G. Huntington

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G. Huntington has Italian Roots.

G. Huntington has Irish ancestors.

G. Huntington is a descendant of Mayflower Passenger Henry Samson.

Descendant of PGM migrant Simon Huntington.

Descendant of PGM migrant Mary (Durrant) Ring.

Descendant of PGM migrant William Hoskins.

I am a software engineer living in Oregon.

My surname is from my mother; my patrilineal name is Ryder (but see Y chromosome below).

WikiTree has potential, but there is a dismaying amount of wrong information. I have removed a lot.

Too many stickers could be applicable, so my criterion is to only include ancestors I have known multiple descents from.

Ancestors on WikiTree

These are my nearest ancestors with profiles on WikiTree (that is, those for who no one else on my line to have profiles):

─┬─┬─┬─ George Emerson Ryder (see Y chromosome below for ancestry discrepancies)  │ │ └─ Mary Louise Fleming*  │ └─────┬─ Salvatore Latteri*  │       └─ Rosa Ragusa*  └─┬─┬─ John Stanton McPherson Sr.*    │ └─┬─ Richard Addison Henderson Fisher*    │   └─ Mary Caroline McClendon*    └─── Robert fka Henry Gesner Huntington (see Autosomal below)

* Created by me. I'm closing in.

In addition:

• DNA shows I somehow have an agnatic descent from Nicholas Rich and his wife Abigail Green. See Y chromosome below.
• I appear to descend from a son of Daniel and Margaret Slane. See Most wanted below.
• Per More evidence wanted below, most likely the wife of Erastus Bingham I descend from is Sarah Lewis*.
• Per WikiTree says below, I believe the Margaret Cowenhoven profile links a wrong husband, and her linked ancestors are my ancestors.

DNA

As a graduate student, I worked on projects to infer species trees from DNA data. Now with widespread commercial testing, I've been able to do genealogical inference in my own family. The results have demonstrated that DNA is indispensable to establish one's true ancestry.

Y chromosome

My paternal line is documented back to John Rider of Newport Pagnell, England, but the DNA evidence convincingly shows my descent is actually from Nicholas Rich of Salem, Wenham, and Attleboro, MA and Preston, CT^[1], who likely immigrated from Jersey.

Autosomal matches corroborate my line as far as William Henry Harrison Ryder, but the evidence suggests that either his or his documented father Nathan Jr.'s paternity is wrong, with the actual father of one presumably being a Rich. More Rich DNA tests^[2] could narrow down who. My current best guess (emphasis guess) is that Caleb Rich Jr. is Nathan Jr.'s father. I am seeking documentary evidence that might bear on any of this.

If I connected my WikiTree profile to Ryders, it would result in wrong DNA info on their profiles. The original Ryder family's haplogroup is R1b-BY20420 rather than my R1b-FGC23067. Also, the Ryder profiles here have had significant errors, although I fixed some of the larger issues.

Mitochondrial

My maternal line goes back to Ellen (Donovan) Riley who married in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland in 1845. The names Ellen and Donovan are both very common there, so while I've found several plausible baptisms, I don't know which, if any, is her. I've had mtDNA matches to other descendants of hers, but no matches that get me further back.

I am related in a female line to street artist Sidewalk Sam (1939–2015).

X chromosome

The X does recombine, but less frequently, allowing more remote relationships to be confirmed. A segment of my mother's X-DNA can be reasonably inferred to come from Sarah (Alden) Standish, born around 1630.

My most distant identified ancestor on an X line (but with no actual DNA support) is Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Welles, my 14th great-grandmother, who died in 1553.

My earliest known alternating-sex ("maximum X") ancestor is my 6th great-grandfather John Durman, whose mother may be Rebecca/Rebekah.

Autosomal

The origin of my great-grandfather Robert Huntington (Find A Grave: Memorial #127855341) was a longstanding mystery. There were many stories around his birth, childhood, and family, which I could never verify. From DNA and other evidence, I've found that almost none of them are true, and he is almost certainly the same person as Henry Gesner Huntington, although why he changed his name and invented these stories remains a mystery. I'm still hoping for non-DNA corroboration of this inference.

Other Ys

McPherson: I am descended from James D. McPherson, supposedly the great-grandson of Stephen McPherson. However, these generations are murky, and Y chromosome tests from two of the former's male-line descendants do not match those of the latter's, instead matching the Landon family.^[3] But, those two share a common ancestor that I don't, so my descent from Stephen might still be okay. More McPhersons testing could nail this down.

Elliott: See Nathaniel Elliott for my summary of the mixed documentary evidence of his parents. There are Y results for a (supposed) descendant of Nathaniel and for a descendant of his great-grandfather John Elliott, and they do not match each other. However, the defect could be in any of the ~17 generations separating these testees, so more than these two are needed. (Tangentially, Anna's mother was Hannah Elliot, a second mystery Elliott.)

Huntington: I am naturally interested in this surname, but the Huntington DNA project is pretty barren right now.

Stiles: The Stiles Surname Project (see Cluster L; note archive.org did not catch all images) has determined that my ancestor Ephraim Stiles Jr. is not in fact the paternal grandson of John Stiles. While no alternative is suggested, I found that the former cluster is a close match to a Hitchcock descendant (kit #360003). There was a Hitchcock family in Springfield, MA at the time, which seems a promising lead.

Samson: The aforementioned X-validated line goes through Elizabeth (Sampson) Pineo, with ancestry traced back to medieval times. On this line Elizabeth starts four generations of Samsons, so that Y chromosome data could add further DNA validation to this descent. FTDNA's Mayflower DNA project includes 13 Samson/Sampson testees as of this writing (March 2024), who all match, which generally supports the integrity of this family; but, lacking pedigrees of the testees, it doesn't tell us which generations are corroborated.

Most wanted / brick walls

This is in addition to Y chromosome and Elliott (Other Ys) above.

1. I am descended from Jedediah Burt and his wife Sybil. However, I have been unable to find Sybil's maiden name, much less her parents, despite this being a large and spread-out family. She might be the Sybil Allen born 1787 VT, daughter of Elisha, but that is little more than a guess.^[4]
2. The names of Robert and Mary Jane (Wiley) Gelray appear on many of their children's vital records, but I have never found direct evidence of their presence anywhere. The known older children (Margaret Jane, Ann, Hannah Maria) were born around Newry, Ireland, where records are sparse; but the younger ones (Joseph Wiley, Martha) were born in Manchester, England, where the family's residence and births should've left a paper trail. And the younger children came to America at a young age, so one would expect their parents did too. But I can find nothing. The surname has spelling variants, in Ireland usually Gallery.
3. Nancy (Slane) (Nixon) Pyott is presumably the daughter of one of Daniel Slane's sons, but which? WikiTree claimed Thomas, but this must be confusion with a cousin also named Nancy who married William French. I removed this connection.

WikiTree says, but...

4. It is often claimed that James Ladd is the son of Jacob and Sylvia (maiden name maybe Tanner), which is plausible, but I've never seen proof. This relationship is linked in those WikiTree profiles, but without evidence.
5. There are many online claims about the parents of John McClendon. I have seen no evidence for any. WikiTree has his father as a Dennis, sourced only to an unreliable online tree with in turn no sourcing.
   • John's wife Nancy, maiden name unknown, is a likely hopeless case, although I have a DNA clue.
6. Henry Fisher's father is said to be John D. Fisher, but with no evidence, and indeed the only citations that John ever existed are to online trees with no sourcing.
7. Everyone seems to agree on the parents of Moses Fleming, for which there is good circumstantial evidence, but is there proof?
8. Cornelius van Couwenhoven and Margaret Schenck had a daughter Margaret, as linked here, claimed to be the husband of Derrick Sutphen. This claim is widespread and seems to originate in an article by Lincoln Coucheu, but I think it is wrong, and Margaret is actually the wife of Philip Wynkoop and thus is this Margaret, while Derrick's wife was a Mary Cowenhoven.^[5]
9. The parents of Isabella Taylor linked here are marked as uncertain. Even that seems generous, as those "parents" likely never existed. DNA evidence weighs against some claims of her Cherokee ancestry.

More evidence wanted

10. Permelia Bingham's father was Erastus, but which of his wives was her mother? I'm almost but not entirely certain it was his second(?) Sarah Lewis.
11. Erastus's father was Horatio Bingham. I have a lot of circumstantial evidence that Horatio was the son of Reuben Bingham, but I'd prefer solid proof.
    • Horatio's wife Sarah Johnson's ancestry is another brick wall. Also, Reuben's wife Mary's maiden name is unknown.
12. Margery Rich is the name of a daughter of James Rich Jr. and of a wife of Thomas Cole. I assume this is the same woman, and I have linked them as such here. The names are distinctive and the dates and places line up, but direct evidence would be nice.
    • Margery's paternal grandmother was Rhoda Fish, a distinctive name, also of unknown origin.

DNA confirmation

13. My descent from Jonah Nixon is well-documented, but I have found no DNA connections through any of his ancestors. There are some oddnesses around him, such as the fact that my ancestor Juliet, his (supposed?) daughter, may have used her mother's maiden name after Jonah's death.
14. Similarly, my doubts noted above about the mother of Permelia Bingham would be assuaged if I found DNA evidence linking me to the Lewis family, but none has yet materialized. Indeed, I have not found matches even to Bingham relations.

Notes

1. ↑ Huntington, G. (me). From Rich to Ryder: DNA and my male line, 2015.
2. ↑ Dozens of Rich men have taken Y chromosome tests, but most were for fairly few markers.
3. ↑ Compare FTDNA kit MK49491 (McPherson) and kits 103621 and N15454 (Landon).
4. ↑ The name, age, and place are all good fits; Jedediah and Sybil named two of their children Elijah and Allen; another child was living with an Allen couple in 1880; another child moved to the same area of Michigan as one of Sybil Allen's brothers; and Sybil Allen is otherwise unaccounted for. There is also weak DNA support. But this is far from decisive, and, against this theory, there was an apparent large class difference between these two families.
5. ↑ I have a draft article explaining my reasoning.