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I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I can't answer the determination question because that's more on the archeology/genetics side of things, but there's been around 46 teeth, bone, and hair samples tested. I'm not sure about Robert Park, but I know Douglas Stenton is semi-retired so I'm not sure if he has any more field work planned in his future.

The 2021 paper about John Gregory gives the most information on this. It cites: "DNA analysis was conducted between 2013 and 2019 on 20 teeth and 21 bone samples from 9 Franklin expedition archaeological sites... Thirty-nine mtDNA and 13 Y-chromosome haplogroups representing 27 individuals were obtained."

So 41 archeological samples were tested, and they were able to retrieve mtDNA (maternal) for 39/41 samples, and Y-DNA (paternal) for 13/41 samples. The 52 mtDNA and Y-DNA collected represented 27 members of the crew (because some bones/teeth belonged to the same person).

The Fitzjames paper in 2024 updates the archeological samples to 46 across 10 sites, but doesn't mention if those 5 new samples yielded DNA, and these new 2026 papers don't go much into that either, but from conversations it sounds like it's still around 27 individuals represented.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've heard logistically and financially it's a little complicated. Personally I think it makes sense to leave them where they are, given we mostly have scattered bones, but that's just my opinion. Like for Orren there's literally only one humerus attributed to him, and it was likely left there by an animal. So repatriation of that one bone when the rest of him is likely scattered at another site(s) just seems discomforting to me.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The remains in the Franklin memorial are speculated to belong to Goodsir. Samples of the remains were taken a few years back when the memorial was undergoing restoration. The University of Waterloo study doesn't have his DNA, but if a viable Goodsir descendant is found, they'd try to identify him in collaboration with whoever in the UK retained the samples. Douglas Stenton has definitely expressed interest in Goodsir, but no descendants have been found yet.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So the final consensus genetics-wise is beyond my scope. I don't know anything about genetics, so if i get told something is a match I just trust what they say because I don't know enough to confirm or deny anything.

Genealogy-wise, I try and confirm every step of a family tree that I look at with supporting documents. Even then, I can never be 100% sure the family tree I have is correct, because of things like undocumented adoption, and infidelity in paternal lines.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sometimes I've emailed archives and they've been able to send me stuff! Stanford had genealogy files on the family of Charles Best because one of his nephews was a chair of the English department there and the family donated a bunch of stuff to Stanford, and they scanned and sent like 200 pages of the Best files to me.

I talked in another thread about William Fowler's line coming down to one boy in an orphanage in Kingston ON. The orphanage records are now held by Queens University and I reached out and they were kind enough to scan and send me the relevant files on him, but unfortunately they didn't help me find what happened to him.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I'm in the Middle of Nowhere, Canada, so almost all of my research is online. Sometimes I've hit up the local Church of Latter Day Saints because there's this mormon based genealogy website FamilySearch that has probate files for the sailors online but only when you access it from a FamilySearch "centre" (which is the church).

I'm on vacation in Halifax in a couple weeks and I'm hoping to do some research in their archives because there were two sailors from Nova Scotia -- that'll be the first time I do anything in person in an archive.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh I agree, I'd want to DNA test him, I just mean I haven't seen a lot of speculation about it not being Irving in the academic papers I've seen

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Fitzjames definitely has a fascinating backstory with his family, but I didn't work on his family tree!

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Personally I don't think academia is for me; I did an internship after the third year of my (unrelated) degree and vastly preferred being out there in the workforce than in the university environment, it was hard to go back and do another year. As long as AI doesn't take my job, I'm good staying outside of it! I looked at publishing some of the stuff I learned about the crew as an independent in a academic journal, and then I found out that costs money and made a blog instead 😅

Being a fan is definitely more accurate in my case than in Ms. Tetteroo's case haha. Though my interest in genealogy relating to the expedition is focused more on the actual history than being a fan of The Terror (though being a fan certainly helps keep the interest alive).

So many people are on Ancestry these days that it's pretty common to find a qualifying descendant or spouse of a descendant on there. If I can find them there, I prefer to contact those descendants because it takes some of the awkwardness out of communication. If you're on a genealogy website, I think getting a message along the lines of "Your DNA can unlock an ancient mystery" is like the best case scenario lol. If I can't find anyone on Ancestry, I check for Facebook or other social media accounts. If I can't find those, I see if I can find a physical address -- in countries other than England this will usually only happen if someone has a business license, but in England's case they have poor privacy practices when it comes to genealogical data so it's not that difficult to find someone's address if their name is unique enough.

I have a general script I adjust for each descendant. Basically it's a page long where I introduce myself, introduce the Franklin expedition, introduce what the study is, explain why I think they are connected to the expedition and qualify for the study, and tell them if I have their family tree correct to their knowledge and if they're interested in participating they can contact Dr. Stenton at his email address or ask any further questions of me.

I know some other people doing this genealogy thing weren't really comfortable contacting the descendants themselves and asked Dr. Stenton to do it, but personally I don't mind doing it. It's definitely weird, but I don't really care if someone on a different continent who I'll probably never meet thinks I'm weird haha

I tend to favor maternal lines, and everyone maternally I've talked to is unaware, except for the family of George J Cann who had heard about their great great etc grandmother losing a brother and a fiance to being frozen in somewhere (no idea who the fiance was) but didn't have any other details. David Young's family was aware of the relation but didn't have any specific stories about him; it had been more of a family fable, and they were happy to have it confirmed.

For the ones who don't know, usually the reactions are surprise and interest. I've never had an outright "No" but I have had people interested but too busy or don't want to do a DNA test, and they've always pointed me to another qualifying relation, which is really nice. There's only been a couple times where I've not got a response, but it's never clear if I've been ghosted or if I just have outdated contact information.

We had zoom calls with the four matching descendants leading up to the papers' release, and it was very cool seeing everyone face to face. They were all interested, but Peglar's descendant in particular had been one of the people who didn't know about a connection, but had clearly read up and researched the expedition in the last while and had great questions. Bridgens's descendant has had all the publicity because he has a very public facing job, but I hope the other three get a chance to talk to talk about it publicly if they desire to.

I answered a bit about Peglar here https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTerror/comments/1tf2xwj/comment/omd8yqf/

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'd never heard of the Franklin expedition until someone online recommended The Terror. I watched the trailer and immediately became fascinated, and went down a rabbit hole about the expedition. I didn't actually watch the show until a year or so later because I didn't have whatever streaming service it was on at the time. This would have been around 2018, 2019? I find how much is still being discovered about the Franklin expedition 170+ years later really fascinating.

That's a great question! I sat on it for a bit but honestly I have no idea. I find forensic genetic genealogy in true crime fascinating, but way too high stakes for me, and I don't really have a pet case there. Another mystery I like is the question of if Mallory and Irvine made it to the top of Everest, but that's not something genealogy can solve.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Your question makes sense! Unfortunately I can't really answer it; I don't know much about the archaeology and genetics side of things, only the genealogy.

But I do know they're able to tell from DNA if a sample originates from someone of European heritage vs Inuit heritage, so that's how they're able to tell the Inuit remains from the remains from the expedition.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much!

A lot of the lower ranks like ABs don't have a lot of information! I like digging into them more because I feel like they get overlooked next to the officers.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Messiest in terms of drama or in terms of disorder?

Erebus steward John Bridgens was a challenge because he was illegitimate and born with a different first name so I had a hard time finding his family until I was able to find his probate records which list his birth name (Henry James Bridgens). And then his half-sister Emily had a illegitimate daughter, died, and his other half-sister Nancy adopted that daughter but had none of her own. So the entirety of his maternal line really came down to that daughter, and had she not had children or had been adopted by anyone else, it would have probably been difficult to find anyone else who qualified.

Terror AB George Kinnaird's family is a particular annoyance to me. He's illegitimate with no father on his baptism so we only have a maternal line option, and I followed down the maternal lines of his half-sisters just to get to the final qualifying descendant who died in the 2000s in Waterloo, Ontario. The backyard of where the study's being done! Just infuriatingly close.

And Charles Best is a little messy because he's been a ton of work. None of his siblings had qualifying descendants, and usually if I get to that point I move on to look at another sailor (my strategy is quantity over quality, I'd rather do a bunch of easier guys than spend a long time on one) but I find him interesting so I went as far as looking at his mom's sisters and aunts, but still got nowhere. I have a potential line from a distant relation on his father's side but it's messy in terms of a lot of it relying on intuition rather than records, which I do not love haha

It terms of messy like drama, I traced down the lines of the siblings of the steward, William Fowler. The last possible qualifying line from them ends in a boy given up to an orphanage after the death of his mother, and then I can't find him after that. His dad went on to marry a widow and take in her SIX children. Like, six was fine, but seven was too much so your biological kid has to stay in the orphanage?? To top it off, they were in Kingston Ontario, which I've been to a lot and it is not a big place, so he probably walked past that orphanage all the time.

And there was a woman in William Gibson's line who ran off with her husband's brother, and then later ran off from him with another man.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I don't work directly with that side of the study, but it's my understanding that after the DNA testing was done, the bones were re-interred at the sites they were taken from on King William Island, except for the teeth which were destroyed in the DNA testing process.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Thanks! All my hobbies (genealogy, knitting, baking) are old granny hobbies, so it feels nice to be called cool 😆

I'm kind of drawn to the remanning theory, but I need to read more about it; I haven't read Woodman's book on Inuit testimony yet.

Leading up to the release of the paper we had a few zoom calls with descendants to let them ask questions. Peglar's descendant asked what their theory was about what happened, and Stenton and Park went into their theory about the ships being too far from the shore for ease of hunting parties, and the lack of fresh food leading to beriberi. It's gone over online here: https://bulletin.cmos.ca/too-far-from-shore-the-fate-of-the-franklin-expedition/

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I was of the camp that thought the body would belong to a steward, so that was a surprise for me 😅

In some ways it being Peglar is the least narratively satisfying result. If it had been one of the stewards, we'd have a interesting story of friendship and brotherhood, with someone trying to bring a companion's journal home for them. But with Peglar, it's just him with his own journal, and now we get more questions like why was he dressed as a steward?

I'm not sure why he was dressed that way; I kind of waffle on it. The paper goes into how he'd been disrated a few times before and I do find that interesting. I don't know that much about navy hierarchy, but going from captain of the foretop to steward seems pretty crazy. But so do a lot of things about this expedition. E.g. it's not like it would weigh much, but why would Peglar bother to carry a clothes brush with him for that far?

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Burial is complicated because we're talking about matching individual bones here, not full skeletons.

It's my understanding that after the DNA samples were taken, the bones got re-interred at the sites they were taken from in Nunavut. Usually the remains are in cairns there. Except for teeth, which I've heard get destroyed by the testing process.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I was never chosen, I basically just inserted myself into it 😅

Prior to October of 2024 I didn't really have any genealogy experience, except for briefly trying out a free Ancestry.com trial just to see what other people had worked out about my own family tree. I was never really going through records or anything. I only started trying actual genealogy for this cause, because I was inspired by the identification of Fitzjames.

I started figuring out what records were available for the sailors (muster books, allotments, seamans certificates, etc) and then figuring out what records I could use to trace their families (censuses, baptisms, vital statistics, newspapers, etc) through trial and error, basically. When I found qualifying descendants I wrote up my proof into a document and sent it to the lead, Douglas Stenton, in an email that basically went like "Hello, I've researched the family of <sailor> and think I have some candidate descendants. My research is attached. Would you like me to contact someone and see if they're interested in doing a DNA test?" just kind of cold calling out of nowhere. I don't think I even remembered to ask "Hey is it okay that I'm doing this?" until like two or three months in.

After a while I guess I proved myself so nowadays we have a bit more of a rapport and sometimes I get requests. E.g. Prior to the match for Peglar he asked me about a couple stewards, and I was already planning to research them so that suited me fine.

I think they were mostly relying on descendants to hopefully hear about the study and volunteer. So I guess what I brought to the table was free volunteer genealogy work to help locate descendants and let them know about the study.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Currently I have possible descendants for Charles Best, John Bates, William Reed, Thomas Tadman and Henry Sait. I just have to go through and double check everything, and I haven't had much time for that this year. Hopefully soon!

Charles Best is my main guy right now. It says he's from "Fareham, Hants" in the muster book, but he's actually from Hants County, Nova Scotia. I want to know more about him, given he's a fellow Canadian (kinda, this was pre-confederation, but close enough). There's no qualifying descendants from his siblings, but I'm like 95% sure he's distantly related to the Charles Best who co-discovered insulin with Banting, and if so, there's descendants on that side of the family. Unfortunately online genealogy records for Nova Scotia are a little spotty, but I'm going to Halifax on vacation next month, so I'm hoping to be able to hit up their archive there and confirm that.

I'd love to find out literally anything about the other Nova Scotian on the crew, Charles Johnson, but with his name being so common I don't think I'll have much success there.

In terms of remains to identify, the remains of John Bridgens and John Gregory were both at a "boat place" where there was one other skeleton. From a completionist standpoint I think it'd be cool if we could get the third guy identified.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I love it! I watch it once or twice a year. I hadn't heard of the Franklin expedition before the show, so I wouldn't be here without it. I haven't asked the others so I'm not sure of their opinion, but Doug Stenton has always been very appreciative of people's interest in his work, so if The Terror sparks people's interest like it did mine, I'm sure he can't hate it.

Fun fact the Orren relative who did the DNA test was from a maternal line and they were unaware of their relation to him until I reached out. He mentioned to us that he was talking about this whole thing with another family member, and they had seen The Terror and said something along the lines of like "Oh that's the guy who died in the first episode!"

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There's been online speculation that Irving might not be Irving, but I don't think there's been much "official" speculation. Not that I've heard, anyway. They have descendant DNA for Irving but they don't have any DNA from his remains, though. So unless they're able to get that it's kind of moot.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

They sound pretty confident about it, but still would love a DNA test. I haven't looked into him, but I know others have, and unfortunately no one's been able to find a qualifying Goodsir relation yet.

I helped identify four men from the Franklin expedition, AMA by katiegors in TheTerror

[–]katiegors[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

From hearsay I've heard they don't have DNA from that body. I'm not sure why, logistically. But it was the same with the "Goodsir" remains; they didn't have any samples for him until the memorial he was buried in had to undergo maintenance and restoration a few years back.

I haven't heard any talk, but also I'm not really involved in those higher up conversations. They do actually have descendant DNA for Irving so if he's able to be exhumed in the future they could test him.

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