Book Reviews

I've recently read a couple of books that I think would be of interest to anyone interested in the use of DNA testing in genealogy. These might make a good Christmas present for the reader/genealogist in your family.

The Stranger in My Genes

This book, by Bill Griffeth, an anchor on CNBC, details his experiences when he got an unexpected result from a DNA test. As you probably guessed from the book title and the picture on the cover of the book, he learned through DNA testing that the man who he thought was his father was not his father at all. (Bill reveals this in the first paragraph of the introduction, so I am not spoiling any surprises here.) The book discusses the many emotions Bill felt as a result of learning this information, how he approached his mother about the news, and what he decided to do upon learning who his real father was. The book is a fast read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking about DNA testing. This book is a reminder that there could be some surprises awaiting anyone who considers DNA testing.

The Gene:  An Intimate History

Although not specifically about DNA testing for genealogical purposes, this book by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a fascinating account of the origins of genetics. It covers a lot of ground in explaining the evolution of the field of genetics and the discovery of DNA, and for the most part does so in an engaging and understandable way. There are a few instances where the book gets a little more technical than I cared for, but on the whole it is very readable and definitely added to my understanding of the study of DNA, which is undoubtedly an important tool in the genealogist's toolkit. If you are into DNA testing and want to know more about the gene, I highly recommend this book as well.

[Images of book covers are from Google Books]

Update on Hackley/Ackley DNA

Recall in the last post that I mentioned that a Hackley male had done a Y-DNA test and that he was waiting for his results. Well, his results are in and we now have a data point we can compare to the Ackley men who have also done a Y-DNA test. First, a little background on the Hackley tester.

Ancestry of the Hackley Tester

The Hackley line that we are interested in should be descendants of John Hackley, who, according to research discussed in the post on "The (Supposed) Ancestors of Nicholas Ackley", could be the brother of Nicholas Ackley. The Hackley tester believes he is a descendant of John Hackley; here is his line of descent (he is the "Living Hackley" at the bottom of this picture):

I have looked at his tree and also exchanged some e-mails with him, and he has some very good documentation for the majority of the tree. He told me that he is pretty confident in most of the relationships shown above; like most of us he is least certain about the earliest couple of generations. So, if we are willing to accept (as I am) that the Hackley tester is a descendant of the John Hackley we are interested in, we can compare his test with the three Ackley men discussed in the last post.

Comparing the Numbers

Just as we did last time, we need to compare Mr. Hackley to each of our Ackley men to determine the genetic distance between them to see if they might be related. So here it is, Mr. Hackley compared to Ackley1:

You can see that there are a lot of markers in red, meaning the values on those markers do not match each other. According to the calculation done by Family Tree DNA, there is a genetic distance of 19 between Mr. Hackley and Ackley1. Definitely not a match; recall that any genetic distance greater than 6 is considered not matching.

Mr. Hackley compared to Ackley2 doesn't look much different:

FTDNA also calculated a genetic distance of 19 for this comparison.

Mr. Hackley vs. Ackley3:

This is a genetic distance of 18. So, Mr. Hackley doesn't match any of the Ackley men who believe they are descendants of Nicholas Ackley. By extrapolation, we can conclude that John Hackley and Nicholas Ackley are probably not brothers as hypothesized in the research presented in "The (Supposed) Ancestors of Nicholas Ackley", and this certainly casts doubt on the ancestry for Nicholas proposed in that research. Of course this conclusion depends on the important assumption that the Hackley tester is a descendant of John Hackley, which we don't know for absolute certain, but the documentation seems to back up that assumption.

I guess that is good news and bad news; the good news is that we now have some data to help us draw some conclusions, the bad news is that we must conclude that John Hackley and Nicholas Ackley were probably not brothers and we are back where we started -- we don't really know anything about Nicholas Ackley's ancestors. I choose to look at this as an opportunity to continue the quest for Nicholas' ancestors. I dream of the day that we find an Ackley relative in England that has a well-documented family tree and has done a Y-DNA test (hey, I can dream, can't I?). In the meantime, we all need to keep looking.

Link of the Day

I've mentioned genetic distance several times lately in discussions about Y-DNA. The link below is from Roberta Estes' excellent blog "DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy", and goes into much more detail about genetic distance.

https://dna-explained.com/category/genetic-distance/

Quote of the Day

"The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am.  Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can't do.”

-- Denis Waitley (motivational speaker, author of "Seeds of Greatness", "The Winner's Edge")

DNA Revisited

OK, so this is obviously not a post about John Ackley and his family, which was supposed to be the next post. There's been a pretty big gap since the last post, mainly because I got sidetracked on other things and just haven't gotten back to old John (I will get to it, I promise). One of the things that sidetracked me was DNA, so I thought I'd write a post about what I've learned.

Y-DNA

Recall that in the original post about DNA I mentioned Y-DNA briefly and also mentioned the existence of an Ackley surname project on Family Tree DNA (FTDNA). Surname projects are designed primarily for people who have done Y-DNA tests, but those who have done autosomal tests can also join if they have the Ackley surname and just want to look specifically for Ackley matches.


When I wrote that original DNA post I had just been made administrator of the Ackley surname project, and I was trying to learn what I could about DNA. Since that time, the project has grown from eight to 20 members. The members can be divided into three distinct groups: 

(1) People (both women and men) who have done autosomal DNA testing (called Family Finder on FTDNA) who have Ackleys somewhere in their tree and want to find Ackley matches within the group. Some of the men in this group have also done Y-DNA tests, but these tests are irrelevant for the purposes of an Ackley surname study since the testers do not have the Ackley surname. 

(2) Men with surnames that are close to Ackley (such as Ackerly and Akeley) who have done Y-DNA tests and would like to determine if their surname is a variation of Ackley. If their tests result in matches with men who have the Ackley surname, a case could be made that their surnames and Ackley are just variations of one another. So far, the results indicate that Ackley, Ackerly, and Akeley are not variations of the same surname and are in fact separate families; i.e., there are no Y-DNA matches between men with Ackley, Ackerley, and Akeley surnames. An important side note here: Recall that in the post on Nicholas Ackley's ancestors there was a lot of discussion about the Hackley surname, and the theory is that Nicholas Ackley and John Hackley were brothers whose father was also named John Hackley. Y-DNA testing could help us answer that question, and I have been successful in finding a descendant of John Hackley (who has the surname Hackley) who was willing to do a Y-DNA test. He has submitted his sample to FTDNA and is now waiting for the results. I will report on what is found when his results are available.

(3)  Men with the Ackley surname who have done Y-DNA testing and want to compare with other Ackley men to see if they are related. This could be useful, for example, for Ackley men who want to determine if they are descendants of Nicholas Ackley, or are from a different, possibly more distantly related or even unrelated Ackley line. There are just three men with the Ackley surname in the project, and the next section will discuss them in more detail.

Y-DNA Testing of Ackley Men in the Ackley Surname Project

Before discussing the actual results, I would like to spend a little time talking in detail about how Y-DNA testing works. I'll try not to get too technical (I probably don't know enough to get really technical anyway), but I think a little bit of technical talk is needed to appreciate the results. I can't do complete justice to the topic in just a paragraph or two, so if you want to read more, see this excellent blog post on Y-DNA by Roberta Estes at DNAeXplained [1]. You can find lots of articles about Y-DNA testing, but Roberta is my go-to blogger on DNA topics because she has a way of explaining things that just makes it more understandable.

Recall that only men have Y-DNA, and that Y-DNA does not recombine with anything from the mother, so each man's Y-DNA is received virtually unchanged from his father, who got it from his father, and so on. So, if I had my dad tested and compared it to my results, we would expect to see exactly the same values at every marker, and my brother should also match both my dad and me exactly, unless a mutation has occurred (more about that in a minute).

So what is a marker? Chromosomes contain sequences of repeating nucleotides, which are the basic building blocks of DNA (the A, T, C, and G patterns of your DNA). Simply stated, a Y-DNA marker is a segment of DNA at a known location on the Y chromosome where the number of Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) of these nucleotides are counted. STRs are short sequences of DNA that are repeated numerous times in a head-tail manner. There are hundreds of markers available to be tested, but there are some standard sets of markers that are used for genealogy purposes. FTDNA offers 37, 67, and 111 marker tests. If two men match each other on enough of these markers, it can be concluded with some level of confidence that they are related within some number of generations. The more markers tested, the more confidence there is in the conclusions drawn about family relationships (and the more the test costs).

Let's look at the three Ackley men who have tested at FTDNA and joined the Ackley surname project (I am one of those three men); we'll call them Ackley1, Ackley2, and Ackley3 (me). Two of us have done a 37 marker test and the other one did a 67 marker test, so the best we can do is compare the 37 markers we all had tested.

Here is a table of the 37 marker results for the three Ackley men. A quick look reveals that for most of the markers, the values are identical for all three.

To see if these men are related to each other, we need to compare their results to each other one-by-one. For example, if we compare Ackley1 and Ackley2 to each other, we can see that they match each other exactly on all the markers in green in the table below, and they differ from each other by 1 at marker DYS392 (Ackley1 has a value of 12 and Ackley2 has a value of 13) and also by one at DYS464 (all shown in red below).

Each difference contributes a value of 1 to a measure called genetic distance; the total genetic distance between these two men is 2. We'll discuss genetic distance in more detail shortly. Here is the comparison between Ackley1 and Ackley3:

You can see that there are a few more red cells, giving a total genetic distance of 5 in this case. Finally, here is the comparison of Ackley2 and Ackley3:

These two men have a total genetic distance of 3. The differences at the markers represent mutations; if there are "too many" mutations it is unlikely that two men would be related in the genealogical time frame. So how many mutations is "too many"? The answer is related to statistical probabilities based on mutation rates, and FTDNA provides a nice table that summarizes the possibilities [2]:

From the information in this table we can conclude that Ackley1 and Ackley2 are "Related" (genetic distance of 2), Ackley1 and Ackley3 are "Possibly Related" (genetic distance of 5), and Ackley2 and Ackley3 are "Related" (genetic distance of 3). 

So this is good, these three men all seem to be related to each other, although the relationship between Ackley1 and Ackley3 might be a little shaky -- they are only "Possibly Related". In fact, FTDNA would not report these two men as a match; the threshold on genetic distance is 4 at 37 markers; anything greater than that is not reported. For a genetic distance of 5, the "Interpretation" column in the table says "they may be related within the genealogical time frame, but additional evidence is needed to confirm the relationship." Additional testing is suggested, but in this case we can use other evidence to help us. It turns out that all three men have documented genealogies that show they are descended from Nicholas Ackley; in fact, all three are descended from his son James. Additional testing of other individuals who are also known descendants of James, preferably through different sons of James, could be done to try to determine where some of the mutations occurred.

Deep Ancestry Testing with Y-DNA

You may have noticed a column in the tables above labeled "Haplogroup" that has not been explained yet. According to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) website, "A haplogroup is a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patrilineal or matrilineal line. Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet, and refinements consist of additional number and letter combinations." [3] 

The definition implies that we are talking about deeper ancestry here, in fact FTDNA says "Haplogroups are associated with early human migrations." So, you probably won't learn much about who your 8th great grandfather is by knowing something about your paternal haplogroup, but it will tell you about where your people came from -- what "clan" you belong to. Men can learn something about their paternal haplogroup by doing a Y-DNA test, while both men and women can learn something about their maternal haplogroup by doing a mitochondrial DNA test. We'll stick to the paternal haplogroups in our discussion.

You'll notice that Ackley1 and Ackley2 both have R-M269 (these are the letters and numbers referred to above) listed in the haplogroup column, while Ackley3 has R-S1051, which is a subgroup of R-M269. R-M343, also called R1b, is the most frequently occurring haplogroup in Western Europe, and R-M269, also known as R1b1a2, is the most dominant branch of R-M343 in Western Europe. Men who take a Y-DNA test at FTDNA are given a predicted haplogroup based on a subset of 14 of the STR markers discussed above that are compared to a confirmed database of haplogroups; Ackley1 and Ackley2 were given a prediction of R-M269 based on their Y-DNA results.

To get confirmation of a haplogroup, along with further refinement deeper on the haplotree, additional Y-DNA tests can be performed. These additional tests look for a different type of mutation than STR tests; they are looking for single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are variations of a single nucleotide (remember the DNA building blocks mentioned above) at a specific location on the Y chromosome. The presence of SNPs in a test subject confirms their ancestors were members of a particular subgroup underneath the more general haplogroups. In the example we have been discussing, Ackley3 has done additional SNP testing, and his haplogroup has been confirmed as R-S1051, which is several levels deep in the R-M343 haplotree.

This is where things start to get very interesting. Besides the surname projects on FTDNA mentioned earlier, there are also haplogroup projects that attempt to discover the geographic origins of a given haplogroup. The project administrators of these projects are really bright people that have an incredible amount of knowledge about Y-DNA, SNPs, etc. It turns out that it is possible to estimate the age of the SNPs that define this branch of the haplotree; i.e., when the mutations occurred that distinguish members of this subgroup from other subgroups of the R-M343 branch. The administrator for the R-S1051 group (George Chandler) has some really good information on this somewhat unique group. George estimates that the defining SNPs for this group are between 3,200 and 4,500 years old, and that these people were part of the Bell Beaker culture (you can read more about them here [4]), and their geographic origin is what is now modern Scotland. He also states that this group is relatively small compared to other haplogroups of a similar age; he believes that a population bottleneck may have occurred that greatly reduced the number of males at some point (see here for a discussion of population bottlenecks [5]). George also believes that this group was part of the Pictish culture that inhabited eastern and northern Scotland during the late Iron Age and early Medieval periods [6]. The Picts were known for their intricate art carved in stones, such as the Hilton of Cadboll Stone shown below (this is a replica -- the original is in the Museum of Scotland). For more on the Picts, see the Wikipedia page here [7].

The Hilton of Cadboll Stone; picture is from http://www.pictishstone.freeuk.com/Framesbase.htm

So what does this mean for Ackleys in general? The assumption is that other Ackley men (at least those who are descendants of Nicholas Ackley) who choose to do Y-DNA SNP testing would have the same results; i.e., their tests should show that their haplogroup is R-S1051. Remember, SNP testing reveals deep ancestry -- the ancient origins of a group of people. All of the male descendants in the paternal line of a particular individual should be members of the same haplogroup. So although we believe we are English due to the fact that Nicholas likely came from England, Y-DNA testing would suggest that our ancient origins are in Scotland.

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)

A recent development in Y-DNA testing is something called Next Generation Sequencing. NGS tests involve technology that allows high-throughput sequencing of DNA so that millions of base pairs can be analyzed in a fairly short amount of time. There are several companies that offer NGS testing, including the Big Y test at FTDNA and Y Elite 2.1 test by Full Genomes. I am most familiar with the Big Y, so I will concentrate on that. Although the Big Y test gets its name from the number of SNPs tested (over 10 million base pairs), I like to think it is called Big Y because it costs "big bucks" to take the test (currently $575 -- I know what I'm going to ask Santa for Christmas).

NGS tests like Big Y can be used to find your location deep in the haplotree because they look at a large number of known SNPs (about 25,000). These tests will also discover SNPs that are unique to you; i.e., SNPs that have not been discovered yet that could eventually lead to new branches on the haplotree if enough other test subjects also have the same SNPs. In short, NGS testing can uncover your deep ancestry as well as help the genetic genealogy community grow the haplotree.

If you are interested in learning more about SNP testing and NGS testing, I highly recommend the following set of YouTube videos by John Cleary at the 2016 "Who Do You Think You Are - Live" conference in Birmingham, England. I found them to be very informative and easy to understand.

Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxvdayxZiI

Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l5QARvhb38#t=38.455813

Part 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxexkvfus6w#t=2.455583

Here Comes the Begging

This is going to sound like begging, and I admit I am begging. One of the ways we can learn more about our Ackley ancestors is to have more men with the Ackley surname take a Y-DNA test with FTDNA and join the Ackley surname project. If you are an Ackley male and you don't know if you are descended from Nicholas Ackley, the Y-DNA test can help answer that question. If you are an Ackley male and you are a descendant of Nicholas, taking the test will add to the database and can help establish the lines of descent below Nicholas that will be useful to future testers. Y-DNA testing could also help connect American Ackleys with Ackleys in England if an English Ackley took a Y-DNA test. It would also be interesting if other Ackley males would do the SNP testing to confirm our deep ancestry as mentioned above. So if you have considered taking a Y-DNA test, I encourage you to please take the plunge and add your results to the Ackley surname project. 

Link of the Day

This is the link to the R-S1051 Haplogroup Project on FTDNA. It gets a little technical, but there is some good information on this web site. Make sure to visit all of the tabs at the top (Overview, Background, Goals, News, Results)


https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/r-s1051/about

Quote of the Day

"Always do right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest."   

--Mark Twain

Sources

1. Estes, Roberta, "Concepts – Y DNA Matching and Connecting with your Paternal Ancestor", https://dna-explained.com/2016/04/14/concepts-y-dna-matching-and-connecting-with-your-paternal-ancestor/

2. Family Tree DNA Learning Center, https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/y-dna-testing/y-str/two-men-share-surname-genetic-distance-37-y-chromosome-str-markers-interpreted/

3. International Society of Genetic Genealogists, http://isogg.org/wiki/Haplogroup

4. Wikipedia contributors, "Beaker culture," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beaker_culture&oldid=721517090 (accessed June 2, 2016).

5. Wikipedia contributors, "Population bottleneck," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Population_bottleneck&oldid=722697228 (accessed June 2, 2016).

6. Family Tree DNA, R-S1051 Haplogroup Project Page, https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/r-s1051/activity-feed

7. Wikipedia contributors, "Picts," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Picts&oldid=722944060 (accessed June 2, 2016).

DNA Testing Sale

For anyone considering DNA testing, now might be the time to do it. Both Ancestry and Family Tree DNA are running sales from now through April 26th to celebrate National DNA Day, which is April 25th. That is the day in 1953 when a paper detailing the structure of DNA was published in Nature Magazine.

Ancestry offers only the autosomal test, and theirs is on sale for $79 (normally $99).

Family Tree DNA offers several tests. Here are the sale prices they are offering:

So, if you are considering testing, take advantage of these sale prices. And if you use Family Tree DNA, join the Ackley Project!

A "Black Sheep" Story

Even the best of families all seem to have that one family member that doesn't quite live up to expectations -- the so-called "black sheep" of the family. President Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy, Alec Baldwin has his brother Daniel, Bill Murray has his brother Brian, ... you get the idea.

The closest thing to a black sheep I could find in my family is my 3rd great uncle, Charles Homer Ackley, my great great grandfather's brother. Charles was born in Akron, Ohio on November 26, 1834, and died in Chicago, Illinois one day short of his 33rd birthday in 1867. The circumstances surrounding his death -- he died in a brothel after a week long bender filled with whisky and morphine -- were certainly tragic for his family when it happened, but through the lens of time it has all the makings of a black sheep story. I can't tell it any better than the newspaper did in 1867, so I offer this transcription of the story of his death as my black sheep story.

A TERRIBLE DEATH.

Coroner’s Inquest on the Body of C. H. Ackley, of Saginaw City – The Testimony in the Case

[From the Chicago Tribune of Tuesday]

   At the inquest on the body of Charles H. Ackley, of Saginaw City, Monday the following testimony was given:

   Mrs. Emma Hedges, keeper of the brothel in which Ackley died, gave the following testimony: I keep the house No. 155 Wells Street. The deceased came to my house a week ago last Friday night. He was pretty drunk, and wanted to stay all night. He stayed the next day, and until Sunday. Sunday he came to my room, and I asked if he didn’t’ want some dinner. He said he would rather have a drink of whisky. He had a bottle with him, a quart bottle, I think, and he wanted to get it filled again. I coaxed him to drink some tea. He went out riding with one of the girls. He stayed until Tuesday, when he settled up his bill and said he was going home. He had a valise, which he took with him, and went away in a hack to get some money. He then went off, and said he should be back in the city in about a month. Wednesday night he came in again. I said, “I thought you had gone, Charley,” and he said “No, I staid to see the fight.” He was very drunk. He had not had anything to eat. He was very drunk. He said he had left his money and watch in a saloon. He wanted a bottle of whisky, but I had none. He then wanted a bottle of wine, which I got. I asked him if he wouldn’t have something to eat, and then went up stairs. He staid all night and all day Thursday. Thursday I went into his room and the paper to him. He staid that night. Friday he went out to get a paper and came back. That night he said he would like to go the theatre, but he did not feel well enough. That was the last I saw of him. He staid that night. Saturday, about noon, one of the girls came up and said, “Something is the matter with Charley.” I went down and found him in a stupor. I had been told by one of the girls that a night or tow before he had had the tremens, and I was afraid that was what ailed him. I sent out for policemen. Two came, and I sent them for a doctor. I had heard Charley say something about a friend of his, so I sent for him, too. It was about half-past four when he died.

   Mary De Ville, an inmate of Mrs. Hedge’s house, testified as follows: The deceased came to our house Wednesday night. He had been drinking a good deal. He staid till Saturday, and Saturday morning, before breakfast, he drank half a pint of whisky. After eating breakfast he asked me to get him some whisky and morphine. He said he was going home the next day, and that morphine always straightened his nerves. He wanted to be all straight. I went out and got a quarter of a grain of morphine. I went back and the deceased took a drink of whisky and then swallowed the morphine. This was about 12 o’clock. After taking the morphine he was immediately seized with a spasm, and turned black in the face. I went out and got him a pint of whisky on Friday night. I told him he must not drink but a little at a time, and he promised me he would not. When I awoke in the morning the bottle was empty. When he was taken with the spasm I went and called Mrs. Hedges. He died about half past four. He did not eat regularly. He was there a week and a day in all, and to my knowledge did not eat more than three times. He only went out of the house to get a drink, and then came back. He drank only tea besides whisky. He told me a good deal about his home and his brother, and said he wanted to be all straight when he got home. Wednesday night he was very drunk, and talked wild all night. The only time when he seemed straight was on Saturday morning. He seemed sober then.

   The jury returned a verdict that the deceased died of congestion of the brain and lungs, superinduced by exhaustion and dissipation.

   The deceased was a man of about thirty years of age, and well known in our business community. His relations, consisting of his mother and a brother, reside in Saginaw. Both of them are highly respected members of society. About a year since, the deceased entered upon a similar career of dissipation in this city, which was protracted to such a length of time that his mother came in search of him, and after much persuasion, induced him to return. In spite of his wild ways, this young man was the idol of her heart, and his death, and the manner thereof, will be a terrible blow to the afflicted parent.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune and was reprinted in the Saginaw newspaper shortly after it ran in Chicago. Unfortunately I have lost the exact reference, but it would have appeared in early December, 1867 since the death occurred 26 November 1867.

Charles was laid to rest in Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio in the same plot as the rest of his family.

Discussion Questions

• Do you have any stories about a "black sheep" in your family you can share?

Link of the Day

This Wikipedia page discusses the origins of the term "black sheep":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sheep

Quote of the Day

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

--Eleanor Roosevelt

Next Post Topic

Sergeant John Ackley (1662-1736) and his Familly

Field Trip!

I just spent a week in Washington, D.C. visiting my daughter and her family, and while I was there I had an opportunity to spend a couple of days at the National Archives doing some genealogy research. I thought I would do a quick post on the Archives as a research resource.

The U.S. National Archives

The Archives has many different types of records available to researchers. The records most relevant to genealogy research include census records, military service records, immigration records, naturalization records, passport applications, and land records, but there are many other types of records available. In order to get access to records in the Archives, you must obtain a researcher's card.

My National Archives Research Card

The card is free, and all you need to do to get one is watch a presentation on records available and rules for using and handling them. There is a bit of security involved to get into the Archives -- metal detector, etc., and you can't bring notebooks or backpacks into the research area. You can bring laptops, cameras, and loose notes with you. There are computers available in the research areas, so you probably don't need to bring your own.

I've been to the Archives several times, and on this trip I was concentrating on military records. Records for pre-World War I military service are kept at the Archives; all military records for later service are kept at the National Military Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. There are two primary types of military records at the Archives - Compiled Service Records, and Pension Application and Pension Payment Records. I have used both types of records and both have useful information, but in general I have found more genealogically relevant information in the pension records. I plan on a more extensive post on using Civil War records with examples from my 2nd great grandfather's records at a later date.

You can order records online, but that can get pretty expensive; for example, a Civil War pension file costs $80. Of course that is cheap compared to a plane ticket to Washington, D.C., but if you are going to be in the area anyway like I was, a trip there can save you some money.

On this trip I took advantage of a fairly new program at the Archives. They have a section called the Innovation Hub that has computers and scanners available that you can use for free to scan records. 

Work Area at the Innovation Hub at the National Archives

Normally when you request records they are brought to an area where you can examine them and either take photos or make paper copies for 25 cents per page (which can also get pretty expensive). If you have your records brought to the Innovation Hub instead, you get to use their equipment for free; your part of the bargain is that you must agree to scan an entire file which will then be made available online on the Archives website for others to use. You get to take a copy of everything you scan with you, so bring a flash drive. A large file can take a while -- one of the pension files I scanned had over 150 pages and took about 5 hours. But in the end you get high quality scans of the records you want and you help others get access to records online.

If you ever find yourself in Washington, D.C. with a free day or two, check out the National Archives and see if you can find some records that will help you with your genealogy research. Make sure you visit the other side of the Archives as well -- if you go in the main entrance you can see original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Where in the World Do Ackleys Live?

I'm kind of a numbers guy, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the number of Ackleys around the world and what countries they live in. I've also put together some rough figures on the number of Ackleys alive throughout American history (insofar as they can be supported by documentation).

From the table below, you can see that there are just under 9,000 Ackleys throughout the world [2].

Table 1: World Population of Ackleys from http://forebears.io/surnames/ackley#nations2014 

To put that number in perspective, there are about 7.125 billion people living in the world right now, so Ackleys represent only 0.000126% of the world's population -- we are pretty rare! The surname Chang is the most frequently occurring name globally -- there are over 76,000,000 people with that name, which is a little over 1% of the world's population [2].

Not surprisingly, the huge majority of Ackleys live in the United States, but what is surprising is the country that holds the number 2 spot -- Tanzania. I would have expected England to be #2, but England is all the way down at #6. For those of you unfamiliar with Tanzania, it is in Eastern Africa, and is where Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is located. A personal side note -- both my dad and daughter have been to Tanzania and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (on separate trips). I wish I had known about these numbers at the time they were there -- I would have asked them to look into it. Tanzania was ruled by Great Britain starting after World War I, and British rule ended in 1961. This is only speculation, but it seems likely that the name must have been introduced during that time.

A Breakdown of Ackleys Currently in the United States

This is not real scientific, but I went to www.whitepages.com and searched for Ackley by state and got the following breakdown of Ackleys in each of the states [1]:

Table 2: Ackleys by State compiled for data on www.whitepages.com

The numbers don't add all the way up to the 8,210 reported in the first table, but not all children are included in the white pages so that can explain the shortfall. From our beginnings in Connecticut, you can see that there are now Ackleys in all 50 states; New York has the most with 667, while Mississippi only has 1 (he must be a lonely guy!).

History of Ackleys in America

The table below shows the number of Ackleys in each of the states over the history of the U.S. Federal Census. Note that the years with yellow headings are those years where only the heads of household were identified by name, while the years with blue headings are the years where every individual was recorded by name. For that reason, you'll see that the total Ackleys for the years in yellow are much lower than for the years in blue. In the body of the table, all cells with no Ackleys are color coded red, while the cells with some positive number of Ackleys are color coded green. The table is arranged so that the states with the most years where Ackleys were present in the state are near the top, while states with the fewest years with Ackleys present are toward the bottom. I got these numbers by doing an exact search on Ancestry for the Ackley surname by state in each census year, so as mentioned above this is not entirely scientific, but it is as close as I could get given the data available [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. 

Table 3. Ackleys by State from U.S. Federal Census 1790-1940

As would be expected, the presence of Ackleys in the states tends to follow the expansion of the United States westward. My Ackleys followed this pattern; started in Connecticut, moved to New York, then Ohio, then Michigan, and finally Wisconsin. One other thing to notice is that New York has been the most populous state in terms of Ackleys throughout U.S. history since 1810, so it is not surprising that there are more Ackleys in New York now than in any other state.

Ackleys in England

Although the data available from the England census is not as extensive as the U.S. census, I think it is worth taking a look at the changes in the population of Ackleys in England; however, the numbers are much smaller than in the U.S., so I have left them at the country level. These numbers also come from census records on Ancestry [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]:

Table 4: Ackleys from England Census 1841-1911

One thing to notice from this data is that the number of Ackleys in England has actually declined since the last census for which data is available (from 87 in 1911 to 75 in 2014), while in the U.S. the number has more than doubled (from 4,097  in 1940 to 8,210 in 2014). The total population in England grew from 42,000,000 to 64,000,000 during that time, while the total U.S. population during that time went from 132,000,000 to 317,000,000. I don't have an explanation for these phenomena, nor can I draw any conclusions, but the numbers do show the contrast between the growth (or lack thereof) in the number of Ackleys in the two countries.

Discussion Questions

• Does anyone have a plausible explanation for the relatively large number of Ackleys in Tanzania?
• How did your Ackleys migrate in the United States?

Link of the Day

This is a link to the website I used to get statistics on the number of Ackleys worldwide. You can search for any surname to see how many there are and where they live. There is also a short history of each surname.

http://forebears.io/surnames/ackley#nations2014

Quote of the Day

"Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning." 

-- Anthony Trollope (19th century English novelist)

Sources

1. www.whitepages.com
2. forebears.io
3. Ancestry.com. 1790 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
4. Ancestry.com. 1800 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
5. Ancestry.com. 1810 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
6. Ancestry.com. 1820 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
7. Ancestry.com. 1830 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
8. Ancestry.com. 1840 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. 
9. Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
10. Ancestry.com. 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
11. Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
12. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. 
13. Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
14. Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.
15. Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
16. Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
17. Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
18. Ancestry.com. 1841 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010.
19. Ancestry.com. 1851 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
20. Ancestry.com. 1861 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
21. Ancestry.com. 1871 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
22. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1881 England Census[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
23. Ancestry.com. 1891 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
24. Ancestry.com. 1901 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
25. Ancestry.com. 1911 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.