An Introduction

In September of 2024 it was announced that the remains of Captain James Fitzjames of the Franklin expedition had been identified. This immediately caught my interest. I’ve been fascinated by the Franklin expedition for several years now, but my interest was of a more casual nature. I’d google it a few times a year to check if Parks Canada had posted any new artefacts they’d retrieved. When the weather got cold enough for sun dogs, I'd bunker down and watch The Terror. That kind of thing.  

But the Fitzjames announcement really lit a fire. He'd been identified as part of a University of Waterloo study comparing the DNA of Franklin remains to the DNA of their living descendants. Suddenly, inexplicably, I've found myself spending my evenings researching members of the Franklin expedition and trying to find their living descendants in the hopes of contributing to this study as a third party. 

I intend to use this blog to post my genealogy research on the sailors that I've looked into, and what I learned about them and their families. My primary goal is to find descendants in a qualifying line for the DNA study; learning about the sailors themselves comes secondary to that. My hope is with more men identified, we'll be able to identify trends and learn more about the circumstances of the expedition's fate. 

As of Fitzjames' identification, there have been DNA samples taken from at least 27 individuals on the expedition, representing less than a quarter of the crew. 25 descendants have been tested, with only 2 having resulted in a match. In order to find a match, "the descendant donors needed to demonstrate a genealogical relationship confirming an unbroken line of descent from a common ancestor in either the female or male line." (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104748).

Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA) is passed down the patrilineal line, from father to son, while mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to child. These are what are being used to determine identity from a descendant DNA sample, which is why either an unbroken male or unbroken female line of descent from a common ancestor is required. Please note that because mtDNA is passed from mother to child regardless of sex, the final leaf node of an unbroken female line can be male.

Due to this, my genealogical research is typically limited to a small maternal or paternal subsection of a sailor's family tree, and not the entire story.

I have a list of some of the genealogical resources I've been using for this here in my master spreadsheet.