Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- How Long Ago Was Your Last "Genealogy Happy Dance"?

  Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night Again - 

Time For Some More Genealogy Fun!!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)  One of the goals of every genealogy researcher is to solve difficult name and relationship problems - and traditionally we do a "genealogy happy dance" when we succeed.

2)  When was the last time you did a "genealogy happy dance" after solving one of your difficult problems?

3)  Share your story on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please share a link in Comments on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

It took me over 35 years to find the mother of my 3rd great-grandmother Sarah Feather (1804-1848), the daughter of Cornelius Feather (1777-1853) and the wife of Henry Carringer (1800-1879).  I knew only the name of Cornelius Feather's wife in 1850, Mary (age 58, born in Pennsylvania).  Was she Sarah's mother?  Mary would have been age 12 at Sarah's birth if her age in 1850 is correct?  Was there another wife of Cornelius that had Sarah (and perhaps the three other children)?

When the FamilySearch Full-Text Search was released in early March 2024 at RootsTech, I tried to find Cornelius Feather in the United States Land Records collection, and had some success.  I wrote about it in Testing the Full Text Search in FamilySearch Labs - An Immediate Success!!  Cornelius and Mary Feather were identified in an 1830 quitclaim deed as heirs of Thomas Partridge (1758-1828) of Trumbull County, Ohio along with six other children of Thomas Partridge and his first wife.

But was Mary (Partridge) Feather the mother of Sarah Feather?  There is no birth record for Mary Partridge, only an age in 1850.  There is no marriage record for Cornelius Feather and Mary Partridge - but now I knew that they married before 1830.

One hypothesis that I tested was "If Mary (Partridge) Feather is the mother of Sarah Feather, do I have DNA matches with other descendants of Thomas and Hannah (Wakeman) Partridge?"  In my Ancestry Member Tree, I added Mary Partridge as Sarah's mother, and Thomas and Hannah (Wakeman) Partridge as Mary's parents, and waited a day or two for AncestryDNA to give me ThruLines.  

That was wildly successful - I wrote about it in Do I Have Any 5th Great-grandparents Partridge/Wakeman DNA Matches?  There were 15 ThruLines for me from Thomas and Hannah (Wakeman) Partridge with 8 to 17 cM matches.  Subsequently, I have one new match with 23 cM.  There were several matches with up to 49 cM for matches that descend from Hannah Wakeman's parents, George and Sarah (Hill) Wakeman (my purported 6th great-grandparents).  I did the same test on MyHeritage and found more matches descended from Thomas and Hannah (Wakeman) Partridge.  

How many cMs are enough?  Is 15 to 20 cM a clear and convincing inication that the match is real?  My guideline is that 20 cM in 1 segment is a real DNA relative.  The 23 cM match is in one segment.  The 49 cM match is in 3 segments.  49 cM is in the upper decile of 7th cousin matches according to the Shared cM project.  Both of the highest cM mtches have fairly large family trees, and I checked them for other names of my ancestors, and checked the supporting sources in those trees and have not found a discrepancy, even though there are no birth records for them.    

My conclusion and current thinking is that Mary (Partridge) Feather is the mother of Sarah Feather.  Thomas and Hannah (Wakeman) Partridge were married in 1785, probably in upstate New York.  They had 11 children, 8 of which married and had children.  Where does Mary fit into the family?  A 1792 birth puts her 4th in the order, but there are no birth records for any of the children.  There are no census records for Thomas Partridge in the 1790, 1800 and 1810 U.S. census enumerations.  

Is it possible that Mary Partridge born in 1792 could marry and have a child in 1804?  Yes, but ...  I would feel a lot better about this if Mary was over age 15 when she became a mother.  

I did a mental "Genealogy Happy Dance" (I have to be careful on my feet because of balance problems) in March 2024 when I found the Full-Text search result and tested the DNA hypothesis.  I've been working on gathering additional information about the Partridge/Wakeman ancestral lines.  Genealogy research is really fun when you find a new ancestral line.  

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