Genealogy, so time consuming, much to look at, and often nothing to find. and then hurray, a little treasure of information presents itself. In my case it was discovering that my Irish Greenwich based Bartholomew Sugrue was godfather to another families child. Bartholomew the Godfather. Godparents are never, as yet, included in transcriptions, for which this was really quite a find. Getting to such a find involves a whole lot of detective work which could lead nowhere. Here, it was from looking at the lives of those who had been godparents to Bartholomew's own children and looking up their own family records. The Graney family, also from Ireland and settled in Greenwich, had been godparents in 1860 to Bartholomew's daughter, Catherine, registered in the baptisms of the Roman Catholic records of Our Lady Star Of The Sea, at Greenwich, when she was just over a year in age. And then, such joy for me, like really, to find that the very next year, in 1861, our Bartholomew was in turn a godparent to the Graney's son, William Joseph Graney. Of this Graney family, friends to the Sugrues, the head of the household, John Graney, worked with Bartholomew in the building trade, and his wife, Mary Graney, née Kane, I saw that by 1881 she was a widow, just about surviving as a hawker on the streets, and interestingly her place of origin was listed, maybe being another clue to the Sugrue families own origins, all being from County Kerry, her hometown being Castleisland at the beginning of the Vale of Tralee, a town surrounded by hills and boglands, atop a vast cave system known as Crag Cave, within which were the underground waters of the Green Lake. Ah, I have tried and tried, and yet have never found a baptism in Ireland for Bartholomew Sugrue, for which I wonder if his family were travellers, not bothering with the system and its obligations; like it's so that Bartholomew never bothered legally registering his children births when living in Greenwich, even though by law one had to do so. And then again, some of the Irish settlers appear to have used alternative names, such as Garrett London, who was a godfather for Bartholomew's son Daniel in 1857 and yet called himself Garrett Barry in the 1851 census. And at the time of the marriage of Bartholomew's grown up son, Thomas (my ancestor), instead of giving his fathers name as Bartholomew Sugrue, Thomas said he was James Seagrove, although we can surmise that by then Thomas wished to disassociate from his fathers scandals. This family continues to fascinate me, and the next day I happily found out more about the Sugrues. I'd not realised it before, but Bartholomew's close friend, Patrick Reardon, who had been best man at his wedding to his first wife Ellen Sullivan, was actually his brother in law, Ellen being none other than Bartholomew's sister, Ellen Sugrue. This and more I was finding out by grace of the Roman Catholic records of our Lady Star of the Sea on FindMyPast, which I had paid a lot to join for a year, but which was yielding anyway these delightful finds for me. Bartholomew's sister, Ellen, was a few years older than him, and this sibling connection explains how it is that these two families were so entwined. It was in looking at a baptism of Patrick and Ellens daughter Mary Ann Reardon, that I saw a side note saying sub-conditional, which at first I though meant handicapped in some way, but actually it referred to a child that may or may not have been previously baptised. Well, it was on that baptism, that I saw Ellen Reardon's surname prior to marriage revealed: she was a Sugrue. I next found that Bartholomew Sugrues first wife, Ellen Sullivan, was a godmother to Patrick and Ellen Reardon's first child, Helen (Ellen) in 1846. It was three months after that baptism that she and Bartholomew married, and then, as I know, having had one child together, Ann, Ellen became very ill in the summer of 1849 with cholera and died. And as for another of Patrick and Ellen Reardon's children, Catherine, Bartholomew's second wife, Catherine Sheehan, was the baby girls godmother in 1855. I happened now to find the Roman Catholic version of Bartholomew Sugrue's marriage to his first wife, Ellen Sullivan, which had more detail than the official certificate, on account of it giving the names and locations of the couples parents. Ellen Sullivans parents were John and Ellen Sullivan of County Kerry. Bartholomew's parents were Thomas Sugrue (I'd already known he had Thomas as a father) and Joanna, which I had not known, they being of County Kerry. So for all of this I could add two new people to my tree, Joanna as Bartholomew's mother and Ellen as his sister. Sad it was to see that his sister, Ellen, died in 1865 aged 45. Interestingly, in one of the census's Ellen gave her place of birth as Church Hill in County Kerry, at last the best clue yet as to where Bartholomew himself may have been born. The Roman Catholic residents of that village, at the time when they would have been there, attended an old and dilapidated chapel, in nearby Chapeltown.. This was due to the original medieval Roman Catholic Church of their own village, on its splendid old hill, with its fine views of the sea, having been long been supplanted by a protestant church. Back in the 1700's, this whole area had been a place of smuggling and the village itself was a protected archeological site. Eventually Church Hill would have a Roman Catholic Church again , but not till after the Sugrue's would had left for England, the church to be St Marys, Star of the Sea (like the church in Greenwich). Tralee, from where was the lovely folk song I used to sing on the piano, was the nearest sizeable town, 10 klms away. Patrick Reardon himself was from Waterville in County Kerry, and we see now another of the family friends, Mary Kane was from Castleisland. And it's fine enough to piece together information once these folk were in England, but Irish records are still as vague and untraceable as ever.
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My daughter Eleanor's half sister, Eashani, has actually done her autosomal dna on 23 & Me; being fully Gujurati on her mums side, and on her fathers side English and French (he having ancestors from the Channel islands). My kinesiologist replacement (for a while), Olivier, asked me if I had family links to Iceland, as I have that 'look', and actually with my Shetland Island dna I do indeed have genetic connections to those Vikings who were early on in Iceland, as I have seen, particularly in my mothers archeogenetic dna matches. This sunny clime in the south of France is maybe too much for me, he suggested, and its so that my face was particularly dry and erupting. But, anyway, as my dna has revealed, I am part Mediterranean, a Myheritage update emphasising that this little part of me is southern Italian, both Italian and Greek. On Facebook I joined the Ivereagh Peninsula genealogy group and how welcoming those other members were. My Irish was of County Kerry and I didn't even know if my Bartholomew Sugrue was of the Iveragh Peninsula or not, as this family was still to much of a mystery, but most Sugrue's were indeed from there, and one of Bartholomew's fellow County Kerry men in Greenwich days, Patrick Reardon, who was best man at his wedding to Ellen Sullivan, was indeed from the Iveragh Peninsula, from Waterville.
Myheritage sent me a new ethnic DNA update, which at first looked to me the same as before. I made a little video talking of this, very short; and it was only later in the day that it dawned on me that the sub-categories under the listing of Irish, Scottish and Welsh were not just generalised but were specific to me. This was most curious because my Scandanavian Viking at 64.3%, which I had always presumed to relate to my granddad Lyall Inkster who had Shetland Island blood, would only have then in part come from him, because one of thise sub-groups in the Celtic-Pictish category specifically specified the 'Shetland Islands'. Of course, Shetland Islands as a sub category was too obscure to relate to everyone. This update had for the first time localised my my Celtic Pictish Scottish to the distant northern Shetland Islands. At the same time this revealed that those islands were not just a Viking conquered land but was made up still of the original maybe Pictish settlers; my people. My share of Viking blood was still a lot, but was not just from my mothers father I now realised but was from my own father too. And some of my fathers ancestry would always remain a mystery to me.
So the other sub-categories of the Celtic type were of two different Irish types, being from my grannies, and the other was 'southern Wales and southern and western England', this relating to my paternal grandfather, Pop, who was Welsh mixed with the Forest of Dean. Specifically that Welsh was southern Welsh which did reflect my research of his people. The Irish had accorded to it the numbers 12 and 8. These I looked up but myheritage had not as yet identify them with any known Irish groups. Presumably they reflected where my grannies ancestors were known to have come from, Westmeath and County Kerry.
My Greek with southern Italian remained at 4%. This was said to centre around the Aegean and Ionian Seas, reaching to Cyprus, the Caucasus, southern Russia and the Mezzigiorno region of southern Italy; south Italy being 'the first region settled by ancient Greeks outside of their Greek peninsula, going right back to the 8th century before Christ'.
The Spanish was 3.5%, pretty mareh for a minimal DNA to; these people descending from 'ancient Iberian tribes', also extending to the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. And not only southern Italian, but I had Italian in general at 2.7%. And what of the Finnish; just a little, at 1%; this category includes some of western Russia, being associated with Nordic and Slavic cultures.
Ok, so I next looked at my mums Myheritage update. My mum not only had the Shetland Islands also specified as a key group but an Irish location was given (though with no number accorded), this being 'Cork, Kerry and Limerick'. Wow, distinct places being mentioned and yes that was right on, as her Irish ancestors whom I had researched did indeed come from County Kerry. My mother had only 3% more Viking than I did and as I had observed before she had a 7%English which I had not inherited. Her Spanish was marginally tinier than mine at 3.2% and her Italian was 2.8%, just a fraction more than mine. She had no Greek, this naturally being my inheritance from my father.
My Aunty Lollies update, she being all I have had to represent my deceased father, wasn't now showing up any Greek DNA. My dad and she would not have inherited the same shares of DNA. By deduction I understood him to have had at least the same amount of Greek DNA as me.
And now, this was interesting, not only did her Celtic data specify 'southern Welsh', this being from Pop, her father, but also that her Irish was of the numbers 12 and 8! What!! This showed that the Irish showing up in me was essentially from my dads side, both those numbers relating to my great great grandmother Mary Dolan from Westmeath. Had I not even inherited my mothers County Kerry quota, let alone her English. How curious! Aunty Lolly had English DNA at 12.9%, again not passed on to me, this specifically being eastern and central UK. It could be that my own sister did get English and County Kerry, but as she had passed away long long ago this I could not know. Aunty Lolly had a high Viking percentage at 25.5%, so indeed my own Viking came from both my parents. And there was another group Aunty Lolly had, but not me, which was 9.1% northern and western European, this being associated with Holland, France and Germany. I didn't have it! It was so curious that largish sections of DNA, although of lesser than 10%, may not be handed on to a descendant, and yet that something more ancient, such as presumably the Greek, had come down to me. And I so could have been 'English' but by fate was not. The strong Irish in me did then appear to be from my father. I'd guess that was what this data was saying.
Looking at my daughter Rosina's update, she had got so much of my Viking at 38% and less of my Celtic at 13.7%, with the special grouping of Shetland Islands in there. She'd not got my Greek or Spanish, but she'd got some Italian at 1.9%. The tiy amount of Finnish I had passed onto her too. Overall she was a Viking Indian. Her Indian DNA at 44.8% was of the Indo-Aryan ancient tribes.
And looking at my son George's update, he had inherited from his Italian father some exotic ethnicities, such as Middle Eastern and West Asian. And, oh, I then saw it, as an additional specific genetic type there was mentioned not only the Shetland Islands but also Bari in Italy. If I'd needed any more proof that Francesco was his father and not Dutch Allard then there it was. Francesco's people were from the village of Turi near to Bari.
George's general Italian was 33.6% and his Greek & Southern Italian was 19%. He had Spanish at 4%, Balkan at 7.4%, Middle Eastern at 1.8% and West Asian at 0.8%. Some of that Mediterranean in him was not just from his dad but from me too. Unlike Rosina, he got very little of my Viking at only 2.4%, compared to her huge 38.6%, but he got more of my Celtic and Pictish at 31%, compared to her 13.7%. Hence Rosina was more of a Viking and George was more of a Celt. It would be interesting to see my other childrens DNA one day, to know what percentages they themselves inherited. George's Middle Eastern was of the Levant, this being the 'cradle of civilisation' which had been inhabited for thousands of years. His West Asian aligned to Turkey and Iran, being of ancient Persians and the Turk nomadic tribes. I do know I have tiny amounts of these types of DNA too from the testing I've done with other companies. I settled into trying to understand more these genetic tools on Gedmatch, specifically the Eurogenes K13 and the Dodecad 3, one of my aims being to discern what is from my mothers side and what is of my fathers. Not that I really work out so much, but there are some things I do see. One marker which I have, but my mum doesn't, and which therefore is from my father, is of the Red Sea. And there I had been previously, holidaying for a month right by the Red Sea in Egypt. Both the Eurogenes and the Dodecad reveal a lot of West Asian, which is considerably higher in me than in my mother. Thus it does look to be that my huge Caucasus heritage, and quite likely the Anatolian/Armenian too, is from my father, or at least a greater portion of the Caucasus is. And isn't that a surprise, considering that mine and my mothers matriarchal DNA is from there, and yet my more recent connections to that land come through my father. Naturally western-northern European is our highest genetics, after which comes a high Mediterranean, which includes some Greek from my father and East European shores of the Black Sea from my mother. South Asian is in my mother and father, and south west Asian is only through my dad. North East Asian is from both my parents, which does get me thinking of Mongol invasions. No paleo-Pygmy African presence shows up after all on the Dodecad. There is, though, north west African from my mum (Moroccan) and north east African (Egyptian) from my dad. Among the Gedmatch tools are oracles for predicting likely origins of the four grandparents, and looking firstly at my mums, her Shetland grandparents are no doubt responsible for the Orcadian, West Scottish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. All is not so straightforward for grandparents Mary Ann Seagrove and D'Auvergne Bane. There is a considerable amount of south west English, pinpointed to Cornwall, that I'm not sure how to account for. This could be tagged onto either of grandparent I suppose. Like I don't yet know the place Mary Ann's ancestors dwelt in as yet before they came to London. The Irish is accounted for by Mary Ann's 'Sugrue' fathers side from County Kerry, and the Spanish with considerable Basque may or may not have come through the Irish connection. The Dodecad reveals that there is French other than just the Basque, and with a name like D'Auvergne naturally I wonder if that grandfather did have some secret French connection. As far as his Norfolk Banes and Beans are concerned, this would be covered by both south east English and Dutch, the Norfolk cloth merchants (a trade to which my people were linked) being from there, and this could also account for traces of German and Austrian. Although not to forget that the Hanseatic merchants also traded with Shetland. The conclusion of my mothers oracle is a quite present Cornish, Scottish and Danish, and a French Basque which is potentially through the Irish. In my own oracle Irish is the strongest, enormously so. Although my mum's Irish would appear to have a strong Basque and Spanish influence, my dads (which is from Westmeath) would be very grass roots Irish. So for my own grandparents in this: Shetland grandfather Lyall Inkster accounts for West Scottish and Orcadian; Granny Isabelle accounts for Irish, Cornwall, French and Spanish. Then, for my other two grandparents, pop and nanny Eileen, would come so much Irish. For pop surely Welsh would show, but maybe Welsh hasn't been sampled as yet and so has been lumped in with the Irish. Unless, that is, my Welsh Harrisons and Forest of Dean Hawkins were of Irish traveller derivation. So much Irish, it being the closest of all ethnic types to me inclines me to think my nanny Eileen's mystery father to be Irish as well. Somewhere on my dads side also comes in some distant Hungarian, according to Eurogenes, so it may be that the Maxteds came from a gypsy heritage after all, but I have to drop gypsyness for now as a consideration due to a lack of proof. Interestingly, beyond the strong French Basque, the most potent influence of all the Spanish areas is Catalan. And where I live now in the south of France was once part of the Spanish Catalan territories, before being snatched away by France. My coming to this land suddenly holds a significance I'd not before been aware of. The Dodecad points not only to Cornwall and Hungary, but also to Slovenia. And Sardinia is there through my mother, as well as north Italian. As Les Batt had pointed out, this appears to point out a route taken to Spain, being via Sardinia, a route of old sea traders, such as the Phoenicians. Certainly the Phoenicians come to mind with such locations, from the Levant to the islands of the Mediterranean to Spain. The Dodecad embroiders yet again on my mothers strong Iberian secondary ancestry, along with Sardinian and Italian. Whereas my own, presumably enriched by my fathers DNA, is increasingly exotic. The Eurogenes has pointed out for me strong Caucasus and central Asian ancestry, along with Anatolian. The Dodecad finds me markers in a more European and Mediterranean context and these are richly ethnic in variety. Primarily there are Greek, Romanian and Hungarian. So would that then relate to my maybe gypsy Kent-London ancestors? But, oh, they are a right melting pot of cultures, just as one may imagine Londoners to be. And I never thought there was any Jewish ancestry in me at all, for nothing else had shown this, but the Dodecad has made of me links to them. Beyond the stronger Greek-Romanian-Hungarian there comes Slovenian, Ashkenazi Jew, Cyprus, Sephardic Jew, the Balkans, Sicily, Lebanon, Moroccan Jew, south Italy, Cornwall (lol, so exotic), and Egypt. What to say of this, well, ones ancestry is not linear, nor easily determined. In these hundreds of years so many families are joined by the marriages and affairs of the ancestors. The Dodecad grandparent predictor oracle for my mother still emphasises a French Basque probability, with Slovenian coming up too, and naturally Irish. Mine brings in, from my father then, an addition of Romanian and the Balkans. At which point I take a break. Because my friend Omani comes to visit. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Having had some time now to digest the information that Romany genealogist Les Batt has given me, I can see at the very least this undertanding: That what is shown is a big connection with people along the old Silk Road, and especially a major presence in the Caucasus mountains and central Asia. The Spanish-Iberian element coming through my mother, the strongest connection being to the French Basque, as I seem from more reading, is indeed considered to have come to Britain from Ireland, accounting for the black hair still to be found there among the people. Some gypsy blood may be present via the connection to India, but as for now, understanding of gypsy patterns is still too primitive and unresearched to be able to firmly make conclusion about this. Another thing about all the Asian tribal groups I have had listed is that it is not that I would have had ancestors coming from every one of them. Although we share markers, this could have come from their own interbreeding with core groups which I am indeed connected to. I do think it would work this way. What would then be the authentic core origins of such markers is what becomes most relevant. Like with all those marked Iberians and Caucasus tribes, naturally they swapped markers between neighbours, therefore it doesn't mean my ancestors were necessarily within all those tribes. It is of interest that although the central Asian element didn't turn up in the analysis of either familytree or MyHeritage, it had indeed been presented to me by the Genographic Project, since which, until now, I had almost concluded this to be an anomaly. But it is indeed very much there. My American friend Satshanti (Peter Pynchon) now connected with me about these latest DNA revelations. And I had been waiting for his insight. He likes that I have a connection to Sicily, pointing out it is where the Greeks had farms for a while. As for my relatives in Iberia, this does hint at how my relatives moved into Britain, and I do think he is right about this, with Ireland being a midway link. Satshanti says he and I share roots in Tajikistan and that a Zoroastrian people from long back are revealing themselves here. Looking at our Gedmatch comparisons, Peter sussed that he and my mother share more than three chromosomes, and from further conversation we work out that this is from County Kerry in Ireland, as Peter has observed in looking at connections to other people with Gedmatches that my mother has some kind of relationship to an Irish Roche, and he himself well knows that his great great grandmother was an irish Roche from near Kerry, therefore this being totally the correct location to link us up. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I buried myself into some genealogy, my quest being to try and find out at last what are the origins of my Greenwich waterman great great grandfather Thomas Seagrove. And although I have many times looked into this to no avail, this time I made the breakthrough, which was really quite amazing. My granny Isabelle did once tell me that the Seagrove surname may have been changed from something sounding like Shugrue. Previously I had looked at one character of the right time, name and place, Bartholomew Sugrue, who did indeed have a son called Thomas. But, on Thomas's marriage certificate he had written his fathers name was James Seagrove and that he was a fisherman, not a match then for this Bartholomew who was a labourer. I decided now, regardless of the contrary detail, to look again at this figure, Bartholomew Sugrue. He was an Irish immigrant from County Kerry, who had married another Irish immigrant, Catherine Sheehan. In later years he was in and out of the workhouse, every time being transferred from Greenwich to Poplar to do hard labour, a frequent way to get a small financial means to then send to his family. It was in looking up his workhouse admissions that I then saw it, the defining proof, the missing link. There it was, written on record that his next of kin was a son who lived at 9 Kitsons Terrace, exactly the time that I knew my ancestor Thomas Seagrove had been living there. In another workhouse entry I then saw the sons actual first name recorded, not with a surname: Thomas. So it is that I now know I have Irish ancestry, not only of Westmeath, but of County Kerry too, that part of the country famed for its friendly dolphin at Dingle. This was most exciting and I spent much of the rest of the day researching Bartholomew Sugrue. He lived on the marshy peninsula where now sits the Millenium Dome. It was his son then, Thomas, who married Maria Harrison, and their daughter Mary Ann who married D'Auvergne Bane, who had granny Isabelle, who had my mother, who had me. Returning to look at my newfound Irish Sugrue family, I discovered that not only was Bartholomew continually in and out of the workhouse, but that at one time his children were too, including his son Thomas, my great great grandfather, who at that time was 11 years old and still a Sugrue. And I discover why. At that time their mother, my very ancestress Catherine (neé Sheehan) had been put in prison for a year for stealing from someone. Her daughter Ann had helped her in this theft and had also been found guilty, punished with 14 days of prison followed by four years in a reformatory school. This was interesting to discover as I myself went through a phase of stealing as a child, and there it is in our family history. They lived in such desperate times, in which Bartholomew frequently subjected himself to stints of hard labour away from his family, to enable their survival. I do feel upset for these sentences imposed on Catherine and her daughter, who simply needed to survive and feed a whole brood of children, to keep all alive and healthy, in times of no modern social support system. Bartholomew died in the Greenwich workhouse. It was as much a home to him as anywhere else. He had been married to someone before Catherine, another Irish girl, Ellen Sullivan, but within three years of being together she had died. Maybe Thomas took the name Seagrove to distance himself from the sorry degradation of his Irish immigrant status; maybe Maria his wife had wished that. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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