Monday, August 22, 2016

Foor-Clingerman connection?

I have a slightly strange (to me) DNA match going on that I cannot figure out. My dad matches 9 descendants of John Foor (1744-1819) and Catherine Miller (1754-1818) at Ancestry, between 9.5cM and 26.0cM. They are from Providence, Bedford, PA, which is where some of my dad's family is from. I just can't seem to place them in his tree. It's possible there's an NPE I suppose.

The match is definitely through my dad's great-grandfather, Nelson Shuss (1862-1915). His grandparents were Jacob Shuss (1785-1853) and Mary Koontz (1789-1864) and Philip Clingerman (1800-1881) and Susannah Buck (1798-1861). I should mention here that Susannah's maiden name was impossible to find proof of, so I looked around for people willing to take full mtdna tests for me. I ended up getting an exact match from a descendant of Susannah's and a descendant of Elizabeth Buck Garlick, her presumed sister whose family converted to Mormonism. Elizabeth recorded the names of all her relatives, but did not put down when Susannah died or her married name. I think this is because I have a court record that shows Susannah's husband Philip tarred and feathered the Mormon missionary who converted Elizabeth and her family, and through Elizabeth's descendants family stories, their own family set fire to their house and ran them out of town. (I wish I could say this was Philip's only brush with the law, but he seemed to make a habit of it).

Anyway, I have not found a single DNA match to the Buck family. I debated if the mtdna could point to an earlier connection, however Elizabeth and Susannah's grandmother Agnes Schwartz was an immigrant from Germany, and as far as I can tell she only had brothers. Agnes *did* have a daughter Mary Cashman who married a John Foor. That seemed like a shoe-in, however they had a daugher Susannah born in 1803 who married a Stewart, and she is recorded as such in her father's will.

I'll say, none of the Foor matches seem to be on the Shuss side of the family, so that leaves the Clingerman/Buck side.

I don't know Philip Clingerman's mother's identity beyond Catherine born about 1760. I suppose it's possible she's some kind of relative of the Foor's but even on the Clingerman side, the shared DNA matches don't seem to overlap, Foor and Clingerman.

Maybe I'm missing something....

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