July and August are Great Months for Family Connections

This is the time of the year that many families plan reunions or visits to relatives. That makes it a perfect time to increase your knowledge about all the branches of your family. Including the Taylors, of course. There are several ways to do this, and all work in different situations.

Let’s start with the soft approach, one in which you may not even “officially” discuss genealogy. You are at a family gathering at a park with a spread of food and children playing. Here are some questions that might start family members to reminisce:

• “I love this dish! Is this a family specialty? Who started it?”
• “What’s your favorite dish today?” (Ask when the person won’t offend others by passing over their dishes.) What was your mother’s/grandmother’s/great grandmother’s favorite summer dish?” You can substitute cousins, male relatives, and so forth.
• “Isn’t little Johnny cute! Who in the family does he resemble?”
• “What games did you play when you were a kid at a summer picnic? Who was with you?”

A more serious approach might have you with a notebook or a recording device asking questions about older or departed relatives. Here I recommend that you offer to share any information that you gather. This could be as a public member tree at Ancestry, or a website dedicated to the family, or a book.

Here, again, you probably want to prompt your subject to remember the olden days. Many will not have critical data like birth and marriage dates for the departed at their fingertips (and you can easily look that up). What they can offer is clues to the personality of important figures in your family tree. They can also offer information that opens up new areas of exploration, and even solves family puzzles. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• “It must have been hard during the Depression, how did your family cope?”
• “During WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam how did you deal with being separated from each other? How did the children cope with it?”
• “What was the best part about growing up in New York City/Tallahassee, Florida/Dayton, Ohio?” There is always a best part. Sometimes it helps to ask about the worst part, too. Also you might ask, “Would your brother/sister see it the same way?”
• “When did your family move to Kansas City? Why?”

Here’s a question I got a while back, “Did any member of our family die from the Spanish Flu?” According to Molly Billings at https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/  “The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.”

In the case of my family, and the direct ancestors of my first cousin the questioner, the answer was no, none of our family members had succumbed.

While you take your leisure this summer, and meet family members, this is your chance to get some of these questions answered. I wish you good luck and new discoveries!

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor DNA Project Blog

Actor Keanu Reeves has a British Taylor Mother

An interesting offshoot of the Taylor lines is Canadian-American actor Keanu Reeves, born in Beruit, Lebanon to a British mother, a Taylor, and an American father.   Reeves was born on 02 September 1964 in Beruit, Lebanon.


Wikipedia says, “Reeves is known for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure as well as Speed, Point Break and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix... A repeated theme in roles he has portrayed is that of saving the world.”

Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the son of Patricia Bond (née Taylor), a costume designer/performer, and Samuel Nowlin Reeves, Jr., a geologist. His mother was English and his father was a Hawaiian-born American of English, Irish, Portuguese, Native Hawaiian, and Chinese descent.

Through his mother, Reeves is one of our cousins from a Taylor line that stayed in Britain. Depending upon when related lines moved to North America, certainly offshoots within about 200 years, we could have Family Finder matches, should Reeves participate in FTDNA.

Should he do so, and have a documented pedigree from his mother’s line, we may be able to resolve some of the questions linking North American Taylors back to the British Isles. May it be so!

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project

Lalia is keenly interested in genetic genealogy for many reasons, among them the many common surnames in her personal genealogy. In addition to Taylor, these include: Jackson, Johnson, Madden, Moore, Robinson, Stone and Wilson. These families were in North America prior to 1700 and followed migration paths from Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York to Ohio then Missouri or to Kentucky then Missouri. Please contact Lalia with questions about the blog, or story ideas, or if you think you’re a relative: Lalia W /at/ aol dot com.

Leonard, Born, Barteaux, Whitman, Starratt, LeCain, Ritchie, Ryerson, Gaston, Perry, Lockwood, Beall/Bell/Beale, Beatty, Wheat, Muliken, Foster, Vail, Salmon, Goodwin, Kinnan, Mead/Meade, Augustus, Bright, Pope, Dickerson, Pulliam, Glover, Scott, Sutton, Rice, Hutt, Spence, Crockwell, Cassell, Lingenfelter, Harbaugh, Springer, Hockersmith

Phineas Taylor Barnum

Born July 5th 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, P. T. Barnum is descended from a Taylor family. Let’s start with his full name, Phineas Taylor Barnum. P. T.’s mother was Irene Taylor, daughter of Phineas Taylor (1760-1837). Phineas Taylor’s father was Nathan Taylor (1717-1798), and his father was also called Nathan Taylor (1682-1782). Nathan Taylor the elder’s father was Thomas Taylor, born in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut in 1643 (died in 1735). All these Taylors were born and died in Connecticut and I do not have record of their immigrant ancestor.

Wikipedia describes Barnum as “an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.” Barnum brought memorable people and performances to the American audience. These included celebrity midget Tom Thumb and Swedish singer Jenny Lind. Barnum served a couple of terms in the Connecticut State Legislature and as Mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. But his greatest fame comes from his work as a circus entrepreneur. He started the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which lives on in at least one form today.

In addition Barnum is well known for a remark that may be true to his spirit, but cannot be documented to have been uttered by him: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Barnum lived a long and full life, cramming more experience into his 80 years than most people could do in three times that long. He died in 1891 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Does your Taylor family intersect with the line of Phineas Taylor Barnum?

Here is a link to P. T. Barnum’s genealogy: http://www.barnum.org/fam00170.htm.


Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project

Lalia is keenly interested in genetic genealogy for many reasons, among them the many common surnames in her personal genealogy. In addition to Taylor, these include: Jackson, Johnson, Madden, Moore, Robinson, Stone and Wilson. These families were in North America prior to 1700 and followed migration paths from Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York to Ohio then Missouri or to Kentucky then Missouri. Please contact Lalia with questions about the blog, or story ideas, or if you think you’re a relative: Lalia W /at/ aol dot com.




Leonard, Born, Barteaux, Whitman, Starratt, LeCain, Ritchie, Ryerson, Gaston, Perry, Lockwood, Beall/Bell/Beale, Beatty, Wheat, Muliken, Foster, Vail, Salmon, Goodwin, Kinnan, Mead/Meade, Augustus, Bright, Pope, Dickerson, Pulliam, Glover, Scott, Sutton, Rice, Hutt, Spence, Crockwell, Cassell, Lingenfelter, Harbaugh, Springer, Hockersmith

The Theory of Autosomal DNA Matching

You have seen the basic theory behind y-DNA matches and mt-DNA matches. Briefly the Y chromosome changes minutely about every fourth generation, as you can see by comparing 67 marker results from the same male lineage. In actuality it is a matter of statistical probability and the minor change may have occurred just between the last two generations, or it may have been six generations ago. The usefulness of using the Y chromosome for matches is to learn more about a male line of descent. The mitochondrial DNA changes much less frequently. It changes at about 1/10th the rate of changes in y-DNA. Thus it is of less genealogical help when fine-tuning recent generations of a family line, but can definitely establish a connection to an historical maternal line. (For more on y-DNA or mt-DNA see previous Taylor blogs.)


Autosomal DNA which is tested through as “Family Finder” at www.ftdna.com, is entirely different. This test looks at segments of the non-sex determinate chromosomes and compares matching segments throughout the Family Tree DNA database.

Here is the theory behind this test. Each of us has received our genes from our biological forebears. Each time a new human is created, some genes from each parent are combined and some are not included. Approximately ½ of our autosomal genes come from each of our parents. Each of them received half of their genes from each of their biological parents.

To simplify our understanding we are going to consider these blocks of genetic material as playing cards. Imagine you are holding a hand of cards—8 cards—and each card represents a unique inheritance from one of your great-grandparents. From Great Grandmother Susie you got the Ace of Spades, for example. But you have 8 cards and one is from each of your great-grandparents.

Let’s follow that Ace of Spades backwards in time. Great-grandmother Susie received it from one of her great-grandparents. And that great-grandparent received it from one of his or hers…

Now back to Great-Grandmother Susie. She was part of a large family. Let’s say there were ten children. Maybe half of those children, Susie’s siblings, got that Ace of Spades in their genetic package. Those of Susie’s siblings who reproduced gave their children part of their genetic heritage. For many it may have included the Ace of Spades, but probably not for all.

Now consider again the hand of cards you received as your birth package of DNA. You got the Ace of Spades (which is a simplified way of saying you got a unique segment of DNA). Anyone else in the Family Tree database who also has the Ace of Spades is a cousin to you. Their relationship may be as far back as seven generations, or more! However we know that you are biologically/genetically related individuals. Now the practical aspects of using this autosomal testing method, Family Finder, become of interest. We will take up that topic in a future blog.

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project

Lalia is keenly interested in genetic genealogy for many reasons, among them the many common surnames in her personal genealogy. In addition to Taylor, these include: Jackson, Johnson, Madden, Moore, Robinson, Stone and Wilson. These families were in North America prior to 1700 and followed migration paths from Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York to Ohio then Missouri or to Kentucky then Missouri. Please contact Lalia with questions about the blog, or story ideas, or if you think you’re a relative: Lalia W /at/ aol dot com.

Sale on genetic tests!

Greetings fellow Taylor fans!  If you have been putting off genetic testing because it's too expensive, order your tests today.  If you've ever wanted to do genetic genealogy there has been no better time than today.

We at the Taylor project can also probably be of some help with Family Finder, y-DNA or mt-DNA results and matches, if you want our help. We are your first choice for the Y-DNA, of course, but some of us have done a bunch of work on the other tests, too.


The site www.ftdna.com is the place to go. They have by far the biggest database--about 10 times what's available elsewhere--and the focus is on genealogy, which is not necessarily the case at other sites.

For Y-DNA, do 67 markers or more. A 67/67 match means that the men are related (50% probability) no further apart than second cousins. You are wasting time and money to test fewer than 67 markers. (A 12/12 match means you are related in the last 2,000 years! Not much genealogical help.)

I recommend you also do a Family Finder test that tests all family lines on autosomal DNA. This will even be of help assuming you are a male Taylor wanting information only about the Taylor line.  Why?  Because one of your cousins, not a Taylor direct descendant, may have that critical missing piece of information about your Taylor line.

If you want to do mt-DNA, go ahead. So far my brother and I have no matches there, but we do know we are haplogroup T2, the same as many of the deceased in 79 AD in the Vesuvius eruption, and the same as Czar Nicholas II.

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project


Lalia is keenly interested in genetic genealogy for many reasons, among them the many common surnames in her personal genealogy. In addition to Taylor, these include: Jackson, Johnson, Madden, Moore, Robinson, Stone and Wilson. These families were in North America prior to 1700 and followed migration paths from Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York to Ohio then Missouri or to Kentucky then Missouri. Please contact Lalia with questions about the blog, or story ideas, or if you think you’re a relative: Lalia W /at/ aol dot com.

Prominent American Taylors

We have the Taylor name in the news again today with James Vernon Taylor’s 64th birthday. James Taylor was born in Boston on 12 March 2012. He is famous as a singer and songwriter in the folk music and folk to pop music category.

Another famous Taylor was born on February 27th 1932: Elizabeth Taylor born in London. I did not know until this year that she is part of an American Taylor family.

If your Taylor line connects to either of these well-know Taylor lines, please let me know!

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project


Lalia is keenly interested in genetic genealogy for many reasons, among them the many common surnames in her personal genealogy. In addition to Taylor, these include: Jackson, Johnson, Madden, Moore, Robinson, Stone and Wilson. These families were in North America prior to 1700 and followed migration paths from Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York to Ohio then Missouri or to Kentucky then Missouri. Please contact Lalia with questions about the blog, or story ideas, or if you think you’re a relative: Lalia W /at/ aol dot com.

2012 is the Hundredth Anniversary of the Titanic Disaster

On Friday the 13th of January the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef on the Isola del Giglio. Of the 4,229 people on board, few were likely to be Taylors. The ship carried 126-129 US citizens, 25 British, 21 Australia, 12 Canadian and 1 New Zealander. Only two of these people from English speaking countries are dead or missing—Jerry and Barbara Heil from Minnesota.

Though the expected loss of the ship, at a cost of $500,000,000, is great, the loss of life is small compared to the Titanic and other notable maritime disasters.

On the Titanic, 2224 people were on board; only 710 survived (32%). There were 10 Taylors on board the Titanic, 5 survived.

While the loss of life was much greater in number and by proportion for the Titanic, the Costa Concordia has been compared to the more famous shipwreck for several reasons. There were ill omens at the christening of the Costa Concordia—the champagne bottle did not break. One of the surviving passengers of the Concordia was the granddaughter of a Titanic survivor. Apparently the Titanic movie theme song was playing in the Concordia lounge when the ship struck the reef.

But perhaps the biggest surprise was the sense among we privileged people of the 21st century that shipwrecks and loss of life at sea is something that happened in previous times and not a current day matter. Clearly we are not immune to the misfortunes of people of all the ages.

More on the Titanic Taylors in a future post.

Lalia Wilson for the Taylor Surname Project
Find us at www.ftdna.com.