Tombstone Tuesday - Nova Lee Peters Godwin

Nova Lee  (Peters) Godwin Martin 

- From the personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, taken May 5, 2006

- My great-grandmother, daughter of William Edward Peters and Dora King.  Born August 11, 1908, died August 22, 2000 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She married Orville Godwin in West Plains, Missouri November 9, 1927. She is buried in Hackett, Arkansas in a relatively small cemetery called Mount View Cemetery overlooking Hackett Lake.

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This post is part of the daily blogging theme hosted by GeneaBloggers.

Wordless Wednesday - Wedding Day

Godwin-Lasiter Wedding, March 1956: My Maternal Grandparents, Sue Lasiter and Larry Godwin; Nova Peters Godwin (left) and James Putman Lasiter (right)


This post is part of the daily blogging theme hosted by GeneaBloggers.

Tombstone Tuesday - Eliza Ann Orr Godwin

Eliza Ann Orr Godwin, b. 27 Apr 1833, d. 20 Oct 1929 - Personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, photograph taken May 1, 2006 by Ginger R. Smith, Old Baptist Cemetery, Salem, Arkansas

Eliza Ann Orr married Agrippa Spinks Godwin who died 1864 at the Battle of Iron Knob in Iron Knob MO. The burial spot of Agrippa Spinks Godwin is unknown at this time but is believed to be an unmarked mass burial grave in Ironton.

This was the state of the tombstone as I found it in 2006 - in 3 separate pieces.

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This post is part of the daily blogging theme hosted by GeneaBloggers.

Facebook Info - Click to Links

This week I posted a link to an article about how Facebook is sharing the information we include in our INFO tab - city, hometown, education, work, and of course interests - with third parties - with NO OPT-OUT OPTION EXCEPT TO DELETE THIS INFORMATION AND LEAVE IT BLANK ON OUR PROFILE. I was skeptical at first because some people's information remained hidden if they were not my friend, but I soon realized it was because they had not yet been "hit" with Facebook's "Connection" bomb.

Today I was again approached with Facebook's forced attempt to link to "pages" from my INFO tab. I took a screenshot before exiting out of the page and saving. I wanted to test my theory out. If I unchecked the box to link to my employer, North Carolina Central University, would that then be deleted automatically from my profile? However, I was so outraged by the entire process and having to uncheck all of those boxes and then the thought of having to add all of those "interests" back into my profile at a later time when I wasn't so angry...

Anyways, here's a screenshot of the "forced linkage..." So if you see this, be prepared...




After I calmed down a few minutes I went back to my Info tab to see if anything had changed and sure enough at the top of my page was a "View Page Suggestions" Link pointing to the page I displayed above.


When I unchecked my employer, North Carolina Central University, it was deleted from my profile completely. In fact the entire Info page looks totally different. I wonder how many lists my name has now been added to? I'm not particularly happy with this change and I intend to let Facebook know.

** Update **

So now I am getting updates from all of the interests I am now linked to in my info page showing up in my home page, including one from Eminem, the rapper. They are making up pages based on what people have in their interests section. For example, the "I Play Ice Hockey" was something *I* typed in...evidently other Facebook subscribers have entered this phrase into their profile, so Facebook made it into a page and automatically subscribed all of us to it. I tried to change it to "Women's Ice Hockey" but I couldn't because there is not a page for that yet.

This is what you see for text you entered into your activities or interests in the info section of your profile for which Facebook has not yet created a "page" for...You see on the left the option to "dislike" it - meaning I have already been subscribed to the page...a page that doesn't even exist yet, because no one else has used this particular phrase in their profile yet.




Oh how lucky I am to be the first person subscribed to a page that doesn't exist yet!

Related Posts:

Updated: Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

Organizing Genealogy in File Cabinet

Currently I have my genealogy files organized in 3 drawers of a file cabinet as such:
drawer 1: Smith files
drawer 2: Brooks/Williams files
drawer 3: Godwin files
Within each drawer the files are organized alphabetically.
My question is this: Should I put all of my files together and organize alphabetically and if I do that, how will I know if a file folder belongs to the Smith, Brooks, or Godwin genealogy group?

Godwin-Boykin DNA puzzle

Last week I got an email from someone who matched my grandfather's DNA on Ancestry.com. Her husband's surname is Boykin and my grandfather's surname is Godwin. My grandfather's Godwin DNA matches at least 8 other Godwin test participants, so I'm fairly certain he's really a Godwin. However, we are not so sure that this Boykin match is, genetically speaking, really a Boykin. His great-great grandmother, Barbara Boykin, appears to have been a true Boykin, however, as we know, the y-chromosome DNA test only applies to the direct male lines.

Barbara Boykin was found on the 1850 census in Johnston Co., NC as an 18 year old girl living in the household of Jesse and Elizabeth Boykin. There is nothing unusual about this census report, therefore I would assign a preliminary relationship of Jesse being Barbara Boykin's father. Also, I would assume that Boykin was Barbara's maiden name.

So what of her son, Perry Boykin, born about 1856 in North Carolina? There is no mention of a father. Barbara and her young son were living with the Barry Johnson family on the 1860 Neuse River, Johnston Co., NC census report. In 1870, Perry Boykin was living with another Johnson Family, this time in Old Fields, Wilson Co., NC. His mother Barbara was not living with them. By 1880, Perry Boykin had married and was enumerated with his wife, Wealthy Jane and daughter Sarah in Old Fields, Wilson Co., NC. His mother Barbara Boykin, a single woman, was also living in the house.

The Johnston County Court minutes should be reviewed for any "bastard bonds" that might have been issued to Barbara Boykin for the maintenance of her son (who did not have a father). Wynette Parks Haun has written several abstract books for the court minutes of Johnston County, but I'm not sure if any of them go up to the year 1856 when Barbara Boykin's son Robert Perry Boykin was born. If not, then the microfilm will have to be reviewed. I hope it has an index!

With regards to the DNA....

My grandfather tested with ftDNA's 37 marker test. This Boykin match tested through Ancestry.com with their 46 marker test. Of those 46, 32 markers intersected, however we were not a perfect match. We were a 31/32 marker match. Ancestry.com gave us a 95% probability that our common ancestor was about 600 years back, not really genealogically significant. However, there is a 50% probability that our common ancestor was only 200 years back.

So did his Boykin great great grandmother have a child with one of my Godwin ancestors? My cousin Lori did find one record between Thomas Godwin and Thomas Boykin in 1828 in Johnston County, NC, however it is unclear if this Thomas Boykin had any ties to Barbara Boykin or her supposed father, Jesse Boykin. She also found another older record dating back to Isle of Wight County, VA, where both of our families are from: A Frances Godwin married General Frances Marshall Boykin in 1805. This Godwin family is not believed to be related to my own however.

The Genetic Distances between Markers and the Affect it has on MRCA

Family Tree DNA has a great article published on its website about deciding how many markers to test in order to determine the time to the most recent common ancestor.

This is a screenshot of the MRCA statistics table on their website below:

I was trying to determine by how much the number of generations to the common ancestor increased as the number of genetic distances (differences between markers) increased. Based on the number posted above, I predicted the following:

It looks as if you have only 1 marker difference, the number of generations to your most common ancestor increases by 1/2 of the number of generations you started with.

For example, if you have a 37 marker test, and you are a 100% match, then there is a 95% probability that you shared a common ancestor within the last 7 generations. If you match 36/37 (1 marker difference), then the number of generations increases by 1/2 of the original number: so you started with 7 generations, take 1/2 of that which is 3.5 and add it to the original number = 10.5. So the number of generations to your common ancestor just increased from 7 to 10.5! If there is a 2 marker difference you would add another 3.5 to the 10.5 = 14!! These numbers are reflected in the table above and the calculations seem to apply to all tests.

I believe the standard for number of years per generation is about 45 years. So 14 generations would be about 630 years. Surnames only started about 600 years ago (~ 1400's), so anything beyond 600 years probably has little genealogical value.

I referenced Genealem's Genetic Genealogy Blog post article, "Why test 67 markers?" to come up with the standard of about 46 years / generation.

Genealem wrote: "25 marker match gives you a 95% probability of having a common ancestor within the last 600 yrs"

Combining the probability for a 25 marker match of 600 years and that of 13 generations as listed in the table above, the calcuated value is about 46 years / generation.

I originally wrote this article for family members who were trying to understand the genealogical value of DNA results. I am in no way an expert on DNA testing, but have developed a few tips and tricks along the way to better understand the results myself. This article reflects my findings.