Mary M Howard: DNA Project to Support that her Parents were James Seth and Harriet C Howard

My 3rd great-grandmother, Mary M Howard, was born May 1, 1848, in Hillsborough County, Florida. She married Wilson Elihu Stephens on March 25, 1869, in Manatee County, Florida. She died April 12, 1879, in Manatee County, Florida. She and Wilson had at least eight children before her death. Published histories note that Mary Howard Stephens’ parents were James Seth Howard and Harriet C Weeks Howard.

As I’ve noted in a previous post, documentary evidence provides a strong circumstantial case that Seth and Harriet Howard were the parents of Mary M Howard Stephens.

Published histories note that Seth and Harriet Howard had at least ten children.

South Florida Pioneers Issue #15/16 Jan-April 1978. Biography on Seth Howard. List of children on page 4.

Direct evidence in the form of a death certificate exists <online> for only three of the ten proposed children of Seth and Harriet Howard. An interview with their granddaughter provides direct evidence for a fourth child. Two other children appear in the household of Seth and Harriet Howard on both the 1880 Census and the 1885 Florida State Census and their relationship is reported. The other four children are determined to be the children of Seth and Harriet through circumstantial evidence only. As noted, my 3rd Great-Grandmother, Mary M Howard is one of those 4 children.

* As of the time of this writing, this researcher has not requested the death certificate for George who died in 1946, or Fanny who died in 1945. For this exercise, DNA evidence along with circumstantial documentary evidence will be used to confirm their parentage. An attempt to gather all direct evidence should be made by anyone in the direct line of descent from George W Howard and Fanny Howard.

Along with the appearance of a child matching the name of each proposed child in the household of Seth and Harriet Howard on the Federal Census at some point, a circumstantial case for the parentage Martha, Mary M, and Newton can be based on marriage records and the proximity of the families in later census records after their marriages. Adaline likely died between 1860 and 1870 as she did not appear on the 1870 census in the household of Seth and Harriet Howard and no marriage record has been located for her.

For this DNA project, I used the kit of my great uncle since he is the generation closest to Seth Howard and Harriet Weeks Howard of the kits that I collaborate on. I can not use my father’s kit for this study because he is related to the Weeks family through both his mother and his father.

During the analysis for this project, I will refer to my great uncle as MMH1. My first step was to look at MMH1’s ThruLines at ancestry.com to see what results he was getting.

Total autosomal DNA matches with tester MMH1 descending from Seth and Harriet Howard as suggested via ThruLines on ancestry.com. Results accessed on Jan 8, 2024.

As you can see, there were 198 DNA matches that ThruLines calculated to be descendants of Seth and Harriet Howard who were MMH1’s 2nd great-grandparents. No ThruLines exist for Adaline Howard, further supporting her likely death between 1860 and 1870.

Autosomal DNA matches with tester MMH1 descending from Seth and Harriet Howard by each proposed child of the couple as suggested via ThruLines on ancestry.com. Results accessed on Jan 8, 2024.

Of those 198 DNA matches, 61 DNA matches were from the Mary M Howard line of descent. So, that leaves us with 137 DNA matches from the eight remaining proposed siblings!

Here is a table of the results:

The next step in the project was to locate the closest DNA match to MMH1 for each proposed sibling of Mary M Howard and confirm the relationship using documentary evidence. The following limitations must be acknowledged:

Descendants of Susan Howard through her daughter, Laura Virginia “Jenny” Arnold had to be excluded from the project because Jenny married her uncle by marriage, Wilson Elihu Stephen, after her aunt, Mary M Howard Stephens passed away in 1879. These descendants must be excluded due to pedigree collapse.
Descendants of Susan Howard through her daughter Martha Maude “Molly” McLeod Whidden had to be excluded from the project because Molly married her uncle by marriage, William Whidden, after her aunt, Martha Howard Whidden passed away in 1897. These descendants were excluded due to the messiness of multiple relationships. I had enough matches to work with that I didn’t need to worry about thinking through how the multiple relationships would affect the shared cMs of the shared matches.
Special care was given to ensure that no pedigree collapse was included in this study, however, it may need to be revised if any additional pedigree collapse is found later.

The following is a chart showing the line of descent of each DNA match analyzed. Their relationship to MMH1 in the blue boxes. I also had the privilege of collaborating on LVH1’s match list (she is the 2nd great-granddaughter of Seth and Harriet Howard through their daughter Laura Virginia Howard). If one of the descendants from the other proposed siblings also matches with LVH1, I have included that information in a small yellow colored box below the larger blue box.

To view a version of this chart that you can enlarge and view more easily, click here.

The following chart shows and analyzes the shared centimorgans of autosomal DNA shared between MMH1 and the other test takers who are documented to descend from the other proposed children of Seth and Harriet Howard.

Note: format was modified from the report used for educational purposes from Barb Groth - Genealogist, “KATHARINA ANNA ELIZABETH SEHER RESEARCH PROJECT”, May 2023.]
a Test taker names were anonymized to protect their privacy.
b For documented relationships, see public tree located on ancestry.com, username: sunnisearchangel, Tree: “Sunni’s Family Tree”
c Shared centimorgans, “atDNA Matches,” for tester MMH1, *Ancestry* (https://www.ancestry.com/DNA: accessed 8 Jan 2024).
d Blaine T. Bettinger, “The Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4,” March 2020, Jonny Perl; Interactive version v4, blog post DNA Painter, (https://DNApainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4: accessed 8 Jan 2024).

I have included whether the shared autosomal DNA between MMH1 and each of his cousins falls within 1 standard deviation of the mean since this is standard practice for this type of analysis. HOWEVER, since MMH1 has so many DNA matches, this is not as relevant as it would be if we were analyzing the validity of one DNA match, in particular, to break down a brick wall. If his matches were outside the range of 1 standard deviation from the mean in the case of the Newton J Howard line of descent or the George W Howard line of descent, I might be more concerned as there are currently only two recognized matches in each of those buckets. Additionally, I reviewed all matches who were at the 3C1R relationship or higher and most fell within 1 standard deviation of the mean (however, I did NOT confirm these through documentary evidence. I just checked that matches within the range did exist).

The following chart shows and analyzes the shared centimorgans of autosomal DNA shared between LVH1 and the other test takers who are documented to descend from the other proposed children of Seth and Harriet Howard.

LVH1’s results are a bit interesting. At first blush, her results seem well outside of 1 standard deviation from the mean. But in truth, this is just the power of recombination. When I analyze her ThruLines, she has a healthy 179 DNA matches reportedly descending from the children of Seth and Harriet Howard. Twenty of the matches are from the Laura Virginia Howard line from which she also descends, so that leaves us with 159 remaining matches. Just like MMH1, she has matches descending from each proposed child except for Adaline Howard. There is some overlap in matches, but she has plenty of matches that are NOT shared with MMH1, and most of these fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean for the given relationship. In short, if LVH1 was the focus of my analysis, I would have chosen different matches to research and document the relationships and her chart would have looked much more like MMH1’s chart.

In conclusion, there is no direct evidence that names James Seth Howard and Harriet C Weeks Howard as the parents of Mary M Howard who was born May 1, 1848, in Hillsborough County, Florida, died April 12, 1879, in Manatee County, Florida and married Wilson Elihu Stephens on March 25, 1869, in Manatee County, Florida. However, a close analysis of circumstantial evidence of a relationship to Seth and Harriet Howard when combined with analyzing shared DNA matches who descend from their other children for whom direct evidence does exist makes for a solid case that Mary M Howard is the daughter of James Seth Howard and Harriet C Weeks.

The next step to make this analyzation airtight would be to find DNA matches that descend from the siblings of James Seth Howard and Harriet C Weeks Howard. But…I don’t know who the parents or the siblings of Seth and Harriet were!

So, with that said, I am committed to breaking down these brick walls.

But how will I do that? I would love some help from my cousins! I will need to perform a DNA project to determine the parents of Seth and Harriet Weeks, so I will need cousins to volunteer to be in the project. Because different descendants all inherit different portions of an ancestor’s DNA (see above where MMH1 and LVH1 both had over 130 autosomal DNA matches with the various children of Seth and Harriet Weeks, but they both shared different amounts with the same matches AND they had many matches that they did NOT share), the more kits we have to analyze, the better we can reconstruct the Most Common Recent Ancestral Couple’s total DNA. Visit https://dnapainter.com/tools/coverage and read the three articles attached to the top of the pop-out screen for more information if you are interested.

As I always say, I will do all the “heavy lifting” (i.e., the data analysis). All you have to do as a volunteer is click a few buttons which allows me to view your DNA match list. I will share all my results and findings after it is complete. If you are descended from Seth and Harriet Howard and you would like to find out who their parents were, please find me via my username “sunnisearchangel” at ancestry.com and send me a message or email me directly at everydayadventuresingenealogy@gmail.com and I will walk you through the next steps in the process. Volunteers must have completed DNA testing at ancestry.com or be willing to complete a DNA test at ancestry.com to participate in the project.

Mary M Howard: DNA Project to Support that her Parents were James Seth and Harriet C Howard

An Efficient Method for Transcribing Genealogical Records

Mary M Howard Stephens: Documentary Evidence that her parents were James Seth and Harriet C Howard