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© Marc St-Jacques

People who know me well know that I have been playing with autosomal DNA for years. These tests give the tester a chance to get in touch with numerous matches with whom he or she shares DNA. Usually, it is easy to find the family relation of matches having more than 100 cM (centimorgan – the unit of measurement for DNA). Some others are more challenging. It is the case for 6 descendants of Beatrice Millar and Randolf Holgate coming from three different branches.

The diagram above shows the position of each of the descendants in relation to the couple that interests us today. Since common matches in Ancestry suggest that this family is connected to the McAllister, let’s see what we can find out about Randolf Holgate and Beatrice Millar and try to figure out try to find out how the histories of these two families intersected.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you might be thinking that you have heard of the Millar family before and you are quite right. In my blog post about The McKinley family we learned that Archibald McAllister’s sister-in-law, Sarah McKinley, married James Millar. The two Millar families aren’t closely related as we will see.

Randolf Holgate and Beatrice Millar

Randolf Holgate was born in September 1911 in Lancashire, England. His parents, John William Holgate and Martha Ellen Davis, and the rest of the family came to Canada later that year[1]. In 1922, Randolf and his family visited his older brother George then residing in Portland, Maine[2]. Randolf, a brother, a sister and their mother must have gone back to England sometime, maybe for a visit, in 1926. They came back aboard the Doric who departed Liverpool on October 1st, 1926. A few years later, after turning 21, Randolf married Beatrice Millar in Montreal on November 4th, 1932, in the middle of the great economic crisis.

Beatrice Annie Millar was born on June 16th, 1915, and baptized on the 20th at the Anglican church of Maniwaki. Her parents were William John Millar and Annie Maria Phipps. She is the last of 8 children born from their marriage, the others being born between 1891 and 1911. In order : George Arthur, Edith, Agnes, Mamie, Lillian, Dora and Mildred.

It is interesting to note that William John Millar’s family is from the Maniwaki. This is also the area where the McAllister family settled. In fact, both families are in the Kensington Township in the 1911 census, a few years before Beatrice’s birth. Since the Holgate family comes from England, it seems only logical to research the Millar family. Note that sometimes the Millar family uses other names : Violon in the case of censuses, Vellow as mentioned in Beatrice’s birth registration.

Whoever digs a little more on the Millar family eventually finds the burial of Beatrice Millar’s father, William John Millar, in the records of the Maniwaki Anglican church. The burial is recorded on September 7, 1914, and the death occurred two days earlier, on September 5. William John Millar is said to have been 66 years, 8 months and 25 days old. That is precise! He was a farmer from Kensington Township and was husband to Annie Maria Phipps.

Usually finding a death record isn’t a big deal, but this one raise an important question since it occurs 40 weeks and two days prior to Beatrice’s birth : Is William John Millar really Beatrice’s father? This might not be impossible since pregnancy can last up to 42 weeks. But when you also consider that the duration of a pregnancy tend to get slightly shorter when the number of pregnancy increases, that Beatrice would have been the eighth child born and that by June 16, 1915, Annie Maria Phipps would have been forty-four years old, going on 45, there are a lot of red flags showing up. Aren’t these red flags pointing a possibility of an illegitimate daughter? Could this be the hidden connection to the McAllister family? Let’s see what else DNA can tell us.

Assessing the Relationship From Ancestry

The first step of our analysis is to assess the relationship between the descendants of Archibald McAllister and Eliza McKinley and those of Beatrice Millar and Randolf Holgate by using Ancestry. For each match, I compiled the number of segments and the shared cM, as displayed below in Ancestry. To have access to this information, you will require access to the list of match of each close cousin or obtain this information from them.

Even though this compilation has been done between the 19 descendants of the McAllister family (as shown in this previous blog post) and the 6 descendants of the Holgate family that have undergone DNA testing, I only present the results gathered for Archibald McAllister and Eliza McKinley’s 2 grandchildren (GC1 and GC2) and 6 great-grandchildren. It was clear from the start that both grandchildren were the ones sharing the most segments and cM with the descendants of the Holgate family as it can be expected.

From this first analysis, we can see that GC1 is the grandchild who shares the most DNA with B1 sharing 286 cM dispersed in 12 segments. Taken alone, this information allow us to draw limited conclusions. According to the Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4, the most probable relationship between B1 and GC1 would be half great-great-niece/nephew, second cousin, half first cousin once removed or first cousin twice removed all with a probability of 59 %. Because of the age of both B1 and GC1, it is possible to eliminate the half great-great-niece/nephew relationship.

Shared segments

To further the research of the connection between the McAllister family and Beatrice Millar’s family, one of her descendants, B1, uploaded his results to GEDmatch. This allows a better understanding of what DNA segments are shared between him and different members of our family that also uploaded their results.

In the previous section, we showed that Ancestry provides the number of segments and cM shared by one person with B1. What it doesn’t allow to do is to distinguish if these segments are unique to each relationship or shared with other descendants of Archibald McAllister. It would be a mistake to think that the maximum cM shared by the descendants of Archibald McAllister is 286 cM over 12 segments. Instead, it is 590 cM over 26 segments that the descendants of Archibald McAllister are sharing with B1 showing a closer family relationship than expected. Here is a breakdown of the shared segments and the cM they represent by the descendants of two branches (William and Archie) of Archibald McAllister that have uploaded their results to GEDmatch.

This breakdown requires a few comments. First of all, the cM of three of these segments, those shown in red, are underestimated. They are combined segments of overlapping smaller segments. I simply took the cM value of the longest segment from which they were combined. For example, the segment on Chromosome 8 that runs from 22 to 113 is a combination of two segments, one running from 22 to 58 being 29,6 cM long and the other from 27 to 113 being 67,9 cM long. Only that last value of 67,9 cM has been considered. Let’s also note that the 107,1 cM shared with Archie’s branch is limited because the information comes from only two descendants : one great-grandchild and one great-great-great-grandchild. The McAllister DNA has been diluted over the generation.

The Possible Connections

Before exploring these segments more in depth, it would be useful to use the WATO (What are the odds?) tool from DNA Painter to see what connections are possible, and which ones are more likely, between the McAllister family and B1, a grandchild of Beatrice Millar. Since most of William McAllister’s DNA has been reconstructed, we are also using the 542 cM identified in the previous breakdown. This will narrow the possibilities offered by WATO.

The main hypotheses to be considered are the one shown in light blue (numbered 1, 2, 4 and 6). Let’s take a closer look at what is suggested :

• Hypothesis 1 suggests that Beatrice would be born from a child of Archibald McAllister and Eliza McAllister. At this point, we can’t negate this hypothesis.
• Hypothesis 2 suggests that Beatrice Millar would be a daughter of Archibald McAllister and another woman. At this point, we can’t negate this hypothesis.
• Hypothesis 4 suggests that Beatrice Millar, who was born in 1915, would be a sister of Archibald McAllister. However, both his parents died before 1915. For that reason, this hypothesis is not valid.
• Hypothesis 6 suggests that Beatrice Millar, who was born in 1915, would be Archibald McAllister’s mother. We know that Archibald was born in 1853 and for that reason this hypothesis is not valid.

At this point, we are left with two hypotheses : either Beatrice Millar is the daughter of Archibald McAllister and another woman, or she is a daughter of one of his children. Using Ancestry, we see that none of the descendants of Beatrice Millar share DNA with the know descendants of Henry McKinley and Mary O’Hara, Eliza McKinley’s parents. This tends to validate hypothesis 2. A more detailed segment analysis could shed some more light on this.

Segment Analysis

When we compare the segments previously identified to the genome map prepared for both Archibald McAllister and Eliza McKinley as shown in this previous blog post, we find that 18 of the 26 segments totalling 471,4 cM are associated to Archibald McAllister’s DNA while the remaining 8 segments representing 119,3 cM haven’t been associated. These remaining segments could be from either Archibald McAllister of Eliza McKinley’s DNA. Surprisingly, no segment is associated with the McKinley family.

Another element to consider is the X-DNA inheritance. No matter if Beatrice Millar’s connection to the McAllister’s family is on her paternal or maternal side, she would be a carrier of X-DNA shared with some descendants of Archibald. If hypothesis 1 is accurate, X-DNA would be shared with three descendants of William McAllister who are carriers of X-DNA from Eliza McKinley. If hypothesis 2 is accurate, X-DNA would not be shared with these descendants. In this precise case, none of the three descendants of William are sharing any X-DNA with Beatrice’s grandchild.

While most of the elements examined so far tend to validate that Beatrice Millar would be a daughter of Archibald McAllister and another woman, we can’t discard hypothesis 1 out of any doubt. There is still a possibility that William McAllister’s three descendants just didn’t share the exact same DNA segments on the X chromosome as Beatrice Millar’s grandchild.

Conclusion

This article explored the possible connection between Beatrice Millar and the McAllister family. Not without any doubt, it tends to show that Beatrice Millar would be the daughter of Archibald McAllister and another woman, adding a new branch to Archibald’s descendants in Canada and abroad.

This conclusion will be reviewed when more cousins from either the Holgate or McAllister families transfer their DNA to GEDmatch. This will certainly help to confirm or disprove that Archibald McAllister is Beatrice’s father. It could also be useful to validate that Annie Maria Phipps is indeed Beatrice’s mother. Couldn’t it be one of her daughters? After all, we all know the custom of keeping in the family the baby of an unwed daughter.

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[1] 1921 Canadian Census, Province of Quebec, Montreal (Ste-Anne), sub district 29 – Ste-Anne Ward, p 5 of 14.

[2] Manifests of Passengers Arriving at St. Albans, VT, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895-1954. M1464-St. Albans, Vermont, 1895-1954, 401-450, 442, p. 640 of 998.