Roger Tanner Ancestry

This posting is for my Uncle Roger Tanner. We recently tested his DNA at 23andMe. I will be sending this link to family and friends interested in the results of his test. I will also send this link to people that are looking for Native American ancestry to show what you can do with your data when the more conservative projects fail to show this.I will update this page in the future as I get more information from my research.

Roger's family on both sides is very Colonial and for the last few hundred years, very Southern. The family is from Georgia and Florida most recently but we have family from Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennesee. So any family connections in the Southeast are possible. The paternal Tanner side of the family is mostly from Washington County Ga. and surnames of interest are Tanner, Tompkins, Scott, and Sheppard. Roger's maternal side of the family is more of a mystery and we are working on that documentation now. Surnames of interest are Brady, Phillips, Bryant, Bryan, Dove, Smith, Mansell, and Mathis.


What have we done with Roger's DNA?

We have sent his data to Dr. Doug McDonald and David Wesolowski who runs the Eurogenes Genetic Ancestry Project We have submitted his Y-Chromosome information to Adriano Squecco and David F Reynolds' Y-Chromosome Genome Comparison project . Roger is also in Leon Kull's HIR Search.

If you have any questions or match him at HIR Search or 23andMe, feel free to email me with any questions. You can find my email in the "about me" link on the right side of this page.



Here is some Ancestral information for my Uncle Roger Tanner.

23andMe Global Similarity

23andMe Ancestry Painting

Here is a high level "painting" of Roger's chromosomes.

23andMe Ancestry Finder

23andMe decribes the tool by saying "Let the 23andMe Community help you discover what countries your ancestors might have lived in. This lab is fueled by your responses to the "Where Are You From?" ancestry survey."

So above are the results from 23andMe. 23andme tends to be rather conservative so I submitted his DNA to a few cutting edge projects.

Dr. Doug McDonald

Dr. McDonald had just gotten his V3 program working but was able to provide these comments:

"He has a 25 mb segment of Native American on Chromosome 18 and a 5 mb one on
chromosome 14. More to follow. There is also a teensy bit of African. Rest Euro. -Doug"

So we can see that with a higher resolution tool Dr. Mcdonald was able to find more Amerindian than 23andMe reported.



 

David Wesolowski

Next I sent his data to the Eurogenes Project for analysis. David replied with this:

  "Your uncle (US184) does show some Native American, with small, tight hits on chromosomes 4 and 6, and larger but sparser hits on chromosomes 11 and 18. I assume it's one of the larger Amerindian hits that got picked up at 23andMe as "Asian". The chromosome 11 and 18 SNPs that weren't flagged in this analysis, that sit in-between those that were, do pull your uncle some way towards my North Amerindian samples.
  
   However, he also shows very clear signals of Sub-Saharan African ancestry on chromosomes 2 and 4. They're quite unmistakable, and I have a hunch that they come from the same ancestor as the Amerindian hits, but that's just speculation." -David

Roberta Estes has written extensively on Native American and Melungeon ancestry. Here are a few links to a few of her articles for further reading.

http://www.jogg.info/52/files/Estes1.pdf

http://www.jogg.info/62/files/Estes.pdf

One more letter from Grace

Here is one more letter from Grace Tanner to her brother, my grandfather Roger Tanner.

Letter to Roger Tanner from sister Grace

My grandfather Roger Tanner was a WWII vet and typical of many of his peers liked to drink Beer and smoke cigars. Here is a letter from his sister Grace asking him to go to church and find Jesus. You can tell from the letter that she loved Roger very much.  If you click on each picture it will enlarge to original size.

Grocery list from Juanita Tanner

I had scanned numerous letters to and from the Tanner family last year.  On the back of a letter from Grace there is a grocery list that I believe Juanita scribbled. I enjoy seeing these little time capsules from my ancestors.

 

 

Juanita Melviney Tanner

     My maternal grandmother Juanita Melviney Tanner (maiden name Brady or Phillips or another name depending on the day of the week) died on September 18, 2003. I spent quite a bit of time with Grandma Tanner as a young boy and as an adult. When I was little I would spend the night at Grandma's house and she would make me greasy hamburgers on plain white bread (no bun) with a glass of orange Kool-Aid in a huge Tupperware cup. I swear she put a half cup of sugar in each glass and I loved it! My grandparents lived in an old house with very little insulation so at night it would get very cold. She would tuck me into the bed in the guest room and stack five blankets on top of me.

   When I was a teenager I would visit Grandma Juanita and she would tell me stories about the family while we watched Bonanza or Sanford and Son. Juanita was a fun person to talk to and often laughed. She was also very religious and very superstitious. When Grandma Juanita passed away she had been sick for some time so it wasn't a surprise to the family. She was 83 and had lived a full life. I was called from work by my mom the day she was dying and went to her house. She was surrounded by her family when she died the way it should be.

     A few days later we had the viewing at Blount & Curry Funeral Home in Tampa, Florida. My wife Beth is a florist and is very talented. She offered to make the casket spray since these can cost many hundreds of dollars. The family pitched in and gave her money for the flowers. Beth went to the floral wholesaler and picked out several types of flowers such as beautiful white lilies, yellow roses, and dark purple lisianthus that looked like purple velvet.

     Later that day Beth was in our house making the flowers for Grandma's casket, when she looked out the window and saw a hummingbird hovering around, looking in at her. Beth excitedly told me about this when I got home. She said " she felt like the hummingbird was Grandma letting us know that she was free from pain, flying up to Heaven." This was the first time she had ever seen a hummingbird and we didn't have a bird feeder outside at this house.

     Later that night we took the flowers to the funeral home and all of the family was there for the viewing. We were shocked to see that the flowers that Beth had picked out matched Grandma Juanita's dress perfectly even though she had no idea Grandma would be wearing purple and the room she was in was.... The Hummingbird Room! The room was full of pictures of hummingbirds... So was the hummingbird at the window Grandma Juanita from the grave?

OakLawn Cemetery

I visited Oak Lawn Cemetery today with cousin JoNelda. Attached are photos of John Morgan Tanner and Minnie Lee Tanner née Scott's headstones. They are located in separate areas of the cemetery. 

Minnie Lee was located next to her daughter Rose Pearl. Her grave shows her name as Rosa Pearl, Im not sure what is correct. Rose's (Rosa's?) husband was also buried next to Minnie and his wife.