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If your Coats or Coates ancestor lived in Virginia in the late 1700s, you
might find his signature on one of the religious petitions on-line at the
Library of Congress website.
To find these:
- go to the Library of Congress website www.loc.gov
- click on the tab for American Memory at the top of the page
- click on Religion in the box on the left hand side
- click on Religious Petitions, Virginia 1764- 1802
These are not indexed by surname, but you can narrow your search by typing
the name of the county in Virginia where your ancestor lived to get a list
of the petitions for that county. Then click on each one to bring up an
image of the petition to scan through to look for your ancestors name.
For example, I am interested in the Coates and Coats families that lived
in Halifax County, Virginia. I followed the above steps to bring up a list
of the petitions for Halifax County and found the following petitions:
- November 25, 1794 contains the signature of Thos. Coates
- November 16, 1795 contains the signatures of Willm. Coats and possibly
another one that might be William Coats
- December 17, 1799 contains the signatures of Joshua Coates, William
Coates jr., John Coats, Richd. Coates, Richard Cotes, and William Cotes
- December 21, 1802 contains the signature of Wm. Coates
Caution many of these are original signatures but you need to evaluate
that. Sometimes what you will see are several names in a row that look
like the same handwriting. In this case, the people signed on a separate
sheet of paper when signatures were being collected at a different
location. Then the names from that sheet of paper were copied over to this
petition. Also, in this time period the term junior does not necessarily
mean that someone is the son of another person with the same name.
Junior could mean someone who was younger and had the same name, i.e. a
son, or nephew, or cousin, or someone not related at all.
Kathryn Hamilton
Hi, I've just been learning a bit about the more specific meaning of
our YDNA results for members who've participated in the Family Tree DNA
Coats project. They have found since we started this project that it
is common for there to be at least one mutation between 2 people when
you are going back 8 generations to your common ancestor. There can
even be a mutation occurring in one generation. Some markers in red at
the top of our page even change much more easily. Knowing the number
of markers that vary isn't what is needed to know how close our common
ancestors are likely to be - but luckily there is an easy way to have
Family Tree DNA do that computing for you. Go to
http//www.familytreedna.com and login. You should be at your MyFTDNA
page. Find the link on the middle of the left hand column called
"Matches" and click on it. Next, scroll down the screen to see all
persons that have a match to your DNA. On the far right hand column
next to their name, there is an orange red pedigree chart symbol on a
blue background. When you click on that symbol, it will show you
statistically how close you are by common ancestor within various
generations to that cousin. So, when you get a one or 2 marker
difference to someone else you expected to have the same ancestor as
yours, don't despair. On a 37 point test, you can have 4 markers of
difference and will still usually be in range to have the common
ancestor you expected if they were back 7 or 8 generations from both of
you. :) If you have questions on how to do this, you can email
me. :) Linda Coate
We've had such interesting news lately on the DNA front. We have
another new member whose kit info is back who has his line to Yorkshire,
England. He doesn't match anyone else at this time, but someone will
sure appreciate a match in the future to that kit number! Big John
info, Little John and a possible kit via Stephen Marmaduke Coate are
other useful strides. Also, if you are a participant, there is a new
feature with Family Tree DNA where you can list your oldest known
ancestor, male and female and have them charted along with other members
in our group on a satellite map of the world... If you know the street
they lived on, the map can even be that detailed. I recommend that you
go into your page at Family Tree DNA in your My-Ftdna page and choose
"Plot Ancestral Locations" in the left hand column. It's pretty
cool. I'll see if we can get that loaded on our page at
http://www.ancestrees.com too. Any questions, just write back.
Thanks. Linda Coate
We just had improved test results for the kit descended through Wright
Coate, Big John's son and it is still an exact match to the other 5
people in the Big John - Marmaduke grouping at 25 points of DNA who
believed they weere descended from Big John. He should be getting back
more test results in the next week or so when I'll remake the charts and
place them up at http://www.ancestrees.com/dna/family.html. This is
one of our more difficult puzzles falling into place. Enjoy. Linda
Coate