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Hello everyone, thanks for adding me to the site.
My paternal grandmother (Edmonia Coleman, b. abt 1906) grew up in Clover, Virginia. Her father, Marcellus, was from Roanoke District, Halifax County. My grandmother knew of four of her father’s siblings, Alice, Anna, Willie, and Martha, and their mother was Kittie Coleman (also spelled in records as Kitty, Kit, Kettie, Ket, likely derivatives of Catherine?). From what I can tell Kittie’s parents were Willis and Sallie/Sally, but this is as far back as I’ve been able to go so far.
Many of my DNA matches have trees with other Saponi surnames as well, so I’m trying to determine if I have a direct connection. I would be glad to share info or receive suggestions on where to look. Thank you! Erica
Many of my DNA matches have trees with other Saponi surnames as well, so I’m trying to determine if I have a direct connection. I would be glad to share info or receive suggestions on where to look. Thank you! Erica
Hi Erica, Welcome to Saponi Town.
Surnames that show up frequently in DNA matches can be a clue. Are the certain names that stand out in your matches?
-Marc
Hi Marc,
Apologies for taking so long to reply. I have been trying to answer your question and keep getting bogged down in analyzing my matches’ trees to figure out the most common surnames, or more importantly, which ones are relevant. Sometimes I look and find that the surname is only mentioned once and it’s the married name of someone lower down the tree…
Do you have any recommendations for how I might go about determining the more common names? I have an easier time, so far, telling which names are NOT coming up, than which ones that come up may be potential leads.
I’ve been trying to examine trees to find the matches who have ancestors who were in Virginia and North Carolina in the 1700s and early 1800s. Can’t for the life of me tell how they might be connected though.
So far, surnames that have made several appearances across matches’ trees are Canada, Lacks/Lax, Collins, Bolling, others I’m investigating are Chavers, Scott, Richardson, Harris, Evans, Johnson, Jones, Brown too maybe. Basically most of the Saponi surnames from the Haithcock list come up somewhere in my matches but I have to cull them down to the meaningful ones. Stay tuned! and Thanks!
The Eastern Siouan diaspora is an endogamous community. It can be hard to identify specific lines more than seeing all the connections to the larger community.
In terms of DNA matches, you could create groups by family surname to help cull them down. I have groups created by surnames on my mother’s mother’s side and my mother’s father’s side. I also use the notes section to reference matches with a specific ancestor in their tree. Often I can use those to see that all or most of my matches to descendants of a specific ancestor are on a certain line of my tree.
For example I have ‘Old Ned’ in notes for descendants of Old Ned Sizemore here, and of the matches I do have in a surname group – they are all on the ‘Indiana Jones Smith” side of my tree:
So this suggests to me the side of my tree that my relation to Old Ned Sizemore is on is my mother’s mother’s mother Inez Louise Smith. I was able to build a reliable DNA matching group for her because we have multiple samples on multiple lines of her descendants. Me, my sister, my mother, my uncle, my 2nd cousin 1x removed, two second cousins 2x removed. Even when I see different surname groups, there always seems to be one that has way more matches than the others.
One strategy I also use is researching the least common surnames/variants first. It is less work to trace a name like Canada (a Kennedy variant) than Smith or Jones.
For example I had a discussion with Rick Haithcock years ago and he told me a series of names that were together at Fort Christanna, and after it closed, together in NC. But Canada was the only surname in that group that was less common.
Later I was able to trace a specific Canada ancestor to the same time, place and Monthly Meeting in Indiana as my family. Looking on the census from that County in Indiana I saw the other surnames that were associated in NC. But if I had been trying to search just that list of surnames it would have been very hard to link the group in NC to the one in IN. It was much easier to trace that one ancestor with a relatively uncommon name.
That’s all very helpful, especially the research tip; thanks Marc!
I’ve just started a spreadsheet for myself where I’m tracking results of surname searches. I think that will help me decide which surnames to start more in depth searches. I was doing searches and not tracking which ones I’d done, and whether I had done them with my own matches or my father’s and so now I’m trying to be more systematic so I don’t keep redoing things.
I wish there wasn’t a limit on the groups you can create on Ancestry… that was a part of the reason for the spreadsheet… too many names to search!
Ahhh… that’s where your notes come in… I get it!
And then I want to cross match locations…
But again even though I’ve done some of the things you suggest I hadn’t done it in an organized fashion or figured out what to DO with the results… so your feedback is quite validating !
And, I hadn’t realized Canada was a relevant surname… or that it’s a variant of Kennedy…
besides the personal relevance of this research… the historian in me (I’m trained in art and architectural history) is having a field day ☺️!
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