really three ways to answer the question,  Genealogically, genetically, and spiritually.  I am not sure how to quantify the spiritual question, so will leave that for you to decide.
Genealogically, I have a lot of information on the different immigrants to America and there country of origin.  In some cases I can even say the city/town of origin.  Where I don't have the details I have made assumptions based on the surname, location and date of the last know ancestor.  I am sure I could be off, but what I show should be pretty close. I am starting at my grandparent's generation to be relevant to more of the cousins.

I'll add what genetic information we have were we can make a comparison.  You should note that being labeled Irish genetically, at least with the Ancestry.com test, actually covers Ireland, Scotland and Northern England.  So it will not be an apples to apples comparison.

Lets start with the Smiths.  This is my mother's mother's, Florence Edna Smith, branch of the family.

David Sanders Wright	Florence Edna Smith
Mother
Writer

We don't have to go very far to find the Irish connection here.  She ends up being 50% Irish and 50% English.  Her Grandfather and Grandmother where both born in Ireland.  The family story say they came County Mayo, but I don't have any of that documentation yet.  I've done some interesting research on the McCann family that I'll share in another post, but for now, here is a quick tree.

John McCann	Mary Clasby
Catherine Ellen McCann
Florence Edna Smith

As a quick note, though I don't know the exact date, both John McCann's family and Mary Clasby appear to have immigrated in the 1850's.  This was likely due to the Irish potato famine.

Now, the Wrights:  My grandfather, David Sanders Wright doesn't appear to have any Irish blood.  Tracing the tree back, he is 98% English, 0.8% Welch, 0.8% Scottish, and 0.4% Dutch.  The Dutch connection are from our pilgrim ancestors.

If we carry this information down to my Mother, she ends up being:

• 25% Irish
• 74% English
• 0.4% Welch
• 0.4% Scottish
• 0.2% Dutch

This is where we can start to compare the genetics.  Both my Mother and her brother have had their DNA tested threw Ancestry.com.  The results are below:

	Mother	Uncle
Europe West	68%	56%
Ireland	21%	31%
Scandinavia	6%	1%
Great Britain	3%	11%
Iberian Peninsula	1%	Less then 1%
Finland/Northwest Russia	Less then 1%	0%
Italy/Greece	Less then 1%	0%

It is interesting that my Uncle's percent Irish is considerably more then my Mother's.  It actually comes out more then the predicted amount from our know ancestry.   This can be explained by a number of different factors.

• There is a error calculation of plus or minus 18% on the results of the test.  which could move it into the predicted range.
• Some of the English ancestors are showing up as Irish.
• My Uncle inherited more of the McCann DNA then my Mother did.
• I have misidentified some of our ancestors as English when they should have been Irish.

As a side note, the Europe West and Great Britain results likely represent ancestors from southern England as well as the Dutch.  The Scandinavian and Finland/Northwest Russia represent viking settlement in England, and the Iberian Peninsula and Italy/Greece may represent the Roman colonization.

So, that's what I have come up with for the Wright and Smith components of the family.  I plan on having the next post cover the Putnam and Connelly side of the ancestry.  I will follow that with information on my wife's family.