Finding family history through place

 

                                     

                                     The Congregational Church at Kilsby where Rev Thomas Strange and family lived                                                                                 one of my Greater London to Southern East Midlands family connections

So far I've only attended two of the RootsTech sessions for 2026. The first was a session on how to use the FamilySearch Research Wiki. In this session the viewers/attendees were advised not to search by name, a common default among genealogical researchers, the wiki gives information about place or locality. So an idea of the area where the family being searched for lived or came from is needed when seeking information from FamilySearch's very informative wiki.

The second session I attended was Diahan Southard's initial DNA presentation. She advised us that knowledge of place and time was key in finding information about ancestors who passed on their DNA to us. So place also matters when building our family trees to make sense of our DNA matches. The various DNA testing companies have different tools to point us in the direction of what places our DNA is related to. At Ancestry they are called ancestral journeys. She also showed us how to toggle through the timeline of these journeys as the migration patterns change over time.

Immediately after the session, I checked out the journeys on my Ancestry account. They can be found under DNA in the Origins section. I now have 3 ancestral journeys which make less sense to me than the original communities or whatever they were called in previous DNA updates. I used to have one that included Ontario which fit in well with the known whereabouts of a branch of my family. Now I have Virginia & Eastern Kentucky Settlers which is no help with my family lines that I can see, Greater London to Southern East Midlands which contrary to expectations is on my maternal side (my Dad's family lived in London for generations) and Eastern Australia which is on my paternal side although the family line which I've traced to NSW is on my maternal side.

The Greater London to Southern East Midlands made sense when I looking into it further as it included Northamptonshire and various people from my family tree were also included although not all of them were from the maternal side of my family tree. The timeline for the Eastern Australia journey only had one entry, no change from date to date. It does remind me that I should track down the family connections on my father's side to see who ended up there. The ancestral journey that still baffles me is the one for Virginia & Eastern Kentucky Settlers but I'm encouraged by Ancestry to keep adding to my family tree and, if I enter a relevant family connection on my own family tree, they will show up in the information for that ancestral journey. Maybe it's time to add more connections to the part of my family tree that could possibly be relevant.