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.

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

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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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.

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.

1. 1878: John POWELL (15) collier, was killed by a roof fall in Southwood Colliery, owners Walters & Canton, Haverfordwest, Pembroke[shire]. Southwood is in Roch parish, Haverfordwest being the nearest town. The Canton owner is David Canton of Nolton Haven, Roch, descendant of the family of Cantons (line PF) who had earlier farmed and mined in the parish of Freystrop for several generations.

2. 1879: Thomas LALLIS (42) collier, was killed by a fall of stone in Southwood colliery, owners Walters & Canton, Haverfordwest, Glamorgan [sic]. This error re the county name suggests that occasional mistakes in recording or transcription could occur - on this point, see no.4, below. There is a map showing the location of Southwood in Fig. 10 in (c) below.

3. 1877: Henry WEBB (23) labourer, was killed by a blow at Woodland colliery, owner David Canton, Haverfordwest, Pembroke[shire] - the same DC as in nos 1 and 2. Woodland is in the parish of Walton West - there is a map of its location in Fig.12 in (c) below.

4. 1877 Nov: Henry ROBERTS (44), sinker, was killed by falling down sinking pit shaft … at Woodfield colliery, owner David Canton, Pontypridd, Glamorgan. This one presents a real difficulty. There is a Woodfield colliery in the Pontypridd, Glamorgan, area, but I rather doubt that David Canton was ever one of its owners, usually described as Bolckow, Vaughan & Co. Ltd.  (The forename David isn’t actually very numerous in Canton  families.)  I think that probably Woodland and Woodfield have become confused here, as Pembs and Glamorgan were in no.2, above. With the intention of unravelling this riddle, I searched for the death of Henry Roberts in the last quarter of 1877 (and later) but found no-one of that name and general age.

Some further reading:

(a) George Edwards, The Coal Industry in Pembrokeshire (Field Studies reprint, 1963).

(b) Dr Brian S. John, The Geology of Pembrokeshire (1979, reprinted 2003).

(c) M.R. Connop-Price, Pembrokeshire: The Forgotten Coalfield (Landmark, 2004).

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.

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.

========================

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.]

FTDNA received my request on 10 May and the kit arrived yesterday, 22 May, which is good going for the mail services involved. I fitted in the three separate scrapings of inside my cheek, each 3-4 hours apart, and the phials into which the brushes had to be put will be posted back today.  

So, obviously interesting, and good for the project administrator to go through the procedure - I can say from personal experience that it is quite painless, with good detailed instructions to be read before you start.

I am really looking forward to the results. As I have two daughters, one of whom also has a daughter, it will represent their mtDNA too, and the same applies to my sisters and nieces. Really I am taking the test for two main reasons: 1. because I believe that the more people who do so the better: there are many mysteries to be solved about our early ancestors. 2. time is flying and it is way of leaving something of oneself for descendants.

I am not really expecting to find a distant relation through this means, for when I work back through the generations on paper, my maternal line has mainly just one daughter (from whom I am descended) per generation. On the other hand, hope springs eternal …

CONTACTS WANTED

I wrote a few days ago about some of my latest emails bouncing, addresses clearly out of date. Thanks for the help offered - I’m glad to say I have heard from Jan now.

There are several items of news:

The latest resultswere received in April. The participant is a descendant of one of the two Canton brothers who left Reynalton, Pembs, for New Zealand. This is a large line nowadays. Please visit this site to see the results and to compare how close they are to others who have tested - I will write more about this later:

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

We have two new members registered with the Canton Surname Project - both about 10 days ago, so there is still a wait for the kits to arrive and be returned.

One is a member of another large line of Cantons, descended (yet again) from Henry of Martletwy (d.1763), through Thomas (b. 1798 ) who went to Kent about 1830.

The other is ‘the present writer’, as I have ordered a mitochondrial (mt) DNA test. Not actually of any use to the Y-DNA Project, but if a few others do the same, we may have useful information about deep female ancestry. My own female line (mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, and so on) is deeply South Pembrokeshire. Anyway, I am looking forward to the results.

New Members are still needed! Do write and enquire if you are thinking about it but not quite sure.

Daily Mail article

I have just received the following, which seems worth publishing here in full, from Max Blankfeld, Vice-President, Operations and Marketing, http://www.FamilyTreeDNA.com “History Unearthed Daily” max@familytreedna.com 713-868-1438

‘This week an article was published in the UK newspaper Daily Mail, quoting Ancestors Magazine, under the title: ”£200-a-time ancestral DNA test kits are a rip off, say experts”, by Andrew Levy.‘The article was based on tests by the following companies: Oxford Ancestors, Ancestry DNA, and International Biosciences.‘Family Tree DNA was not contacted for testing purposes, nor mentioned in that article. Having tested over 350,000 individuals (over 100,000 of our direct customers and 250,000 participants in National Geographic’s Genographic Project) we could supply anyone who asks us with thousands of examples that prove the opposite of what the article stated. ‘Unfortunately, the journalist’s conclusion is based on opportunist companies who noted our success and jumped into Genetic Genealogy to get a piece of it, but who did not have the science or the database that would allow for a serious work. Again, note that Family Tree DNA was NOT one of the companies that the journalist approached.‘About 2 years ago, Oxford Ancestors announced to the world that they found a descendant of Genghis Khan living in Florida - a Caucasian accountant. Family Tree DNA proved that Oxford Ancestors was wrong. Tom Robinson, the person in question, recounts the entire story in his blog at http://trrobinson.com/2006/06/16/genghis-khan-or-not–that-is-the-question.aspx#comment-56635. The Associated Press later distributed the news: “Robinson, an associate accounting professor at the University of Miami, canceled a planned trip to Mongolia after learning of the new results. He said he never sought publicity on his ancestry. “The results that Family Tree DNA gave me are pretty conclusive,” he said. “I’m certainly not going to look for any more tests on Genghis Khan.” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13467247/ )‘Family Tree DNA is proud to have the largest database of its kind in the world (more than all other companies combined), to adhere to the best science in the field, and to be the expert source for journalists from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among others. National Geographic would not tarnish their century-old reputation by partnering with us.‘That article, in the end, demonstrates the following:

- While Family Tree DNA prices are in line with other companies, price is not the only thing that matters when choosing a DNA testing company

- Science and database size are important factors when choosing a testing company.

‘You are welcome to share this e-mail with whomever you feel necessary, and we make ourselves available to anyone with questions about our work.

‘E-mail me anytime!

‘Max Blankfeld’