Reminded of my search for a Chelsea Pensioner

 

                                                  The article that caught my eye in "Your Family History" magazine

I'm still going through my backlog of genealogy magazines. Much of the news and many of the links are way out of date but some are still relevant like the article I found in the May 2010 Your Family History magazine. The article was about the release of a new collection (at that time) of soldiers' records on Find My Past, the Chelsea Pensioners. It reminded me of the search I had done looking for the father of Benjamin Cavannaugh (sp), my 3 x great grandfather. I was looking for another Benjamin with the same or similar last name among those who had received a pension for military service. There were in pensioners as well as out pensioners. But I didn't get as far with those records by searching Find My Past as the magazine article reported was possible. I did, however, search for Chelsea Pensioners on FamilySearch by checking the catalogue for the subject Chelsea which brought up "united kingdom Chelsea pensioner's service records". I came up with some possible matches but I'll need to get to an affiliate LDS library to see the original documents from which the index was made. That was my search for army men but perhaps he was more of a seagoing type. I found a distinct possibility at Find My Past in the records of "British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704-1939". 

But then I started thinking of why I was looking for a military Benjamin Cavanaugh as the father of my known 3 x great grandfather. I had no record of birth for my known relative. No way to know that his father was named Benjamin, only an educated guess that the name was passed down as my 3 x great grandfather named his own son Benjamin. Maybe it was time to shelve this research and work back from what I had already proved to my own satisfaction on this family line. 

Sources:

FamilySearch, “United Kingdom Chelsea Pensioner’s Service Records”

FindMyPast “British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704-1939”

Your Family History “Genealogy News Agenda” Chelsea Pensioners Online,  May 2010

Distracted by a match during a DNA webinar

 

                                                                       A snippet from the Welch part of my family tree

I was watching a DNA webinar the other day while idly checking out my DNA matches on Ancestry. Dual screens provide plenty of distractions, sometimes a good thing but not always a great aid to retention for the information originally tuned into. On that occasion, my attention was definitely divided and became more so when I found a new-to-me cousin match. It was high, 179 cm and predicted to be a half 2nd cousin. The match list indicated that my match had a public linked tree but that's not what showed up when I clicked through. It showed one profile picture with private written beside it. That's still what I saw when I clicked through on "view full tree". However, there were two profile pictures on the bottom left of the mostly blank screen and when I clicked on the leftmost of those pictures the actual family tree showed up.

Good thing that it did because I could see right away that my link with my match was through the Welch family, the family of my paternal grandmother. One of the Welch names on the match's tree was even familiar and yes, Benjamin W. Welch showed up in my family connections as well. Then I noticed a complication because Benjamin W. Welch, my match's link to the family, married a woman with the last name of Welch. That might complicate the amount of DNA between me and my match. It also reminded me of a strange connection I found when looking at the military records for one of my George Welches. George wasn't the only Welch listed and I wondered at the time if there was a link between the two Welch names in that military list. I'm not sure if I ever wrote anything about the possible connection between those two recruits or if I explored the possible link further. So I now have another intriguing thing to check out and then there is my DNA match to explore further as well. It never ends, does it?

Overwhelmed and trying to keep up

 

                                                           Battling the Reversing Rapids, Sunshine Coast, BC

Do you ever run into those periods when everything seems to be coming at you at once? The last week has been like that for me, so busy that I had to look at the calendar on my phone to reconstruct how the flow of events had gone. All of that, of course, meant that I didn't get much of my own genealogy done.

When last I updated my Chambers family members on my Ancestry family tree, I had a look at ThruLines to see if adding more family members to the tree had caused more matches to show up with links to my Chambers ancestors. No such luck, I still see one match only, my own offspring. So no big breakthrough yet. I'm starting to wonder if there ever will be. Still, I'll keep at it.

The lack of progress did make it easy to get distracted. The week before, Your DNA Guide had put on DNA Rush Week and I wanted to make sure I saw the webinars from that a second time to catch anything I might have missed or disremembered. There was also another genealogy group's meeting to check out, since the usual meeting for my local group which is usually on the same night, had changed for this month. Our group was welcomed by the Maple Ridge genealogy folks and they had an interesting presentation by one of their members. In the discussion afterwards, the speaker mentioned researching gamekeepers. My ears perked up at that and I now have ideas for other records to search for my gamekeeping folks, Elias Maidment and family. Even distractions might prove useful.