Juanita History

This was a document I created to help understand my Grandmother Juanitas side of the family. I believe I created this around 2008. New science and documents are possibly available so I will have to revisit this issue. March 2020

I’m writing this to record and share my thoughts and research with my family that descends from Juanita Brady. I call her Juanita Brady because that is how she identifies herself on the few records I have of her. On the 1935 Florida State Census she lives with her family and the head of the family is Mr. Phillips. However all of the children are listed as Brady’s including Juanita. On a document from her first marriage in 1937, she identifies herself as a Brady also. I have never found a document that listed Juanita as a Phillips, only Brady. So I have to go with what I’m provided in the records.

First of all, family research and DNA analysis is hard. It takes quite a bit of research and money to figure this stuff out. I love doing it, but its not a simple task to reconstruct your family’s past. Some people spend their entire lives and spend a fortune doing this, only to find very little accurate information.

The TV shows you watch like the George Lopez Show where they give guests an ethnic breakdown are based on poor science. There are several companies that use very old tests and will tell you what Native American tribe you match up with. These companies are known within the DNA community as a sham. People continue to use their services because they tell people what they want to hear, that they are a certain percentage of American Indian. The “TV” tests use only 13-100 CODIS markers to identify your origin. This technology is antiquated and the results are ambiguous at best. The new tests available today utilize 500,000 + markers within our DNA , a substantial difference.

If you want to have membership within a  recognized tribe, you need to “prove” decent from a person on the various rolls. (Dawes, Baker, etc.) This is very hard to do and the majority of Americans with Indian ancestors are not on these documents.

If you have no records and want to trace your native ancestry with DNA only, which is our present situation, there are still a few things you can do. 23andme provides a test that will give you a geographic breakdown but it’s rather conservative. It’s split up into three percentages: European, African, and Asian. For people with American roots the Asian is the Native American percentage. Most “white” people get 98-99 % European since that’s what we are overwhelmingly. If you get a larger percentage of Asian 4-10 % then you have a good chance of having a Native ancestor.

Family Tree DNA has a new test that is to be released any day now. This test is supposed to be more granular in respect to ethnicity, but the Affymetrix chip that is used by FTDNA is geared toward Northern European heritage, so I’m not sure how well it will identify Asian or Native American markers. It will probably tell me all about my Irish and English ancestry, but that’s not the subject of this article.

Within the extended Tanner family there is debate about Juanita’s origins. Here are the competing stories. Feel free to add more if you have one…lol.



Story # 1. Walter Lee Brady and Missouri Bryant are her parents. This is the official story, but we have little proof if this is true or not. Here are my thoughts on this.

    We don't have a birth certificate for Juanita yet and no sign of her on the 1920 Census. Now  Juanita was born supposedly March 1920 and the 1920 census was taken in January. On that census if Missouri was her mother, then she was about to have her. But the census doesn't mention if a mother is with child, so we will never know.
Juanita Tanner shows up on the 1935 Florida Census for the first time. On that census the following people are listed:

         J.A Phillips 50, Missouri Phillips 52, Annie Brady 29, Frank Brady 26, Council Brady 23, Juanta Brady 15 and Corine Farabee 4.

 Now we know that Annie was back in the house since she had divorced Mr. Farabee and had Corine there as well. But what I want to point out is the fact that the first 3 children of Missouri’s were 3 years apart each. There is an eight year difference between Juanita and Council.  It’s not impossible, but suspicious.


Story # 2. James A Phillips brought Juanita from another state were she was born to an Indian woman. Grandma always had stories of different mothers.


Story # 3. Juanita was the daughter of Missouri Bryant and a traveling Italian salesman who was a boarder in Missouri’s boarding house.



So above are the 3 stories we have to work with.

Before we get into what we have discovered lets discuss what we know about the family without all of these pesky records and DNA tests. Families often have legends that are passed down and many of them have quite a bit of truth in them. There are also things that people don’t want to pass on and feel ashamed of at the time so details are left out.

My job as a family historian is to find the facts and present them in a respectful manner. I loved Grandma Juanita and would have done anything for her, but I have tools that she didn’t have access to and the ability to analyze DNA and cross reference large databases of people that have submitted their genealogy and DNA.

In years past if you researched your family’s genealogy you could only go by what was recorded and what you are told. With DNA and the huge databases that have been compiled by 23andme, the Sorenson Foundation, and Family Tree DNA,  we are able to see what others  match our DNA report as their heritage. For example,  I consider myself English and Irish with a small amount of Native American ancestry. This is what I have been told by family and the genealogy that I have done over the years. When I took the data that has been reported by over 50 people in the FTDNA database, I see an overwhelming English, Irish Ancestry.

I also see a bit of Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry. This seems to reflect what has been reported by my family over the years.


We have several people in our family that look rather “Native” so it’s not so far fetched for us to say we have Native heritage. We have a strong family history from the South and actually have living people in our family that “look Indian”.

So what does my (our) DNA say about Native Ancestry?

There are several tests that you can take to prove, or try to prove Native American ancestry. A Y-Chromosome test (native male line),  mtDNA (native female line), and various autosomal DNA tests (the rest of your DNA).

We suspect Juanita’s native ancestry comes from the female Northern European line. I carry her mtDNA which was passed down from her mother.

It is the mtDNA U4 haplogroup which originates in Siberia or Finland from 30,000 years ago. It’s quite common in Ireland and the UK which makes sense if Missouri Bryant is her mother. I manage the U4 mtDNA group at FTDNA and it’s not Indian. It is one of the oldest mtDNA’s of Europe.

The Y-Chromosome won’t help us here with Juanita since that’s a male only test.

Autosomal DNA testing is rather new but I’ve taken a test and my results have linked me to numerous people throughout the world that share DNA with me. There are also other databases that I’ve submitted my DNA to and have found several distant cousins from Ireland, England, and Australia. Not much Native American yet, only a small amount.

So what can we do at this point to find our Native ancestry?


#1 wait. There are numerous studies and tests that are linking portions of our genomes to areas of the world.

#2 Test Uncle Bo. – He is the closest link we have to Native Ancestry from the way he looks to his age. When he dies… we will be out of luck. That would give us a direct link to Grandpa Tanner’s paternal line as well as grandma’s mtDNA and atDNA.

Any test I take will be diluted by 50% since I carry Bill Allen’s DNA as well as April’s. So without Grandma to test, Uncle Bo is the best chance we have.

Uncle Bo is 50% Grandma, 50% percent Grandpa. I’m 25% percent Grandma, 25% Grandpa and the other 50% my paternal line (Allen.)  So as generations pass, it gets diluted more and more.


So if you have any information that I have not covered in this document, please send it my way. I would love to be disproved or scooped by a family member with new information.