The family tree of the HOCKETT/STEINBACH/FRAZIER family of Wisconsin
2017 has brought many new genetic genealogy surprises! Lots of people received testing kits from the three testing companies for Christmas, and now many are receiving their results and some are uploading to Gedmatch.com, which helps immensely in the search for genealogical evidence & answers via DNA.
This past week, a match showed up on 23andMe in my DNA Relatives list at 3rd-4th cousin level, sharing 1.02% DNA over 4 segments; in my brother's list, the person was matching him at 2-3rd cousin level, 2.32% over 7 segments!
The first thing I did was compare my newly found 3rd cousin, whom I'll call MG, with all the members of my close paternal family who have tested with 23andMe. MG was a match for each & every one of them, on mostly the same chromosomal locations! So she appeared to be related to my paternal HUBER family. I checked this theory by comparing her with my known maternal relatives on 23andMe. She did not match any of them.
The next thing I did was to compare her against known relatives of my paternal great grandparents. I am fortunate in that I now have many solid matches from the HUBER, FRAZIER, BRUTON & WHITECOTTON families in my father's lineage.
Very quickly, I eliminated HUBER, BRUTON & WHITECOTTON as possibilities. That left FRAZIER. I have about 75 verified matches to the Quaker FRAZIER family of my great grandmother, CRAMELIA FRAZIER HUBER. When I compared MG to my known FRAZIER relatives, she was a solid match to all of them on 23andMe!!
I contacted MG immediately, to ask if she had an online family tree that I might look at, and she informed me that she had been adopted in Wisconsin, and because the adoption papers were sealed, knew little about her birth parents. The story she had been told was that her father was married, but had carried on a long-term relationship with another woman in a different town, and had with her five children who were all placed for adoption in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Her birth mother's married name at the time was Beverly (Harrison) DeVoy; in 1991 she married Fred Hall. Beverly's mother was Shirley (Shaefer) Harrison, and her father was Raymond Harrison.
MG was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, and adopted in either Fort Atkinson or Madison, Wisconsin. Since most of the FRAZIER family lived in Iowa & Indiana, with some migrating to California, at first I wasn't sure which branch MG might be related to.
Going back to my 23andMe DNA Relatives list, I combed through, to see if I might find any more clues within the FRAZIER family. I did.
One of my DNA Relatives on 23andMe was listed as MG's aunt!
While I had never been in contact with MG's aunt on 23andMe, I was certainly aware of how she was related to the FRAZIER family, through a branch of the HOCKETT family: LINDEN FLOYD HOCKETT who married MABEL GRACE FRAZIER. MABEL was the daughter of JASPER NEWTON FRAZIER--the brother of my great grandmother CRAMELIA FRAZIER HUBER.
Fortunately, there is a large database for the all Quaker FRAZIER descendants on Rootsweb, which I have used many times before to help verify my FRAZIER DNA matches, so I went there to see if this HOCKETT/FRAZIER family had ever lived in Wisconsin. They had. According to census, they lived in Waukesha, Wisconsin from about 1930 onward.
Waukesha, Wisconsin is about 42 miles east of both Watertown and Fort Atkinson--about a 45 minute drive.
The oldest son of LINDEN FLOYD HOCKETT & MABEL GRACE FRAZIER was NEIL JOSEPH HOCKETT Sr (died 1962) who married HELEN STEINBACH (died 1985). MG's aunt was one of their daughters, so it would stand to reason that one of her brothers was MG's father. The youngest son DENNIS HOCKETT was born 1945, so could not have been MG's father. But the two oldest sons, now deceased, were of the correct age to be her father:
NEIL JOSEPH "JACK" HOCKETT Jr born Feb 16, 1930 Waukesha, Wisconsin, died April 26, 2000 Merrill, Lincoln Co Wisconsin.
WILLIAM HOWARD HOCKETT born Jan 17, 1938 Waukesha, Wisconsin, died Sept 12, 2013 Lake Wales, Polk Co Florida.
Please! If anyone has any further information that could help MG find out which of these two men is her biological father, contact me via this blog.
Have a great day!
Betty
© Betty Tartas 2017
