The search for a Dorset connection

 

                           The Acorn Inn in Evershot where some of my Dorset ancestors came from (the village not the pub)

It always pays to look twice. I was deep into research on my Maidment line when I realized I was on the wrong track. Not that I got far - just far enough to see that there were unnamed fathers for some of the offspring on that family line which will make genetic research tricky.    

But it turns out that was not the main problem with pursuing that family line to see if I could find the common ancestor for my DNA match and myself. What I had done when I looked at my match's family tree was to enter a search term. I chose the surname Maidment for my search. A name popped up, a Susanna Maidment from the 1700's. I didn't have a Susanna on my family tree but it was the right surname. But it turns out that many of my family names would have popped up if I entered them as search terms. Susanna wasn't attached to any family line on my match's tree. My match had added the Dorset names from my tree to a kind of free form tree that sits behind but doesn't link up with hers. Maybe that was in anticipation of joining our lines later or perhaps as a reminder of the names that may eventually link to her family tree. 

So the research I did last Sunday hit a bit of a dead end. Since then I've jotted the Dorset names on my match's tree down in a notebook with their birth and death dates, if available. I'm hoping that some of those locations will give me a better idea of where to start expanding my family tree with collaterals to see if we can come up with our common ancestor sooner rather than later.                               

Delving into Dorset family links

 

                                                              Google Map image showing the County of Dorset

Life has been full of distractions lately, from writing groups get togethers to genealogy webinars to Wi-Fi problems and non-genealogy parts of life to look after too. I finally sat down the other day to start adding the collateral links to the Dorset part of my family tree. My plan was to start with my Chubb family but before doing that I decided to have a closer look at my DNA match's family tree on Ancestry.

When my match emailed me, she said that she couldn't find any common surnames in the lists of names on our family trees. By the time I looked recently, there was now a common surname, Maidment. That, of course, is surname I haven't been able to get much information on. It also was the maiden name of one of my more intriguing ancestors, Mary Rideout nee Maidment.

Mary spent much of her life in the small Dorset village of Ashmore where she married Thomas Rideout on April 25, 1833. They had several children together. Thomas died in 1842 and there was no record of Mary remarrying. However, her last child was born in 1845. As far as I can tell, Mary Rideout spent the rest of her life in Ashmore. Was the name of the child's father an open secret in the village?

I don't know the answer to that but it will be interesting to follow the Maidment line. Hopefully I will learn more about Mary and the family she was born into.

The Plan: First step with complications

 

                                     Photo of some of the Chubb family tree I received with the caveat in the right corner

One project that I've been promising to do for a while is updating my Ancestry tree by adding collateral lines. A few months ago, I was contacted by a DNA match but we couldn't find any names in common on our trees. We narrowed down a location. There is a common link to Dorset, so it's my Dorset lines I want to branch out by adding siblings to my direct ancestors.

I remembered that a fellow researcher on my Chubb line had sent me a detailed family tree. That seemed the best place to start. It would be so easy just to plug in the names and dates from the tree he'd given me. Well, at least that's what I thought until I dug out the paperwork.

It's a very comprehensive tree, covering a long sheet of paper with a letter sized sheet taped on. (I'm not sure of the exact paper size because it came from the UK. They measure paper differently over there.) On first glance, the names I recognized agreed with my research but there is a caveat. In the top left hand corner he wrote: The Chubb Family of Evershot in Dorset, a provisional line of descent, being open to possible amendment. The words "provisional" and "possible amendment" gave me pause. It was a reminder to do the genealogy carefully and to check the information I had been given before adding it to my Ancestry tree. I don't want to be one of the Ancestry users who add people willy nilly to my family and consider my work done. Unless I want to perpetuate misinformation, I better slow down and do this right. Looks like my 2023 genealogy plan is going to take longer than I thought.

Plans for a distracted researcher

 

After the social gatherings of December, it's hard to get back to routines and remember what I was working on. It didn't help that I'd put everything on hold when I went for a beach vacation towards the end of 2022.

It's time to remind myself of what I want to get done. Time to come up with a plan or else I'll get pulled down one rabbit hole after another. That was clear after I went into my Ancestry account for the first time in a long time. The landing page featured one possibility after another from family trees to recipes. Mmm, I like apple cobbler, I wonder what they use in that recipe? But I digress, time to get back to my plan.

Of course, there's a complication. Isn't there always? In the spring I've got a group genealogy week scheduled in Salt Lake City. Prep work is needed for that too. Now, just what do I want to find out when I'm there? Maybe if I work on the list of tasks left over from last year I'll come up with a direction I want to concentrate on for this year's research. Maybe a webinar on organization would help but then I'd have to add that to the plan. I know, I'll give myself until next week to come up with a research plan for the year or at least the start of one. Tune in next week and hopefully I'll be organized by then. 

2022 Year in review

 

2022 was a change from the years preceding it. Restrictions loosened up somewhat allowing travel. It was enough to make things feel almost normal again but not quite. My blog posts included some about travel. At least I had new photos to share. Here is a review of some of the topics covered in my blog posts in 2022. 

As the year began, I was exploring letters from my 3 x great uncle, Alexander Matheson, who had found his sister again after 40 years. His correspondence was both a window on the times he was living through and a deeper dive into their birth family's past.

In February, I took my great uncle's story further. Alexander Matheson fought as a Union soldier in the US Civil War so research into his life included an exploration of his military records, an interesting source although some of the information, especially that coming from the man himself, may be questionable. 

The Mathesons had lived in Ontario before Alexander crossed the border into the US. Early links there were explored as well as those to Scotland where the family had originated. Included in my exploration of Ontario sources was a dive into the records of the McPhersons, connections of the Mathesons and the birth family of Mrs. Clark, who figured in Alexander's story. Posts in March and April were about this exploration.

In June, Scottish research was on my mind as I prepared for a trip there that had been delayed for a few years. That was when I signed up for a Pharos course with Chris Paton about Scottish records. Also, research looked to be tricky with the new reality and I wondered if I remembered how to research on the road. There was not as much research done on the ground in Scotland as I was used to but the trip reconnected me to the country and provided some clues that will keep me busy.

From August to December, my posts were inspired by travel to my destinations of Scotland, Alaska and Puerto Vallarta as well as other things that piqued my interest. Those were things like my father's RAF records, Viking DNA and the convict bodies found on Rat Island as reported in the program Digging for Britain. I'm still following up on that clue.

Images:

A letter from Alexander Matheson plus research books

Muster rolls for Alexander Matheson

An early Ontario house

Turf house at Glencoe

Books about Vikings

Seasons Greetings

 

                                      Seasons Greetings

                                               and 

                                     all the best for the

                                           Holidays

Getting back to it

 

This has been a year of travel for me, now that some of the restrictions of the past years have been eased a bit. The latest travel was a beach holiday in Mexico. There was no family history involved. Well, at least on my part. It was my first trip to Mexico other than the time we parked and crossed the border at Tijuana for a day. That was back in the '70s. I would imagine even that border town has changed since then. 

The trip was more reminiscent for my travel companion. More than once she brought up past travels to the country, the first time when she was a teen travelling with parents and siblings. That brought to mind my own travels when I was still living at home. We took beach vacations too, probably more to get away from the long Montreal winters. Like many people from Quebec, we headed south to Florida. In fact, my parents liked it so much they bought a house near Kissimmee.

That brings to mind a whole other story, an adventure of sorts. Perhaps there is something in my latest trip to trigger thoughts of family history and memories of the way I have migrated from one place to another. Maybe the break I took from family history will inspire me in new directions.