|
|
|
|
|
|
| We all are connected! |
02/10/08GENEALOGY |
     
|
Our genealogy adventures! Link to Our Family TreeI grew up in Smith County, Mississippi after the family moved there about 1945. The only kin we knew of for sure was our uncle Jim Rogers, brother to our grandmother. It was only through our search for our roots that we found out that we were kin to most of the county. It turns out that this was the area (Smith, Jasper and Clarke Counties) that a large part of our history was lived. |
|
| No one in the family knew our great grandfather's name and we searched for years before a copy of our grandfather's Social Security card turned up. Soon, we knew our great grandfather was, James Varnell Lawson, but that was all. A name only, nothing else. Two large file cabinets of collected research papers failed to turn up anything of use. In a desperate effort my sister sat down with our dad and ask if he could recall any names of his father's relations. He recalled two names; uncle Oliver and aunt Emma. We found a 1850 Federal Census report that had children with those names but did include not the name of our great grandfather but it was a clue. We had recently discovered that DNA testing was available for genealogy purposes and decided to take that route; nothing else had helped. We located a male Lawson who said he was a descendant of that family and agreed to provide a yDNA sample. He and I submitted our cheek swabs and long weeks later the results came back. We were a perfect match! It wasn't long before we were connected with a whole new world of people. Family! At last, we knew who we belong to. What a relief to have a real connection after thirty something years of hard work. | ||
| But was this the end? No, an even greater mystery was in store. We proved that we were connected to Daniel F. Lawson of Clarke County Mississippi through this yDNA test but it turned out that he did not have a male child which was our James Varnell Lawson. We believe our ancestor was a brother to Daniel and we suspect that may have been a person named James but we have found no proof of that as of yet. | ||
| We now know that our great-great-great-grandfather was Jonathan Lawson who owned a store with his partner David Price at 29 Broad Street in Charleston, SC between 1780 and 1790. The building is still there. We believe Jonathan came from Scotland and estimate his age as about 45 in 1790. He died in 1790 and we believe it was before Daniel Franklin Lawson, his son, was born. His partner, David Price, sued customers who owed money to the store in 1791 as the survivor of Jonathan and the partnership. We believe that Mary Lawson was the wife of Jonathan and that she remarried before 1800. She shows up in the 1790 Federal Census as the head of a household with some females. We think that William and James were sons of Jonathan. Each had a store between 1800 and 1810 in Charleston. William is in the 1810 Federal Census as the head of a household but with no family. We have not found anything else about James but feel he is our best bet as the father or grandfather of our James Varnell Lawson. | ||
| Our yDNA test showed that we were related to the Native American gene (known as Haplogroup Q) which originated near Lake Baikal on the Mongolian/Siberian border in eastern Asia. Most migrants from there came across the Bering Strait to America but a few traveled the Artic Circle in the other direction and ended up in Norway, or Sweden. This is what we think happened in our case. Making their way to the Scandinavian countries where they became Vikings, eventually settling in the British Isles before coming to America. | ||
|
One may go to
Ysearch at Family Tree and see the
yDNA results (Haplotype) for myself MREQH and my cousin John Lawson XFECN. Once at the
site, search for the surname Lawson where our results are posted. Also, one
may do search comparisons with other Lawsons or by using our Haplogroup Q to
compare us to other Qs.
DNA image courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program. |
This site was last updated 02/10/08