Branches and Ancestry communities

 

                                                                                 Branches can hold surprises 

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. 

Widening family lines, discovery stories

 

                                  Some of my ancestors would have been familiar with this bridge

Lately, I'll fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. Early this year, I resolved to expand my family tree on Ancestry by adding to the branches, listing siblings as well as my direct ancestors. I intended to start with my Dorset family links because I was still looking for a possible link related to the email I received from a DNA match. I didn't get very far with that but then I signed up for Diahan Southard's DNA study group. In one session she told us about how she uses the Ancestry dots in a system to filter her matches. Once I clued in, I realized it only works if you have an extensive family tree on Ancestry. It looks like I really need to work on adding those collateral lines. 

I made a start from the top of my Ancestry tree, the 2 x great grandparents on my paternal line, neither of whom have roots in Dorset. So figuring out that match I was emailed about will have to wait a while longer. My searches took me deep into the East End of London. One of the first things that came to light was a mention in the Old Bailey Proceedings Online for Sarah Cavanagh in 1861, something I was pointed towards by a search on Find My Past. Her offense was making counterfeit coins. I looks likely that Sarah was the daughter of my 2 x great grandparents as the Old Bailey record also used the name Weldon and my Sarah married a John Weldon in 1862.

As I was still working on filling out my family tree, I didn't stop to find out anything further about Sarah's criminal past. It's likely there will be records with more information. As I filled out the information about Sarah's children, however, I was tickled by the fact that her daughter, Eliza Weldon, married Edward Siequien, a police constable in Whitechapel, someone on the side of law and order. There's got to be a story there.

Sources:

Ancestry family trees

Find My Past searches

Old Bailey Online https://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Unexpected history finds on the road

 

                                                              One of the stones in the Nashville Pathway of History

It seemed like fun, a tour touching on the musical history of the South from Nashville to Memphis then ending up in New Orleans. I'm always interested in history, enjoy music and hadn't spent much time in the southern states except for a time my youth, but that's a tale for another time. I thought I wouldn't run across anything that I could use to add to my family's social history. In that, I was wrong.

Geography is not my strong suit, especially when it comes to the United States. There are just too many states to keep track of especially for someone who wasn't exposed to that information during school years. History I'm a little bit better with particularly when one of my family connections was involved.

I knew that my 2 x great uncle, Alexander Matheson, a Union soldier, fought at Shiloh and that the battle took place somewhere in the South. My connection between that battle and Tennessee didn't come until I saw it written in stone in the Nashville Pathway of History, a wall marking out the events through the years in Tennessee's history.

Between that wall marking out Tennessee history and an installation about the Civil War at a rest stop, I was able to gather more information for my family history, an unanticipated side benefit to a musical history tour. I never know what I'll find when I take my explorations on the road. 

A musical road to history

 

                                                                Statue outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville

Music is often in the background of our lives except for the chosen few who make it their life's passion. Most people can remember tunes from different phases of their lives. Indeed hearing certain tunes can evoke those memories along with feelings of joy or sorrow. Music plays a part in the history of our lives and takes us back beyond our own pasts to that of those who came before us.

I recently had a chance to remember this when I embarked on a tour called The Tennessee Music Trail to New Orleans run by Intrepid Travel. Our aim was to spend some time in New Orleans and this seemed like an interesting way to do it, taking in more cities in the American South and following up on the musical theme. Besides the destination city, we also had brief stays in Nashville and Memphis.

Beale Street in Memphis

All the stops had claims to fame and their own flavour to add to the musical past. For that's what was celebrated in all the stops, the birth and evolution of different forms of music. Nashville featured the history of various forms of musical expression from the gospel to hip hop strains showcased in the National Museum of African American Music to the various artists spotlighted in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The history of blues in Memphis was harder to come by on the ground although a visit to Sun Record Shop filled in some of the backstory as did a stop at Graceland. A walking tour of the Bourbon Street area of New Orleans rounded out our musical history exposure with a taste of Jazz.

One of the few quiet spots at night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans 

 

The tour was a reminder of how music brings back memories for all of us and how listening to it and being with others on the same quest can create a history of its own. 

Adding local information to a family past

 

                       Some books about Northamptonshire including the Kettering Vestry Minutes

I love books so when I got into family history many years ago, besides the novels that I wanted to read, I also bought books about the places where my family had lived. The trouble is that they lived in a lot of places. I have a whole large section on London, for instance. But they lived in other places too. One of those was Kettering in Northamptonshire.

Kettering was where my 3 x great grandfather, John Strange, and his family lived. He had been born there in 1790. So when I found a copy of the Kettering Vestry Minutes: 1797-1853 for sale, I purchased it. My hope was that it would give me an idea about what kind of place Kettering was when he lived there. To me vestry minutes meant the minutes of the parish or established church. I highly doubted that my Strange family would be found in there.

John was the grandson of Reverend Thomas Strange, the first Congregational minister in Kilsby, Northamptonshire. It didn't seem likely that the Strange family would have converted to Anglicanism, not in Northamptonshire where nonconformity was rife.

I was happily surprised to find John Strange showing up when I browsed through the entries. In an entry made about September 22, 1831, it was recorded that Mr. John Strange was appointed but he got off by pleading illness. That didn't last long because he was recorded as being present for the Vestry on November 14 of the same year. A number of other entries recording his name were sprinkled throughout the book. 

To settle my confusion over the religious issue, I finally looked at the introduction to the book. There I read that the various officers of the parish came from among the ratepayers. So being part of the Vestry wasn't about religion. It was about the parish as a unit of government. John Strange had been called to perform his civic duty. It gave me an idea of his status in the community. 

Beyond that, the introduction made for good background reading. It gave an interesting insight into life in that time period as there were other passages that detailed the problems the people were up against in that era. It's amazing what can be found to add colour to the lives of the family on a family tree if you bother to read a source thoroughly. 

Sources:

Kettering Vestry Minutes: A.D. 1797-1853, printed for the Northamptonshire Record Society by the Northamptonshire Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., Kettering, 1933  

Looking at my family tree through a different lens

 

                                                            X-DNA chart with presently known details filled in

Sometimes it helps to look at your family tree in a new way. When looking at different aspects of DNA through a DNA Study Group session the other day, we were introduced to X-DNA inheritance. According to the information given, the X chromosome is handed down in a different way than the other chromosomes and this also varies depending on whether the recipient is male or female. There are different charts for male and female inheritance available on the internet.

I'm still working on a particular DNA match and haven't gotten much further but she is an X DNA match to me. That inheritance should narrow the field of potential common matches. So I printed off a blank female inheritance chart and started filling in the names from my family tree.

I knew that there was one female line I wouldn't get far back on. I still haven't found the parents of my 3 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment. Once I filled out the tree it was surprising how many of the lines didn't go far back. There were only a couple of lines that reached the outer row of the chart at the 6 x great grandparent level. I thought my tree was more extensive than that but then again, most of the names on the chart are female. Females are notoriously hard to research changing their names as they do in marriage.

Having filled out a lot of the boxes on the chart, I can see where I need to concentrate my efforts to extend some of the lines. This will help me with the particular DNA match problem I'm working on. It also shows the gaps where I should concentrate my efforts to learn more about the female members in my family tree and makes me wonder if I've been guilty of concentrating on those easier to find male lines for too long. 

Sources:

X-DNA inheritance chart - https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2008/12/21/unlocking-the-genealogical-secrets-of-the-x-chromosome/

Finding fault with history

 

                                            A view of the May Day display at the Port Coquitlam Community Centre

The City of Port Coquitlam still celebrates May Day. Instead of going by the wayside as acknowledging the day has done in so many municipalities, in the city of PoCo the celebration has grown so the festivities now take a week. The highlight this Saturday will be the May Day Parade.

It should be a big one this year, unless people drop out because of the unprecedented heat predicted. This year marks the 100th anniversary of May Day festivities in Port Coquitlam. To honour this fact, an exhibit was set up in the city's new community centre. One of the items on display was the throne for the May Queen.

While I was there taking in the display, a few other people stopped to look too. It's great to see some interest from sports minded members of a younger generation. Unfortunately, there have also been complaints to do with the non-inclusivity of celebrating a Queen, a role only open to female students. But that's history for you, often politically incorrect. Recently we've seen statues of once lauded men toppled due to what they represent about our past. I understand the sentiment but the past happened. We learn from that and improve how people are treated but it doesn't alter what was. If the person who complained had read more of the information on display, they could have seen that a male ambassador was included as part of the May Day Royal Party, and innovation introduced in 1993. As it is, a heritage society seeks to present stories about what happened, not what people of the future would have deemed acceptable.