Christian Waddington (unknown) - Relationship to Ka Okee cut?

Erica Howton funny you should mention this! I was just reading up on interracial marriage in the early Virginia colony, and was surprised at the results.

Several scholarly sources report that there were cultural factors in both communities that worked strongly against it. This thesis doesn't mention marriage but talks about the general distrust and hostility between the two communities, which ramped up significantly on the English side after the massacre of 1622 and only got worse after the massacre of 1644: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5814&co... The violence was a two-way street, with plenty of English attacks on Native villages. After 1646 there was basically an apartheid system in place: the English assigned some land to the Native population and didn't allow them on English land except in very limited circumstances. The atmosphere in the 1630s (when Pettus and Ka-Okee supposedly married) wasn't conducive to marriage-making.

This article is all about the cultural factors that worked against interracial marriage and even unmarried sex: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4248940?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents It talks about logging in through a school or library, but that's not necessary. You can sign up for a private JSTOR account and read it for free. It may take some experimental button-pushing to figure out how to open the full article.

This link says that there are only three recorded Anglo-Powhatan marriages in 17th century Virginia: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/marriage-in-early-virginia... One of these was the marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas, which was basically a political alliance that bought a few years of peace between the communities. It's documented that Rolfe was very concerned about the morality of marrying a "heathen", but finally decided that it was OK because it was for the good of the community.

Not directly relevant, but here's an article on Powhatan marriage customs, as reported by English observers: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/marriage-in-early-virginia...

So all the claims about Englishmen marrying descendants of Pocahontas are looking kind of iffy. The marriage of Thomas Pettus' daughter to Chief Wahanganoche is especially troubling. This marriage would have occurred around 1650 at the earliest. Pettus was a bigwig in the English community by this time and the racial separation policy had already taken effect. The general attitude of the English was that genocide sounded like a mighty good idea, and basically put it into effect in 1666, at which point the Patawomeck disappeared from the historical record. Even if Pettus himself was in sympathy with the Patawomeck, his fellow Englishmen would not have taken it lightly if his daughter left the English community to marry a pagan. All signs suggest that Christian Martin spent her life as a member of the English community, so presumably her unknown sister did too.

I don't know of any headrights on Christian, but we also don't know when Thomas Pettus and a lot of other prominent people arrived. There were a lot of Virginia courthouses going up in flames in both the Revolution and the Civil War, plus the usual ravages of time like mold, floods, and stuff getting so old and brittle that it just crumbles into dust. A lot of the colonial records must have been lost.

Class mobility among the English is hard to judge, but I'm sure there was more opportunity in Virginia than there was in England. A sexy, ambitious woman has always had a good chance of marrying above her station, and there are situations that can make a woman lose status too.

There was a major shortage of English women in the early part of the century, but page 191 of the "Abominable Mixture" article says that the situation was much improved by mid-century, to the point that in the 1650s the dowry system was back in place. That's the approximate time period when Christian and her unknown sister would have probably gotten married for the first time.

The talk about DNA connections between the Martin and Bryant families make me wonder if Ann Alleged-Meese might have been a daughter of Christian's unknown sister. We know that there really was a sister, and that she had at least one daughter called Frances Golber. There's no indication that Frances married into the Bryants - there are other surnames associated with her. But she could have had a sister who did. I'm not confident that they're finding a reliable genetic link after so many generations, but it's not impossible.

Interesting story about the Queen! I wouldn't expect any DNA studies since none of the characters were so important that anybody would feel a compelling urge to prove a link.

Cockacoeske had a son called “John West” but therecis no evidence that the English John West was actually his father. The Pamukey John man had a Pamunkey wife (who left him), no known children, and was not mentioned after his mother’s death. The Bryants and Martins connect through Richard Elkins who married a Bryant and also the granddaughter of Christian unknoepwn Martin Waddington

The generally accepted view seems to be that Christian's daughter was Richard Elkins' first wife, and Elizabeth Bryant was his second wife. There were several children with each wife There's not a lot of information on dates etc, but the general consensus seems to be that my ancestor (Ralph Elkins) was the son of Elizabeth Bryant.

Whoops, make that Christian's GRAND daughter.

My personal hypothesis on where genetic mixing between the English and the Potomac tribes could have come from, since marriage between the communities or longterm cohabitation was apparently not a very viable option:

According to the articles cited earlier, the English did not treat their own people well. In the early days of the colony, there was a major problem with Englishmen running away from the settlement and taking refuge with the tribes, who welcomed them. The Potomac had a more relaxed attitude toward sex than the English did, so there was probably some sexual activity going on even though the English community in general frowned on it. Inevitably this would have resulted in children being born, who would have remained with their mother. The English cracked down harshly on these runaways, so staying in the Native community longterm wasn't a viable option for the men. Later on, there might have been some gene flow in the other direction as mixed-race individuals who could pass for English chose to join the English community.

There was a lot of violence running in both directions between the English and Native communities, and it usually ended in the indiscriminate slaughter of everybody on the losing side regardless of age or sex. But there could have been violent incidents where there was rape that did not end with the woman's murder, and this could also have provided some gene flow.

Presumably Christian Williams still had some property left for her own use too after making this gift, which is a lot more impressive than some of the bequests I've seen from other people who were considered to be prosperous.

The disconnect between the proposed Ka Okee-related marriages and the situation described in the articles is really startling. It's like people were so busy looking up family trees and manipulating the DNA evidence that they forgot to read up on the actual historical setting.

If the James Elkins line dies out, the rest of the Elkins family is still useful because of their Bryant connections.

It's claimed that the Bryants are descendants of Ka-Okee because the unknown sister of Christian Pettus married Chief Wahanganoche and begat Keziah Arroyah, who gave birth to Richard Bryant in an impossibly short time span. Richard Bryant's daughter Elizabeth was the mother of most of the Elkins kids. A significant DNA match between the Bryants and the non-Elkins descendants of Christian Pettus would indicate that they all have the same common ancestor. The ultimate goal of course is to prove that Pocahontas is the grandmother of all of them. Without her at the top of the tree, I don't think there would be much interest in trying to prove a connection between these families.

Some additional records for Christian Martin Waddington confirming her second and third husbands:

1707/8, 11 Feb: At Stafford Co., VA Court, the within power of attorney upon motion of Major William ROBINSON was ordered to be recorded. Whereas we William FITZHUGH, Thomas GREGG, Henry CONNYER & Leonard TARENT were this day appointed and elected auditors of the matter in difference between Joseph WAUGH, John WAUGH and Alexr. WAUGH, Admrs. of John WAUGH Clk deced & John HAWKINS & Christian his wife late Widow of the said deced relating to her thirds of the personal of said John WAUGH Clk & thereupon having fully audited adjusted stated & settled all accounts concerning the same do award, John HAWKINS & Christian his wife for a full ballance of their share and part of the estate of John WAUGH deced that is at present come to the hands of Admrs. shall be one feather bed & furniture according to the appraismt. 1600; one trunk 80; one looking glass 36 & that they have third part of the estate of the deced as shall hereafter come into hands of Joseph WAUGH 11 Dec 1707.

I think all of these people are much too far back for any realistic DNA comparisons. Pretty much all of the early Stafford County families intermarried at some point, so modern descendants probably share multiple common ancestors.

This is the link to the DNA results that we were given a couple of days ago: https://www.geni.com/projects/Linda-Carr-Buchholz-SNP-Cousins/55358 I didn't take a serious look at it until just now, because I was more focused on all the red flags in the talk about the project.

It looks like there are about 9 participants in the project. That's a very small sample to make a sweeping conclusion about something that happened 10 generations ago. Here's the thing about autosomal DNA: for any given segment, the odds that the DNA came from a specific 10th-generation ancestor are the same as the odds of flipping a coin ten times and getting heads every time. About one in five hundred.

Putting it another way: the number of ancestors doubles every generation. You have 2 ancestors at the first generation level, your parents. There are 4 at the second generation, your grandparents. At the tenth generation level there are 512 ancestors (less if there have been cousin marriages along the line). Every piece of DNA that you have came from one of those 10th-generation ancestors, but it's quite a trick to figure out which one a given segment came from. There will be some ancestors whose DNA has completely washed out of the individual. For the ones that didn't wash out, most of the segments will be so small that it's hard to distinguish true matches from the general background noise. The line of descent isn't shown for most of the project participants, and the summary doesn't say anything about segment size. So I can't really tell what's going on here.

In the project results, I see lots of people matching each other on lots of chromosomes. You don't expect this many significant matches at 10 generations (where "significant" means a segment length of at least 7cM).

Since each specific segment in each separate individual has only a 1 in 512 chance of coming from the ancestor of interest, your odds of matching another descendant on that segment are pretty slim. A prolific line will have thousands of descendants after 10 generations, so there will be some matches. But finding them is a "needle in a haystack" search. You need a database with thousands of descendants in it to find a few who match on any given segment.

You're right about the likelihood of sharing multiple common ancestors. I know of one guy who is my cousin in seven different ways and a couple of others who are four-way cousins, and that's just on the lines that we've both identified. There's almost nobody who can fill out their family tree completely and accurately for 10 generations. So there are lots of "holes" where unidentified common ancestors can hide. If all these matching segments are of significant size, they're probably from a more recent ancestor, not from ten generations ago.

Looking at the project results some more, I realized that the number in front of each project participant is a Gedmatch kit number. Which means that anybody can get on Gedmatch and look at the DNA results. I didn't check out everybody, but the ones that I did look at had large matching segments, and the estimated relationship was a lot more recent than the tenth generation level. It looks like the first two participants are first cousins. You can only triangulate to your most recent common ancestor, it tells you nothing about ancestors who are further up the line.

Looking at the bottom of the page, we see the project manager's name; her Gedmatch kit number; a chromosome number; two long numbers identifying the beginning and end of a segment; an estimated number of generations to the most recent common ancestor (this will be with respect to a specific DNA match, but I don't know who it is); another number that seems likely to be an Ahnentafel ID number on a family tree; and the name of the ancestor or family group that this DNA segment has been associated with.

The numbers for "generations to most recent common ancestor) range from 3.4 to 7.2. Not 10. There were multiple mentions of endogamy in this thread, and that will throw the estimation off. But it also screws up your ability to accurately identify a common ancestor, so it's not a good thing.

I have Bryant/Elkins descent, so just for fun I ran a Gedmatch comparison of the project manager and myself, setting the calculator at the minimum 3 cM match level. There was no match - not that I actually expected one!

Correction - I did some checking and figured out that the number that I had misidentified as the estimated generations to MRCA in the project manager's results is actually the segment length in cMs. All of the autosomal segments are below the 7.0 standard for significance. It's sometimes possible to identify true matches from smaller segments, but you need to know what you're doing. I wouldn't attempt it myself.

There is an X-chromosome segment that is slightly over 7.0, but there is a higher standard for X segments - I think it's something like 10 or 15 cMs. I'm not sure why the X is held to a different standard.

X goes back to the 1500 time line. It is worked just like the other chromes. Half matches on half cousins are going to be less than 7. The work traced the 7 plus 8th cousins back from what was done by 23andMe by computer. You can't just take your own kit number and make a determination. Your test kit only picks up a small section. You have to have huge numbers of claimants and put them all in the group chromosome browser which Tier One allows up to 10,000 on the denoted segments that were phased and worked backwards to be in common to the named families and ferreted for those who have multiple paths back against those who only have Rolfe to Matoaka.

On the Bryant specific to the Pettus line, we did not go there. We used Bryants that had paper trails with endogamy and the non paper Bryants of that ilk liked up like clockwork since the Gedcom study had long since differentiated the various Bryans / Bryants on the y. We stuck to the R U 106 Bryants and did their degree of cousin distance in stair step obvious resulting connections to each other and worked our cluster backwards to the X era and then we started in on the X era and did the admixture for where the ethnicity markers showed C-1 West Asian and also North Amerindian.

I don't see a huge number of claimants in the test results at https://www.geni.com/projects/Linda-Carr-Buchholz-SNP-Cousins/55358 I see 9 people who are pretty closely related based on the samples that I checked out. On 8 of these people, it looks like the project is just looking for the location of Native DNA, not trying to triangulate with anybody further up the line.

The only mention of the X chromosome is in the project manager's data. It looks like she has used triangulation to assign ancestors to specific, very small DNA segments, but we don't know who she triangulated with or how accurate the family trees are on either side of the triangulation. The results page reads like somebody's private notes where you have to be an insider to understand it, and outsiders can only guess at what it means. In any case, the results for just one person aren't persuasive due to the high risk of error. The confidence level would be higher if there were more matches to help validate the results, and if there was more transparency about how they reached their conclusions.

The biggest X match is with the Sullivan family. I found a Bill Deyo article on the Sullivan family at https://patawomeckindiantribeofvirginia.org/ct-menu-item-35#Sullivan They have multiple female Patawomeck ancestors, and the claimed descent from Ka-Okee is not the first one or the only one. X-DNA has a different inheritance pattern than autosomal DNA. If an individual has identifiable Native DNA on the X, we'd need a complete and accurate family tree to figure out the possible candidate(s) who could have provided it.

There's been no mention of mitochondrial DNA. That's useful for identifying whether people are on the same matrilneal line, but first you have to find at least two people who are claiming matrilineal descent from the same person. You're not likely to have that in a 9-person project.

The Holy Grail for this project would be to find a plausible DNA match with the descendants of Thomas Rolfe, whose descent from Pocahontas is undisputed. But that's not likely to happen with only 9 people in the project.

The catch with the Pocahontas descendants is that there are no Y or mitochondrial descendants, only autosomal and Pocahontas is ten or more generations from them, far past the utility of autosomal DNA.

I found a trove of Bill Deyo articles at https://patawomeckindiantribeofvirginia.org/ct-menu-item-35

I haven't read all of them, but this one: https://patawomeckindiantribeofvirginia.org/ct-menu-item-35#Wahanga... has some talk about the location of land parcels. Unfortunately I suck at checking out land ownership, but there are clues to be gleaned here. "She [Ka-Okee] married a Mr. Pettus, an Englishman, and raised a number of children on land adjoining her cousin, Wahanganoche." Notice that this is just a Mr. Pettus with no first name and no credentials besides "Englishman". For all we know, he could have been an ex-indentured servant on the rise.

It doesn't say that they owned the land either, just that they lived there. The English were zealous about recording land ownership, but if the couple were Wahanganoche's neighbors then this may not have been happening on English land. The only time when there was anything resembling friendly relations between the communities started in 1614 with the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, and ended with the 1622 uprising that wiped out a quarter of the English settlers. After that the general atmosphere consisted of mutual distrust and hostility, culminating in the near-extinction of the Native community in the 1660s. The marriage is usually dated around 1635, when it doesn't seem likely that a prominent Englishman like Thomas Pettus would be living next door to Wahanganoche.

It also doesn't seem likely that an Englishmen who had married into the enemy camp would be welcome on the Virginia Governor's Council, which was an important government body. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Governor%27s_Council#Royal_c... "The members of the Council were almost all wealthy and both socially and politically prominent. Independent wealth was required both for the social standing necessary for membership and also to permit the members to be absent from their families and plantations for long periods of time,"

Getting back on topic: The Deyo article goes on to say "the only representatives of the matrilineal succession available to Wahanganoche were the daughters of his older cousin, Ka-Okee, who happened to live on the adjoining property in Passapatanzy." Wikipedia says that Passapatanzy was a Patawomeck village, and was the place where Pochantas lived with her first husband Kocoum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passapatanzy,_Virginia That definitely doesn't sound like a place where Thomas Pettus would have lived.

The Deyo article relates the story of how Ka-Okee's granddaughter Keziah gave birth to Richard Bryant in 1651, without giving too many dates or providing information on how a woman born around 1636 (Ka-Okee's daughter Unknown Pettus) could have become a grandmother in 1651. So now we know that Bill Deyo is the source of this particular hypothesis.There's a lot of other disputed information in the article, but there's no need to talk about it now.

There wouldn't be any Y on the Ka-Okee side and there wouldn't be any mitochondrial on the Rolfe side. But there might be some matrilineal lines on the Ka-Okee side only that could be tested. It wouldn't prove that Ka-Okee was the common ancestor, but it could establish whether it was possible that the claimants were descended from the same woman. The haplotype might tell us something too, since there are distinctive Native American haplotypes.

I'm very very doubtful about going trying to go back that far with autosomal DNA. But DNA can be "sticky", and it might be doable in skilled hands if they're lucky enough to find the right matches. But even if you manage to accurately establish that the DNA came from 10 generations back, it's still hard to tell whether you've identified the common ancestor correctly. The descendants might believe that it was Ka-Okee, but there's no way to tell whether it was actually her or some random Patawomeck woman whose name was forgotten centuries ago.

This reminds me of a completely separate Bryant/Bryan problem in a different branch of my family tree. There are people out there trying to use Y-DNA to prove their descent from Sir Francis Bryan, who has no known descendants. There's an alleged family of Bryan settlers in Nansemond, Virginia that looks like they might be entirely fictional, and even if the family really existed it's painfully obvious that the family history they told is fabricated. Last time I checked, the Y project wasn't yielding any consistent results. But even if it did, it would just be a bunch of guys on the same patrilineal line who BELIEVED that they were descended from Sir Francis Bryan. It wouldn't prove that they actually WERE descended from him.