Family Tree Update: June 18, 2018

My progress on the family tree. I have more DNA to work with. Yay!!

Sorry for the delay but this update is a big one. Let’s go…

Turk: I will be able to work on the Turk line because my wonderful cousin Tara Turk was so kind and shared her DNA results with me. I can concretely confirm that my mother and her brother were half-siblings (more on this later). Tara’s DNA matches Turks (yay!). I still have to concretely confirm this but at a glance, it looks pretty solid that my mother’s brother was a Turk and the surname still exists! I still have a lot to figure out and I’ll be posting updates as I come across them. Of course, when the tree is properly documented, it will be public and you can browse it yourself. I’m excited to find the stories within the Turk line! Thank you Tara!!

Morrison: My cousin Lisa took the AncestryDNA test and I can concretely say that the Morrison line is DNA confirmed through both siblings. Woot!

Blackburn: I mentioned previously that there are free and educated Blackburns prior to when slavery was abolished. I still have a lot of work to do on this line. I am putting this at a lower priority as it crosses into another family line (see below).

Matthews/Mathis/Mathews/et al: This is a new surname I will sharing information about. It’s one I’ve been working with for months but haven’t talked about in an update because it’s confusing. I received DNA matches months ago that made it pretty clear my mother’s father was a Mathis. My grandmother told me when I was young that Turk Sr. was not her father. DNA confirms this.

The Matthews line makes another appearance in my family tree – in the Bergeon line. Remember how many times I said the Bergeon line is a beast? Now I know why.

I’ve mentioned previously that my paternal and maternal lines cross. The Mathis/Matthew line is the reason why. The family migrated from Europe and the family dispersed throughout the United States. Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina…the family is huge and relocated across the United States. I see DNA matches where family lines cross. For example, I am related to my cousin Tara Turk on my maternal side (Summers). Guess where one of the Summers lines descends from? You guessed it! The Matthews line. Tara also matches people who I have marked as Bergeons, which I said above descends from the Matthews line.

For me, the Matthews line crosses the White, Meredith, Summers, and Bergeon lines. Add onto that, my mother seems to be a Mathis/Matthews…so five lines cross into my mother’s family lineage.

The irony here (yes, it’s time for me to eat my words): All this time I’ve been wishing for my mother’s paternal side to test and thinking that most of my matches are from my father’s side when, in truth, my mother’s side has been testing heavily and a huge amount of my matches descend from her family line. Isn’t that something!?! For that, I humbly apologize.

I will be multi-tasking on the family tree, jumping between re-identifying the Bergeon, White, Summers, and Meredith lines to their appropriate Matthews/Mathis surnames; working on the Turk and Matthews/Mathis lines and properly documenting the tree.

Two things:

1) The Matthews connection on the Bergeon side has nothing to do with Lightfoot (another thing I have to figure out).
2) Talking to a newly found cousin via Ancestry, the surname Fields is one I need to research. It is a popular surname within my DNA matches and I match three family members of this cousin through his Fields line. If the surname Fields means something to you, please send me a message. On his tree, it is coming out of Alabama and Mississippi.

That’s it for now. Sorry for the book! 🙂

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