R-FT12801: Charles Scaggs of Sims Settlement

Intruder alert!  Intruder alert!  Our Y-DNA testing project has tested multiple descendants of Charles Scaggs, one of the intruders on Indian land in Mississippi Territory at Sims Settlement in the early 1800s. You can read the history of how the President ordered the Army to beat the stuffing out of these intruders to drive them off Indian land back to Tennessee where they belonged.

Skaggs DNA Testing: Putting It All Together

The Skaggs Y-DNA project has been working diligently testing male volunteers who descend along different Skaggs family lines.  They've been aligning the DNA test results with the ongoing genealogical research effort to identify distinct, yet related, Skaggs families.  The results follow below the fold.

Colonial Roads and Skaggs Family Migration

Knowledge of colonial roads can help with understanding Skaggs family migrations prior to 1800.  Below is a map of the system of roads in colonial America.  

If you are interested in how Maryland Skaggs might have ended up in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina just check out the analysis below the fold.

Skaggs DNA Testing: Aaron Skaggs

The Skaggs Y-DNA project has been working diligently testing male volunteers who descend along different Skaggs family lines.  Volunteers have been tested from the branch of the Skaggs family that consists of descendants of "Hunting" Henry Skaggs and Aaron Skaggs who married Sarah Lyon.  This branch traces back to southern Maryland in the early 1700s and we've decided to call it the Aaron Skaggs branch because of the number of men named Aaron in the family lines.

Skaggs DNA Testing: The Safeway Skaggs

The Skaggs Y-DNA project has been hard at work testing male volunteers who descend along different Skaggs family lines.  A branch of the Skaggs family founded the Safeway family of stores, with names like Osco, Albertson's and Long's Drugs.  Several descendants of this Safeway Skaggs family have tested with the project and they not only match each other but also closely match the descendants of James and Susanna Scaggs.  The famous musician, Boz Scaggs, is also a descendant of this family.

Skaggs Family Groups based on DNA Testing

It's time for an update on the Skaggs Y-DNA testing.  We currently have 19 Skaggs who have taken the Big-Y DNA test and are descendants of Viking ancestors from the Isle of Man.  We call these guys R1a Skaggs.  We also have a few other Skaggs who are not part of this Isle of Man family and we call them the R1b Skaggs.  Both are Skaggs, just two completely different families. Both are really interesting, however, in this post I'll discuss the R1a Skaggs and group them into families based on their DNA.

Bible Entries for the Sims Settlement Scaggs

I have been scrolling back through the history of the Rootsweb Skaggs list and found an entry regarding one of the Sims Settlement Scaggs families.  This October 2008 entry seems long forgotten.  A poster to the old Genealogy.com Genforum board claimed to possess a Williams family bible with two Scaggs entries in it.

Skaggs Y-DNA Testing Update

Since it's a new year I thought I would give an update on where we stand with Skaggs Y-DNA testing. Based on our testing results to date it appears there are two distinct Skaggs families in America:

• Old Peter, the Longhunters, the Safeway Skaggs, James and Susanna, etc. whose descendants test with a Y-haplogroup of some flavor of R-M417.  These Skaggs match the Keig test-takers from the Isle of Man.
• Descendants of the Thomas Skaggs born 1728 in Maryland who migrated to the Greenbrier region of West Virginia.  These Skaggs test with some flavor of R-M269

Aaron Scaggs of Maryland and His Descendants

We know from early 18th century Maryland christening records that an Aaron Scaggs and wife Susanna had three children, Charles, Moses and Susanna.  We also know that Aaron Scaggs died c. 1715 and Susanna subsequently remarried to John Moberley and later Henry Boulton.  These second and third marriages allow us to determine that Aaron's wife Susanna was Susanna Hyatt, the daughter of Charles Hyatt and Sarah Tewksbury of Maryland.  Aaron's descendants are relevant for researchers interested in Old Peter Skaggs since at least one appeared in the records of the New River area of Virginia and is frequently mistaken for James, the father of the Longhunters.

Will the real James Skaggs please stand up? James C. Skaggs

There are many genealogical records available from the 1700s for James Skaggs, making him appear to have been everywhere at all times.  I want to try to take advantage of years of genealogical research by many Skaggs researchers to separate these James from each other:

1. James and Rachel Skaggs - the parents of the Long Hunters
2. James Jr. and Mary Skaggs - the Longhunter James, son of James and Rachel
   
3. James and Susanna Scaggs - lived side-by-side with the Long Hunters in Virginia, then went west and ended up in Warren County, Kentucky
4. James C. Skaggs – Revolutionary War pensioner from South Carolina
5. James Scaggs and Catherine Reaser/Mary Brinker - lived with first wife Catherine Reaser in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, then with second wife Mary Brinker in Frederick County, Virginia and the Chew's Folly farm in Prince George's County, Maryland

James C. Skaggs was a Revolutionary War pensioner from South Carolina who is frequently confused with other James Skaggs from that time period.  He is considered to be an ancestor of the famous Safeway Skaggs family.  The affidavit below the fold for a military pension contains a lot of useful information about James C.’s life, including an interesting statement that “applicant states that he never left his post during all this service unless when in the immediate neighborhood of his father's, when he made a visit of a few days and immediately returned.”  This indicates that James C.’s father lived nearby in Laurens District, South Carolina during the War.  Also, “at the termination of the war he moved to Spartanburg District South Carolina where he lived 10 or 11 years, when he moved to Jefferson County Tennessee, where he lived one-year when he moved to Knox County Tennessee where he has lived ever since and now lives.”

Skaggs Family Groups

Since a limited amount of DNA testing has indicated that there are two or more distinct Skaggs families in the United States I have decided to try and separate the known Skaggs families into groups so that when DNA results come in we know which family we are talking about.  Here goes:

The Safeway Skaggs: Where did they come from?

A branch of the Skaggs family founded the Safeway family of stores, with names like Osco, Albertsons and Longs Drugs.  Sam Skaggs donated $100 million to the Scripps Research Institute. You can read about the family here and their genealogy here.  M. B. Skaggs was the first President of Skaggs United Stores.  It has been thought by many genealogists that the Safeway Skaggs family goes back to a James C. Skaggs who served during the Revolutionary War.  Could be, but I'm not so sure.