DNA solves genealogical problems we didn't know we had

 

Because of the rise in genealogical DNA testing, news reports commonly contain accounts of people who unexpectantly find that they are not related to the parents that raised them or have surprise relatives in many different types of relationships. My personal DNA discoveries go back as far as six generations. The latest discovery involves my own surname line, the Tanner family from Rhode Island and New York. 

Tanner is a fairly common surname in England, Switzerland, and parts of the German-speaking parts of Europe. My family shows up in the 1600s in Rhode Island, and no further connection has been demonstrated to Europe, but it is assumed that the original immigrant came from England. There are several different unrelated Tanner families living in Rhode Island during the 1700s despite assumptions by careless researchers to the contrary. My particular Tanner family line is well documented back eight generations to three brothers (not the three brother immigrants nonsense) who were born in the early 1700s and participated in the Seventh-day Baptist Church. DNA testing becomes tenuous at this level. 

Coming forward two generations brings us to the first Tanner who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1832 soon after the Church was organized. John Tanner was born in Rhode Island in 1778 and moved to Washington County, New York around 1818 and later moved to Bolton, Warren County, New York on the shores of Lake George. He had a large family with three wives in succession and 21 children. Most of his children also joined the Church and moved west with the migration of the Church members across the country to the Salt Lake Valley, Utah where John Tanner died in 1850. 

Four of John Tanner's oldest children died young before he left New York, but three of the children did not join the Church and lived out their lives in the eastern part of the United States. His oldest child, Elisha Bentley Tanner, lived in New York state. Here is where the DNA testing comes into the story. My side of the Tanner family is descends from the oldest son who moved west, Sidney Tanner who was born in 1809. Elisha Bentley Tanner was born in 1801 and died in New York City, New York, in 1858. Few, if any of John Tanner's western U.S. descendants have spent any time researching Elisha's family. 

My two DNA tests have accumulated thousands of DNA matches. Unfortunately, relatively few of them have a corresponding family tree making it extremely difficult to determine any common ancestral connections. Most of the connections made by the genealogy websites, Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, link me to my fourth generation ancestors. However, a connection to an actively researching genealogist on the Elisa Bently Tanner line highlighted how little attention my own family had spent researching these "cousins." 

The validation of this relationship has been in existence for quite a few years. This situation highlights a common issue that genealogists tend to research only those members of a family that are their direct-line ancestors and usually ignore the rest of the children. Although this issue with Elisha Bentley Tanner was known for some time, it took a direct contact from another genealogist directly to me to get me interest in looking at that line.