Heartland Genealogy

Do you ever feel as if DNA results are breaking family connections instead of verifying them? That has certainly been my experience with my Kentucky CRAWFORD research. For years, many researchers have identified William, James, and John Crawford , who lived in the early Garrard County, Kentucky, area, as brothers. That relationship appears in online family trees and has become part of the commonly accepted reconstruction of this Crawford family. But what happens when Y-DNA says otherwise? Testing a Descendant of William Crawford Some time ago, I asked a descendant of William Crawford of Madison County, Kentucky , whom I will identify as RC , to take a Y-DNA test. Since Y-DNA is passed from father to son along the direct paternal line, I hoped RC's results might help confirm William's connection to the other Crawford men living in the area. Instead, the results created another Crawford puzzle. RC's Y-DNA placed him in the R1b-05 group of the Crawford Y-DNA Project. More rec...

Have you ever encountered someone with the surname you are researching living in the same place—and immediately wondered whether the two families were related? That is exactly what happened when I recently found an 1836 Jefferson County, Indiana, court case involving the dower rights of Jane Crawford, widow of Thomas Crawford. Since I have spent years researching James Crawford (b. 1758), his wife Rebecca Anderson, and their descendants in Jefferson County, my first thought was obvious: Could Thomas Crawford be related to James Crawford? Following Thomas Back to Virginia The court case referred to the "heirs of Thomas D. Crawford," so I began searching my records for Thomas. When I did not find him among the Crawford families I had already researched, I started digging into Thomas Crawford and his wife, Jane Todd. That search led me back to their 1794 marriage in Rockbridge County, Virginia. I then located the will of Thomas's father, James Crawford, in Rockbridge County....

Have you had your DNA tested? If so, did DNA help you answer a question? Based on Facebook posts I've seen, it appears that DNA is helping adoptees to connect with their birth family. In my case, I wasn't hoping to identify a close relative. Instead, I was hoping (and still am hoping) to identify my 5th great grandparents -- particularly on my dad's CRAWFORD line. It's been 3 years since I first spit in a test tube (autosomal DNA) and since my brother swabbed his cheek (yDNA). That's 3 years of working with various DNA results and few clues about this mysterious CRAWFORD grandfather. As I'm trying to learn more about our yDNA results, so I can make sense of how we might fit in the Crawford Clan, I've come to a couple of conclusions: There's too little data - I need more 5th, 6th and 7th cousins to do a yDNA test Determining relationships is VERY dependent on the accuracy of BOTH of our family trees

Thanks to some updates to the yDNA test I manage, my Crawford line (James Crawford - born 1772, died 1854) has been assigned a new Haplogroup: R-A13336. Previously, we had been grouped in the larger R-M269 Haplogroup. According to a Crawford project administrator, I also share the Y30725 terminal SNP with another match. It is my understanding that work is still being done to determine which is older: the A13336 or the Y30725.

Have you ever come across a new piece of information that sends your genealogy research in a totally different direction? I'm sure you have as most of us encounter this from time to time. Yesterday, I received such a piece of information. This wasn't a document but a DNA result - a yDNA result. Apparently, my Crawford line is its own branch with my closest Crawford match being a descendant of Edward Crawford of Overton, Tennessee. So, one of my new goals is to try and determine how this Edward Crawford might fit in with all of my James Crawford research. With only five Edwards in my database it is a relatively unusual name. Unfortunately, Alexander and Mary (McPheeters) Crawford had a son named Edward. Thus, there will be confusion in online trees as to the parents of Edward. In looking back thru my Kentucky research notes, I do have some data placing an Edward Crawford in Madison County, Kentucky during the time period of my James Crawford research. In 1795, Edw...