Using DNA to identify a parent

[Liberty]

My sole Scottish line is the male one that led directly to my birth name. And that seems to hit a problem with the illegitimate birth of my GGF, thus neatly(?) bringing together a few of the elements of this discussion

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Now that's one Liberty that could be solved by a Y-DNA test as any brothers, uncles, male cousins from male uncles etc could provide a sample. (Further solidifying this thread).

Since it's a very close family relationship you are more likely to know if any candidate male exists.

 

[Liberty]

Now that's one Liberty that could be solved by a Y-DNA test as any brothers, uncles, male cousins from male uncles etc could provide a sample. (Further solidifying this thread).

Since it's a very close family relationship you are more likely to know if any candidate male exists.

There are males in my family, but what question would be 'solved by a Y-DNA test'?
My brother looked fairly exhaustively, and is pretty happy that he has identified the baby who became our GGF. However, if I understand this aright, we could only push the male line back further if we had an idea who his father might have been, and the samples could be compared. It looks as if you are suggesting my brother post a sample of his DNA to a database in the hope that someone will also provide a sample and the samples are compared and found to match.
Since potentially our GG GF could have been any youth or man in Greater Glasgow in 1855, this seems a pretty long shot. And presumably, at best we would know that this potential new cousin was in some way related through the male line to my brother, in that at some generation our direct ancestors were (half) brothers. I can't say - keen family historian though I am - that I would urge my brother to do this. If he wanted to do it, that would be fine, but i don't find the prospect particularly exciting. Or am I missing something?

 

[Alexander Bisset]

You are right the question that would be solved would be if your brother's sample matches others who have tested - either now or tests in future. In a way its similar to Lost Cousins, entering a test now might get you a match straight away or you might have to wait until someone else tests, with Lost Cousins by entering your ancestors on the census you might get a match straight away or you might have to wait until someone else enters their ancestors.

As you have now given more info and identify that almost any male in Greater Glasgow in 1855 could be the father it is perhaps a long shot. You would know not just that they were half brothers but also the male line further back. However as you say given the scope of the possible candidate males it is perhaps not worthwhile. I was imagining the more common parish community handful of candidate males rather than the entire male population of the empires "second city".

 

[Liberty]

As you have now given more info and identify that almost any male in Greater Glasgow in 1855 could be the father it is perhaps a long shot. You would know not just that they were half brothers but also the male line further back. However as you say given the scope of the possible candidate males it is perhaps not worthwhile. I was imagining the more common parish community handful of candidate males rather than the entire male population of the empires "second city".

We might know the male line further back if the cousin knew it....

And, yes, if our GG GM had been living in a small community I would be going door-to-door with an interrogation along the lines of 'Where were you in August 1855???'

 

[alanmack]

Though much vaunted, DNA analysis is not the panacea for all our brick walls. Aside from the social limitations whereby, as Liberty rightly points out, "You just can't ask", there are areas which it can never hope to be effective. I give as example the suspicion I have that my GGM is actually her 21 yr older sister's child passed off as the last offspring of her GM (does that make sense?). As I understand it mtDNA can't work here and the problems of finding a male of the line are practically insurmountable. Indeed it would be easier to prove a negative than a positive. Apologies if this is drifting off topic a bit.

 

[peter]

Though much vaunted, DNA analysis is not the panacea for all our brick walls. Aside from the social limitations whereby, as Liberty rightly points out, "You just can't ask", there are areas which it can never hope to be effective. I give as example the suspicion I have that my GGM is actually her 21 yr older sister's child passed off as the last offspring of her GM (does that make sense?). As I understand it mtDNA can't work here and the problems of finding a male of the line are practically insurmountable. Indeed it would be easier to prove a negative than a positive. Apologies if this is drifting off topic a bit.

mtDNA certainly won't help, but it's just possible that a Family Finder test might. However, at the end of the day the most important clue is likely to be the age of the supposed mother at the time of the birth - if she was more than 49 you can be pretty certain that it wasn't her child.

 

[peter]

if our GG GM had been living in a small community I would be going door-to-door with an interrogation along the lines of 'Where were you in August 1855???'

Even within cities there are small communities - did you ever watch the film Passport to Pimlico? I lived in Pimlico in the mid-70s and even then it was still like living in a village, despite being in central London.

My advice is to see what surname the DNA test comes up with - you may well find that there's a near neighbour with the same surname.

 

[alanmack]

Afternoon Peter,
It's a fifty-fifty situation. My GGM's 'mother' was around 40 at the time, having had her previous child four years earlier. Despite being registered as the child of James and Mary, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest otherwise from subsequent events. I'll grant that I have no concrete evidence at all for my supposition and have settled for the fact that I will never know.

 

[Liberty]

Cities were made up of small communities in those days (some still are), so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the father was a near neighbour (or a lodger).

Oddly enough, this is one question that doesn't really exercise me. I am reasonably happy to leave it as a question that will never be answered. If GGF had been born 9 months after a census I might be tempted to look closely at near neighbours, etc. but as it is, I think it is just a line that I won't be able to track back further.

 

[peter]

It's a fifty-fifty situation. My GGM's 'mother' was around 40 at the time, having had her previous child four years earlier. Despite being registered as the child of James and Mary, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest otherwise from subsequent events. I'll grant that I have no concrete evidence at all for my supposition and have settled for the fact that I will never know.

36 is very young for a woman to give birth to her last child unless it was difficult birth which precluded further children. To clarify my earlier comment, although an mtDNA test is very unlikely to differentiate between the supposed mother and the hypothetical mother - because it mutates so slowly - you might find that it points to someone else entirely!

 

[peter]

Oddly enough, this is one question that doesn't really exercise me. I am reasonably happy to leave it as a question that will never be answered. If GGF had been born 9 months after a census I might be tempted to look closely at near neighbours, etc. but as it is, I think it is just a line that I won't be able to track back further.

It's your choice - personally I like a challenge, but unfortunately my illegitimate ancestors (the ones I've identified so far, that is) were either female or have no descendants in the direct male line.

 

[Tim]

As you say Alan, you'd need 2 male descendants (one from each line) alive today willing to take the test. If they were unconnected then you would be correct in your suspicions.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Oddly enough, this is one question that doesn't really exercise me. I am reasonably happy to leave it as a question that will never be answered. If GGF had been born 9 months after a census I might be tempted to look closely at near neighbours, etc. but as it is, I think it is just a line that I won't be able to track back further.

Bear in mind Liberty this is in Scotland so in addition to the census we have the valuation rolls which are like a mini census. So far only 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915 & 1920 have been published. I understand that 1855 will be soon so you might find that you have a record of neighbours in the year you are interested in.

The valuation rolls were compiled annually and the aim is to digitise all of them from 1855 onwards. So in Scotland we'd have annual records of where people were living. PS. v3.7.2.3 of FTAnalyzer has reports listing those alive on the various published Scottish valuation rolls.

 

[Liberty]

Bear in mind Liberty this is in Scotland so in addition to the census we have the valuation rolls which are like a mini census. So far only 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915 & 1920 have been published. I understand that 1855 will be soon so you might find that you have a record of neighbours in the year you are interested in.

I still think it all a bit too hypothetical. I accept that the father of my GGF is likely to have been someone within walking distance of where my GG GM lived, but I wouldn't think you could make a case more accurately than that. He could have been someone from work (she was a power loom weaver), someone she knew through church or other orgaization, no real reason to suppose that he was literally the boy next door. (About the one person I am inclined to rule out is her future husband, who seems to have had little to do with the boy, who was about two when his mother married.)
All my ancestral lines vanish into the mists of time at some point - I think this particular one disappears with my 'pure Y-chromosome' GG GF.

 

[peter]

It's all hypothetical until you have the test results. You might not get any matches (fairly unlikely) or you might get several. What you need is more than one match with the same surname - and ideally not too common a surname.

I wouldn't rule out the husband - I've seen numerous late marriages. However if he describes the child as his step-son or as his adoptive son that would strongly suggest that he isn't the father.

There are many 'brick walls' that can't be knocked down, but right now this isn't one of them.

 

[Liberty]

Peter (and Alexander) You seem to be more interested than I do in solving this one! I don't see it as a brick wall - and it bothers me less than other blanks in my tree.

For a few more details on the family. The husband of my GG GM was called John Miller (which is not a helpful name for our purposes), and while it is possible that he was GGF's father there is no indication of any attachment. (Either or both of you may remember exchanges about my GGF Robert Campbell, and the difficulty of identifying him) My brother did very detailed searches for the boy, and is pretty confident that he has identified him. If correct, then in 1861 he was staying with an elderly couple who described him as a nephew (and always seemed to have young relatives living with them over a number of censuses) NOT with his mother and her husband. In 1871 he was again not with his family, and the best fit seems to be a Robert Miller in a semi-reformatory-type school. Later that year, he moved to England (apparently slightly before his mother's death) and thereafter always gave his family to understand that he was an orphan without siblings, although John Miller was still alive in 1881, and his son John lived until 1934. (John Jr was born in 1868, after two older sisters had died, so the much older Robert may not have felt very close to him anyway). All in all, it feels as as if John Miller and Robert Campbell wanted as little as possible to do with each other - although that, of course, does not rule out the possibility that they were father and son!
(When he married, Robert said his father was Robert Campbell, which is most likely shorthand for 'I'm illegitimate but I don't see the need to tell you that.')

 

[Liberty]

Afternoon Peter,
It's a fifty-fifty situation. My GGM's 'mother' was around 40 at the time, having had her previous child four years earlier. Despite being registered as the child of James and Mary, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest otherwise from subsequent events. I'll grant that I have no concrete evidence at all for my supposition and have settled for the fact that I will never know.

If we were taking a vote on it (which I know we're not!) I would go for the child being that of the older couple. One reason is the biological one - that there is nothing unlikely about a 40 year old woman having a baby (and as Peter suggested, it might be more unlikely that she stopped having children at 36).
The other reason is more a psychological one. It is not uncommon to have a situation in which a couple bring up a granddaughter (or grandson, of course) with their own younger children. It would be 'natural' enough for the girl to regard them as her parents, and if the slightly older children were calling them Mum and Dad (or whatever) she would too. (Who would say to her 'John and Mary call me Mum but you must call me Granny'?) There might not even be any real intention to deceive, although they might be 'hiding their daughter's shame' and pretending to the world that the child was indeed theirs. However, I feel it a completely different situation to actually go to register a birth and declare that the baby is yours (which is what would have been the case regarding your GGM). Many people would feel reasonably comfortable with the first situation as a little fib that hurt nobody, but making a false declaration to an official might well be regarded as considerably more serious. Also, though people might not have thought about it, if a few years later the daughter was in a position to make home for the baby, it would not be hers. Declaring your grandchild to be your own is making a long-term commitment, not helping out your daughter when she needs it. A woman of 21 who has a baby (as possibly the case here) might well be able to take the child back within a year or two, as distinct from a 16-year old who would be more likely to completely relinquish a baby to her parents.

The circumstantial evidence that you mention,which suggests that your GGM was her 'sister's' child, would it also fit with there being unfounded gossip and rumours?

 

[peter]

The fact that your ancestor married someone called Miller - a fairly common surname - has relatively little bearing on the probability of a Y-DNA test fingering him as the father. However, if the child never lived with his mother and her husband then I agree, it's highly unlikely that he was their son.

We do now have one useful clue - it seems quite possible that his father's name was Robert, which will help to narrow the field (even though it was twice as popular a forename in Scotland as in England), especially if a DNA test indicates that the father's surname was a common one. He may well not have known that he was illegitimate, and it's also quite possible that he wasn't aware that his mother was alive, or that he had any siblings - after all, there's no evidence that he ever lived with his mother and we all know how Home Children and other adoptees were treated. By the way, in the 19th century you could be classified as an orphan even if one parent was still living.

Opportunities to knock down illegitimacy 'brick walls' don't come along very often. I can appreciate that you may not be interesting in tracing the ancestry of a man who seems to have deserted your 2G grandmother rather than making an honest woman of her, but until you know who the father was it isn't possible to divine what the circumstances were (for example, he may have died - or been in the army and posted abroad).

 

[Liberty]

The fact that your ancestor married someone called Miller - a fairly common surname - has relatively little bearing on the probability of a Y-DNA test fingering him as the father. However, if the child never lived with his mother and her husband then I agree, it's highly unlikely that he was their son.

We do now have one useful clue - it seems quite possible that his father's name was Robert, which will help to narrow the field (even though it was twice as popular a forename in Scotland as in England), especially if a DNA test indicates that the father's surname was a common one. He may well not have known that he was illegitimate, and it's also quite possible that he wasn't aware that his mother was alive, or that he had any siblings - after all, there's no evidence that he ever lived with his mother and we all know how Home Children and other adoptees were treated. By the way, in the 19th century you could be classified as an orphan even if one parent was still living.

Opportunities to knock down illegitimacy 'brick walls' don't come along very often. I can appreciate that you may not be interesting in tracing the ancestry of a man who seems to have deserted your 2G grandmother rather than making an honest woman of her, but until you know who the father was it isn't possible to divine what the circumstances were (for example, he may have died - or been in the army and posted abroad).

Oddly enough, in these post-feminist days, I hadn't thought in terms of the mysterious GG GF abandoning my GG GM or otherwise Doin' Her Wrong, merely that she had a baby and didn't marry the father.

Peter, I had a private exchange with you about the naming of GGF's father on the marriage certificate and your comment at the time was "It's amazing how often people claim on their marriage certificate that their father bore the same name - and how often that's wrong."
Partly prompted by this comment, I have rather assumed that this Robert Campbell senior was complete fiction. The Campbell bit pretty definitely was, (or at least if true it was complete coincidence) From my brother's detailed search of records we KNOW that GGF wasn't born when he said he was on later documents, so an extra little fib to make himself seem legitimate would seem neither here nor there.

One thing my brother discovered was the day/month GGF gave for his birth was that of his mother's death. While this is coincidental, it looks significant. What we are postulating is that:
GG GM Jane Campbell had an illegitimate baby in 1856, married John Miller 1858. Baby Robert lived with the older 'relatives' for some unspecified period of time.
Some time before the 1871 census he was admitted to Mossbank Industrial Schools, Hogganfield under the name Miller, which suggests that his stepfather in some way acknowledged him -possibly he (or rather, his wife, Robert's mother) signed him in as being unruly and in need of reform.
In the course of 1871 or 1872 he made his way to England, in time to sign on a ship between Oct 1871 and March 1872. (Crew records run in 6-month blocks)
His mother died 11 December 1871 - at which point he would have been an orphan because she was his only legal parent. Quite possibly he left the school at this point, and in future aged himself by a few months (maybe for employment purposes) and said he was born 11 December 1855. (My brother tells me that if he had been admitted to the school on a voluntary basis (i.e. a parent had put him there, rather than the police) he might have been discharged on the death of his mother, his only parent.)

The links suggesting that he knew his mother and stepfather, possibly lived with them after the 1861 census are (1) the re-use of his mother's date of death (2) the indication that he was down under his stepfather's name in 1871 (and my brother couldn't find a likely Robert Campbell instead of this lad, or a likely Robert Miller in other censuses) and also (3) that the name Jessie was special to him, Jessie being a diminutive of Jane or Janet, which was the name of both his mother and a Miller daughter (his half-sister)who died 3 weeks short of her 2nd birthday.

I think he knew his mother and her family very well, and the circumstances of his birth, and that he re-invented himself when he came to England. I also think there was no love lost between him and his stepfather, and he felt no compunction in distancing himself, and saying that he was alone in the world. He seems to have been taken under the wing of an older shipmate, later marrying his daughter (my GGM), so perhaps he played the sympathy card at a very early stage,and then stuck with it.