a genealogist's sketchbook

Besides our agnate (male-line) ancestry, and our matrilineal ancestry (also called the umbilical or mitochondrial line, to indicate the uterine mother-child bond or the exclusively maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA), what specific lines have any distinction, in an abstract sense, in the vast swath of the pedigree chart that lies between these two bookends? The ‘xy’ or gender-alternating line has, as Todd Farmerie explained, a theoretically heightened role in the transmission of some genetic material. But it is also the simplest ‘unique’ path to follow among ancestors after the all-male and all-female lines. There is the interesting oddity that siblings of different genders have wholly different XY lines, since a man’s line starts with his mother while a woman’s line starts with her father. As it turns out, my ‘XY’ line is pretty long, leading back through a Great-Migration colonist into late medieval England. Today the ever-vigilant John Brandon of Charleston, South Carolina, noticed some generations of ancestors of Dorothy (Nicholl) Stratton in the 1563 Visitation of Suffolk. So my line now stretches 19 generations from my daughters back to Avelyn Pelham, who probably lived in the mid to later 15th century:

1. Avelyn Pelham = John Colbye, Gent., of Banham, Norfolk
2. John Colbye = Isabel Ives
3. Ann Colbye = Robert Nichols of Brundish, Suffolk
4. John Nichols = Cecily Merell
5. Dorothy Nichols = Thomas Stratton of Shotley, Suffolk (d. 1596)
6. John Stratton (1581–1627) = Anne Derehaugh (d. after 1641)
7. Elizabeth Stratton (1614–1668) = John Thorndike (–1668)
8. Paul Thorndike (1643–1698) = Mary Patch (1650–)
9. Mary Thorndike (1669–1732) = Robert Morgan (–1762)
10. Paul Morgan (1712–1796) = Ruth Lane (1718–1797)
11. Ruth Morgan (1739 – ) = Nehemiah Stanwood (1733-1815)
12. John Morgan Stanwood (1774-1852) = Mary Lurvey (1773 – )
13. Ruth Morgan Stanwood (1812–1887) = Lazarus Lane (1809–1843)
14. George Washington Lane (1834–1879) = Anne Elizabeth Andrews (1837-1913)
15. Nellie Mae Lane (1876–1935) = Benjamin Franklin Tucker (1873-1947)
16. Carle Thornton Tucker (1896-1974) = Adeline Alice Brownell (1898-1988)
17. Elaine Doris Tucker (b. 1929–) = Marvin Hunter Taylor (b. 1929)
18. Nathaniel Lane Taylor (b. 1965) = Julie Harmon Scott (b. 1968)
19. Cassandra Elizabeth Taylor (b. 2000) & Amelia Katherine Taylor (b. 2005)

I like that this line goes through John Morgan Stanwood and his daughter Ruth, whom I discussed in my last blog post—with a picture of Ruth. My sons’ XY line is alas 11 generations and 400 years shorter:

?1. Cynthia, widow in 1828 of Isaac Dudley of East Haven, CT.; perhaps parents of:
2. Whiting B. Dudley (1823-1882) = Rosanna Hotchkiss (1824-1884)
3. Rosa Whiting Dudley (1857-1940) = John Milton Harmon (1854-1934)
4. Dudley Harmon (1886-1976) = Selene Ayer Armstrong (1883-1932)
5. Carolyn Ayer Harmon (1915-2000) = Joseph Robertson Scott (1915-1986)
6. Joseph Robertson Scott (b. 1942) = Paula Louise Fitts (b. 1945)
7. Julie Harmon Scott (b. 1968) = Nathaniel Lane Taylor (b. 1065)
8. Harrison Scott Taylor (b. 2003) & Simon Lane Taylor (b. 2009)