2020/21 Progress Report

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU JOIN THE SWANN RESEARCH GENEALOGY FACEBOOK PAGE - MOST UPDATES AND DISCUSSIONS NOW TAKE PLACE THERE IN A PUBLIC FORUM

We continue to make progress – but as always we still have masses to do.  There are some very talented genealogists / family historians in this group of people,but we can always use your help, time and commitment.  We are not going to crack some of this without the help of you all doing something over and beyond sorting out your own immediate family line. This is a large group of individual pedigrees making up these two surnames - Swan and Swann.

What we have accomplished up to end of 2020 include:

(1) Establishment and initial entries made into a Swann/Swan Family DNA & Genealogy Research website:  https://www.swann-family-genealogy-research-dna.us/?fbclid=IwAR0grNGdR0D6iQjTkwvwEzF5yHIpfxogWYL-jGFiNupY1eSVz2WjbcUtzC4 [This weblink will need to be copied and pasted into your browser to work. FTDNA do not allow weblinks to be placed in this area of the surname project - only text entries].

(2) Adding several Swann lines into proven descendants from Edward Swan of Maryland by DNA – and an increasing number by paper trails.  For some lines it may never be possible to get a paper trail.  More descendants, both from proven and unproven descents are always welcome. We have had breakthroughs on several lines, and many Big Y-700 tests completed or in the works (January 2021). Details available from the Swann Surname Project Administrators on request.

(3) Dale Swann has been accepted into membership of the Jamestowne Society, the first male Swann to achieve this after 14 females – via his descent from William Swann of Swanns Point. Significant progress made on this Swan line in Kent, England, 1550-1635.

(4) Much ongoing work on Swan lines which lead into Ireland.  Anita Korin has an extensive knowledge of Swan families in all parts of Ireland.

(5)  As all of you will know – Swan(n) family trees on Ancestry are in varying degrees of mess.  We have established a Swan(n) Genealogy Research Group Facebook page which seems to go from strength to strength - please join.  The only way forward, and the only reasonable chance of changing what is on Ancestry - is to have a visible alternative we can refer people to and that is now becoming available on the website referred to in (1) above.

(6) We have begun attempts to try and find the ancestor of Edward Swan of Maryland in England.  We have little to go on – so we will have to guess the answer, but two new good candidates have appeared recently in the parish registers of Newcastle. We are working through what is online and what is not online regarding the parish registers of Kent. We are awaiting the completion of the Manorial Documents Register for Kent in 2021, delayed due to Covid-19.

(7)  We need to continue to focus on which lines lead down male Swan(n)s living today, so that we can achieve effective triangulation. Autosomal DNA may have an increasing part to play in some situations, especially after 1800. DNA Painter is a major advance for autosomal DNA matching.

(8) Swan(n) is too large a surname to run as a normal Surname One-Name Project – unless there is appreciable extra involvement in Britain.  We are focusing mainly on tackling American and other immigrant families first - and seeing who the many gateway Swan(n) ancestors were.  It is possible to do surname compilations now in the UK.

Tracking Swan(n) families in England forwards for a Y-DNA test from any gateway ancestor will usually be a big task, but as more material goes online all the time this continues to improve.

(9) FamilySearch is putting masses of material online – and have converted all their microfilms at Salt Lake City to digital format by 2020, although some microfiche items remain to be tackled.  That is transforming how research can be done and how much of it can now be conducted online around the world.  Family Record Centres (FRCs) are the key - as not all material will be able to be accessed from computers at home, principally because of legacy access reasons and old agreements in a digital online world.

(10) We monitor this Y-DNA Project via a specific Project Spreadsheet in Excel. This enables the Project Administrators to keep track of certain key items not available on the FTDNA website itself.  One consequence of this will be that the clusters visible on the FTDNA webpages will often not be up-to-date. 

We will always need help in recruiting people to test.  Triangulation is the key word here – do the genetic signatures match up with any documentation to tell a self-consistent story, and if they do not – is this a recent event, or an event further back in time.  It is this back and forwards movement between DNA testing and trees which enables us to make progress. Big Y-700 testing is having, and will continue to have, a major impact - and allied to that are advances in dating Y-SNPs on any given individual's personal Haplotree..

This surname project continues to be a strong supporter of ISOGG.  In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented across Europe. ISOGG was on top of that and we continue to be in a good position to answer questions from anyone expressing concerns in this general area.

DNA testing may well continue to be controversial in some areas, such as medical diagnostics and criminal investigations, but we continue to monitor such developments closely.

Keep searching!!

Brian