After administering the Mason DNA project for almost two years now, I am finally prepared to summarize some of our findings. One of the first goals was to determine if all the various branches of the Whitmore family in the Mason and Stanton areas were indeed related. It was clear that they all probably descended from the slaves on the Edwin Whitmore plantation at the time of the Civil War. But the question remained were they biologically related? Oral history from some stated that they were. Additionally, most had referred to each other as "cousin" down through the generations. But no one could tell me how they were related.
Our testing proved that the answer was a resounding yes! And, furthermore, all branches led back to one man, Charles Whitmore, born about 1815 in Virginia. Three male Whitmores, each from a distinct set, took the Y-DNA test. One was a descendant of Billy Whitmore, born about 1840, another from James "Jim" Whitmore who was born about 1842. The third participant was a descendant of Steven Whitmore who was born about 1860. The scanty evidence available from that time period seemed to suggest that Billy Whitmore and Jim Whitmore were brothers and Steven Whitmore their nephew. The 1870 census listed all members of a household but did not give their relationships to each other as did later censuses. In the 1870 household of Charles Whitmore in Civil District 5 of Fayette County, Tennessee, there was a young male named Jack Whitmore who appeared to be his son. This same Jack is listed in the 1880 census as the brother of Jim Whitmore, Thus, it appears that Charles was the father of Billy and Jim and grandfather of Steven.
The three male test-takers were all a perfect match at 12 markers meaning that they shared a common ancestor through their male lineages. But this finding needed further fine tuning in order to determine about when this common male ancestor lived. One way to do this is through autosomal DNA testing which can predict a range of relationship between two people. In addition to the three original male participants, several Whitmore descendants, both male and female, took the autosomal DNA or Family Finder test which can pinpoint if two persons share a common ancestor within about 5 generations. Nearly all of them matched each other at various levels. And, importantly, the participant from the oldest generation (a great-grandchild of Charles Whitmore) did match every single participant at fairly significant levels. All evidence pointed to a common ancestor who would have lived about the time of Charles Whitmore
Our test results were able to tell us what sketchy records and faulty memories could not: that the various Whitmore families in this area of West Tennessee were indeed all the descendants of Charles Whitmore.
