Hi Whit,
I have a lot of questions for you, but I'll stay at the subject
for right now.
For those who don't know, Dr. Whit Athey is not only a Carroll
descendant, but is also one of the outstanding scientists in the
use of DNA in genealogy research.
I have also seen the name of "Martha" used as the wife of Dempsey
Carroll, Jr. in some family trees. I have not yet found proof of
that, but I think I MAY have found a source of misinformation. I
have a deed written July 17, 1793 that states... "between Dempsey
Carrell Senior of the County of Sampson and State of North
Carolina of the one part and Alexander Carrell.... "
That deed was not proven in open court until February 1798 and
registered November 17, 1798. I don't understand all that, but I
am pretty sure that the word "SENIOR" is written out right after
the name, Dempsey Carrell.
Near the end is written, "IN WITNESS WHEREOF WE the said Dempsey
Carrell and Martha Carrell (sorry my eyesight will not tell me a
few words here) the day and year first mentioned."
This deed appears to be signed by Dempsey Carrell and by Martha
Carrell with the scribbled "seal" by each name. It was witnessed
by Labon Taylor and Samuel Ratlee? (one abstract of the deed
listed that as "Butler") All of these names seem to written by
the same person who wrote the deed. I assume that was O Holmes,
Reg.
On the basis of this deed, I had put "Martha" as the wife of
Dempsey, Sr. and mother of his children until I became aware of
the apparent marriage of one Dempsey Carrell to widow Mrs.
Abraham Herring as mentioned by Charles E. Carroll in another
letter today.
I believe now that the marriage of Dempsey Carroll SENIOR to
Martha was a marriage in his older age and she was not the mother
of his children. I think he died around 1802.
Now it is entirely possible that Dempsey JUNIOR may also have had
a wife named Martha. Somebody had written that he married a
bride from Wilkes County, NC. I have no idea where I saw that,
and I don't think I have any record of it. It is possible! My
Major Hardy Carrell, son of Alexander and nephew of Dempsey, Jr.
moved to Stokes County, NC and married there. Perhaps he had
relatives in adjoining Wilkes County???
To draw all this back to DNA... what we do know is that this
group of men from the Six Runs Creek area in Sampson Co. have a
Y-DNA genetic anomaly showing a NULL value for DYS 425. So, the
fact that Dempsey, Jr.'s wife had an unusual mtDNA haplogroup
T2a1a should be no surprise, Whit. She probably dropped from
the sky the same day as all these men. :-) ;-)
Lura
........................................................................
----- Original Message -----
From: "Whit Athey" <wathey(a)hprg.com>
To: <carroll-dna(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 9:30 AM
Subject: Re: [CARROLL-DNA] Has everyone finished research?
| Dear Carroll List,
|
| Thanks to Lura's "nudge," I will try to bring everyone up to
date on a
| little project of mine. This concerns the wife of Dempsey
Carroll Jr,
| who is unknown to us. Some have her name as "Martha," but
there has
| been no information as to her surname. BTW, what is the
evidence that
| her name was Martha?
|
| I managed to convince an elderly relative of mine, who is a
matrilineal
| descendant of "Martha," to take a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
test. The
| hope was that the results would match someone else in the
Family Tree
| DNA database and that this would provide some leads on figuring
out who
| Martha was. As you know, mtDNA is passed down from mother to
child.
| Males have it too from their mothers, but do not pass it on.
Anyway,
| the results of a full sequence test (FGS) give some interesting
results,
| but there are no matches in the database. The mtDNA haplogroup
for this
| line is unusual--Haplogroup T2a1a. There are very few of these
in any
| database, including GenBank, and none match exactly with our
line.
|
| I will keep looking for matches. If any other descendant of
Dempsey Jr
| knows of a theory about "Martha" that might be testable through
mtDNA
| and a matrilineal line, please let me know.
|
| Whit
...........................................................
|
| Lura wrote:
| > Did everyone just give up trying to use DNA to find Carroll |
ancestors?........