. . . I Once Was Lost . . . But Now Am Found . . .

Beloved by its original Dougan family owners, this Holy Bible, nearly 200 hundred years old, tattered and water-stained, was published and leather-bound in 1823 in New York City, bundled with other Bibles and carted to the city's wharf, where it was loaded into the hold of a coastal packet ship bound for New Orleans. (Canals had yet to be dug to ease transportation to Pittsburgh and the midwest, and it was cheaper to transport goods by water.)

Packet ship

There the Bibles were unpacked, some sold locally, others placed in barrels, carted to a levee, and rolled up the gang-plank of a steamboat headed up the Mississippi. The side-wheeler entered the Ohio River and about twenty-five days out of New Orleans, arrived in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ohio River

Stacked with other Bibles on a table in a dry goods store, a few days later a God-fearing man of Presbyterian descent picked it up with reverence, carefully turned its pages until finding what he sought, and then counted out $3.75 in silver.  It was wrapped in brown paper and placed in a large hemp sack with other supplies that he tied to the saddle of a smart-looking horse. Man and horse ferried across the Ohio River on a flatboat to Jeffersonville in Clark County, Indiana. He owned a good-sized farm about twenty-five miles up county near New Washington. 

Clark County, Indiana, and New Washington as red insert

And so this Good Book became the Thomas Dougan Family Bible.

Warped page identifies owner Thomas Dougan

His young wife, Sarah "Sally Ann" Dougan, prepared the ink. Thomas picked up the new dip pen with a metal nib and, after practicing on the brown wrapping paper, wrote in a fine hand the names and birth dates of himself, his wife and their children. 

Born in New York State in 1804, Sally married Thomas in 1819 in Indiana when she was fifteen. Ten years older, Thomas was born a few months after his Revolutionary War hero father's death in 1795 in North Carolina. Thomas Senior's life is HERE. His mother Isabelle married the widower Jacob Fouts, but died in 1804 after producing a son. Jacob now had four Dougan daughters, 10-year-old Thomas, and his own children to rear. He and other Fouts men trekked their families up the Great Valley Road and then floated down the Ohio River, arriving in Clark County, Indiana Territory prior to 1810. Three of the Dougan sisters married Fouts men. Thomas Dougan was twenty-five and an established farmer when he married Sally Ann Roe.

List of Dougan children in Thomas Dougan's hand.

This Good Book came to life when opened, its words sparking Dougan souls and soothing Dougan minds during hard times. Their first child,William Dougan, was born in 1820. Eleanor was born in 1821, but died in 1828. Two months before Eleanor's death their fifth child, James Lowry was born, but died when he was fifteen in 1843. Thomas wrote down the births of nine children in the first column, each one slightly more compressed. When additional sons were born, Francis Marion and finally James Oliver in 1845, their names were entered in the 2nd column.

The page of deaths and dates

 After the last child's birth, it was Thomas' own death in 1853 at age fifty-eight that was next recorded. He'd made out his will two months before and its photostat on Ancestry.com shows his signature in the same hand as the earlier Bible entries. Sally Ann, who remained on the farm with the three youngest children, passed on in 1876. Youngest daughter Sarah Elizabeth Dougan, born in 1836, continued to faithfully enter the Dougan family deaths. 

Hers must have been a difficult life. She remained on the farm to help her mother and younger brothers Francis and James, finally marrying in 1878 when she was forty-two. She had no children and there was a divorce. Quite a scandal in those days. Sarah took back her proud Scots-Irish name and in the 1900 census she owned her own home in New Washington and had an 82-year-old woman boarder. She now recorded family deaths in pencil. Still, this Bible must have given her many hours of solace. Perhaps there were nieces and nephews of her Dougan sisters living in Clark County, and of the oldest son, William, who died in 1872, but the other male Dougans had earlier gone west. When her brother Francis died in 1898, he was living in Kansas. John died in 1901 in Illinois and Thomas in 1905 in Missouri. Sarah was Thomas and Sally Ann Dougan's last child living.

Items found between leaves of the Bible

When she died alone in 1917 at age 80 of a heart attack, the informant giving the information for the death certificate was Charles Homer Jones (b. 1877), a barber. Was he a descendant of one of her aunts or was he a neighbor, promised her property if he would just look after her? Whatever his connection, he took possession of the Dougan Family Bible, entered Sarah's death, and then entered his own family's names.

And between the pages was slipped a photograph of a set of twins in cowboy boots taken sometime in the 1920s or '30s.

Perhaps it was the devastating Ohio River Flood of 1937 that damaged the Bible. The last entry is for Charles Daniel Jones, born in 1941. And then the Bible goes silent, not to be opened again for many years. 

Jeffersonville, Clark County, on banks of Ohio River

The last entry, Charles Daniel Jones, died in 2013, not in Clark County, but in California, his children living elsewhere. He did marry in Jeffersonville, Clark County, in 1963. This in itself wouldn't be important, except it was in Jeffersonville a few years back that a hospital surgical tech named Patriece attended an estate auction and purchased a box of items that included a large and soiled old Bible. 

Patriece

Patriece possesses a moral compass. She believed that somewhere in America there was a person who was spiritually connected to the Dougan Family Bible, and she determined to track down that person. She contacted a Dougan she found on the Internet, but received no response. Some time later, she found my blog on Thomas Dougan, Sr. and contacted me.

Our family is not in a direct line from Thomas Dougan; our Dougan ancestors were his cousins, who moved to Indiana a few counties away and a couple of decades after he settled there. Patriece emailed me photos. Could I help? What to do? I emailed back that I would try to find a direct descendant on Ancestry.com. 
 

New Washington 1928 Graduation Program

While snow fell softly outside, I spent a cozy Sunday afternoon in my study searching out descendants of Thomas and Sally Ann Dougan. Oh, yes, plenty of direct descendants are out there, but I hoped for a direct male descendant.  I found Bruce Dougan who, having built a full tree on Ancestry.com, was obviously fascinated by his genealogy. 

It is a wonderful feeling to connect two people, one who wants to bestow an important gift and the other who is thrilled to receive it. Bruce, who lives in Oregon, emailed in response to my query, "This would be of greatest interest to my family and others. I would be honored to receive it. This Thomas Dougan is my 3rd great-grandfather and we have wondered where this bible is forever."

And so Patriece mailed the Dougan Family Bible to Bruce and here he is holding it. A lovely conclusion to my tale. We'll end with Willie Nelson's Song "Family Bible," sung by Johnny Cash. HERE

Raney DNA Helps Locate 16th C. Somerset Ancestral Home

Flag of County Somerset, England

When Pat Raney and a host of other Raneys/Raineys took the paternal line DNA test in about 2007, the results informed Pat that our family's closest DNA match was to a descendant of Francis Rainey (c.1730-1804), a plantation owner, born and buried in Virginia. Francis was not our direct ancestor. I continue to try to link our 3rd great-grandfather James Rainey (b.1814 - died before 1870 in Indiana) to one of Francis's numerous brothers or uncles born in Southside Virginia (those Virginia counties above the North Carolina line). What we know with certainty is that we are descended from a Rainey who settled in Virginia in the 17th century.

Southside Virginia

For some time we believed our Rainey ancestor immigrated to Virginia about 1732 in the huge Scots--Irish diaspora out of Ulster (present-day Northern Ireland).  I even visited Derry (Londonderry) a couple of years ago, took photos of the broad River Foyle so many sailed away on and bid our distant-in-time ancestor a good life in America. Some of our ancestors did come to America in that migration - the Dougans - for instance. But not the Raineys.

Foyle River at Derry, Northern Ireland

William Rainey (c.1666-1722) and possibly a brother John Rainey came to Virginia earlier. There is record of William being granted land in Prince George County in 1713. Additionally, because of Pat's DNA test, I've discovered that the Rainey family resided in Bridgwater, Somerset, England, at least a hundred years earlier.

Somerset, England

The graph below exhibits Pat's closest DNA matches of present-day Raneys/Raineys. See the vertical line of numbers on the left. Francis Rainey is a 1. That means the late Claude Gladwin Rainey, able to trace his ancestry on paper up 6 generations to Francis Rainey, was one degree of genetic distance from Pat Raney. If Francis Rainey were our direct ancestor, the degree would be 0. There is a 95% chance that within 8 generations Claude and Pat shared a mutual ancestor, a 99% by the 12th generation. So Claude's and our mutual ancestor might well be Francis's father Roger Rainey (1700-1747) or Roger's father William (c.1666-1722) or his uncle John (d.1740). We know only that we're related to that group of Southside Virginia Raineys. Now pay attention because the next paragraph is important to my story. 

67 Markers - 15 - Matches

Genetic Distance  ↑	Name	Earliest Known Ancestor	Y-DNA Haplogroup	Terminal SNP	Match Date
1	Claude Gladwin Rainey (1923-2007) Y-DNA67	Francis RAINEY b ca 1725, d 1804 VA	R-M269		2/17/2010
2	J RAINEY Y-DNA67    FF	John Rainey b.1827-1832 GA d.abt 1884 FayetteCo.AL	R-FGC12307	FGC12307	12/5/2017
2	J. M. Rainey Y-DNA67		R-M269		7/25/2011
2	M. Rainey Y-DNA67    FF	William Rainey b ca 1774 VA d 1855 SC	R-M269		11/1/2007
2	B. W. Rainey Y-DNA67	John Y. Rainey b ca 1800 NC d MS	R-M269		11/1/2007
2	J. S. Raney Y-DNA67	J.Russell M. Raney b ca 1856 MS, d 1884 MS	R-M269		11/1/2007
2	H. F. Rainey Y-DNA67	Francis Rainey b ca 1725, d 1804 VA	R-M269		11/1/2007
2	J. D. Rainey Y-DNA67	William Raney 1805 - 1885	R-M269		11/1/2007
2	T. L. Raney Y-DNA67	William Raney b ca 1770 VA	R-P25	P25	11/1/2007
2	P. T. Rainey Y-DNA67	John Y. Rainey b ca 1800 NC, d MS	R-M269		11/1/2007
3	E. M. Rainey Y-DNA67    FF	William Rainey, b. 1774 and d. 1855	R-M269		10/12/2015
3	E. Rainey Y-DNA67	William Rainey b ca 1774 VA, d af 1855 SC	R-M269		2/8/2012
4	D. Rainey Y-DNA67	William Rainey b ca 1734 VA, d 1815 VA	R-M269		11/1/2007
5	L. W. Raney Y-DNA67	Daniel Epps Rainey b 1796 VA, d 1862 VA	R-M269		11/1/2007
7	Craig E--- Y-DNA67		R-M269		7/14/2016

See the bottom line on the graph where the degree of genetic connection to Pat Raney is 7. It indicates that the ascent for Pat and Craig E--- to reach a mutual ancestor is a real stretch. What's surprising is that Craig's surname is not Rainey. Craig E--- (identity withheld) lives in Tasmania. He was asked to take the Family Tree DNA test by a person with his same surname, who is trying to trace her family bloodline to Cornwall and beyond.  Craig could trace his E--- family to an ancestor who married in Withycombe, Somerset, England, in 1743. But lo and behold, when he took the paternal DNA test the results indicated his paternal line was actually the same as the Raineys/Raneys. He and Pat Raney (and the rest of us) have a mutual Rainey ancestor far up the direct male line. My curiosity was whetted.

I looked online at the Wythicombe, Somerset, parish records to see if any Raineys had lived there. They had not. I was able to search all the extant Somerset parish records. I found a few Raineys in Tickingham and Long Ashton, but no family of E---. And then I found some Rainey women baptised, married and buried in Bridgwater. I searched the Bridgwater parish records for the family E---. And there was little Michael E---, baptized 23 January 1613/14 at St. Mary parish church. These records aren't complete, and there was no suspect Rainey male who could be the child's possible biological father.  I changed the search to Raynye, as our ancestors William and John Rainey occasionally spelled their name. And there he was - Rafe Raynye, baptized 24 December, 1574, at St. Mary parish church in Bridgwater. Is Rafe the mutual ancestor linking us with Craig E--- in Tasmania? It's something to consider. The Raineys were merchants, so they must have had a female servant or two. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

St. Mary parish church, Bridgwater, Somerset, where our Rainey ancestors worshiped in the 16th and 17th centuries.

 In my next blog, I'll tell you about the Rainey's merchant ship, The Friendship of Belfast, and the pirates.
 PS: The woman who asked Craig to take the DNA test read this blog and explains the DNA mutations: 

You say " If Francis Rainey were our direct ancestor, the degree would be 0".  That is not my understanding of Y-DNA. One degree of difference means there has been one variation/mutation in one or other descendant's Y-DNA since the common ancestor. With Y-DNA these occur every 200 years or so, on average (sometimes more frequently and sometimes less, it can depend on which gene it is). You can use the TiP report in FTDNA to see the probability of the number of generations to the common ancestor (generally 25 years per generation).

I would think it highly likely that if Rafe Raynye was born in 1574 and is the common ancestor, there would have to be at least 1 genetic difference and more likely 2. I think the common ancestor could be someone a bit closer to now. Experts are able to make more accurate predictions, but it is a very inexact science.