The Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace

Catoctin Furnace cast munitions for the Revolutionary War, and the people who kept it burning were enslaved African Americans, buried in a cemetery beside the ironworks. Twenty-seven of them were studied in partnership with the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society and the AARCH Society, and the results were returned to the public. These twelve belong to that community, members of five biological families of mothers, children and siblings. Their African ancestry lies closest to the Wolof of Senegambia and the Kongo of Angola and Congo. Eight also carried British or Irish ancestry, a legacy of the coercion that enslavement made possible. Some carried sickle-cell and G6PD variants. Among 23andMe participants the study found nearly 42,000 living relatives, most densely in Maryland.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in The genetic legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

• 01

  Who were the Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace?

  The Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace (1774-1850 CE, Catoctin Furnace, Frederick County, Maryland, USA) are one of the Historical figures entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "The genetic legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

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  How do I see my own distance to the Ironworkers of Catoctin Furnace?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

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• The Kongo Kingdom at Kindokic. 1650-1800 CE

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