Our research group is going Hi-Tech!
It will be a year this October that this family research site was started. At that time we had listed as one of our top priorities, to find the Parentage of Morris Winebrenner and the true maiden name of his wife Hannah. As of this date after many hours of searching available documents posted on websites and personal corresponded with other family members this goal still remains un-reached. This is not too surprising as the further back in time our research takes us there are less written documentation and a lack of living relatives to supply information. Not living in the location of our ancestors makes us have to rely on both of these methods of research.
A few weeks ago I was posting the news of the debut of our sister site ourbrickwalls.com on all the messages boards. While I was at it I took the opportunity to check out what people were talking about. I had seen postings before about the Crow/Crowe DNA study before but never looked into it. Since another subject had popped up on our Crowe forum a few months back about William Crow and whither Jacob was really a son of William I started to ponder if this could help. So I wrote Philip Crow and asked a few questions. I asked how they got DNA from an ancestor (this I had to know) to start the tracking with. Philip wrote back saying that they didn’t get DNA from ancestors but use the DNA from a living relative who could provide documentation back to their oldest ancestor and then a marker is set for the family line of that ancestor. I also checked what family lines were represented. While there was only one Crow line from Cecil Co. Maryland there was the family of George Philip Groh/Crow that I have seen people connecting William Crow with which caught my eye. So I decided to ask my youngest brother if he would provide the needed Y chromosome for the test and he agreed.
Here is the website where all the family charts and people participating are listed. There is also a description on the Y-DNA25 kit I choose to go with. There is a discount offered to people who go through one of the family groups that are already participating.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~crow2000/crowdna.htm
The other thing that caught my eye was this below:
Ethnic and Geographic Origins: All Y-DNA tests allow you to identify your ethnic and geographic origins, both recent and far distant on your direct male descending line. Among others, you will be able to check your Native-American or African Ancestry as well as for the Cohanim Ancestry.
I called the lab to check into this. As you know I have been pondering about how far back the Indian ancestry goes in the Crowe/Winebrenner family, and if this may be why we cannot find a surname for Hannah. I was told since the Indian ancestry was on the grandmother’s side that it would not show on my brother’s Y-DNA test. The person who should test for the grandmother’s side had to be from one of Mary Ann Winebrenners’ daughters and then female down to the present generation. Well guess who fit the ticket, our cousin Genie! So she has submitted her DNA to the cause.
Both tests were sent off to the lab on Friday so now it’s just sit back and wait to see what kind of results we get. Genie has started a topic for discussion on our new sister site if you want to voice your options. All results will be posted on the ourbrickwalls.com site when they come back, which should take aprox. 6 weeks.
Carol
