Glennis DNA Project

By Don Taylor

Part 3

[Previously, I wrote about my Glennis DNA Project in Not a Grimm Tale – So Far and Hemsworth-Morgan Branch. This is a continuation of that project.] 

My half-sister Glennis has long wondered who her biological father is. Thanks to Ancestry DNA we have a great clue. She has a match with a person, I’ll call M.A., [i] who she shares 201 centimorgans of DNA across 8 segments with. M.A. does not match with me, so we know that the match is on Glennis’ paternal side. Ancestry DNA predicts the relationship to be 2nd to 3rd cousins and Blaine Bettinger’s “Shared CM Project”[ii] suggests they are second cousins. That means that she and M.A. likely share a great grandparent. The really great thing is that M.A. has all of his/her great grandparents identified. If I can take all eight of those great-grandparents and follow their descendants, possibly one of them was in the right place at the right time. If so, I will have a very likely candidate to my Glennis’ biological father.

Background notes: Glennis’s mother was 21 when Glennis was born. I estimate that Glennis’ biological father must have been between 19 and 32, suggesting a birth year from 1920 to 1934. Supposedly his name was Paul, but he went by Phil. Additionally, Glennis was probably conceived in either Minnesota or Michigan.

M.A. provided a skeleton tree showing his eight great-grandparents and included Jeremiah Anderson his wife Parcidia Bishop and the three direct descendants to MA. My goal with this segment of the project was to follow the descendants of Jeremiah and Parcidia to find an individual who potentially was in either Minnesota or Michigan.  I was able to expand my initial knowledge of

Using Ancestry Family Trees and the family tree at Family Search as well as a few census records, I was able to piece together a “notional” family tree showing the basics of Parcidia’s descendants and where they might have lived.  I know it is not perfect and relies on the research of other people, but it does give me a first brush stroke and lets me know of this potential line deserves much more research or not.

Jeremiah died very young, at age 29. His only known children were his four children with Parcidia.  Parcidia had six more children with her second husband, Isaac Lewis Anderson. Her ten children were:

Four with Jeremiah Anderson:

• Isaiah P. Anderson (25 Jul 1854 – ? | 13 Feb 1931 – ?)
• Alice Peora Anderson (8 Oct 1856 – ? | 26 Dec 1932 – ?)
• Isaac Anderson (1857 |  – )
• Mary Anderson (15 May 1859 – Amelia | 13 Mar 1950 – Ravenswood)

Six with Isaac Lewis Anderson:

• Irene Evangaline Anderson (1 Mar 1862 – Jackson | 16 Apr 1944 – ?)
• Ezra Anderson (Sep 1864 – ? |  – )
• Benton Anderson (1872 – ? |  – )
• John Crittenden Anderson (25 Aug 1875 – ? |  – )
• Clifford Oscar Anderson (Jun 1879 – ? |  – )
• Rena Anderson (1882 – ? |  – )

Using Ancestry Family Trees and the family tree at Family Search as well as a few census records, I was able to expand my list of descendants from an initial 3 to 58 known descendants including the following known surnames:

The total number of surnames is relatively short because both Alice and Mary married men with the Abels surname (John William Abels and J. Bruce Ables respectively).  Neither Irene nor Rena appear to have had children.

In my quick research, I found all of Parcidia descendants remained in West Virginia and western Ohio. I found no branches that located to Michigan or Minnesota, thus no potential father for Glennis from this line.

Certainly, it is possible that someone from this like left West Virginia or Ohio and located to Michigan or Minnesota sometime between 1940 and 1953, but I believe researching the Biddle-Wykert line next will be a better course of action.