Hello to all you Cates listers,
Some time ago I was surffing web sites for the name "Cates" and came across one
that had a picture of the original ancestor George Dibrel Cates taken @1890's-1900. I
was so impressed by this picture because I have one in an album of a man who is almost the
very same image. Both of these men began life in Tennessee but further paper research
about my ancestor has proved to be fairly difficult, if it is to be had at all.
Recently I have been the project coordinater for a DNA project to prove the liniage of my
husband's 6th great grandfather and we have had success beyond our wildest dreams with
this project. You can see the project at
http://users.mstar2.net/katerose/ if you want
all the details. The short story is: Samuel Rose is found on paper starting in 1743 in
Crum Elbow, Nine Partners, Dutchess County NY. He pays taxes so he had to have some land
but no record of that land deed/transfer has ever been found. From that time to the
probating of his will in Mancherter VT in 1782 he is everywhere in paper documents so
there is no problem following his life. He has been sought be amateur genealogist and
paid professionals for more than 100 years but to no avail. Two years ago we
"found" his wife by a tip from a gentleman who found us on GenForum and passed
on a film # he was looking at in a FHC. It was a gold mine for Sarah and her family but
nothing new for Samuel. We had been rea!
ding about DNA in articles in Ancestry magazine and on the internet so in 2001 we
"took the bull by the horns" and organized a project. We worked with Family
Tree DNA out of Houston and they have several surname projects you can look at
http://www.familytreedna.com/
All participants are living descendants of Samuel and others whom it looked on paper as
though we had a good chance of descending from. This kind of DNA testing
is not pertinant to your medical history!!!! The DNA tested is only for what is called
"halotype" and does not look for genes that show medical problems. The test is
taken by swabing the inside of the cheek with a small brush, inserting that sample into a
vial containing salt water to perserve it while in the mail to the lab. The cost, if we
do this as a group, is $99 for a 12 marker test and $149 for a 25 marker test. We
solicited families to help cover the cost, in other words, my husband was the test subject
for his family he paid some, his two brothers paid some each and a cousin paid some toward
his test. The other descendants did much the same thing and after we got the initial
results back and they were so good a whole group of us contributed for two tests to be
upgraded to a 25 marker and it was a perfect match which means that we are related with in
7 generations, which for us bridged that gap and connected us for certain to one of the
two families we have al!
ways wondered about. It also showed us that the other family is definately not ours. We
have had over 40 people join our project and have just recently "proved" another
Samuel descendant and connected 4 others of differing Rose lines to each other. One test
subject matched a different halotype so closely that she started asking in the family
about it and got some startling answers from an elderly relative who had been holding on
to letters written pre 1800's that no one else knew existed. She (her brother was the
test subject) is enthusiastic about this new reseach direction.
Now, because this picture of George D. Cates was so close to my David T. Cates I began to
wonder if there would be any interest in the Cates/Cate community of doing a similar
project. From what I gather on the net and in reading other information in published
family histories Robert the Shoemaker is the 1st Cates/Cate who can be documented in the
US. Did he have more than one male child that lived to adulthood and had children? I
think the answer is yes. If he did and we can find two men who descend from him directly
(this has to be male descent, father to son to grandson etc.) they could be the
"benchmark" for us to test against.
If there is any interest I would be willing to help get this started. I am not a web
person so we would need someone who could post the results on a web page since FTDNA only
does the testing and comparisons for individual test subjects and the project families are
responsible for getting that info out to the "greater" community.
Let me hear. Sorry for the length of this posting.
Kathleen (David T., D. T. David T. #1, Thomas, Samuel, ???)