zz Abiathar French Sr--DNA: a Virtual Cemetery

See all by JBrown, IA, MN, Calif, AustinTX

A Virtual Cemetery created by JBrown, IA, MN, Calif, AustinTX

zz Abiathar French Sr--DNA

###

Scroll to ...Bottom

STONES & PAPER & DNA. Stones could reconstruct birth and death dates, but cemetery practices led to destruction of too many markers in both Massaschusetts and Ohio. We know the people existed, often their places of death, but cannot pinpoint an exact gravesite where the burial happened, as markers evaporated by sledge hammer and cow kick and 200 years of frequent rain.

While written records have to substitute for stone info, they should be checked anyway as mistakes are made in working or reading stones a certain percentage of the time ("A" work means getting things 95% right.). Even though carved in stone, the carving can be wrong, the stone soft, and the the rain harsh if not protected by tree branches or falling face down for 100 years before somebody props the toppled stone back up.

Relationships of orphaned family trees to parent trees were not discoverable until the Internet, with the search engines surviving including Findagrave and FamilySearch.org. Add in all the local historical societies, especially in Ohio, and the helpful memory.gov and old books and state archives put online, all helping here and there.

The FrenchFamilyAssoc.com (FFA) was a tremendous aid for searching through different family's charts to get an idea of which Frenches to check and where, but also showing how hard it was to verify and clean family charts without male DNA. Two good results of DNA-checking:

(a) Little family trees orphaned from parent trees can be joined together. The large parent tree of the Braintree Frenches with connections verifiable by stone or paper (DNA Group 25) stops with Abiathar Jr. and his children of record.

Little trees with certain of his French-surnamed grandchildren were orphaned by a lack of records in Ohio's early years that would give the needed parents' names, proving connection to the parent. Male DNA tests for descendants named French would be an easy short-cut to prove membership in that particular French family begun by Puritans in Braintree, Frenches arriving from the Brtish Isles before the American Revolution and not just the Civil War, that voted for John Adams for President before they voted for Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

(b) Portions of large family trees tend to have grown Frankenstein arms and legs and even heads that need removal. In the case of DNA 25, the true heads of its colonial tree were replaced by untrue due to matching the name of John French and not much else (the correct heads were an older John French and his wife Grace, who was an Alden if anything, but must be regarded as maiden name unproved. had been replaced by one or both of a younger). This led to arms and legs being added in, cousins and such, borrowed from a Puritan tree with the wrong DNA (a bit younger John French and his wife Freedom Kingsley, perhaps thrown off the path in discovering Freedom by the father John Kingsley calling her ffreedum in his will, not even capitalizing her name, and a former employer pre-marriage calling her Freedome Kingely in his will).

NAME-MATCHING VS. DNA. The simple name-matching tactic that creates Frankenstein trees says: if you have two John Frenches, even though those are common names, we will assume they must be the same or related since they come from the same era, without thoroughly checking the ministers they followed, the dates of all involved and the places they went to see if it all hangs together makes sense, the places explainable.

However, the usual case is that more John Frenches are unrelated than related, a fact proven by the FFA. Their study at familyTreeDNA.com shows over 50 distinct DNAs, with half solo (end of line??), and half groupable (multiple testtakers whose DNA matches).

The Braintree bunch at this writing recently added a second test-taker, so moved out of "end of the line" to "we hope one reproduced", by confirming at least two males exist belonging to DNA Group 25. Group 25 of the Braintree-descended Frenches is a rarish type, not the normal R1b type usually found. Perhaps it came from a set of Frenches who, in the older times, were isolated (not destroyed by excess war, as seen here 1860-1870), yet who reproduced successfully.

Scroll to <a href="#JBbottom">...Bottom</a>

STONES & PAPER & DNA. Stones could reconstruct birth and death dates, but cemetery practices led to destruction of too many markers in both Massaschusetts and Ohio. We know the people existed, often their places of death, but cannot pinpoint an exact gravesite where the burial happened, as markers evaporated by sledge hammer and cow kick and 200 years of frequent rain.

While written records have to substitute for stone info, they should be checked anyway as mistakes are made in working or reading stones a certain percentage of the time ("A" work means getting things 95% right.).  Even though carved in stone, the carving can be wrong, the stone soft, and the the rain harsh if not protected by tree branches or falling face down for 100 years before somebody props the toppled stone back up.

Relationships of orphaned family trees to parent trees were not discoverable until the Internet, with the search engines surviving including Findagrave and FamilySearch.org.  Add in all the local historical societies, especially in Ohio, and the helpful memory.gov and old books and state archives put online, all helping here and there.

The FrenchFamilyAssoc.com (FFA) was a tremendous aid for searching through different family's charts to get an idea of which Frenches to check and where, but also showing how hard it was to verify and clean family charts without male DNA.  Two good results of DNA-checking:

(a) Little family trees orphaned from parent trees can be joined together.  The large parent tree of the Braintree Frenches with connections verifiable by stone or paper (DNA Group 25) stops with Abiathar Jr. and his children of record.

Little trees with certain of his French-surnamed grandchildren were orphaned by a lack of records in Ohio's early years that would give the needed parents' names, proving connection to the parent.  Male DNA tests for descendants named French would be an easy short-cut to prove membership in that particular French family begun by Puritans in Braintree, Frenches arriving from the Brtish Isles  before the American Revolution and not just the Civil War, that voted for John Adams for President before they voted for Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

(b) Portions of large family trees tend to have grown Frankenstein arms and legs and even heads that need removal. In the case of DNA 25, the true heads of its colonial tree were replaced by untrue due to matching the name of John French and not much else (the correct heads were an older John French and his wife Grace, who was an Alden if anything, but must be regarded as maiden name unproved. had been replaced by one or both of a younger).  This led to arms and legs being added in, cousins and such, borrowed from a Puritan tree with the wrong DNA (a bit younger John French and his wife Freedom Kingsley, perhaps thrown off the path in discovering Freedom by the father John Kingsley calling her ffreedum in his will, not even capitalizing her name, and a former employer pre-marriage calling her Freedome Kingely in his will).

NAME-MATCHING VS. DNA.  The simple name-matching tactic that creates Frankenstein trees says: if you have two John Frenches, even though those are common names, we will assume they must be the same or related since they come from the same era, without thoroughly checking the ministers they followed, the dates of all involved and the places they went to see if it all hangs together makes sense, the places explainable.

However, the usual case is that more John Frenches are unrelated than related, a fact proven by the FFA.  Their study at familyTreeDNA.com shows over 50 distinct DNAs, with half solo (end of line??), and half groupable (multiple testtakers whose DNA matches).

The Braintree bunch at this writing recently added a second test-taker, so moved out of "end of the line" to "we hope one reproduced", by confirming at least two males exist belonging to DNA Group 25.  Group 25 of the Braintree-descended Frenches is a rarish type, not the normal R1b type usually found.  Perhaps it came from a set of Frenches who, in the older times, were isolated (not destroyed by excess war, as seen here 1860-1870), yet who reproduced successfully.   
<br id="JBbottom" name="JBbottom">

1 memorial

No grave photo

Abiathar French Sr. Flowers have been left.

7 Apr 1732 – 4 Jan 1815

Burial Details Unknown