----- Original Message -----
From: "J & S Spencer" <JandSSpencer(a)earthlink.net>
To: <SPENCER-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 10:30 PM
Subject: [SPENCER] New Spencer DNA web page
A new web page is now available for the SPENCER DNA Project.
Go to:
http://www.FamilyTreeDNA.com/public/SPENCER/
Sharron Spencer #1487B
Spencer DNA Project Manager
==== SPENCER Mailing List ====
SHGS website:
www.SHGS.ORG
Thank you, Spencer-List! While the Spencer Hist.& Geneal. Society seems to have lost
interest in MAINE Spencers*, some members of CHADBOURNE-L and GOODWIN-Lists may still
subscribe. On the SPENCER-List, immigrants predominantly to-the-Central US-East may help
show the way to their possible-cousins-in-England who settled Kittery Maine and to others
who came to Connecticut in the early 1600s, by pioneering in genetic detective work. As
you may well know, not only can MALE ancestry be traced by some types of DNA, but also,
very reliably, the much greater challenge** of FEMALE (matrilineal) ancestry, which is
passed from mother to daughter (and to a daughter's sons, where it ends). Such is
traced by MITOCHONDRIAL DNA (MtDNA).
There have been many queries on the Spencer-List from those who trace back to states such
as ILLINOIS and IOWA, through which wagon trains passed (later trains and barges using the
Erie Canal to the tributaries of the Mississippi River for those from New England), from
each of the three regions above, including VA, MD and the Carolinas.
* The MAINE SPENCERs came from immigrant William Chadbourne's daughter Patience, who
married Thomas SPENCER (and the very fertile Goodwin tribe came from their daughter
Margaret SPENCER, who married Daniel GOODWIN, immigrant from Yoxford (sic), England
Several generations of these three families may be found at
www.chadbourne.org with source
citations. So, due to constricted geography in the upper mid-west we had an early
smelting pot for those may have had common roots in the British Isles. (But as they
continued west, farmers tended to seek a climate where they could grow crops they knew).
** The difficulty, of course, with MtDNA, is that it's much more challenging to trace
female ancestry in the early years of America as well as England, since property was
typically held in a man's name. As well, elected leaders tended to be male, and many
early birth records as well as baptism records in churches, named only the father
(overlooking the most reliably know parent, if I may say so).
We thank the SPENCER family for leading the way in this type of reliable ancestral
sleuthing. Likely at the site given one can delete the ending surname and find other
families whose descendants are invited to come together. This is not an endorsement of
that particular website, however; I've not compared it with others.
And of course this is not an endorsement of any signature block below my signature, which
may be an advertisement by Ancestry, Inc.
REMINDER: When you adopt SPAM-resistant mail FILTERS, the name of the mailing list at
Rootsweb, or elsewhere, must appear in your address book (for the simpler systems) or in
your approved senders or "WHITE LIST" (e.g.
spamarrest.com) for the more
advanced systems, unless the latter is backed up by a challenge system, though those
clever systems are designed to fool computers (normal senders to mailing Lists but inept
at reading usernames in graphic images).
Please note: You NEED NOT QUOTE BACK IN FULL a message such as this, and may delete
portions if that is your default setting. Also, you may always delete the signature block
of the List to which you sending, since it would be doubled when your reply appears, the
reason we've sometimes seen long strings of duplicate signature blocks. {I can quote
this one in full (moved to the top) because Sharron was more concise than I
<grin>}.
~ Ted Chadbourne, Chair, Genealogical Research Committee, CFA