A chance for Australian Research

 

                                 My Grandad's sketchy family tree that started off my research into my Australian family

It's very hard to stay the course with one area of research. This time my distraction was a post on Genealogy à la Carte advising that Australian records on MyHeritage were free to access for a short time. So I decided to concentrate on my Australian connections for the time the records were available. 

I previously wrote a series of posts about the McKay family who started out from Dorset and ended up in Australia after detouring through Malta and India. Such was the life of the British forces and their families at the time. William McKay, his wife Henrietta and their children ended up in New South Wales, Australia after he retired from the military in 1888.

                       The birthplaces of William and Henrietta McKay's children reflect the moves of his military career

There are no census records to help place the family together in Australia. I've been trawling through electoral rolls and death notices. But, while looking through the binders of information I already have, I found a printed family tree for the family that Margaret McKay married into. She was the McKay daughter my grandfather was closest to. It looks like this might be more of a distraction than I first thought but then I can always expand this part of my family tree as well. Maybe that will help me identify the families on my Ancestry Community labelled: New South Wales, Australia, European & British Settlers 1775-1975. I know that the McKays would be some of those connections but there were descendants of some of my other related families too. My people weren't very good at staying in one place. 

DNA update: A link to deep ethnicity

 

Vikings! That conjures up a certain image, doesn't it? I've long been fascinated by tales of the Northern raiders and have a number of books about them in my personal library. Among the world regions my Ancestry DNA ethnicity results come up with are results from Sweden and Denmark. As I have no known ancestors who came from those areas, I chalked it up to Vikings. It only made sense when I could track back ancestral links to Islay and the Isle of Skye, islands on the west of Scotland. It was common knowledge that they were part of the area that been of interest to Viking raiders.

My Scottish ancestry come from my maternal side so that's probably where the Viking link comes in and I used that information in my ethnicity inheritance to separate my maternal and paternal sides when Ancestry came up with the function that allows you to differentiate between inheritance from your parents if they have sufficient differences in their ethnic makeup. I assigned Ancestry's 5% Sweden & Denmark result to my maternal side. But maybe my links to that inheritance came later than the Vikings. After all, they stopped being a nuisance around 1100 or so and genealogical records don't go that far back.

Just to be sure, I opted for the further analysis of my DNA for Viking links at Living DNA as I had also tested at that site. Turns out that my Viking index is 78%, which means that my DNA is more similar to Viking DNA than 78% of all Living DNA customers. They also place my Vikings as coming from Sweden and Denmark rather than Norway.

I found this very interesting and it confirmed my belief that my Scandinavian roots were related to the Vikings but the thing was that I forgot part of the English history that I learned in school. As the Vikings put down roots in the British Isles they were given (or took) what was called the Danelaw. This was described in Current Archaeology magazine as the part of England lying east of a line from Chester to London. It was an area that would include Lincolnshire and I know that one of my family lines, the Tripp line, transplanted to North America in 1630 in the person of John Tripp who came from Horkstow, Lincolnshire. So it left me wondering, did my Viking ancestors end up in England or Scotland or maybe both?

Google Map approximation of Danelaw drawing a line (the roads) from Chester to London, Danelaw being the part east of the line

Sources:

Current Archaeology January 2015, Issue 298 “A prey to pagan people”? The Viking impact on Britain and Ireland” p28-36 

Take the research further or record and move on?

 

                                                               Family tree branch based on an SAR application

My progress on filling out my family tree has been halting at best. There are too many other things happening at this time of year. As you can see by the scan of the family line that heads this post, I've filled in the lineage that was outlined in the Sons of the American Revolution application which I found on Ancestry in December. The pension records I reviewed for Charles and Jane Tripp also contained proof of James Lanfear being married to Elizabeth Woodworth, so I'm pretty confident about the information tying the applicant back to Selah Woodworth. At the other end of the supplied data, I expect the applicant, Clarence Edmund Hyatt, would have had intimate knowledge of his parents' dates and probably had accurate information about his grandparents too. I also thought that any entries in an application to the Sons of the American Revolution would be of a high caliber. But was I justified in that belief?

I looked into the Ancestry database, U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970. According to the page about this source, these were applications approved by the Sons of the American Revolution between 1889 and 31 December 1970. There is a caveat though, in that present applicants basing their current application on an old SAR application might have to supply further documentation as older applications may not meet current genealogy standards. There is no mention of what year constitutes an older application.

Should I look into the application I have further or just accept the information on it at face value? A random overview of both Ancestry and FamilySearch shows that there is more information available about SAR and DAR applications and possibly documentation that accompanied them. Should I take my research further in this direction or just accept what I have? On the one hand, I want to continue with the expansion of my family tree and on the other, there could be treasures to uncover if I go further with my research on the application that I found and I might even pull up further applicants who also fit on my tree.

Sources:

Ancestry – U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970

Continuing my Revolutionary War records review

 

                                                         Tripp/Woodworth military and pension application papers

I've been sitting on the information from my 3 x great grandparents' pension application records for years now and I knew there was good stuff in there. At the time though, I was busy gathering information. Analysing what I had was always something I'd get to later. It probably wasn't the best approach.

After making notes from the pension records, I now have quite a few names to follow up on as you can see in the table below:

The Woodworth connection looks like the most interesting one to follow up on. Many of the documents made reference to Jane's father, Solomon Woodworth, who lost his life during the conflict, a fact that seems to have weighed in her favour when it came to the granting of her widow's pension.

I was able to access several stories on Ancestry about what happened to Solomon Woodworth. Some of the facts vary slightly but all paint him as a hero. Several mention his brother Selah, who also fought, another family connection who probably ties into some of the cousins mentioned in the table. Looks like my analysis has given me leads to further research, no doubt a reason why the analysis should have been done shortly after I had the pension records.

Sources:

Ancestry – U.S., Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Application Files, 1800-1900