To continue on from my post last week, I added descendants to my 2 x great grandparent, Cavanagh/Minister couple and proved the path to my match who I could see on Ancestry, a third cousin once removed. All that was left was to add the correct dot to the matches I shared with that third cousin, only there weren't any. We had no shared matches in the Ancestry database. I put that down to the fact that DNA testing hasn't caught on in Britain like it has in America. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that people in the UK are not as keen to find family connections since they are they are still living close to their families' origins.
I haven't given up on adding offspring to my 2 x great grandparents, I'm moving on to a different set of 2 x greats. One of the couple this time hails from Dorset so there's the potential that my email match, the one I'm supposed to be adding collateral ancestors to my family tree for, could be a link. On top of that, I think that some descendants of my Rideout/Maidment couple left the UK. Maybe some of the Rideout/Maidment children are the reason Australian communities show up in my Ancestry DNA Story. People in faraway Australia, like those in the US and Canada, might be more interested in DNA testing. At least that's what I hope.
Initially, I was surprised when Australian communities showed up related to my DNA. Then I researched the story of Henrietta Chubb, sister to my great grandmother, Sarah Ann Chubb. Henrietta married a military man, William McKay. My June 2020 blog posts about them followed the Army Engineer and his family from the UK to Malta and back, then on to Bangalore, eventually ending up in New South Wales. So, there was a definite Australian link to one of my Dorset lines, the Chubbs. I have a feeling that some of my other Dorset line, the Rideouts, ended up in Oz as well.
My family, including all of its branches, seems to have rarely been content to stay in one place which feels like business as usual for me. Not for some families though or else how could the DNA testing companies come up with their reference populations. I can't imagine having all four grandparents coming from the same place but that's what's required to become part of those all-important population markers that allow the companies to come up with ethnicity estimates. I'm not sure what methods are used to come up with Ancestry's communities but they are supposed to be pretty good clues to where family has lived in the recent past. I think I've figured out why I have Australian communities and hope to find out more. Virginia and Eastern Kentucky Settlers also show up in my Ancestry communities. I don't have a clue as to why or who they could refer to. I guess I have more digging to do.
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