Last week I wrote about finding the parents of my third great grandmother, Mina Wilson, by combing through clusters of autosomal DNA matches.

Well, this week I get to add another person to the family tree:  Uncle William M. Simpson!

But first, some background:

Far little is known about our Simpson family prior to my great grandfather, Ernest L. Simpson.  My grandmother said he didn’t talk about his parents, and at the beginning of my genealogical journey nearly 40 years ago, I didn’t even know who his parents were.  Slowly but surely, however, through collaboration with other cousins, corresponding pre-internet and sharing photo-copied documents, I did get more information about his siblings and learned the names of his parents:  George W. Simpson and Achsa Sisco!   It turned out I even had an original photo of his mother Achsa (Sisco) Simpson that I had inherited!

What was also shared at the time was a transcription from a family a Bible listing the names of George W. Simpson’s parents, penned by George’s brother, Wallace R. Simpson in 1880.  The document did not list the names of any other siblings of George and Wallace, just that of the parents:  John M. Simpson and Charlotte M. Bornan.

Well, I’ve spent the better part of the last four decades searching for these mysterious Simpsons, with little progress until recently.  Turning again to DNA, I decided to try and map as many of my Simpson DNA connections as possible.  This proved exceptionally challenging as there was a hodgepodge of Simpsons originating in New Hampshire and I was clueless as to how they were related!  With a lot of online research, looking at published vital records and digitized land and probate documents, I was able to compile this chart, and then began adding DNA matches as I found them:

While I haven’t YET found John M. Simpson’s parents, I DID find his son, a brother of George W. and Wallace R., named William M. Simpson.

Given the substantial amounts of DNA shared by my aunt with Testers 1, 2 and 4, I entered these family lines and matches into DNA Painter to determine the most probable connection these testers have with our family. After viewing the proposed relationships, I was pretty certain that William M. Simpson had to be a brother of George and Wallace, but I had no paper trail at all to connect him. At first! 🙂

After more searching and probing, I discovered an indexed marriage record on Ancestry.com for William M. Simpson and Mary Norton. The citation referred me to the Wisconsin Historical Society for the original document, and I submitted my order and waited a few days. When the PDF arrived in my email in-box, I eagerly pounded on my keyboard to open the attachment and shouted for joy when I saw the proof I knew I needed to back up my DNA hypothesis!!!!

William M. Simpson, carpenter born in Vermont, married Mary Norton 5 December 1866 in Onalaska, La Crosse County, Wisconsin. 

While I was quite excited to have the documentation to prove my hunch, I’ve now found William’s trail runs cold there.  The marriage either ended in his untimely death or the pair divorced.   While William may be the same 30-year-old William Simpson enumerated in 1870 in the disabled soldiers home in Wauwatosa, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the age seems off.  (If born in Vermont, he would need to be born in the 1820s or very early 1830s before John and Charlotte left for upstate New York.)  Either way, after the end of his marriage with Mary, she had two additional quick and brief marriages which produced two more sons – Melville Harrington and George Milton, both of whom are listed on the 1880 census with their mother, Mary, and older brother Leonard Simpson, son of William.

That wraps up another day with DNA – what will tomorrow bring?