First Presbyterian Church of Mountain View celebrates 175 years of Ministry
From March to October 1850 a wagon train traveled 2,000 miles from the Midwest to a tiny settlement on the banks of Stephens Creek and El Camino Real. The travelers sought to spread the word of God, not fill their pockets with gold. The settlement became
The Presbyterian Church through the years
known as Mountain View.
On April 4, 1851, three residents( all Cumberland Presbyterian ministers) formed the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It was the first Protestant congregation between San Jose and San Francisco, and one of only two Presbyterian churches on the Pacific Coast. by Cindy Newman
In 1860 the first church building was constructed at the corner of what would become Castro & Mercy( now City Hall) on land donated by Maria Trinidad Peralta de Castro. She also gave adjacent land for use as a cemetery for all faiths( now Pioneer Memorial Park).
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DNA Matches and Chromosome Browsers
In previous articles, we have noted that DNA services, like those provided by Ancestry or MyHeritage, can help fill out your family tree by providing shared matches( Ancestry term) or DNA Matches( MyHeritage term). Two profiles are shared matches if they share a segment of DNA along some chromosome. This indicates that the people represented by those profiles share a common ancestor.
An important question in genetic genealogy is:“ If profiles A and B are shared matches and profiles B and C are shared matches, do the people represented by A, B, and C share a common ancestor?” The answer is:“ Not necessarily.”
To see why, consider the diagrams below. In the first diagram, profiles A and B represent two siblings with father AF and mother AM. C is a half-sibling of both, sharing a father with A and B, but with a different mother CM. Here the people represented by profiles A, B, and C have a common ancestor: their father AF.
Finding Your Family History
Is there a way to tell if three profiles A, B, C represent three people with a common ancestor? Yes, if you have access to a chromosome browser. To see how a chromosome browser works, let’ s look at what it shows for the relationship between me( Robert Cox), my first cousin Larry Cox, and our third cousin Franklyn Cooke.( We all share a pair of common great-great-grandparents: George and Sarah( Ward) Cox.)
The chromosome browser shows the DNA segments in common between Robert and Larry in the upper line for each chromosome. It shows the DNA segments in common between Robert and Franklyn in the lower line for each chromosome. Along chromosome 5, there is a circled segment which Robert, Larry, and Franklyn have in common. This is DNA proof that Robert, Larry, and Franklyn share a common ancestor.( I’ m showing only the first 5 or 23 chromosomes to keep the diagram simple.)
Now consider the second diagram. Here, the people represented by profiles A and B have a common ancestor, their father AF. The people represented by profiles B and C have a common ancestor, their mother BM. But the people represented by A and C have no common ancestor.
Unfortunately, while MyHeritage does offer a chromosome browser, Ancestry does not. This is because Ancestry has a much broader customer base, and Ancestry believes their average customer would not be interested tools to do such advanced genealogical research.
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