Canton Family History

We have just received the result of the Y-DNA test for Kit #131188, a descendant of John Canton, FRS. The result can be seen here:

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject  

This tester’s haplogroup is quite different from the Pembrokeshire people tested so far. They are all I1 (was I1a) while this GL/A4 descendant is R1b1b2.

This is being written in a great hurry as I have been away for a few days and the result arrived home more or less as I did! More later, I hope.

MAIN BRANCHES OF THE CANTON TREE

In Canton Connections No. 2, I published an outline of the main known Canton lines, to help with indexing, and this list was then published in each subsequent issue. Originally, it referred only to Canton lines of which the earliest known origin is in Britain and Ireland (but see below). I concocted a simple system, using letters based chiefly on the county/country and parish of origin attached to each earliest known ancestor in a particular line.

The system worked well during the life of the magazine and I haven’t found it necessary to modify it too drastically. I wrote optimistically, ‘if/when we are able to attach one branch to another, it will not be too complicated to modify their “labels” further’. This has happened once, as far as I can tell, in that the then X-labelled Cantans of Kent became firmly PM/K. (Really, this should be just part of PM/J but it has been useful to distinguish them still.) 

More amalgamations may come about in the future – who knows what DNA testing may bring! 

The following are the chief lines identified so far:·     

• GL Gloucestershire (Stroud)/London. These are the descendants of John Canton, FRS, to a great degree London-based for two centuries. They form a very numerous branch, needing subdivision which it is easier to define by letters and numbers related to people, not places, in view of mobility within London. (London-based Cantons not yet connected to this line appear as LND).·First come the sons of John, FRS:
• GL/A descendants of William. This is a particularly prolific line, William having four sons with many descendants. Therefore this line is further sub-divided as:
  • GL/A1 descendants of William Lawrence
  • GL/A2 descendants of Nathaniel John
  • GL/A3 descendants of Charles James
  • GL/A4 descendants of George Augustus.
• GL/B descendants of Thomas
• GL/C descendants of John (if any)     
• GLS Gloucestershire (unattached). This includes Cantons in several parishes, including Stroud, which have not been connected to the family of John Canton, FRS.·     
• IRL Ireland (sub-divisions unclear as yet). NB: This is believed to be an offshoot of the Pembrokeshire Cantons·     
• LND Unidentified lines based in London. 
• PA Pembrokeshire, Amroth.·     
• PB Pembrokeshire, Begelly.·     
• PC Pembrokeshire, Cosheston.·     
• PF Pembrokeshire, Freystrop; later Nolton Haven.·     
• PJ Pembrokeshire, Jeffreston (early residents, quite separate from PM/J).·     
• PL Pembrokeshire, Lampeter Velfrey.·     
• PM Pembrokeshire, Martletwy (including Coedcanlas). A very large branch, needing subdivision on occasion for extra clarity:
  • PM/J Jeffreston
    • PM/K Kent (19C) - often as CANTAN - is a sub-division of PM/J
  • PM/P Pembroke;
  • PM/R Reynalton, with further subdivision PM/NZ New Zealand
  • PM/S Stackpole.·     
• PMn Pembrokeshire, Manorbier.·     
• PR Pembrokeshire, Rhoscrowther.·     
• PS Pembrokeshire, Slebech.·     
• SE Sussex, Eastbourne.·     
• X Miscellaneous unidentified lines other than in London.·    

 Since the above were first published I have been in contact with and/or able to research the surname in other European countries, so will be using the following abbreviations:

ESP Spain

FRA France

ITA Italy

SCT Scotland

The Canton Family History Group on Facebook is new, another way to make contact with fellow CANTON researchers and Canton descendants. Also covered are the main variant spellings: CANTAN, CANTEN, CANTIN and CANTONS.

The idea is for many people to share their knowledge and to swap ideas in an informal setting. Photographs of Canton family members and of places connected with them are ideal for sharing in this way. Interesting research finds, new useful links, brief queries about research problems - all will be welcome.

This has been set up as an ‘open group’, so that anyone interested can join without formality. Over months and years the group may well be discovered by distant relations, previously unknown - this could be a slow process, so suggestions about people who might be interested would be welcome.

As the ‘founder’, I have to confess that I don’t know that many people on Facebook, as I joined only a few weeks ago. Many of those I have written to about Canton research over the years are not on Facebook - or, at least, not yet. For a long time I pronounced it was ‘not for me’ until my dear daughter persuaded me otherwise. How right she was! Facebook can be what you make of it, more or less private, as you choose - and it is very enjoyable, especially meeting friends from various aspects of life and just keeping in touch.

Now I hope to expand its value to others researching CANTON and its variants and I hope you will join! Find the Canton Family History Group at  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=31200853998

If you have any questions about this, please do write to me at canton [at] one-name.org

DNA Tests There are no new results to report. One Y-DNA test is still at the lab and results may not be available until next month. My own further mtDNA test result is due out soon and I’ll announce details when this arrives. 

PROJECT NEWS

Family Tree DNA Discounts

The period for taking up these generous discounts ends on 30 September. It takes a very few minutes to order online - and I will gladly advise about that. However, realistically, I feel I would have been contacted long before this if anyone were seriously interested. That’s disappointing, but there we are!

In view of that, I am withdrawing my published offer to buy two (the minimum order) or more kits to distribute in the months ahead. Really, I only needed one, to donate to someone in my own line, and anything extra was part of the practical goodwill I feel to this project, the only way we are going to break through the immense research difficulties caused by lost records.  In case anyone thinks that’s a matter of guesswork on my part, I should mention that my experience in academic and genealogical historical research over several decades affords me some credibility in this.

There is still a Free Offer posted up by me for any descendant of my great-great grandfather, James Canton - this will be financed when someone comes forward.

We have one test in the Y-DNA pipeline: that of a member of the large GL (Gloucestershire -> London) line, a descendant of the great John Canton FRS, the Enlightenment scientist. We look forward very much to seeing and sharing that result, perhaps in about six weeks’ time.

FTDNA and Hurricane Ike

I have today received a further bulletin about this. Basically, all is well and work is going to schedule. If anyone would like to see the letter, they should please just ask me.

PERSONAL NEWS

I have mentioned here in recent months that I am suffering from a painful condition, for which I am to start treatment in the coming week. As soon as I am over that, I am off to London for a few days, which will include a check-up with my St Thomas’s consultant. As a result, I don’t plan to write any more individual letters until all that is over. My doctor told me to cut back, so that I have only been replying to correspondents at weekends recently, but this will be a complete break for about three weeks.

My doctor was all for me doing ‘fun’ things like Facebook, which is relaxing and distracting in a good way. See me there if you want to - as far as I can tell, if you put ’Sheila Rowlands Wales’ into the search box, I am the only one to come up.

There has been no news of the CSP to report recently as we are waiting for results from one Y-DNA test - please bear in mind that the special discounts will last to 30 September, so new additions will be very welcome!  We are also waiting for one mtDNA result, which is having a more refined test, not due until October.

Below is a copy of the latest newsletter  from FTDNA, sent on 21 September:

Dear Customers,
 
As a follow-up to our letter informing you of the level of preparedness Family Tree DNA established regarding the coming of Hurricane Ike to Houston, we are coming to you now to update you on our status post-Ike.
 
a) As you may know, all of our standard Y-DNA and mtDNA tests are processed at the lab in Arizona, and therefore, this processing has not been affected at all.
 
b) Also, as we advised previously, we have taken appropriate measures to safeguard and protect the data and our servers and therefore all computer systems are in place and functioning normally.  You may have noticed that our web sites have been up, available, and are running normally as they were before and during the storm.
 
c) The building where Family Tree DNA’s offices and Houston laboratory are located is without power, like most of Houston office buildings, and sustained damage, like so many other Houston office buildings.  This means that the building will be closed for the next few days until it is ready for tenants to return.  Despite this situation, several members of our staff have worked over the weekend to transfer equipment to other locations so that our normal office operations can resume on Monday, or at the latest on Tuesday, from an alternate location.  All postal mail will be picked up normally at our local post office, so that kits can be checked-in and processed normally.
 
d) The coming days will allow us to have a better assessment of when our Houston lab will resume normal operations, at which point we will be back to you again with additional information about any delays in delivering results for the advanced tests that our lab processes in Houston. (Advanced panels, FGS and Deep Clade Y SNP’s)
 
Please forgive us if in the next few days we don’t meet our standard level of customer service as to e-mails and phone calls.  We will be back to normal as soon as possible.  We appreciate your continued support .
 
E-mail us anytime!
 
Bennett Greenspan            Max Blankfeld
President                              Vice-President, Operations and Marketing
bcg@familytreedna.com    max@familytreedna.com

http://www.FamilyTreeDNA.com
“History Unearthed Daily”
713-868-1438

Below is the blog I posted in mid-August. I am glad to tell you that this offer has been extended to September 30th.

I’m specially glad because the last two weeks of August, including as they do a bank holiday weekend, are a difficult time to contact people in Britain, at least. It turned into quite a stressful time, writing personal emails, helping sort out the odd glitch, etc, in a period when the days go whizzing by! Good news. though: we have at least one new (i.e., hitherto untested) line committed to taking part, and considerable hopes of another.

As ever, I will be only too pleased to answer any questions on this subject. I think the Comments facility (below) works now, or write to me at canton’at’one-name.org (but replace ‘at’ with @). 

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Today I received the following information from FT DNA - it is such a good offer that I want group members and supporters to know about it as soon as possible.

 From the Canton Surname Project point of view, I am - needless to say - keen to take advantage of the Y-DNA37 test at 119 USD (a saving of 70 USD on the normal, already-reduced project price. Please contact me [see above] if you are at all interested, so that we can look into possibilities - no obligation if you just enquire, but the offer closes at the end of August so I need your response soon.

For members and others who want to take advantage of other offers below, of course I will support you in that, too, and also answer any questions you may have.

Please support our research into the Canton Surname!

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Dear Group Administrator,

In June, Family Tree DNA ran our most successful promotion ever, in which we offered a significant discount on many of our test upgrades.
 
Now that our lab has had time to process the high volume of orders generated by that promotion, we are ready to challenge the record that we set in June by returning to you with our “Sizzling Summer Sale.” This time, the promotion is geared towards bringing new members to your projects by offering the following big incentives:
 
= Y-DNA12 orders include a FREE mtDNA test (Y-DNA12+mtDNA promotion price of $99; normally $189)
= Y-DNA25 orders include a FREE mtDNA test (Y-DNA25+mtDNA promotion price of $148; normally $238)
= Y-DNA37 orders price REDUCED to $119 (normally $189)
= Y-DNA37+mtDNAPlus orders price REDUCED to $189 (normally $339)
= Y-DNA67+mtDNAPlus orders price REDUCED to $288 (normally $409)
= mtDNAPlus price REDUCED to $149 (normally $189)
 
This promotion goes into effect immediately and will be available until August 31st, 11:59PM CST.
 
We would also like to make you aware of a change in shipping costs. Since our inception we never increased our shipping charge, even though in the meantime USPS has increased its rates 6 times. For that reason, our shipping cost will increase by $2, effective immediately. We appreciate your understanding.
 
As always, thank you for your continued support!

Family Tree DNA, Best Regards, Bennett Greenspan

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Apologies for letting this slip through the net: when I received notification that some haplogroups, including the current most common one in our Project, had been renamed, I prepared a posting at the time. It has been that sort of year! For convenience I will point you towards the Wikipedia entry for Haplogroup I1 (as I1a has become) as this is a fairly clear explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I1

When reading the historical detail, bear in mind that Pembrokeshire (the home of Cantons tested so far) was invaded by the Normans, and also that many of their followers were English. There was permanent settlement in Cemais, north Pembrokeshire, home of the earliest known Cantingtons/Cantons - not to the same degree as in anglicised south Pembrokeshire but quite sufficient to leave genetic evidence.

For general information on the subject of haplogroups, read:

http://www.familytreedna.com/hap_nomenclature.html

I should also point out that one member of our group has I1 coloured green on our results chart. This is because this member’s result was tested further and verified. You can take it that those shown in red must also, therefore be counted as confimed.

New Y-DNA results arrived last night, for Kit #121546. This test was for 12-markers, the participant being (on documentary evidence) a member of line PM/K, the branch of the Martletwy line which settled in Kent before c.1830.

These 12 markers of #121546 match exactly with three other previous participants - you can see their results at the Family Tree Canton Surname Project Webpage:

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/

Thousands of other people might have the same results for 12 markers but - and this is the important point - not with the Canton surname. So these results have helped to reinforce earlier research on this family line.  

More soon about DNA testing in general and about the future objectives of the Project.

Research matters have gone rather quiet recently, though we are expecting some Y-DNA results fairly soon. To keep in touch, here are some sites I have visited recently. 

CANTON etc IN FRANCE 

This is a lovely site, the link recently sent to the Guild mailing list by Debbie Kennett (researching CRUWYS):

http://www.geopatronyme.com/

It gives statistics and population maps for individual surnames and of course I looked for CANTON, CANTIN, etc. This, of course, is part of studying the surname and should not be interpreted as any sort of indication of French ancestry for most Cantons outside France.

You will need some very basic French to use the site for simple location searches - and it is free of charge at that level. But be warned that if you follow other internal links to books, histories, etc, such things come at a price.

As an example of what the site has to offer: when I put CANTON in the search box (’votre nom’, then press ‘valider’), a list of birth statistics came up, one for each of four 25-year periods:

1891-1915 — 289 births  /  1916-1940 – 405  /  1941-1965  — 575  /  1966-1990 – 586

A click on each period brings up a map, showing the distribution of the name by département. Cantonis found in small numbers in many areas, but the largest clusters are, in the earliest maps, in Pyrénées Atlantiques, Hautes Pyrénées and Bouches de Rhône. I imagine that these are the result of Spanish and Italian influence. Cantin has larger numbers - it is a typically French spelling (often a rationalisation of the personal name Quentin). Cantain has only 10 in 100 years (all in the north).

In a newsletter some years ago I mentioned, at least half-joking, that it would be good to count the footballer Eric Cantona among our greater ‘family’. His surname has just 11 entries in 100 years, all in Bouches de Rhône. As two of these are accounted for by Eric and his brother Joël, I imagine the other nine also belong to his family and may (probably someone reading this can say for sure) represent a single immigration, perhaps from Italy.

I will try to find time to write more about continental  names-like-Canton in my One-Name Studies web page - I did this on my old personal website but newer contacts may like it afresh.

CANTON IN MINING ACCIDENTS

There’s a very interesting list of Mining Accidents published by the Coalmining History Resource Centre at 

http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/disasters/

Six Cantons are listed, including two injured men (luckily no fatalities) and some colliery owners.

Of the former, one is Sidney Canton aged 56 in 1928 - he is more usually Sydney in documents and is a member of line PM/P. He was a mason and, though I had several details of where he worked, I had no idea that he had worked down a coal mine.  

Also injured, in Merthyr Vale Colliery, was Albert Canton, aged 20 in 1933. As I write, I cannot place this young man, so if anyone can help out I’d appreciate it. An Albert was born in 1912, but died age 2. All others are too old to pass for 20. Line PL was living in Merthyr Tydful but, again, there’s no Albert born about 1913. I hope someone will soon claim him!

The ‘colliery owners’ relate to the Pembrokeshire coalfield - more about them another time.

DECEASED ONLINE

This website was launched recently:
www.deceasedonline.com/servlet/GSDOSearch

Details are being collected from municipal cemeteries and crematoria, so expanding on the more usual data from church and chapel graveyards. At the moment there are only 140,000 records from Kent & Sussex, but it plans much more. I know that a number of people reading this have non-Canton interests in that area. At present, while the site is being tested, it’s free to search.

The two Canton entries found are a couple from line GL/A3, Hubert Edgar and his wife Katherine Mildred.

Finally, I shall write again when the next DNA results come through. Do check the website at

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/

Revised 27.07.08 - thanks to Michael C. for pointing out a typo.

Great excitement here when I saw my result was through this morning, over a month before the predicted date. This is the first completed mtDNA test under the umbrella of the Canton Surname Project (CSP) and I am hoping readers will find it interesting.

The results are now shown on the Project public website

www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/

and scroll right down to the bottom. You’ll even see my location on a map, in unlabelled Cardiff. I’ll leave my earlier account here for reference and with some commentary: 

Kit No.: 121844 / Name: Sheila Rowlands / Haplogroup: H / HVR 1 Differences from CRS: 16304C [abbreviated to 304C on the chart.]

Letters of the alphabet are used to label haplogroups for both Y-DNA and mtDNA, but they have no connection or overlap with each other.

CRS stands for Cambridge Reference Sequence, from the earliest mitochondrial tests, used as the basis for comparison in all mtDNA tests. 

Haplogroup H is a very common one, making up about 40% of  mtDNA in Europe. As with the Y-DNA haplogroups, there are sub-divisions - I can have further tests on my existing sample, for an extra fee. I am very interested in knowing more and am considering doing this - I’ll let you know.  By the way, as I write there are already 954 matches for my result in the database so refinement seems wise.

Haplogroup H is the one named ‘Helina’ in Stephen Oppenheimer’s books, e.g., The Origins of the British, (London, 2007, paperback), which I can recommend highly.  

My maternal grandmother was Olive Emma Ann Canton born Lamphey 1895; her mother Eliza Ann Charles born Monkton 1863; her mother Ann Griffiths born Monkton 1836; and her mother Ann Williams born St Twynnells 1797. The St Twynnells documentary records are poor and allow me to know only that this last Ann was the daughter of William Williams and that there were two men of this name in the parish. One married Elizabeth Eynon of a Stackpole family and the other married yet another Ann Williams of St Twynnells. Who knows - perhaps my mtDNA test will one day provide the answer! 

I am not writing much more about this now, for two reasons, one of which is covered by the personal news below - the other is that it’s all fairly new to me and I don’t know enough to explain it all right now without copying out chunks of other people’s copyright material. Better then if I refer you to some FTDNA pages on mitochondrial DNA tests for now.

http://www.familytreedna.com/tr_mtDNA.pdf

http://www.familytreedna.com/hclade.html

FTDNA site has masses of information. Go to

http://www.familytreedna.com/

then click on the SiteMap link at the very bottom of that page.

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PERSONAL NOTE

Some of you know that I have been ill recently - it is a very painful spinal condition which I feared for a long time to be a variation on my long-term Churg-Strauss vasculitis. I have had a good many tests, scans, etc, and yesterday saw my consultant at St Thomas’s. He felt he could now exclude CSS as a cause and said he will recommend I see an orthopaedic surgeon. Any reader who has known me since the 1980s may just remember I had an op on my spine then (though on a different part) - I’m not very keen on the prospect but will be glad to get it all sorted out.   I shall carry on as I’ve done recently, writing this blog from time to time. On odd ‘good’ days I’ll be trying hard to move the Canton Surname Project forward. If you have any suggestions, please write to me at the one-name.org address.

[Blog updated on 3 July 2008.]