Sukie Sarah Vann (Oocaneechi), Cornstalk - Vann, Sahra Suski (Oocaneechi), Cornstalk

Randy Allen Holder

Thanks for sharing the info. I'm Vann descendant and claim Sukie as my direct ancestor via both my mother's parents' lines and because I show Native DNA in all my test results, I'm able to work with my cousin matches on these and other lines to use DNA to validate the ethnicity on branches of my tree. I not only have matches on my two branches from Sukie but also to the Colbert descendants of her son Burl Perry / Minta Hoya with whom I share Native DNA as well. People can have tree errors, lack of non-Native documentation, etc., but DNA is the new 'documentation' that is never wrong, so working with DNA gives me more confidence in lines like these.

You're Welcome Debbie, I stopped updating Profiles on here because they High-Jack my great-grandmother's profile and they deleted the her parents: Keziah Southern

I started with my father's Surname [HOLDER] building my tree based on DNA connections and other matching profiles, I completed thousands of hours of research just on the [VANN] surname alone, front to back on both sides I connected DNA to the linage that was existing on sites like this, didn't take long and I started to receive a lot of resistance to my endeavors to unravel the mess on the [Vanns].

My DNA connections were discredited and considered insufficient for me to list the parents for Keziah Southern, whom I listed as John Joseph [Vann] and her mother as Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford]

Wasn't long before I was told that couldn't be possible as there is a Keziah [Manley] whose father was reported to be John [Vann] and mother Agnes Ruth [Weatherford]. That there was no John Joseph [Vann] and Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford] testimony said Keziah Manley was her daughter not Keziah Southern.

The problem for me was the DNA said otherwise, they said my connection was faulty because it was based on Ancestry Trees, not DNA connections, tree can be wrong, so I showed my ThruLines that are based on DNA, at the time I believed I had like 70 DNA connections to John Joseph [Vann] and 30 to Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford].

I pointed out that the Tribal Courts on three accounting did not believe Keziah Manley to be the decedent of Weatherford and Vann, and that it could be that the true daughter of [Weatherford] could point-in-fact be Keziah Southern.

But being open-minded I removed Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford]. from my Ancestry Tree and started replacing the mother with other known possibles like (Mary Christina Vann "Wah-li"), no DNA connection came back from her, been several years now and the ThruLines never changed, still list Joseph [Vann] and to Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford] as the ThruLine for Keziah Southern except now there are 130 DNA connections for Joseph [Vann] and to 108 DNA Matches for Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford]. as my 5th great-grandparents.

My DNA connections show a "Isaac [Burleson]" as my [half] 4th great-granduncle and he is the son of David Burleson Agnes another husband, and Keziah [Manley] as my half-4th great-grandaunt. and James 'Jim' Clement Vann Jr, as my half-4th great-granduncle.

I know that this causes a lot of genealogist controversy because they will believe in a paper trail testimony that was found to be not credible by the Indigest Nation courts given by Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford], who by the way was very old at the time, and not the DNA Connections.

NOTE: Since Keziah Manley is coming back under Agnes Ruth. [Weatherford]. as a Half Aunt and her brother is coming back as a Half Uncle, "Occam Razior" would suggest the simplest explanation is they are not from the [VANN] bloodline.

It doesn't matter to me who the parents turned out to be I have no axes to grind, unlike the Manley who were trying to get Cherokee Citizenship, which I find ironic considering Maney was an Indian Killer.

Best Regards: Cousin Randy

I can so relate, Randy. I've had some folks from this site who are also on Wiki debunk that there is Cherokee on my Vann line from Edward Vann. My DNA work indicates otherwise. I just ended up telling them we'd have to agree to disagree since neither party is likely to change their mind.

I have Agnes Weatherford related to me multiple ways in my tree, but show her nearest connection is to my son on his paternal Eppes lines. II have John Joseph Vann listed as John Vann III in my tree. I'm not sure he had a middle name. Anyway, I have him as my 1st cousin 8x removed.

I do have the John Joseph Vann who was married to Wah-Li in my tree and have them as the parents of Keziah (Vann) Southern with a note that she is NOT the same as Keziah (Vann) Maney since it seems folks were mixing them up.

I don't know if what I have is correct, but it's as correct as I could sort it out at the time I worked on it. I'm 75 and don't recall when I last worked on those connections and I do try to keep an open mind if new, reliable info is presented. However, if said info contradicts DNA results, I have to go with the DNA. Folks can argue against that till they turn blue and I'll still believe the DNA. lol

I keep telling people (but they never listen) that there are three kinds of genetic DNA research, and only the first two can be used to place someone within a lineage.

Y-DNA (male to male to male) can be used to place someone within a male line of descent - but not precisely unless there is a supporting paper trail. Sometimes it is possible to "bracket" within a few generations, see recent Y-DNA studies on the Stewarts.

mtDNA (female to female to female) can place someone within a female line of descent, with the same limitations ("bracketing" is far more difficult with mtDNA because it changes so much more slowly).

Autosomal DNA is the "hot" one these days, and is usually what most people are talking about when they discuss their "DNA results". At short range it can connect anybody to anybody, but its effective limitations are still about 5-7 generations - and unless you know every single ancestor for all of those generations, you can't be certain what you got from whom. (The woman who runs the DNAeXplained blog has an interesting case study of her own ancestry, in which she found that while she did have indicators of "native DNA", they didn't come from the ancestor that "family lore" had always claimed, but from an unsuspected and previously unstudied branch.)

The BIG question is, "Why do you want to know?" If it's just to satisfy your own curiosity, that's one thing. If it's for "brownie points" or "bragging rights", that's quite another....

Maven, in my case, both my parents knew they had Native ancestry and told me so long ago. In fact, one of my first attempts at genealogy was trying to contact the Mississippi Choctaw tribal office in hopes they had info on my maternal great-great-grandmother. They told me their records were sketchy in general and they weren't able to help. It wasn't until this year that evidence of Choctaw on that line showed up in Ancestry Hints on my gg-grandmother's half-brother's Dawes application. So for me, I've just always felt the pull to learn more about my ancestors in general and my Native ancestors in particular.

I'm really fortunate because I have most lines on both sides of my tree at least 6 generations or more and some of my Native ancestry is well documented, moreso than others I've had to work harder to find info on. I was also extremely lucky that long before the internet and DNA I had info from my immediate family and several cousins who had already been researching many of my lines and very generously shared their findings (and books some authored) on them. Then I also have some cousins who share Native ancestry with me but their branch was enrolled and mine wasn't. One such case is a 5th cousin who shared Creek ancestors with me is from my ancestral aunt who went to Oklahoma in her 70s. My ancestor who was her sister, however, had died the same year the Dawes roll was implemented and none of my branch left Mississippi and went to Oklahoma. They were all grown, had already raised their families in Mississippi, etc. and stayed put. But the cousin whose line was enrolled shared all the info and family photos, etc. he had. But that also happens to be one of our better documented lines with Congressional records, being mentioned in the writing of Benjamin Hawkins, etc. In any case, I've had a number of such cases as that that have greatly helped me along in my quest to know more about all the lines I come from. Some of my cousins are the 2nd or 3rd generation in their family to carry the torch of family genealogist, which wasn't the case in my immediate family. So for me and those I've worked with, it has been a collaborative project much like working on a huge family jigsaw puzzle and we just enjoy the process of finding new pieces of that puzzle not just for ourselves but for others in the family branches and generations to come. It's just that the internet, collaborative research groups, and DNA testing have all been game-changers for everyone.

All that said, I respectuflly disagree about only Y-DNA nad mtDNA being applicable to placing someone in a lineage. You pointed out the limitations of those two, with which I agree. I had a brick wall on my mtDNA line and thought / hoped mtDNA testing would help me have a breakthrough. It didn't, because I would show matches who could be a close cousin or something like a 23rd cousin and it would still be an mtDNA match and pretty much useless in my research.

And I have found using Y-DNA studies equally useless because people join one of the surname groups and list who they believe their ancestor is, causing their Y-DNA haplogroup to get attached to that person even if they have their tree wrong. That's how we also end up with male lines on Geni showing 2-3 conflicting Y-DNA haplogroups attached to them. The connections are only as correct as the info input by the various individuals. If they aren't biologically who they believe they are, error. If they were adopted and don't know it, error. And these things do happen and it throws everything off for everyone else trying to depend on the Y-DNA surname groups to confirm their lines.

On the other hand, triangulating atDNA can be useful in confirming where cousins share a line. And sites like Ancestry gives us ThruLines matches that are 'usually' correct, but not always and still require double-checking the tree connections, in my opinion. Even Geni 'confirms' atDNA matches to the 7th generation, pulling the info from FTDNA. Gedmatch validates matches to an estimated 7.7 generations but you still have to do the tree work to find 'how' you connect with the matches.

So for me, atDNA is the best DNA tool to combine with tree work. I understand your point and the example of thinking the shared NA DNA is from one branch of a tree but was actually from another. I'm sure that can and does happen. In my own work, however, I think it's different. For example, my Creek line is so well-documented and there are so many surnames on the decendant branches that are very well-known to be from that line. So when they show up in ThruLines, for example, showing the connection to our already known common ancestors on that line, if we share Native DNA, I am confident we share it from our shared Creek ancestry.

So I think it depends on, as you pointed out, how far back the tree(s) are documented back in time, how well-known the lines are in general, etc. I get Native DNA matches on a regular basis where I have no idea how I'm related to the person or who we got the shared Native DNA from. So I'm not saying that in every case I know. I wish I did! My DNA Consultants results show I match Ojibewe and Sioux groups from Minnesota. I have no idea who / how. However, earlier this year I was contacted by a 5th-great-granddaughter of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull's brother Standing Bull who found me among her Gedmatch matches and looked me up on Ancestry. We are a DNA match, we used the Gedmatch chromosome paint tool to validate we share Native DNA, her ancestors are enrolled Native Americans from Minnesota...and we have no idea how we're related. But it did validate my results from DNA Consultants, which was amazing in itself. I'd say about half my Native DNA matches I know who / how we're related either because I know the lines so well or by identifying who our mutual matches are and which line(s)we all connect on. Another 1/4 are with matches who are from enrolled families but I have no clue who/how I connect with them. And the last 1/4 show matching Native DNA but no enrolled family lines and no clues whatsoever as to who / how we're related. On the lines where I know how I'm related to the person but we could have a Native DNA match more than one way...it's always a very close match (on Ancestry, My Heritage, 23andme and/or Gedmatch) and I know which lines we share, and 'usually' the multi-related connection is because on my match's side they have ancestors who are both related to me on a single given connection - like they had ancestors who were were cousins and I know how they connect to each other and to me. My side is easier to identify because I don't have any direct ancestors within recent generations who were married to a close cousin. In my case, any such connection as that is way back like very distant ancestry before America and doesn't apply to any Native American ancestry.

This discussion began about a specific person but she's just one of countless individuals in my family tree. I research them all with equal interest, as well as all of my son's paternal lines, because I do all of this for him. He's the one who got me started on it many years ago because of his personal curiosity about the people he came from. So I'm not sure where you're coming from about 'brownie points' or 'bragging rights'. I don't recall anything in the discussion you joined that indicates that was anyone's purpose in the discussion.

Also, just as a side note, it's not just Native American DNA matches I work with. I'm equally interested in my son's Basque / Portuguese and Finnish matches and loved that on My Heritage we used to could sort our matches by ethnicity. I am disappointed they removed that feature. Identifying our Basque / Portuguese / Spanish and Finnish ancestors whose identities have been lost over time has proven to be much more challenging than even Native American research. My son shows 20%+ Portuguese, 13% indigenous Caribe...and it has to be an accumulation from multiple ancestors since he doesn't have one single close ancestor from either of those groups, which is why I participate in Portuguese Melungeon, Caribe, etc. DNA research groups nowadays and haven't participated in a Native American research group since 2021. I'm pretty content with what I know about my Native American ancestry and much more interested at this point in trying to identify where other ethnicities come from in our tree. Although, indigenous Caribe is actually still considered Native American in a broader sense. We do have ancestors from Barbados but thought they were just white colonists. Obviously not all were.

Erica,

My son is from a Jewish-Cherokee line from the Appalachians on his paternal grandmother's side. She told him before she died that she had Native ancestry but didn't know the line. I more or less 'accidentally' discovered it while participating in a Melungeon research group. His direct ancestor's sister was mentioned - Temperance Leeman (Leaman) who married Benjamin Cooper. A member in the group referenced Temperance, so I asked what she knew about her. She told me Temperance and Benjamin had a Cherokee marriage but that the Leeman / Leaman surname itself was Jewish and they were part of the Jewish-Cherokee-Melungeon community. Not longer after, I purchased one of Donald Yates' books on Melungeons and Temperance is mentioned in the book! I 'just happened' to be communicating via email at that very time with Mrs. Yates with a question I had on my DNA results. I asked if her husband could confirm for me what I'd been told about Temperance, because whatever her ethnicity was, that would apply to her sister Sallie who is my son's direct ancestor. I was surprised to get an email from Donald himself in which he confirmed their heritage and expanded on the info I had so far. So that's how I was able to after generations of the family having lost how they had both Jewish and Cherokee lineage just basically stumbled upon it. Len has Jewish markers on both his dad's side and mine. I'm pretty sure my own Jewish lineage is mixed in with a similarly mixed line of ancestry but only have theories at this point.

Point being, the whole Jewish-Cherokee combo was a real surprise to me when I first heard of it years ago. I have no idea if my Jewish markers are from a mixed line like that or not. It felt a bit like a miracle that the info on my son's paternal side just unfolded for me the way it did. lol Again, great collaboration available for that to have come about as it did. Len's aunt Temperance was the key to unlocking it all and her story was only known because she married into the better-documented Cooper family. So sometimes it's all about the luck of being in a specific research group, reading a particular book, etc. lol