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| 1895, Samuel Sigford b. 1818, Lower August, Northumberland county, PA d. 1896, Mt. Morris, Waushara County, Wisconsin Courtesy of the Archives of Joan Hill and Roots and Leaves Publishing |
In the early 2000s when I was digging deeper into my maternal genealogy. Not long after, I became aware that DNA was probably going to be my only hope of putting a “yea” or “nay” on the connection of my mother’s paternal family. Her father. Frank Sigford, always told of his father, Samuel Sigford, being born in Lower August, Northumberland county PA, left home to sail the Great Lakes, and that he married three sisters (not at the same time). I was able to confirm the marriages and deaths of the older two sisters, and the marriage of the third, younger sister, who was my great great grandmother. A cousin's family has Samuel's sea chest. I also found an old book through RootsWEB and the Northumberland Historical Society on Northumberland county, which tells of the Samuel Levan Sigford/Sigfried family (the father of my grandfather’s father), the disposition of his estate and some details of the life of the his wife and children after his death.
The names of the father and mother (parents of my grandfather's father) appear to be connected to a rather well-known Mennonite German family in Berks county. However, I have never been able to connect the two families. There are lots of genealogy trees of this large family (and each son tended to name their sons with the names within the family, which made a huge web of the same names). Family researchers of this family are prolific, but sometimes the histories are not always consistent. The history of this family in America goes back to the early 1700s, nearly 300 years ago. Early grave stones were rocks on a hillside, unengraved. Names changed, even on legal documents. So the spelling of the name might have been the old Germanic name or a more phonetic name. Some of the handwriting was difficult to read, even then, and one has to add in the fact that the German speaking folks were sometime not well understood by English speaking neighbors and towns people. All of these factors led to a conundrum for this researcher in rural southern Oregon.
Well-known researchers within this family assured me that the connection was impossible. There are a number of family trees on the web that have a connection to one or another related families, but not always discernible to me The resulting fuzziness of the roots of my grandfather's family has put my research far away on the back burner. Nonetheless, the tales of my great grandfather Samuel Sigford being born in Lower Augusta, Northumberland county of Pennsylvania, continue to keep this research bubbling away.
I spent several years trying to convince my only male Sigford cousin to submit his Y-DNA to Family Tree DNA (FTDNA). FTDNA has a number of family name projects, including the old Siegfried family. I told my cousin about the Y-DNA being the unbroken link from father to son, to son, to son..., and how important my cousin's DNA was to answering the question of whether we were connected to the Siegfried family from Berks county, Pennsylvania. I offered to purchase the kit, but he, nor his wife, ever responded to my numerous requests before they both passed away. Now I am left with trying to track male descendants from my great great grandfather’s line, which has been a hit and miss endeavor. My grandfather's stories point to a connection with this old Mennonite German family, but I believe to have an absolute answer, we will need a Y-DNA sample from my Sigford/Sigfrit line to compare with verifiable samples of the older Siegfried line from Berks county, Pennsylvania. Time, and a Y-DNA sample from our line, will likely yield a "yea" or a "nay" to this long standing question.
Unfortunately, patience is not my strong suit.
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© Joan G. Hill, Roots'n'Leaves Publications
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