We did find a direct female descendant and she was kind enough to complete Female DNA testing through Family Tree DNA. To our surprise, the results came up to be entirely European. Haplogroup K. Predominantly Northern Irish and Scottish. This means Nancy’s mother and her mother and her mother, none of the female line was American Indian.
I think the answers are in file boxes in Pennsylvania. Nancy was purported to be an orphan. Now she could not have been in the Carlisle Indian School as she was born about 1814 and the school began in 1879 when Nancy was about 65 years old. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t adopted from another area though, and having a white mother possibly made her more readily adopted by a white couple. McLane may be her adopted family’s surname.
Further DNA testing on other cousins has come up with Shawnee Indian through the Sinkey family and Cherokee Indian through the Green family.
Nancy’s son Millen Ralston married Eliza Sinkey and the Shawnee blood and the Green’s Cherokee blood (according only to testing) come to me this way. Eliza Sinkey’s parents were Matthew Sinkey and Nancy Huston. Nancy Huston’s parents were Andrew Huston and Elizabeth Green. Many many cousins have purported that Andrew Huston was American Indian and left Iowa in his elder years to return to his Shawnee family in Ohio. Andrew died after 1840 and was born circa 1776. We have not pin pointed where in the line the Shawnee blood entered the Sinkey family.
My cousin Dennis Butt maintains a fabulous site on the Sinkey-Huston-Green families: http://dennis-william-butt.com/Andrew%20Houston.htm
Millen himself had a mixed-blood mother in Nancy McLane and a mixed-blood father in John Ralston Jr.
