Henry Trent, III - DNA conflicts

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ve posted a chart in the media section showing which common ancestor each group converges to. Here’s the summary:

Group 2 has five lines converging on William Junior as the first common ancestor through three of his sons (Frederick, Williamson, and James Harvey. See https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Trent-Descendants-150 for James Harvey’s connection to William Junior). This line also matches a line claiming descent from Henry Trent of Amherst, whose parents are unknown. The relationship between William Junior and Henry of Amherst could be as close as brothers or father and son, or they could be distant cousins whose first common ancestor was centuries ago.

Group 1 has three lines converging on Henry d 1808 as the first common ancestor through two of his sons (Henry and John)

Group 3 is a little hard to interpret because of a Thomas Trent b. 1757 who might or might not be the son of Henry the Immigrant’s great-grandson Alexander b. 1729 (see discussion at https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/trent/1089/ and https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/trent/917/ ) If this Thomas is Alexander’s son, the line has been verified as far back as Alexander b. 1729. If not, the line is only verified as far back as Henry the Immigrant’s great-great-grandson Stephen Trent b. 1769, and Thomas is some kind of cousin to this line.

These DNA conflicts are causing confusion in the genealogy community. A post at https://www.ancestry.com/boards/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=701&p... declares that William Senior is not the father of William Junior. This is a misunderstanding of the DNA results. We don’t have enough information to make that determination. They might or might not be father and son.

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/trent/9919/ says that William Senior is actually descended from the Howell family, and implies that Thomas Howell is his father. We have no DNA information on Henry the Immigrant or any of his sons, so we can’t tell whether or not they’re really father and son. Here’s the Howell DNA project: https://www.familytreedna.com/public/howell?iframe=yresults It doesn't show the relevant Thomas Howell. It has no matches to the Trent DNA groups that I can see, and there's no mention of the name Trent.

The link also says that Henry the Immigrant’s son John is actually descended from the Childress family. John doesn’t have any easily identifiable descendants in the Trent DNA project, so I don’t know where this idea came from. I repeat: we have no DNA information on Henry the Immigrant or any of his sons, so we can’t tell whether any of them are really father and son. We can see matches and mismatches between some of the later generations, but our information doesn’t go that far back in time.

https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/28303002?p=10284008&a... goes further and says that William Trent was adopted, and that this lineage is descended from Thomas Howell even though Elizabeth Gee (William Senior’s mother) is somehow still the biological grandmother of William Junior. The only way that could happen is if Thomas fathered a son on one of Elizabeth’s daughters, or if Elizabeth was Thomas’s mother. It does appear that William Junior was Elizabeth’s favorite grandson; she left her plantation to him, and her other heirs got smaller bequests (See notes at Elizabeth Gee ).

Thomas Howell is a shadowy figure who doesn’t have a Geni profile or much documentation. However he was a witness (or something) to the will of Henry Sherman, the father-in-law of Henry the Immigrant.
https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/m/a/y/Lyndall-J-Mayes/BOOK-0001/0009-... He did leave a bequest to William Junior, apparently for 8 pounds sterling; see https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=scruffy3&...

Which means the yDNA should have certain mutations markers correct? Just like the Royal Project my first male cousins and I are in. It's actually quite simple when the mutation and markers are matched.

Yes, there should be markers. I'm still learning how to read that sort of thing, and the Trent project doesn't go into as much detail as some of the others that I've seen. For example the Bryan DNA project has more participants, and has broken the results down into a lot more subgroups: https://www.familytreedna.com/public/bryan/default.aspx?section=yre... But the Trent project is clear enough to see that there are three distinct lines within the Henry Trent 1642 family tree.

There's also a fourth group that I haven't tried to trace back to Henry 1642, and some ungrouped people who don't fit with anyone at the moment. I haven't tried to trace every single person within the first three groups either, just the ones that were easy to connect. It was very informative and I learned a lot from it.

Here's an explanation of how to read the results for the markers on Family Tree DNA projects (which is where most online DNA projects are stored): https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/project-administration/gap-refe...

There are lots of columns of numbers going across the page to the right of the ancestor's name and the haplogroup. The red column headings are for the ones that mutate more frequently. There are five different levels of testing, and the shade of blue in the non-red columns shows how deep the testing level was. But you can figure that out just by scrolling across the page to see how many columns have numbers in them.

It's a match when almost all the numbers in these columns are the same. A little variation here and there is okay. But it's not a match when there are too many differences.

The tricky part is the code for the haplogroup. You'll often see men with matching DNA who have different haplogroup numbers. This is because the haplogroup that a man is assigned to depends on how deeply his DNA has been tested. The R haplogroup is the most common group for men of English ancestry, and a guy who's been tested just enough to determine that he's an R will be assigned to the R-M269 haplogroup. If that same guy gets a new test at an intermediate level, he'll be assigned to a different R number. His DNA is still the same, it's just been identified precisely enough to put him in a smaller R subgroup. If he gets a test for an even deeper level, he'll be assigned to an even smaller subgroup with a different number.

So having different haplogroup codes doesn't always mean that the DNA doesn't match. And sometimes it does mean that they don't match. The way to tell the difference is to look at the results for the markers to see how similar they are. The project managers at Family Tree DNA have already done the work for us by dividing the spreadsheet results into different groups.

If the haplogroups start with a different letter, they definitely don't match. A haplogroup code that starts with an R will never match one that starts with a different letter, like a B or an E.

So, Mrs. Henry the Immigrant had some fun on the side, and either Henry didn’t know or he accepted the result(s) as his and loved them just the same... most likely he didn’t know.

That’s what it sounds like you’re saying.

It's always possible that Mrs. Henry the Immigrant had a little side action going. It's more likely that eager genealogists have been taking every ancestor named Trent that they have and putting them in Henry's tree whether they belong there or not.

Eager genealogists are apparently the reason that Henry has been stretched to become his own father and grandfather. We can't blame that situation on Mrs. Henry's love life lol.

I tried looking at places of birth and places of death to see if that would indicate which of the DNA lines looked more likely to be descended from Henry the Immigrant. It didn't do any good. Henry settled in Varina Parish in Henrico County. All of his sons were born and died in Henrico, except for maybe John who doesn't factor into the DNA conflicts. The relevant area of Henrico later became Chesterfield County, so you sometimes see that name too.

The relevant grandsons were all born in Henrico/Chesterfield and then moved somewhere else. There wasn't a line that stayed close to home in Henrico, and all three lines had the opportunity to make a mistake about where the first Trent in a new area came from.

Information source: http://scottzajac.tripod.com/trenth.txt

’’’Henry Trent, of Varina Parish’’’ I read my relationship wrong, I'm NOT DNA related, looks like by marriage only.