Team Liddell et al

Team Liddell et al is a volunteer genealogical research group that aims to provide worldwide support for family genealogists who are interested in the surnames thought to derive from Liddesdale, a Scottish Border country glen.

The team provides research assistance on each of the surnames, of which all are accepted as at least informally related, even though for some this type of relationship is only a courtesy because of genealogical DNA test results. The team also provides a "digital round-table" on which participants can display their charts and genetics test results and compares each to the other in a nurturing familial environment.

Team Liddell et al is the world's first genealogy group to be enrolled in The National Geographic Society's "Origins of Mankind" genographic study. It provide a large array of public and Team Member services, including two allied and important genetic genealogy studies

Team Liddell et al has no dues, no assessments, no work assignments, no corporation underpinnings or by-laws, no officers, and owns no property other than its copyrighted materials, of which it freely gives away a sizable portion when asked.

History

One of the world's newest family genealogy and genealogy-genetics groups, Team Liddell et al, 'just happened'. (The members of the team consider that it is also one of the most innovative such groups.) There was no design or strategy behind the process that created this now-worldwide group of volunteer family genealogists.

It was originally a small, casual cluster of close relatives in the central southern region of the United States but is now a sizable and reputable worldwide organization with self-assumed responsibilities for more than 100 surnames thought to be derived from the ancient valley of Liddesdale.

In late 2002, three cousins who descend from a common Liddell ancestor who lived in New Albany, Mississippi during the second half of the 1800s and first quarter of the 1900s, and whose own ancestors came from Abbeville, South Carolina in the early 1800s following the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit, accidentally found each other on popular genealogy surname boards on the World Wide Web. These cousins were Angela Davis of Colorado, Catherine Liddell Skapura of California and James Wallace Liddell of Georgia.

They are the nucleus of what was to become -- in fewer than 36 months -- a worldwide group of nearly 100 family genealogists dedicated to the study of the Liddesdale-derived surnames and their genealogical and genetic kinships and providing a large array of new and innovative services.

These initial Liddells' postings to each other over several months were noticed by several more-distantly related Liddells in Texas and California who were related to the original band of cousins further back on their common tree through common ancestors who definitely had arrived in the New World in the early 1700s in the upper Chesapeake Bay and possibly as early as the mid-1600s in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. These newly discovered relatives were welcomed into the initial circle, which then began rapidly growing during 2003.

In early-2003 an increasing number of obviously unrelated Liddells in the Southern United States began joining the circle in hopes their ancestor research could be advantageously served by the group, and even a few Liddles asked to become part of the circle since they had no organization of their own.

By mid-year, this then still casual group of Liddells and Liddles--about 18 in all at this point--began receiving email traffic from even more-distantly related and previously unknown cousins of several lines represented in the group asking to become part of whatever was beginning to happen.

Structure
It was at that point that the original members of the group decided that the Web presented a very good opportunity to form a larger circle of Liddell and Liddle relatives, perhaps including even relatives who had no interest at all in family genealogy but who might be friendly to the idea of a Liddell-Liddle organization. This idea had scarcely entered development when Gary Wayne Liddell of Texas suggested in early-March 2004 that the group be named Team Liddell, an identity that was immediately adopted and put into general use.

Word began to spread about the Mid-South Liddells and their huge accumulation of Liddell-related genealogy files that had been preserved from generation to generation in dozens of small Southern towns, and then elsewhere in the United States as the Southern Liddells began to migrate and settle in other areas of the nation.

Growth
In mid-2003, David Dale West of New York State, who had been viewing the 'Southern' Liddells with envy for years because he had been unable, despite his great skills and vast files, to resolve his Lydell wife’s surname ancestry in the New England area, visited the aforesaid Liddells’ in-boxes one day with an 'earliest' Liddell chart he had researched on his own and asked what the Liddells thought of it.

West's chart of the primary Southern Liddell lines that were known to him closely matched those of the Mississippi-cousins' own ancestral records, and this growing friendship led West to suggest that the Liddells look into a possible connection to the de Soulis (French Norman) family of Scotland as a possible source of origin.

David Dale West reasoned that since the Liddell surname in a variant spelling began appearing in the few Scotland records of the late-1200s about the same time and in the same locale (Liddesdale) that the de Soulis lines began disappearing during a time of considerable social stress and international war in Scotland, that the Liddell surname might be a simple product of a place-name adoption, modification or creation by the then-royally-harried de Soulis family. (The family had been particularly harried since William de Soulis attempted to assassinate Robert the Bruce (King Robert I) in an attempt to seize the Throne of Scotland for an ally).

A new genealogical direction
David Dale West's visit led to Team Liddell’s contacting Frank Flint Soule of Illinois, the (2003-05) president of the Soule Kindred in America family association—a Mayflower family—about his knowledge of the de Soulis. Soule knew little of the Scot branch of his lines since his own is English and the de Soulis were Scottish, even though both branches have common ancestors in 11th-Century Normandy in the northeast of France and, by consequence, in William the Conqueror's armies.

While he could help only to a slight degree with the Scottish de Soulis lines, Soule and his association provided some rare reference material and books to Team Liddell, the study of which happily led to several genealogical breakthroughs and reinterpretations of the history of the now apparently extinct de Soulis lines of Scotland, and a final determination that Liddells did not evolve from the de Soulis lines.

During 2003, word about the then-still-forming Liddell group continued to spread through still-unknown web pathways to other individuals with (probably) related surnames based on Liddesdale. They began contacting Team Liddell members to ask to see their files or for help with their own. These included not only Lydell but also Lidell and Lyedelle. During early-2003, Team Liddell began producing the irregularly issued but generally monthly 'The Liddell Collection', which was a compiling of interesting current research contributed by members of the organization.

The Liddell Collection was distributed as an attachment to a groupwide email. But its rapid file-size growth quickly brought the realization by its third edition—the April 2004 one—that the files were getting too big for use as attachments to email messages sent to the members.

It was also at this time that a Team Liddell member volunteered two files of suspected Liddesdale-related email addresses he had gathered over several years which could be used to inform others that Team Liddell was breaking through long-existing genealogical barriers. The preliminary use of these files caused Team Liddell to triple in size to more than 60 members and extend its presence into seven nations and three continents in a mere 10 days.

Today, the Team includes two and perhaps three distinct Liddell lines and a yet-to-be determined number of Liddle, Lydell, Lidell and Lyedelle lines. As many as six other surname groups have expressed interest in the Team's activities, including some Little/Lyttle forms.

The Team sponsors and supports a Leyton-Leighton genetic study and a Northern-USA Perry study as a courtesy to their members and the world of genealogy. Both group are expected to be spun off as independent studies once they obtain six or more participants.

The Team in mid-2005 has approximately 100 members on four continents and in eight nations and temporarily has ceased aggressive membership building activities in order to consolidate its past gains and to have to time further develop a number of important projects. Membership remains open at all times to qualified applicants, however.

Evolution of the Team's public identity

The 'Old-Line Southern Liddell' cousins gradually realized during late-2002 into early-2003 that since the Liddell-surname possessors were obviously the largest group by far of the Liddesdale variant-surname groups, they had a responsibility to assist the smaller groups, just as they had been assisted by the Soules. This direction also was inviting because the considerable work of their own ancestors who had compiled large genealogy holdings pertaining to their histories had reached the point there was little left for them in genealogy other than to update the archives and to assist others.

In this manner, the previously nameless cluster of cousins became Team Liddell, and then Team Liddell et al was developed out of Team Liddell to represent the largest 'family' the Team had become. At this point, the group was dedicated to a larger service as a data-collecting, meeting place, and a form of communal 'digital hearth' for all Liddesdale variant-surnamed families to gather at from throughout the world.

Today, Team Liddell et al recognizes that the Liddell surname, itself, is nothing more than just another of the surname variants thought to be derived from Liddesdale and that the Liddell-surname bearers now have no special place in the growing mutual history of the combined Team. It is still used solely because the majority of the Team Liddell members have this surname connection and also because a sizable number of Web-based relationships originally were based on the use of Liddell which would be highly inconvenient to change to another at this late point in time.

A meaningful name-change offer by the Team remains open.

Genealogical assets

In early 2004, while the name Team Liddell was first being used by the group, the modern Liddell genealogists in it learned of a relatively obscure “History of Liddells” that was nearly 400 pages in length and covered the various lines coming from four reputed brothers including Thomas, William, John and James Liddell.

These four and the families of two and perhaps three of the assumed brothers entered the future United States of America at New Castleton at the upper point of Chesapeake Bay in the early-1700s in an area disputed by of the colonies of Delaware, Maryland, the old "West Jersey Colony" and Pennsylvania. John and James later settled prior to the American War of Independence in Abbeville South Carolina and gave rise to that is today called the 'Old-Line Southern Liddells'. All four brothers were earlier of Scotland—probably from Roxbourghshire, with John likely to be born in 1708 and James in 1712.

The 'History of Liddells' attempts to report on the various lines descending from two of the four brothers (and perhaps a third as one brother, Thomas, is likely without descent and William's perhaps raised following his apparent death in Maryland as fosters in John or James' homes, to approximately 1958 when the author ceased writing and released his work to a few close cousins.

The book was compiled principally by James Thomson Liddell of Louisiana following his retirement and the death of his wife. He extensively used countless genealogy files from private holdings provided to him, but principally those of Ximena Liddell Parsons of Atlanta, Georgia and, for a time in the 1950s of Tupelo, Mississippi.

The Team's research during late-2004 indicates that the book is, to an indeterminable degree, also based on the reputedly extensive genealogy records of Ann Liddell who was the head librarian for Louisiana State University for most of her career and who was last known living in Hammond, Louisiana in the 1970s.

The History has a sizable number of errors and omissions, and several Team members are working on correcting these shortcomings, but it will take the Team an estimated decade or more to complete this project. An uncorrected and un-updated early version of this book is available on microfilm in the Family History Centers maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

During 2003, the Team also established contact with several sizable Liddell and Liddle genealogy archives and obtained access to them. Today, the Team undoubtedly has the largest Liddell-Liddle genealogy assets of any organization in the world, and has useful accumulations of Lydell and Lidell material as well.

The Team's still-growing, in-hand family genealogy and genealogy-related assets currently total more than 500 megabytes in approximately 4,500 individual digital, on-line files, which are largely reserved for membership use only and are stored in nearly a dozen restricted-access/members-only websites, each designed to be little more than filing cabinets that every Team Member can access and download from for personal use.

The Team also provides several specialized on-line libraries for its membership addressing genealogy, genetic genealogy, and digital equipment and storage devices. It also provides a number of secure on-line files-storage vaults for preserving its members' genealogy files under restricted-access agreements.

Innovative public and Team-Member services

In addition to its extensive files and sizable libraries on the Web, the Team offers a growing number of other free services to its membership and is gradually adding variants on these services for no-cost, free use by the world at large.

A two-gigabyte "Team Super Website" is currently in the development stage (mid-2005) under the direction of Team Webservant William Albert (Bill) Liddle of Washington to bring all these assets together in one on-line location. The 'Super' will feature a number of innovations for a genealogy group, including a music page with on-line recordings of the Celt and Scot music of Moira Kerr, a noted Scot songtress and composer, extensive family photo albums and a three-dimensional animation theatre that will trace out the complex history of Liddesdale. Approximately 30 percent of the site will be open to the public when it opens before the end of 2005.

A Team-supported public website was opened in March 2005 for the membership to use in any fun way they wish. Current interest focuses on family-photo scrapbooks, book reviews section, a growing recipes collection and the Scotland Pilgrimage accountings of Team Members' trips to their ancestral towns in Scotland. The JustUsCousin website has become highly popular with both the Team and public.

Some Team Members are still struggling to find their way back to Scotland or northern England from within the United States and/or Canada, and even from other places on the globe, while other members have succeeded in getting back to Scotland but once there, they have run into the barrier for all of the variant surnames of the great destruction of public and church records during three-hundred years of rebellion, war and conflict. Still others are just starting out in genealogy and are doubtful of their own grandfather’s parents. For these reasons, the Team has established a limited on-line self-education course in basic genealogy, and several Team Members provide personal coaching to 'newbies' in the use of genealogy tools and procedures.

The Team also offers to its members a free computer, digital device, web security and software advisory service.

A special public website was opened to the public in September 2005. This marked the first time that the Team allowed its genealogy files to be publicly available. The contains a sizable collection of genealogy records pertinent to New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Amazing Sea Chest has nearly 20 megabytes of files and 15 megabytes of photographs pertaining to the history of the Liddell lines that opened up New Zealand in the early 1820s, long before those islands became a British colony.

These Liddell lines also were important to the founding of Victoria and New South Wales in Australia. The Sea Chest collection has become a focus of American Liddell attention as well after a genetic connection was revealed during genealogy-genetics testing.

Genetic genealogy research

At the suggestion of Angela Davis, one of the members of the initial cluster of cousins that would later become the Team, several of her relatives began a study into genetic genealogy as a means to get around the absence of records in pre-1600s Scotland and to assist Team Members in their individual document research.

After a 18-month study of the then- and still-new, rapidly growing genetic genealogy market, Team Liddell et al decided to adopt FamilyTreeDNA as its exclusive genealogical DNA testing service. This company has since been selected by the National Geographic Society as a partner-administrator and comprehensive testing service for its landmark 'Origins of Mankind' Genographic Project. The NGS action included an adoption without modification of the genetic-marker arrays of FamilyTreeDNA and its lab procedures based at the University of Arizona.

There now are two allied Team-administered studies, the "Team Liddell et al YDNA/mtDNA Study for Males and Females" for the USA in which only senior-level genetics tests are accepted (37-YDNA, YDNA-Plus and mtDNAPlus), and, for the rest of the world, the Liddesdale YDNA/mtDNA Study for Males and Females. This newer study was established by the Team in mid-2005 to enable the study participation of non-USA-residing genealogy-genetics testers with limited incomes. The latter study offers both the most basic FamilyTreeDNA tests (12-YDNA and mdDNA) as well as the senior tests required in the Team Liddell et al Study.

The two studies are explained and discussed at the Team's website and at specialized webpages provided by FamilyTreeDNA within its own website.

Well-administered genetic testing procedures and conservative interpretations have subsequently richly rewarded the Team and its members from this massive effort, given its limited manpower and complete lack of a treasury.

The Team's first study was launched 15 Oct 2004. Within eight months, and in conjunction with the later-established Liddesdale YDNA/mtDNA Study, the testing produced results leading to the reuniting of a R1b haplogroup Liddell line with known representatives on two continents for the first time in more than two centuries.

This line, which entered the United States via New York harbor about 1790 now is attempting to understand its close genetic relationships to a Carr line and what previously was thought to be a pair of French Norman lines.

The Team Liddell et al study also has established that a J haplogroup Liddell line was most likely founded by a Roman Army auxiliary, a Syrian (Hamian) archer, who was assigned for several years to Hadrian's Wall starting in A.D. 250. A second R1b haplogroup Liddell line. which entered the United States from Canada in the mid-1800s has been very tentatively identified in the Team Liddell et al Study as possibly related to the other R1b-halogroup Liddell line, and is awaiting further research developments along with several lines not bearing a Liddell surname.

A western-USA Liddle male is currently (mid-2005) undergoing testing in the Liddesdale Study and another Liddle male in the U.S. New England area will soon join the Team Liddell et al Study. A Mid-West Liddle female will soon join the Team Liddell et al study as well.

The Lydell members of the Team currently are searching for a pair of third-cousin males in their lines for USA-resident testing.

Also, the rapidly growing Team genealogy archives has compiled several documents that indicate a kinship between some of the North American Liddle lines and an Australian Liddell line, and a genetic-matching will be attempted.

The first Liddell-line female Team Liddell et al Study participant, a H haplogroup who now is using the most recent sub-H tests at FTDNA, will be joined in late-2005 by two Liddle females.

The team accepts no other testing services' results into its studies unless the reported data has been converted by FTDNA or is otherwise accepted by FTDNA as equivalent to its own, and derives no income or benefits of any type from the testing procedures of or purchases of testing kits from FamilyTreeDNA.

The Team has formed a mutual-advice partnership with the Reivers Genetics Study, which is administered by James V. (Jim) Elliott, a leading amateur genetic genealogist, and provides reference material and Web-development advice to the Soule Kindred in American association.

In June 2005, Team Liddell et al became the world's first family genealogy group of any type to be enrolled in The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.

In August 2005, the Team founded a medical-theme study group, the "Family Medical History Project", for the study of inheritable diseases and tendencies to develop certain diseases within specific families, and how family genealogists can track these illnesses and tendencies, and how to assist physicians in making forecasts and otherwise providing compiled family medical histories for living members of each family. This trailblazing study is expected to be completed by the end of 2006, with the results given to the world without restrictions of any type at that time.

Conclusions

Team Members plan that the organization become permanent but to keep it in its present form with no dues or assessments, nothing to sell, with no formal structure including a complete absence of by-laws, officers and incorporation and to always firmly established on the Web exclusively.

A plan to establish a permanent depository of its records and archives at a minimum of two major universities is presently under study by the Team.

The Team's earlier and current names, its slogan--"No Longer Separated by Oceans and Centuries", and its emblem composed of a frosted outline of the British Isles set over its slogan were copyrighted in early 2004.

Team Liddell et al's primary email-address is TeamLiddell@Yahoo. Com. Currently James Wallace Liddell is the Team's facilitator, which is an informal position and title only. The Team's 'Webservant' can be emailed at bill_liddle_webservant@yahoo.com.

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