During lockdown I have been seriously looking at my ancestry, did the DNA test and now have a group of people who seemingly are related. Some we have worked out the links, others are a mystery, but it have been a diversion and actually fun.
A cousin has been doing this for quite a while and together we tracked down the identity of our Paternal Grandfather and my Cuz has tracked done his grave in Mildura Cemetery, which was marked with a brick ! He died in 1928 and has in a brick-marked grave until today, when a headstone was installed ! I have photos and we will drive up their on the weekend to have a small celebration.
Back 5 generations on Dads side and up to 7 on Mums. Found some rich relations in USA ! And plenty of skeltons.
Anyway, has anyone else done this and found any exciting or dark secrets.
Aunt has done a heap of this. She went over to the USA and went though the Mormon library in Salt Lake City.
One interesting snippet is that back in the day a guy found out well into his life that the woman he thought was his mother was actually his grandmother. The girl he thought was his sister was his mum, but they’d done the switch to save face.
From what we knew, we thought it was 13/32 Irish, mostly from Co Clare and some Co Meath, and 19/32 English, and on my father’s paternal side, east end of London (Stepney), and the maternal side, Tamworth (once capital of Mercia).
But two of my sisters did the DNA test, and came out about 65% south-west Ireland, 32% English and 3% Norwegian.
The Norwegian bit would come from York where a maternal ancestor was transported to Tasmania in 1828. She later was freed by marrying a Geelong man.
Difficult to know where the mistake of Irish heritage arose, now that both parents have dropped off the perch.
My mum’s family were always quite contemptuous of the bog-Irish…difficult to understand being devout RC in Geelong…my suspicion is they were actually mostly Irish, particularly when cousins were named Bourke and Kenny.
Seems to me that the attribution of DNA to an area of Ireland is possibly stretching the capability of the test.
Seems like a bit of fun, but I am not sure how accurate the percentages are.
My mum did it, and had the expected regions, then a percentage Spanish that was a bit unexpected.
The other thing with those tests which was a potential problem a few years ago, but I have no idea about the current situation was “who owns” the DNA test results and how that is used. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
my dad, his sister and their cousin did a lot of digging back before websites did it for you. linked back to some castle estate in ireland so had records back to like 1300s. i’m sure i’ll inherit the stack of scrapbooks one day.
mum had a crack at her side but didn’t get a lot past her grandad. his wife died not long after having my grandmother, and he didn’t have any kind of doco kept other than “england army, stationed in india for a bit”. still managed to get together a heap of diaries, old photos and video of her mother and aunty talking about life on the land in childhood that she passed on to the local historical society where they grew up.
so out of all that i learned that i’m 7th gen 'strayin on dad’s side and 4th on mum’s, so almost as pure bred bogan as you can get.
Been meaning to do this for years, I do know my fathers, father had a lot of land on the East Coast of Tas, Elephant Pass to about Douglas River, through the whole family generation I still have the Family Bible and some left over documents.
Ireland gave Australia all the records that hadn’t been destroyed ( when the Irish Records Office was blown up, destroying 1000 years of history) on transportation to Australia.
As the convict class tended to marry into the convict class until late in the 19th century, ancestry can be traced through several generations without having to pay for it.
Another limited avenue is the Australian War Memorial records, can be done free for tracing anyone who served, online with a name trace and only nominal fees for details, including pics - good for WW2, not bad for WW1, Boer War not flash . It is an Ancestry source, but they slug you for it , advertise it around Anzac Day.
I imagine the UK Imperial War Museum has something similar.
National Archives of Australia is also a source to trace family, but not easy to navigate (Trove section not bad on migrant families by ship post WW2, if you persevere)
Now that so many records offices in so many countries have online records, mostly free, a keen family historian could go back several generations.
Understand Iceland is the only country to have accurate DNA mapping.
One grandparent is from Scotland, the other 3 were all orphans so idk how well I’d go trying to trace it back any further.
Other than that I share ARA-VP-6/500 as my earliest known direct ancestor.
