About us
June 2011
Lisa Wilcox
John and Joseph: Too Close to Call
During discounted upgrade sales in 2010, a number of men from the Joseph/"Mysterious William" and Elinor Muncy Goddard family expanded their testing to 67 markers. We hoped to identify possible genetic differences between these descendants and those of Joseph's probable brother John. This might help folks with gaps in their paper trail to at least identify which wing to research.
We need additional members of the John and Mary McTier Goddard family to test —there are only two whose descent is documented— but thus far the family appears quite homogeneous. Nothing has emerged in the data to distinguish one family from the other.
DNA, Leaping Brick Walls in a Single Bound!
Several frustrated (single-D) Godard researchers —all stuck around 1800, plus or minus a decade or two— met online and shared their few clues. From this they assembled a sketchy hypothetical pedigree.
One of them had tested with this project, but could only determine that he was "related to" Win Goddard and the Goddards of Granby; he had no idea how. In the new theory, he was assumed to descend from one Anson Godard; while two of the other researchers were known to be descended from an Aaron Godard with a brother named Anson. The last known living male Godard in Aaron's line was located and tested; he did indeed match Anson's descendant, and all the other Granby Goddards.
The eldest son of the eldest son of John and Sarah Hayes Gozzard, not to mention several hundred of his descendants, were thereby returned to the family fold.
February 2009
Sue Kohlhepp
To date the most widely important finding is that the descendants of John and Mary McTier Goddard genetically match the descendants of (Mysterious) William and Elinor Goddard of eastern Tennessee. This means that John and "Mysterious' William shared a fairly recent common paternal ancestor. The two sets of families had no idea they were related so closely.
John Goddard descendants preserve a tradition in which John and his brother Joseph left England together bound for America (see November 2008 Goddard Newsletter article by Jack Goddard) but no one knew what had become of Joseph. One of the men attending a GH&GS gathering some years ago shared the story from his family that Joseph got in trouble with the law and took off. Did he change his name to William? If so, why only the first name?