This article examines the genealogy of some Ryders of Vermont, and should be of interest to descendants of this family, as well as Rich genealogists.

The double helix has taught us much.

From Rich to Ryder: DNA and my male line

The Y chromosome is passed unrecombined from father to son and thus can trace a male lineage. Since surnames are generally passed the same way, DNA testing can validate connections beyond documentary evidence. Equally, DNA can disprove apparent connections: A so-called “non-paternity event” (NPE), a poor but established nomenclature, might result from an adoption, a step-relation, adultery, etc., and be unveiled generations later through Y chromosome data.

An example of what might be called an NPE is me: I was born with the name Ryder, but it was changed after my parents' divorce. Conversely, my possibly half-first cousin, four times removed James Rider (1846–1910) and his wife Mary adopted Alice Follansbee, who thence became Alice Rider (1896–1988).

Fairly good documentation traces my male-line descent back to the American immigrant Samuel Ryder (1601–1679), who in turn is descended from the Ryders of Newport Pagnell, England.

DNA, however, tells a different story.

Samuel Ryder… not

It's worth mentioning now that the spellings Rider and Ryder were used interchangeably for a long time, with sometimes one ascendant at a place or time. It is only in modern times with widespread literacy that the spellings have stabilized as one or the other, depending on the family. They will thus be treated as equivalent here.

In addition to me, there are four other putative Ryder descendants of the immigrant Samuel known to me who have been DNA-tested. The following chart lays out their documented relationships, using codes in some cases for convenience and unambiguity and privacy:

I am R-X. Dashed lines indicate guesswork in the absence of good documentation. In particular the R5 line is quite sketchy. Getting these right would be helpful, but the exact placement is not as important as the general shape (which admittedly could also be off). The red dotted lines indicate where I think my generations might have been disrupted, for reasons I will get to.

Birth of Nathan Jr., 1806, from Bristol, Vermont town records.

Here is a summary of the DNA data:

• R-X, R2-W, and R4-U have had tests for SNPs (individual low-probability mutations), although R2-W's was more shallow.
• R-X and R4-U have had 111-marker STR panel tests (yielding a high-volume mutation signature). R3-W had a 67-marker test, and R5-W had a 12-marker test. 12 markers is very few, and insufficient to eliminate coincidence without other evidence.
• R3-W and R4-U are close STR matches on their common 67 markers, meaning a probable relationship within not many generations. R5-W's 12 markers closely match these two.
• R2-W and R4-U both tested positive for the mutation L48.¹ Only about 5–6% of men from the relevant population have this SNP.²
• R-X is not an STR panel match to any of these people, nor to any other known tested men named Ryder.
• R-X does not have the L48 mutation, and indeed has the inconsistent DF27 marker³.
• I am in short the odd man out.

The conclusion is hard to escape: I am not a (male-line) descendant of Samuel, who had the L48 mutation and an STR signature similar to the other tested Ryders. There is thus an unidentified NPE in the generations between me and “John IV”.

The only way I could be a descendant of Samuel is for all of the following to have happened:

• An NPE in the 7 generations from R2-W to John IV;
• Another NPE somehow upstream of the common ancestor of R3-W and R4-U, supposed here to be Samuel Jr., which would require it to be in the first generation;
• By chance, both NPEs being L48+; and
• Either R5-W also being a descendant of the second NPE, or the 12-marker similarity being coincidence.

Although more data on this point would be welcome, the evidence is strong that I am not a “deep” Ryder. And more is coming.

Nicholas Rich

From my first STR panel test in 2009 it was clear how closely matched I was to several men with the surname Rich. Maybe these Ryder and Rich families were closely related, splitting before use of surnames in England was widespread. Or, perhaps a man named Ryder was the son of someone named Rich, or vice versa. Now with more information we can answer pretty definitively.

Unfortunately, all but two of these Rich men have only used 43-marker tests (or similar), which are often not adequate for a haplogroup as large as our R1b. But by combining genealogical and genetic facts and building trees, I developed this categorization of DNA-grouped Rich families into three clusters with these ancestral haplotypes:

I include Frick, the only other public testee outside the Rich family who belongs to the FGC23067+ clade and (like us) not the subclade FG23074+. I add the modal values for successively larger enclosing groups, starting with the FGC23067+ group I belong to, which with 21 testees is a bit of a small sample; the larger FGC23071+ with 30 testees has the same modal due to being dominated by this subgroup, and similarly for the more recently discovered intermediate BY43335+. Going out, I include the proposed but not widely accepted Z46512+ and the recently published larger FTT1+, which is currently directly under ZZ12+. These modals differ only slightly.⁴ Grey numbers are those attested by only a single exemplar in the cluster; the β-DYS464d value is usually 18, and the 17 found in one person might be the basal value, but could also be a back-mutation. Red numbers mark columns with differences.

Those unfamiliar with STR panels may not realize how close a match the Rich haplotypes are to mine. For example, the values for the fast-changing multimarker CDY are less disparate than they might appear; they don't have a fixed order, and a mutation can cause a jump of more than one, so 36-37 could be one mutation from 37-38. DYS464 is another fast-changing multimarker. For 389ii, the number that should be compared is its difference from 389i, which is 16 for all rows above.

Rich and Rider under one roof in the 1850 census of Bristol, Vermont. Sally (née Mallory) is the widow of Nathan Sr.'s brother John, living with two sons. Phebe's placement is unknown.

A key value is DYS393, the first column, which here varies between 12 and 13. It is very slow-changing, with a mutation rate estimated at one in every 1000 to 1500 generations.⁵ It clearly did mutate once within the Rich family, but it is unlikely to have mutated twice. Within the relevant haplogroup R1b-DF27, the value of DYS393 is overwhelmingly 13, and among those 30 men who have tested as FGC23071+, all but me have 13. The conclusion therefore is that the value was 13 for early Riches, but for one Rich (and his descendants) it mutated to 12. Rich clusters α and β thus form a clade.

Given that it's unlikely I independently had the same mutation, this puts me squarely inside the Rich family, that is, one of my Ryder ancestors' biological father is actually a Rich. This also fits the evidence in the last section, and so probably happened in the last few generations here in America.

I cluster with α, having DYS444=12 (and also 18∉DYS464). Hundreds of men with the name Rich have had STR tests, and all matching α whose ancestry to colonial times is known are descendants of Nicholas Rich of Salem, Massachusetts, who lived roughly from 1660 to 1723. (Nicholas's ancestry has been speculated on and researched but remains unknown.)

Furthermore, as we shall see, several descendants of Nicholas came into close proximity to the Ryder family, as both settled in Addison County, Vermont in the late 18th century, providing an opportunity for the NPE.

My conclusion then is that my direct patrilineal ancestor is not Samuel Rider but Nicholas Rich.

William Henry Harrison Ryder

The Y chromosome is just a small part of our DNA, most of which can be inherited from either parent. And one can identify relatives by finding common DNA segments using commercial tests. However, this only tells us that people are related, not how. Still, inferences are possible. For example, I have multiple matches to people with ancestors from the same small south Italian town my paternal grandmother immigrated from; this is quite unlikely to be coincidence, and so we can be confident most if not all matches are through Italy.

In this way I have found varying degrees of corroboration for a number of documented ancestors, including up my patrilineal line. The most important of these is identified as DS-W.

William Henry Harrison Ryder (1839–1915) and his wife Mary Jane Elliott (1844–1912), who DNA corroborates as my ancestors.

DS-W has, like me, an extensive compiled genealogy, and by exploring and narrowing down parts of trees geographically, we find we both have an ancestor with the surname Vadakin. This is an uncommon name and so quite suggestive. In fact, we can both trace our ancestry to one Henry Vadakin. Henry (born as Heinrich Ernst Wedekind on August 25, 1753 in Kirchbrak, Germany) was a “Hessian” soldier rented to Britain to help put down the American Revolution. He was captured at the Battle of Saratoga on October 17, 1777 and marched as a POW in the so-called “Convention Army”. He escaped custody on probably November 18, 1778 at or near Enfield, Connecticut, where he settled and married local girl Tabitha, daughter of Ebenezer Prior, on January 15, 1781.

These are our descents:

WHHR is William Henry Harrison Ryder (1839–1915), sometimes called just “William”, and sometimes “Henry”. DNA and this Vadakin connection thus support him actually being my great-great-grandfather, with Melissa as his mother, even if Nathan might not be his father.

We can consider other scenarios, but most bring me back to WHHR. E.g., Nathan and Melissa could have adopted one of Melissa's nephews. Only more remote theories would disconnect me, such as WHHR adopting a distant Vadakin relative. I also have (less sure) DNA matches through his wife's Elliott family.

The shared segment can in fact be deduced⁶ to have come down through R-V, so the connection is stronger than the above chart indicates.

WHHR and his alleged father Nathan Jr. (1806–1898) were both born in Bristol, Addison County, Vermont. As noted, a Rich migration to this vicinity is the presumed basis for the NPE. However, Nathan Sr. and his father Ebenezer were born on Long Island and Cape Cod, respectively, where there don't seem to be any Riches of the right family at such an early date. By contrast, Addison County was swarming with Riches by the early-to-mid 19th century.

My conclusion is that the NPE occurred within two upstream generations from WHHR: he is my patrilineal great-great-grandfather, but Nathan Sr. is not his paternal grandfather.

Elisha

Nicholas had three sons and nine paternal grandsons, shown here, along with further descendants I will soon discuss:

Earlier I stated that many descendants of Nicholas Rich moved into the relevant area of Vermont at the right time. I will now be more precise about this.

Most of the migration was through three of his grandson Elisha's sons, underlined above, who moved to Shoreham, about 20 miles from Bristol; they and their descendants spread out from there. Other sons of Elisha were at times nearby but can probably be discounted.⁷ Two other of Nicholas's grandsons, David and Jonathan, underlined, also had descendants in the area.

What follows is a survey of all Rich families living near Bristol, Vermont. Nathan Rider Jr. was conceived in 1805 and WHHR in 1838 (or perhaps as early as 1837⁸); we thus examine the decennial censuses of 1800, 1810, 1830, and 1840. Censuses this early only list the head of household by name, and I tabulate all heads named Rich. I include women, who are usually widows and thus may stand for a husband and sons.

The scope includes all towns up to about 25 miles from Bristol, as the crow flies; for borderline cases I weigh actual accessibility. Specifically, the list I came up with was all of Addison County; the southern half of Chittenden County; the western 40% or so of Washington County⁹; Rochester in Windsor County; Brandon and Sudbury in Rutland County; and the border towns of Essex County, New York. The cutoffs are somewhat arbitrary, and of course it's not certain that the relevant Rich even lived nearby, but this focus seems like a good bet.

A few notes:

• The information provided on the censuses is limited, leaving room for error, but I'm reasonably confident of the placements above.
• The excluded Riches descend from Richard and Sarah (Roberts) Rich. Many of their descendants have had Y chromosome tests, which show this family is unrelated and cannot be my ancestors in the male line (although I am in fact descended from this couple in another line¹⁰).
• The most nagging mystery is “James Rich” in 1800 in Bristol, listed with presumably a wife, two sons, and four daughters. There seems to be no other record of these people, despite all these children, nor any known Rich fitting this description, much less a descendant of Nicholas. Perhaps James was passing through from far away, or was even an immigrant; perhaps his name was garbled. In any case, while James could be the mystery father, there are reasons to doubt it: Out of about 180 men named Rich tested, only 10 match cluster α, so we would not expect a random Rich to, especially with no known connection to Nicholas. And James was not listed in either 1790 and 1810, so it's at best even money he was around in 1805.
• Public indexes of the 1810 census list a “James Ritch” in Bristol. However, this appears to be an error for “Ketch”, as witnessed by the fact that the census is alphabetized by first letter and James is grouped with the K's.

Like two peas in a pod. (Google Maps)

One can see the numerical predominance and spread of Elisha's descendants, although it's not quite overwhelming. As might be guessed from the above chart, I shall focus on a particular descendant.

Caleb Rich… and Caleb Rich

Rev. Caleb Rich (1750–1821), son of Elisha, was a prominent figure in early Universalism. He spent much of his life preaching, travelling often. Born in Warwick, Massachusetts, he moved to Shoreham and later New Haven.

Two factors support Caleb being my ancestor:

• New Haven is directly adjacent to Bristol. Indeed, the Ryder family seems to have lived on the western side of Bristol, based on their burials. Carleton (1903) states that Nathan Ryder Jr. “was a farmer in Bristol and New Haven”. Caleb had moved there by 1803, in time for him or a son to father Nathan.
• Caleb's wife Electa's family had a history of (doctrinally sanctioned) adultery. An unusual religious idea gained currency in Warwick that a person might have a “spiritual spouse” (“soulmate” in modern parlance), and if this was not your actual spouse, it was no sin to leave your legal marriage for the spiritual one. This opened a large loophole in the marriage contract, and many indulged. Electa's (unmarried) sister Lavina ran off with Moses Hicks, husband of Mary Goff and a proponent of the doctrine; Electa's mother Jerusha (née) Smith left her father to be with Amos Marsh, husband of Beulah Leonard; Electa's father Amzi Doolittle “to be even with the rest of his family” (Holland 1855) made off with Hannah Miller, wife of Thomas Barber. (Smith 2010) Apparently all but the last of these spiritual unions persisted, and the families even remained cordial. (ibid.) The practice was short-lived, but since prosecutions for adultery reportedly ensued it may have continued underground. In any case, one can conjecture effects of this heritage on Electa's family.

Gravestone of Jerusha (Smith) (Doolittle) Marsh (1742?–1844), possibly my ancestress, which lists both her "spiritual" husband and her (original) secular one. Whatever else, her lifestyle may have brought her longevity. (Find A Grave)

Caleb had two sons, Caleb (1786–1813) and Hiram (1799–1850s?) (plus eleven daughters!). Hiram would be too young to be Nathan Jr.'s father, and he married in 1823 and moved to Norfolk, New York years before WHHR was born. So either Caleb Sr. or Caleb Jr. would be the father of Nathan Rider Jr. Nathan's mother is recorded as Irena (Cushman) Rider (1769–1849). At Nathan's conception, she was 35, Caleb Sr. was 54, and Caleb Jr. was 18.

Caleb Sr., as mentioned, travelled a lot. He also continued to have children as late as 1806, and would have had young ones to care for almost continuously. He also was a visible member of the community. None of this precludes an affair, but does tip the balances towards Caleb Jr.

Caleb Jr. seems to still be in New Haven in the 1810 census. He enlisted in the 30th regiment during the War of 1812 for a one-year term starting August 20, 1813, and served in Plattsburgh, New York as a Private under Captain Daniel Farrington. His death the following December 4 in Plattsburgh is recorded in Doolittle (1903) without any details or sourcing, and also in military records. The cause of death is not listed, but it does not appear he died in combat directly, although indirectly the war brought stretched rations, sparse medical care, and difficult winters. No evidence has surfaced of a marriage or children.

And that, folks, is where we stand.

More charts

This section provides supplementary information which adds context but isn't necessary to the core argument.

First is a complete eight-generation chart of the documented male-line descendants of Nathan Ryder Sr., with the last three generations anonymized. As noted, the relationships in the early generations are in doubt, although it may be that multiple siblings have the same illegitimate father; this tree is thus only a baseline for research.

A ninth generation starts with a great-great-grandson of Nathan born in 1998. Interestingly, due to factors mentioned in the introduction, most living descendants are not named Ryder. The smallness of the tree is largely due to a repeated high proportion of daughters; for example, both Francis and Herbert Jr. had four daughters but no sons.¹¹

Distribution maps of DF27, my broader haplogroup, in Europe and England. (Eupedia and Mark Mitchell)

Note that all extant agnatic descents from Nathan Sr. are through his “grandson” WHHR, so that Y chromosome testing cannot distinguish these generations. However, Nathan Sr.'s father Ebenezer has other Ryder descendants still living; in 2013 I contacted one of these with an interest in genealogy and mentioned DNA testing, but received no reply.¹²

The next table focuses on 19 markers which serve to distinguish the local clades. My FGC23067+ is part of the larger (but still small) FGC23071+ clade, grouped inside the FTT1+ clade, which is part of the expansive ZZ12+ group. Using a combination of eyeballing and tools such as PHYLIP, I made educated guesses as to the ancestral values for these markers, although there is considerable uncertainty due to limited information. Greyed numbers represent particularly unclear cases.

FGC23071+ includes 29 testees outside the Rich group. Besides my FGC23067+, which has 20 other men, this group a clade nearly all of whose men share a Bar/Bare surname, believed to be descended from a Swiss ancestor. Presumably more FGC23071+ FGC23067− men will eventually be found. Frick might cluster with Rich (and me) based on markers such as 385, but as of now I consider this too uncertain.

The last family tree is somewhat broader than the previous—the whole human race—and illustrates the above scheme with proposed mutations on my line. At each fork the paraphyletic remainder is on the left. Dates are wild estimates!

When there are many mutations at a single node, it generally reflects our ignorance of a deeper structure. In fact, there may be more mutations, since less stable markers often mutate and back-mutate in the same line. Here, for the early groupings I only consider clades distinguished by a known and accepted SNP.

Conclusion

Carleton (1903) writes,

From that hardy little coast state [Connecticut] came… Nathan Rider, to join the pioneers who settled at Bristol as early as the year 1800. He was a farmer of the strict New England type and followed that noble calling until the final summons reached him in 1846. Nathan Rider married a Connecticut girl named Irena Cushman, who shared his joys and sorrows with unwearying fidelity and made him the father of six children, all of whom have long since passed away, and she herself closed her earthly accounts in 1848, when about seventy-five years old.

Like many local histories, this includes a bunch of fluff, and many of the facts are off¹³. I have presented here a theory that Irena's fidelity may have wearied a tad, and she may have shared joys a bit more broadly. There are other possible theories¹⁴, but this one seems most likely, although not necessarily likely.

I feel the evidence at least nudges us towards this conclusion. However, while many parts of this argument support one another, it must be admitted that much of the uncertainty is cumulative, so in the end it's possible I'm way off.

Nevertheless, the argument is laid out.

Future research should shed more light, in particular more commercial DNA tests.

History

This article was originally written in November 2015, and has since had only minor edits and updates. A new flurry of DNA data became available in August 2019, allowing larger refinements of the modal and ancestral values and of the likely family tree. In 2023, I updated with newer data, including removing reference to a testee (Cloyd) who had previously seemed closely related to me, but later tests showed was not, and adding the discovered Frick testee. None of this has affected the main thesis.

Notes

1. R4-U in fact has the more specific Z326.
2. This estimate is derived from a crude but probably sound method: I looked at the percentage of my sharing 23andme matches (around 600) who are L48+.
3. In fact, I have the more specific FGC23067 marker.
4. I belong to the large DF27+ clade, and within it is large ZZ12+ subgroup, although this may be an unstable marker. ZZ12+ has many child clades, about ten of which have been provisionally grouped as FTT1+, and within that at least five are provisionally designated Z46512. There is not much difference between the modals of any of these.
5. For example, NIST's info page gives a rate which (accounting for rounding) comes to about 1 in 1200 to 1300
6. From my mother's DNA test we know the segment did not come from her, and R-W's mother is from Italy, whereas DS-W appears to have no Italian ancestry.
7. Elisha's son Elisha lived in Pittsford, about 30 miles distant, and then moved with his family to Troy, Pennsylvania around 1805, so is probably not relevant. Elisha's son Ebenezer's son Jacob married in New Haven in 1818, but there is no indication he was there much beforehand and by 1823 he had settled in St. Lawrence County, New York.
8. WHHR's year of birth is not given consistently in the records; while 1839 seems most likely, 1838 and 1840 are both found.
9. Roxbury, Warren, Fayston, Waitsfield, Moretown, Duxbury, and Northfield.
10. In fact, they are ancestors of the above-mentioned Mary Jane (Elliott) Ryder.
11. I could add the qualification “known”, because, although my search of records was fairly thorough, there is always the chance that a birth escaped my attention, especially if it's not legitimate.
12. From the previous considerations, Ebenezer is unlikely to be my ancestor, but proving this by DNA would eliminate one generation of small uncertainty.
13. The years of death are both wrong, and Irena died at age 80, and she had seven children. Nathan was not from Connecticut at all; he was born in New York and fled to Canada during the Revolution with his Loyalist father, later returning and settling in Vermont.
14. For example, Nathan was a deacon, and may have seen it as a Christian duty to adopt an orphaned or illegitimate child; but this would presumably be reflected in town records, and the spacing of children is consistent with one mother.

Bibliography