If we disregard the A.B. matches in our equations, the probability tools available very clearly point to Clyde as James’ father:
So, what is going on with A.B., and could that provide a different hypothesis?
A.B. is a documented Whiting-McCray descendant through their daughter Louvernia – Samuel Fletcher’s sister. Louvernia married Frank Davis, and their brother Robert Stuart married Frank’s sister Mary Jane, making the children of these couples double cousins to each other. Despite the genealogical stereotype of Appalachia, this is the only, even mildly out-of-the-ordinary relationship that is identified, by documentation, among the Whiting-McCray descendant testers.
Descendants within A.B.’s collateral lines were searched for potential matches, or any indication that there may be a different or additional relationship to be considered, but exhaustive tests across the various DNA platforms revealed no such matches that were within the cM ranges to be expected for the cousin relationship.1
Reviewing the shared centiMorgans, the time frame, and the proximity of A.B.’s family to the ancestors of the Samuel Fletcher Whiting-descendant testers, we hypothesized Samuel Fletcher Whiting as the ancestor of A.B. in place of the grandfather attributed by documentation.
Recall, if you will, that Samuel Fletcher’s wife Sarah had died in April 1895. The direct ascendant of A.B., where the issue might lay, was born in May 1896. One can speculate as to all sorts of reasons there would be a mis-attributed paternity event here (the lonely widower, the remarried widow who may be unhappy in her marriage, etc.), but unless a diary or journal escapes from the woodwork, any explanation is only conjecture.
However, regardless of reasons, the statistical results were striking; the “math begins mathing” if Samuel Fletcher Whiting is the ancestor of A.B., as well as carrying the genes expected in the documented relationship through Louvernia Whiting:
But, DNA match results such as these, while compelling, cannot be relied upon solely to confirm relationships. There has been no chain-of-custody in the genealogical DNA testing process; are we certain the name associated with the test is the relative we (or they!) have assigned to them? The variance in shared centiMorgans means the relationship could be one of several possibilities; what other evidence confirms the tree placement of the test results? Are there potential other or additional relationships that could affect the results? Is the suspected relationship possible when considering such things as biological age or physical proximity?
Remember this map, displayed to indicate the proximity of Lee or Clyde (blue star) to Demma Williams (somewhere near the purple underscored land holders)? That red star is where Malinda Ellyson Brannon Radabaugh resided, and Samuel Fletcher Whiting was near the blue star.
In 1895, Samuel Fletcher was a 44-year-old widow, while Malinda was his 28-year-old neighbor. Samuel Fletcher Whiting remarried in 1900 and fathered two more children: Robert McCray Whiting when he was 54, and Mary Gertrude Whiting at 56. Malinda had three daughters: 10-year-old Matella Brannon, and Ethel and Maude Radabaugh, six and three, respectively; and would go on to have two children, ten and eleven years later. Thus, biological capability and proximity are proven.
A review of each party’s personal history and physical evidence (documentation claims, notwithstanding) along with analysis of shared DNA among and between 74 descendants of Robert Whiting and Sarah McCray, provides, in my view, the following conclusions to our original mysteries:
- K.I. is a second cousin, once-removed, to me and my siblings. Our MRCA (most recent common ancestor) is the Samuel Fletcher Whiting-Sarah Wade ancestral couple.
- A.B. is a third cousin (historical method) as well as a half-first cousin, once-removed to me and my siblings. At the third cousin level, our MRCA is the Robert Whiting-Sarah McCray ancestral couple. Additionally, I propose the DNA evidence indicates that Samuel Fletcher Whiting is the MRCA at the half-first cousin, once removed level.
- Adoptees C.B. and M.F. are also second cousins, once-removed, to me and my siblings. Our MRCA (most recent common ancestor) is the Samuel Fletcher Whiting-Sarah Wade ancestral couple. C.B. and M.F. are half first cousins to K.I. and their siblings with James R Whiting as their MRCA.
Navigation
Return to the first post in this series, here.
If you have questions, comments, or corrections, please get in touch with me!
Footnotes
- Blaine T. Bettinger, “The Shared cM Project Version 4.0 (March 2020),” The Genetic Genealogist (thegeneticgenealogist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Shared-cM-Project-Version-4.pdf), or https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4. ↩︎