NALF - President's Message

Archivist's Report

OFFERINGS

Dear Cousins,

Despite the rain that kept us from taking advantage of the picturesque landscape for our group photos, the reunion at Turner's Fore Seasons Restaurant rolled along with no problems. With only 44 arrivals, we were far from reaching the 200 person benchmark that the 1993 reunion reached the last time NALF was there. Perhaps the days of triple digit attendance are a thing of the last, as we haven't seen those kinds of numbers in over a decade. Still, we have nearly four-hundred members in our association, which is a nice showing, and we are able to give out two $1000 scholarships every year, which is something many organizations are unable to do.

A question was brought up to me at the reunion concerning the Leavitt DNA testing, so I will quickly go over the project for our new members:

"How do we match the DNA results with that of Deacon John?" Preferring to leave our Leavitt patriarch undisturbed in his Hingham burial place (with that kind of DNA testing using totally different methods and not commercially available to the general public for obvious reasons), we need to take an indirect route and rely on both paper trails and testing several known descendants for comparison.

On paper, our books show that Deacon John had five sons that produced future Leavitt male lines: Samuel, Israel, Moses, Josiah and Nehemiah. By having a volunteer from each one of these families take a test, we were then able to compare those results and show that, when they were found to match each other, it solidified our earlier genealogical research showing these five were indeed brothers. Had one of them not matched, it wouldn't surely say that one of the five were not a child of John, but a non paternal event (ie an adoption) may have taken place between that son of John and the person taking the test. In that case, another person claiming descent from that son in question would be sought for testing with hopes of a match taking place.

With our project now having representatives from the sons of Deacon John, as well as several of the Thomas line, we can tackle those Leavitt folks who do not know their ancestry or may lack a proper paper trail that traces them back to the immigrant ancestors. A more difficult endeavour would be using DNA testing to help solve some questionable placements of several families within our books. Whether related to John or Thomas would be an easy answer, as they weren't related and their descendants would have far differing test numbers. But what about a family from, say, Samuel or Israel? Already distant cousins, the test results would be a close match to begin with. Further testing or an upgrade to a current test would be necessary to increase the finding of a MRCA (most recent common ancestor).

In closing, where's my vice president? I know you are out there!

Enjoy your summer,

Steve Dow

President and Historian, NALF

President's Message