Lemuel McCracken Mystery

An analysis of DNA matches between multiple family members that have taken the ancestry.com DNA test  have been searched for the name McCracken in the family trees.  Those matches have been analyzed for patterns and potential matches to Lemuel. Some of these matches are clearly related to Louisiana.  Others have little data.  Others are possible matches, but no specific information has been found to indicate that the link to these DNA matches is through the McCracken family.

Additionally, the stronger matches to people with McCracken in their tree were also analyzed for those people whose DNA matches I have direct access.  Again, there is no specific information to indicate that the match is through the McCracken family.

From the analysis of these sets of data, I have created several McCracken families that might possibly be related to us.  Attention was placed on McCracken families that showed up in multiple family trees (not just multiple DNA matches).I focused on those with ties to Ohio and Pennsylvania since Lemuel’s records state he was born in one of those two states.  Note was also taken of McCrackens in Kansas and Lee County, Iowa.    There were multiple matches to McCrackens in Tennesse, Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, but those were not included in the analysis to date.  Others removed from the analysis were families where they were known to not be Y-DNA matches, there were many errors in the tree, or where identifying the specific person was very complicated (e.g. too many people in the area with the same name). The top candidate families are included in the next several sections.

It is unclear if any of the McCracken families identified by the DNA analysis are actually Lemuel’s ancestors.  If not, the following possibilities exist:

• DNA matches of related McCracken families have not yet identified their McCracken ancestors in their family tree. (Perhaps their McCracken family line is as hard to trace as ours.)
• People related to our McCracken family line have not taken this DNA test.
• McCracken is not Lemuel’s  actual surname
  • Lemuel or an ancestor was adopted.
  • Lemuel or an ancestor took the name of a family with whom he lived.  (We know multiple of Lemuel’s children lived with other people)
  • The name was changed to protect someone’s identity (e.g. they were running from the law)
• Lemuel was an only child or had a history of small families, limiting the number of potential descendants.
• Lemuel’s family died out from disease or for other reasons.