Autosomal DNA

Naturally, when the thing genealogists and geneticists refer to as a Non-Paternal Event (NPE) happens, the most likely scenarios are either that an adoption or an affair has occurred. Kidnappings are rare, no matter what Lifetime Movies would have you believe.

For quite some time, we (mostly) believed that Henry Buel Gleason must have had an affair with Mary Wallace. It made no sense that Elizabeth Milnor Gleason would relinquish a child, no matter how sickly. Mary Wallace lived in Ward 1 of Charleston, which is adjacent and just a short stroll to Ward 3 where the Gleasons lived. Surely they could have come into contact. But how could we ever know?

Enter autosomal DNA.

I wrote about the Y chromosome being half of the man's 23rd chromosome, the half he gets from his father. The other half of his 23rd chromosome is the X he gets from his mother.  In women, half of the 23rd chromosome is an X she got from her father, and half is an X she got from her mother. The other 22 chromosomes in both men and women are called the autosomes, You might be able to deduce that an autosomal DNA test can detect DNA from both maternal and paternal lines.

I had an autosomal DNA test done by Ancestry in September of 2017. Once again, I got my results and wasn't quite sure what to do with them. I suppose I looked at some matches, saw the tons of cousins I matched with due to the inordinately large number of children my farmer ancestors had, and then I put everything on the back burner. I wasn't really interested in collateral cousins from certain sides. I know I'm from certain descent. Everyone in Florida is descended from half my great-great grandparents. They needed farmhands.

Recently we started looking into the Gleason dilemma again. I started playing around on Ancestry, and eventually I realized that I could enter a surname and search for DNA matches who also had that surname on their tree.

I texted my sister one morning and said, "I match with someone who descends from the Bucks County, Pennsylvania Milnor line." She texted back, "What does that mean?" I texted, "It means that we have evidence that we are descended from Henry Gleason AND Elizabeth Milnor."

After a few days of searching my matches, I realized I didn't just match with Milnors. I matched with Higbees and Glens and Joneses, all Elizabeth Milnor's ancestral line.

I still don't know why Elizabeth gave her child away. In 1836, childbirth was a deadly serious matter. Unlike Kate Middleton, who was showing off her baby hours after bringing him into the world, 1800s mothers would often be confined to bed for days, sometimes weeks. Hemorrhage and infection were real possibilities. It's entirely possible that Henry Gleason either didn't want the hassle or the heartbreak of another sick child, and when nurse Mary Wallace offered to take him home so that he die in peace, he agreed without Elizabeth knowing. It's also possible that Elizabeth did know and thought that having a nurse for a mother was her child's best chance for survival. We tend to see things through the lens of the 21st Century, but things were very different in the 19th Century.

There were no adoption records in South Carolina until the 1940s. There were no birth records. Census records until 1860 only listed head of household. Unless we find some wildly random proof of the Gleasons relinquishing their child, we'll have to rely on DNA, and trust the scientific evidence.