History in the news

 A selection of articles:

- A story from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles on the facial reconstruction of a 3,500 year old Greek warrior

- A fascinating story in the LA Times about a missing mother who reappeared in Arizona decades later. DNA and mentions of Sonora and Arizona led me to read the story. Who knows, I'm probably related to these people given how many of our DNA matches in Sonora and Arizona are related to each other.

- A BBC article from 5 July on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Dora, Agnes and Emily

 

Source: Ancestry.

An undated photo, from left to right showing Dora Allman, Agnes Lydia Allman (my 2nd-great-grandmother) and Emily Rachel Davis Allman (my 3rd-great-grandmother). The photo was probably taken about 1882 or a little before, in Vermilion County, Illinois.

In the deeds

 

FamilySearch. Vermilion County, Illinois. 1865.

After seeing the photo of my 3rd-great-grandparents William and Emily (who often went by Rachel E. Allman), I looked again on FamilySearch Full-text search for deeds in Vermilion County, Illinois involving the couple. Above is a sale of 8 acres by William and Emily to John Edwards, of land that had been partitioned from the estate of Azariah Davis, Emily's father.

Another land sale from 16 March 1867 shows the couple selling off 5 more acres partitioned from the estate. They sold off 5 more acres from the estate on 30 March 1867 to John Price. An earlier land sale shows Emily and her Davis siblings jointly selling off a plot of land from the estate on 7 February 1865.

On 20 April 1861, Emily and her Davis siblings executed a sale of land for the benefit of their father's second wife, Hettie Redman Davis.

FamilySearch. 20 Apr 1861.

There are a ton of deeds to sort through on the Allman and Davis families in Vermilion County. I'm in the process of separating out the ones that connect backward from William and the ones belonging to the Davis line.

William and Emily

 

Source: Ancestry. 

Above is a photo of my 3rd-great-grandparents William Allman and Emily Rachel Davis Allman, shared to Ancestry by a distant cousin in 2023. This photo, and a few others, popped up recently on Ancestry's daily photo hints. I'm not sure why I missed this earlier. Here's a link to my 2013 post on their marriage record from 1861.

Research Progress August 2025

This is a progress check on various DNA research questions since my previous update in July. With this update, I am moving to a new format for the research areas.

Paternal side

1 - Identifying the Irish parents of Bridget, my 3rd-great-grandmother. In July I tried some new approaches, isolating the DNA matches in common between my Dad's results and his first cousin MO on FamilyTreeDNA. I have also been looking at a couple of bubble groups from Ancestry's Shared matches of matches tool who have ancestors connecting back to County Longford, Ireland.

There's another possibly I had not considered until I started drafting this post. In 1854, John and Bridget O'Brien purchased a plot of land in La Salle, Illinois from Patrick Dooley. Looking quickly on Ancestry, Patrick was likely born in Roscommon, Ireland. I need to look closer to see if he was connected to Bridget through family.

2 - Determining the generation of connection for the Pennsylvania O'Briens. I watched a webinar on generation of connection by Diahan Southard of YourDNAGuide, who I have heard give a version of this talk a couple of times, and I am going to try again. I still think these people either descended from a brother of my 3rd-great-grandfather John O'Brien or are a first family of John's before he reappeared in La Salle, Illinois about 1850.

3 - Looking for potential matches descending from the Westall/Thornhill side of the tree to do a mtDNA test (New research idea)

4 - Looking for mtDNA test candidates descending from the McIntosh side of the tree

5 - Locating another Jones cousin for YDNA testing

6 - Trying new-to-me tools to isolate matches descending from Ireland on MyHeritage

Maternal side

1 - Identify possible siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez

2 - Working with DNA matches connected to the Amado side of the tree

3 - Awaiting mtDNA results (and XDNA data) from a Campuzano cousin who is testing through FTDNA

4 - Identifying the connection with the mystery Guerrero-Leyva matches