Searching Gordon with DNA

One of the most difficult lines to trace in our family history has been the Gordon line and the parents of John C Gordon who was born about 1830 in New Jersey, and died in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York.  John was the subject of my last blog post where I shared pretty much everything that we know about him – and the fact that we know nothing about his parents or early family.  

John first shows up in the 1855 Census, married to Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon and with their first child.  He was a machinist, they lived in Brooklyn, and the census records show that he was born in New Jersey.  There is no mention of John’s siblings or parents in any of the family notes or research documentation that has so far been found.

The Gordon families in New Jersey seem to descend from two early immigrants who settled in the Monmouth, New Jersey area from Scotland in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s.  Most appear to descend from either Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) or Peter Gordon (1687 – 1725).  It is suspected, but not proven, that Charles and Peter could have even been brothers or were related in some way.  And interestingly enough, our verbal family history claims that we are related to “a Peter Gordon” and that the family roots go back to Scotland.  The Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) noted above also had a son (his eldest son) that was named Peter, so that could also confuse things for us when looking for an early Peter Gordon.

My cousin, Lynn, and I have for many years researched various Gordon family lines in New Jersey searching birth records and church records for a possible family connection to our John C Gordon.  We did find one John Gordon born in Monmouth, New Jersey in 1829 and the son of William C Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush, however he died in 1906  –  thus, he wasn’t our John [see the Notes at the end of the last blog post, Lived In Brooklyn but from New Jersey, for documentation].

Autosomal DNA

In recent years, we hoped that maybe DNA tests would open up some new Gordon possibilities to research and we both completed the Ancestry DNA test.  When looking at ThruLines, a DNA match feature on Ancestry, I find that there are 10 of my matches that show up as probable Gordon links.  Of those ThruLine matches, all but 1 are distant cousins that I know descend from my John C Gordon – so a DNA match to them is to be expected and doesn’t provide any new information.

Keep in mind that the ThruLines feature at Ancestry looks at the family trees that have been input by the match owners, thus the results that project the ThruLines common ancestors are totally dependent on the accuracy of the research that was used to build the family trees associated with the match owner.

The problem is that several of the Ancestry trees belonging to my known cousins that are fellow descendants of my John C Gordon incorrectly show William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush as the parents of our John C Gordon.  Consequently, the ThruLines program erroneously projects that we all connect through William Crawford & Catharine directly to earlier generations of Gordons and Quackenbushes – a flawed assumption.  Thus the majority of the early ancestors shown in Ancestry’s ThruLines cannot be proven as our direct ancestors.

However, there is 1 of my identified Gordon DNA ThruLine matches that is not a descendant of our John C Gordon.  The link shown in the family tree for this ThruLine match is a Quackenbush link through an uncle of Catharine Quackenbush.  This is relevant because it could indicate that there “might” be a Quackenbush-Gordon connection for us that is earlier than William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush.  Thus our John C Gordon “possibly” could have been related to either William or Catharine as a remote cousin, though not as their son.

In early times the communities were small and local families often intermarried.  It is possible that there is a common Quackenbush ancestor, a Gordon ancestor or even both that we share with this DNA match and is yet to be identified.

The bottom line is that with the autosomal DNA test through Ancestry we got little or no real information on the lineage of our John C Gordon that could help us break down our brick wall, and lots of questionable ThruLine suggestions.

Y-DNA

More recently, my cousin Lynn decided that a Y-DNA test might be more helpful to our Gordon search.  An autosomal DNA test looks at connections among all of the DNA segments, both paternal and maternal.  However, Y-DNA is inherited only in the male line, thus we were hoping to find a Gordon line that might be easier to identify if a Gordon male from among our Gordon cousins took the Y-DNA test.  There is even a Gordon DNA Project with over 1,000 participants who have taken the Y-DNA test and compared results to assist with making Gordon connections worldwide.

Lynn identified a direct-line male Gordon descendant cousin in our extended family who agreed to take the Y-DNA test, and he generously agreed to share his results with us, as well as to add them to the Gordon DNA project database.  We were so excited at the prospect of finally getting somewhere and possibly breaking down our Gordon brick wall!

Sometimes when you do research hoping to find answers, you end up with surprises and even more questions.  That is certainly what happened with our Gordon Y-DNA effort.  We ended up with about 25 Y-DNA matches, though less than half of those, or about 10, were strong enough matches to be considered relevant.

Now you would expect that the Y-DNA matches would mostly be with individuals with a Gordon surname because Y-DNA only transfers from father to sons (i.e. Gordon to Gordon to Gordon, etc) along the male line, and thus you would expect to find matches with mostly Gordon surnames.  But among the 10 strongest matches in our Gordon Y-DNA test there were only 2 Gordons – and there were 7 matches with the last name of Middleton!

A change of a surname is always a possibility in any generation.  Such exceptions are defined as “non-paternal events” and would be the likely result of an adoption, intentional name change, or the result of a liaison between a Gordon and a Middleton resulting in the child being raised with the mother’s surname.

First of all, our 2 Gordon Y-DNA matches link with the Gordons from New Jersey and confirm that we fit in with that group.  However, once again we didn’t find any Gordon lines that we could tie directly to our John C Gordon.

Several of our Middleton Y-DNA matches have worked extensively on their genealogy and documented their family trees back to the 1600’s in Scotland, likely the Aberdeenshire area, where there were both Gordons and Middletons.  However, there is no historical evidence that will document that there was a male Gordon fathered by a Middleton, or documentation that a Middleton changed his name to Gordon.  A result of the Gordon Y-DNA Project is that there is an academic consensus that our Gordon line definitely connects back to a Middleton line, probably in Scotland. 

There is some speculation that possibly Charles, the youngest son of Alexander Middleton (1610 – 1686) of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, could be the same person as Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740), who immigrated to New Jersey.  The wife of Alexander Middleton was a Gordon, and that would assume that Charles changed his surname to Gordon, his mother's maiden name, prior to his arrival in America.

This comprehensive Gordon family website https://history.wdgordon.com/gedcom/p16.htm#i480 claims that Charles Gordon (b.1664) was the son of Alexander Middleton, however no documents have been found to verify that claim.  Others believe that the event resulting in the name change could have been generations earlier.

The Gordon-Middleton link is proven by the Y-DNA results.  And, it looks like the “non-paternal event” was very likely prior to the arrivals of Peter Gordon and Charles Gordon in New Jersey in the late 1600’s.  Of course, we will probably never have answers about the “Middleton to Gordon event” – but it stands as one of the most intriguing mysteries on our family tree.

I feel that our Gordon Y-DNA results once again prove that our Gordon line connects with the New Jersey Gordon’s.  And that our earlier ancestors were indeed from Scotland, and that we likely descend from either Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) or Peter Gordon (1687 – 1725) both of whom immigrated to the Monmouth area of New Jersey sometime around the late 1600’s. 

We are still searching for the direct line of descent for our John C Gordon.

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Key Individuals:

        John C Gordon  (~1830 – 1886)

        Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon  (1832 – 1912)

- Jane Scribner McCrary