Determining the Father of
Walter Henry Leiper
Walter Henry Leiper was born in 1864, and the man named on his birth certificate as father (Andrew Leiper) had abandoned his mother Eliza Jane Leach (later Smith, and then Leiper) some 4 years previously in 1859 or early 1860.
To determine the true identity of Walter's father, an ambitious project was undertaken given that Walter had only one confirmed child, a daughter, to pass his father's DNA on to, and for her to pass this DNA on to her descendants. While Walter had one purported son, the son appears to have died without issue, and as such Y-DNA based testing was not possible to assist with this puzzle. As such, autosomal testing was undertaken among willing participants of Walter’s descendants. This was conducted across 3 testing companies (Family Tree DNA, Ancestry, and 23andMe), and results loaded to 2 others (My Heritage and Gedmatch).
Only one member of the eldest generation remained alive at the time of the project start, and was only able to be tested at FTDNA before their passing, but their results were transferred to Gedmatch and to MyHeritage to gain more information.
The other five descendants consist of 4 full siblings (children of the eldest generation), and a 1st cousin of theirs (nibling to the eldest generation). These 5 were each able to test at FTDNA and transfer to My Heritage and Gedmatch. Testing the 4 siblings enabled for Visual Phasing to occur, allowing for basic groupings to be made regarding which grandparent of the siblings had contributed which portion of their DNA, and thus giving a psuedo-parental breakdown of the oldest generation tested.
Only one of these five was able to test at multiple locations, and so they also tested at Ancestry and at 23andMe, enabling a certain level of cross referencing to occur in places where chromosomal information is available.
These results were used to compare with a variety of matches who, when clustered together, clearly showed familial links to the same Munro family.
That of Allan MONRO and Margaret PENDER, with a connection also to Allan MONRO's parents, Henry MONRO and Elisabeth RADDOCH.
Research was conducted to compile a family tree that could then be expanded and hopefully used to connect with other descendants. This information can be found on the Munro page.
To determine which male in the Munro family could have been the father of Walter, living males aged under 15 and over 65 were excluded, as was anyone who was not in the right approximate location as best could be determined.
This very quickly narrowed down the males of the family to just two people: Henry Albert Munro, and his brother John Munro.
Henry's father Allan had died in 1836, and so could be ruled out, and Henry’s sons were either not yet old enough to father a child, or had not yet been born.
John has been untraceable, only a single baptism index from November 1836 can be located, no record of his birth has yet been located, nor has any record of his death or a marriage been found.
As such, it appears that only one man could have been Walter's father - Henry Albert Munro.
This family tree shows all of the known DNA tested descendants of Henry MONRO and Elisabeth RADDOCH, via their daughter Jean, and their son Allan.
Jean's known DNA tested descendants are in green, and each of them match one or more of Walter Henry's DNA tested descendants (coloured red).
Allan MONRO married Margaret Pender, and their DNA tested descendants are marked in blue. These matches comprise of two groups, one group which descend from their daughter Elizabeth, and the other group who descend from their son Henry Albert Munro via his legal wife Isabella Harkness.
All shared DNA values have been included on the chart. Where only a single value for J is present, this match tested at either 23andMe or Ancestry and has not transferred to FTDNA, MyHeritage, or Gedmatch, where it can be further compared to J's siblings, cousin, and the older generation. As more connections are located, the chart will be updated.
With such evidence as this, it is my conclusion that Walter Henry was the son of Henry Albert Munro. Perhaps this is evident in his name, with his middle name being Henry, it's not the first time in history that the father's name would be given to the child as a middle name when born out of wedlock.
Walter never spoke of his personal family life, his early childhood, or his family to his descendants - or if he did tell his daughter, those stories did not reach his grandchildren and great grandchildren, and as such, the DNA is all we have to go on.
Perhaps Walter was keeping it a secret like his parents did, or perhaps he never knew who his father was. But his DNA has certainly let this secret come out into the open.