Stevens Line DNA Testing Confirmation of Paper Trail

[rms2]

Yesterday I made a list for my own information of all the various dna matches, y chromosome and/or autosomal, I have to known Stevens-line relatives, those to whom I could assign a page number from Stevens-Washburn with Related Lines by Annie Stevens Jones (with Supplement by Frances Ulmer Bittman) or who were the child or grandchild of someone to whom I could assign a page number.

There are nineteen of them! Of those, I personally recruited five, but the other fourteen popped up on their own. They just happened to test with Family Tree DNA or Ancestry (or both) and showed up among my matches. Not all of these folks have the surname Stevens. Many of them, for example, are descendants of Sarah May "Sally" Stevens, the youngest sister of my great grandfather James.

In each case I listed our most recent common ancestors. Every such listing, with the exceptions of the matches to my own father, my sons, and my youngest daughter, was either to my great grandparents, James Holmes Stevens Jr. and Jonnie T. Holmes Stevens (pages 33-35, 217, in Stevens-Washburn with Related Lines), or to my second great grandparents, James Holmes Stevens Sr. and Olive Augusta Washburn Stevens (pages 20, 27-28).

Today I will add to the list the y-dna matches I have to men with the surname Stephens/Stevens who are obviously relatives but for whom I cannot yet establish the connection and who are not represented in the book Stevens-Washburn with Related Lines. Those matches go back even beyond my third great grandfather Auguston. I will also add to the list a few autosomal matches to people whose only apparent connection to me is their descent from the Stevens family group in Fayette County, PA, Columbiana County, OH, etc., who are known relatives thanks to y-dna testing combined with paper trail research.

I would love to post my list here, but it would violate the privacy of my matches big time. Redacting all the personal info would make the list just a sparser version of what I already posted above, but with the addition of centimorgan details. Not worth the trouble.

The matches from my mother's side and my father's maternal side I did not include. There is a boat load of them, too.

[rms2]

Just a few minutes ago I picked up a new y-dna match to a man with the spelling variant Stephens. It's not a super close match, 61/67, but, given the surname, he could be a y-dna line relative in genealogical time.

I emailed him and asked him to upgrade to the Big Y-500 while the summer sale is on or at least to test for FGC36974 (the Stephens/Stevens SNP we all share). If he is FGC36974+, then he's a y-dna relative, however distant.

[rms2]

Updated my list to include my y-dna matches and three additional autosomal matches to Stevens-line relatives earlier than my mdka third great grandfather Auguston Stevens.

DNA testing has been very good to me. It has confirmed my y-dna paper trail and beyond, confirming the research done in 2106 by genealogist Joan Peake.