To continue from my last post about my favorite (and least favorite) brick wall ancestor, Aaron King, I want to talk about how I have tried to use Y DNA to learn more. Aaron King is, after all, on my direct paternal line, and although I don’t have a Y chromosome, my dad was willing to take a Y test at FTDNA.
The initial results showed that we are in haplogroup I-M253. 23andme’s haplogroup page notes that it’s common in the United Kingdom. The list of common surnames does not include King.
I did upgrade my dad’s kit to Big Y, which eventually gave us the more specific haplogroup of I-FTD56362. There are only two people in this group, my dad and his closest Y match whose test I upgraded. :-) Their common ancestor should be around 1800 based on the number of differences between the two of them (3 non-matching variants and exact match on Y-111).
We were actually fortunate to have a couple quite close matches (on a Y DNA time frame!). In addition to the first match I already mentioned who is exact on 111 markers, we have another match who is one step distant at 67 markers. According to the time predictor on FTDNA, the common ancestor with that match could also be around 1800.
My next step was to look at the matches’ trees. I contacted the closest match, whose surname is not King, and talked to him about the research he’s already done on his direct paternal line. His line gets… very confusing long before we get back as far as I’m looking, but as far as we can tell (using autosomal DNA), his line goes back to Lyman Oscar King, born about 1802 in Massachusetts, died 1898 in Crawford County, Wisconsin, who married Sarah Powers. I have never been able to identify anything in my grandfather’s autosomal DNA matches to indicate that we are related to this couple at all, but the pattern is pretty clear in the match’s matches. This match shares a tiny segment of DNA (~ 7 cM) with my grandfather, but it’s possible it’s from another line as he has a French Canadian line on his mom’s side, and my grandfather’s mom was from Texas, as is the match’s paternal side. This match has a case of mysterious parenthood on his direct paternal line several generations after this, so this connection is based solely on autosomal DNA analysis.
The second Y match has a tree that is Kings all the way back, but the line peters out around the same time as mine does. However, I was excited to see that his King branch leads directly back to yet another Aaron King! This Aaron King was probably born in the Connecticut Western Reserve, now part of Ohio, but at the time claimed by Connecticut. His parents were William King (probably from New York or Connecticut) and Hannah Hungerford of Connecticut. William King is a brick wall. He disappeared mysteriously around 1819 and was presumed dead, although no reports of his body being found have surfaced that I’m aware of. Aaron was born in 1812. He moved to Indiana and eventually settled in Kansas, where he died in 1889. I have more information about this Aaron King on his Wikitree profile. He’s too young to be “my” Aaron King, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence they share a name.
When I looked for links to Y match #2’s family in my grandfather’s autosomal DNA results, I actually found a group of matches who descend from this family! The pattern is as clear as it ever gets for Cajun DNA (luckily, #2 is not Cajun). The connection is definitely on my grandfather’s paternal side and the matches in common are King side matches for us. This is really exciting to me, but also raises questions…
Y match #1 is technically the closer match. Exact on 111 markers, while #2 has one difference on 67 markers. Yet I can find autosomal connections to his branch, but with match #1 I find nothing. I can think of some potential reasons for this:
Y match #1 is much younger than Y match #2. #1 is probably in the same generation as I am, while #2 is in my grandfather’s generation (and actually, sadly, passed away last year; he was in his eighties).
Y match #1 may be harder to find connections with in the DNA matches due to his French Canadian line & French Canadians in general being in the vicinity of Crawford County, Wisconsin, and muddying up the DNA matches because we match them on other lines
I think the first explanation is likely contributing more to my inability to find connections with the autosomal groups of #1. I always use my grandfather’s test for this for exactly that reason, but unfortunately there’s no one else in #1’s family who could test on that line who is further back. :(
Additionally, my grandfather and match #2 don’t match each other; although, to be fair, Ancestry tells me that my grandfather doesn’t match #1 either as it’s too low of a match to show up there. I was able to see that segment by using GEDmatch (with standard settings), but as far as I know, match #2 isn’t on GEDmatch. Note to self: try to dig a bit more and see if he may actually be on GEDmatch after all.
An interesting side note is that both #1 and #2’s families ended up in Oklahoma.
Neither of them has any connection to Louisiana. #1’s autosomal results show Louisiana communities are common in his paternal matches, and I can find matches in common with my grandfather, but they’re usually from southwest Louisiana, more closely related to my mom than my paternal side. It’s not clear that most of these matches in common are on the King side at all. I haven’t seen #2’s autosomal results, although it’s something I am working on and hope to one day be able to do with help from his sons. I really think analyzing his autosomal matches more closely and potentially upgrading his Y test may help a lot with figuring out, at least, how these three testers sit in relation to each other on this line. I haven’t yet found anything to reconcile their lines with each other or with mine.