Looking up some genealogy, I still have that ever query as to whether Percy Spencer was really my nanny Eileen's dad or not. I've never had any cousin matches to confirm any genetic lineage through Percy, as happens with other lineages; I thought to check my relationship calculator between me and my cousin Dee Lovelock of Luton, who has also tested her own dna, to see if a clue may lie there, Percy Spencer for sure being her own great grandfather, through my nanny Eileen's later sister, Molly. Always the issue with baby Eileen is that her mother, Florence, married Percy just two weeks before Eileen was born, along with the fact that he was considerably older, as also that his family were reluctant to accept these sudden new additions to the family. They'd had a firm story to allay all doubts, which was that he had been at sea, hence why they could not have married earlier. Nevertheless, such a story remains something to question. And it doesn't help for there to be no corroborating cousin dna connections, which is always essential to confirm a lineage is authentic.
And, lo and behold, although Dee is for sure my second cousin, the dna result concludes her to be a third cousin, that is more distant, which would support our not having the same great grandfather. So that's interesting. Like I'd hate to be denying Percy if he was genuinely my ancestor after all, but I need some proof here. I know that, regardless, he doted on young Eileen; for sure she was precious to him. The research I had done on Percy's Essex ancestry, was along with our Norfolk heritage some of the first genealogy I'd done, but is any of it even relevant?!
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I got into trying to understand just a little something about one-to-one DNA comparisons. One of my cousins, Dee, who was the daughter of Linda, who was herself the daughter of my nanny Eileen's sister, Molly, also had her DNA online on the useful Gedmatch site. For which I could compare shared segments of chromosomes between me and her and also with my Aunty Lolly (my fathers sister). In this way I worked out what on my own chromosomes was of our shared Maxted-Dolan ancestry, this being the DNA passed onto us by my great grandmother, Florence Maxted (and of her husband Percy, he was not included, because I had pretty much observed by now that there had been no cousin links between me and his ancestors other descendants, by which I could conclude he was not really my nanny Eileen's father, supporting a hypothesis I'd had anyway). So I worked out all the chromosomal chunks shared between us three, which I could then label as of Maxted-Dolan derivation, these segments being found on chromosomes 2, 5, 7, 11, 12, 16, 17 and 20. I had it confirmed that I was on the right track with this by looking at a distant cousin match suggested to me on Gedmatch, for the person of Kevin James Young, seeing that the DNA we had common to one another was on chromosome 12 at one of those aforementioned segments. It was for this, excitedly I knew it, that he had to be of this same lineage, from either somewhere back in William Maxted's ancestry or Irish Mary Dolan's, both these great great grandparents of mine being the parents of Florence Maxted. And sure enough he was! I had to suss out the links between us myself, there having been no online tree showing our connection. But he had listed online one of his family surnames as Swinden, and it so happened that I knew well of the Swindens, from where further back they connected to my own ancestors. Even I knew of this in my head without looking it up, that William Maxted's mother, who was Sarah Green, had two sisters who married Swinden brothers. Therefore I connected up our families, by which not only did I authenticate my own family tree researches in this regard, but I saw exactly where came from that DNA chunk found on my 12th chromosome (the range being between 88,000,000 and 129,000,000 on the said chromosome), this then being what I had inherited from the Lambeth residing parents of Sarah Green, either from her father Henry Green or her mother Elizabeth Harding. My research into this rather foreboding subject of DNA comparisons had paid off. This was my breakthrough of the day. What I found most strange was that my mother and my Aunty Lolly shared a segment of DNA; like what, how come?! I knew of no connections between their two families, and yet something was there, or so the DNA was suggesting. Maybe this came through their Irish ancestresses.
I got back into my genealogy, recieving a reply from my son George's distant cousin, of the De Bella family, Leonora De Bella; well the email was from her husband, Edward Yarrows, they being in America, and he had no family tree for his wife, but he did give me tidbits of information, which at first seemed of little use, but then became clues by which to make up Leonora's tree, her potential parents and their many siblings, by which I found her Italian born grandparents, Francesco Paolo De Bella and Angelarosa Boracca.
This Francesco De Bella was indeed from the village of Turi where George's dad was from and his original surname, well, in America he being a 'De Bella' was originally 'Di Bello', the surname of George's dad, totally the correct surname. And the great grandparents in Italy, as far as I could see, were another Francesco Di Bello and Anna Laporte, again of the village of Turi, born back in the 1840's or 1850's and quite possibly these being ancestors of my own Georgie. I also worked out the expanded tree of some appointed distant cousins for me, who were descended from some of my Londoners, from Henry Green the tailor and his wife Elizabeth Harding. What was fab about this was that it authenticated certain lineages, in this case my Maxted line, which therefore was not of adoptions or infidelities for which they would be only assumed lineages. And likewise, another distant cousin authenticated my Norfolk Bane line. My youngest childrens ethnic Myheritage DNA percentages arrived: Rosina: 44.8% South Asian; 38.6% Viking (Shetland); 13.7% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 1.9% Italian; 1% Finnish George: 33.6% Italian; 31% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Wesh); 19% Greek and South Italian; 7.4% Balkan; 4% Spanish Iberian; 2.4% Viking Shetland; 1.8% Middle East; 0.8% West Asia And so comparing theirs to mine: 64.3% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 24% Viking Shetland; 4% Greek and South Italian; 3.5% Spanish Iberian; 2.7% Italian; 1% Finnish
That ever mystery of George's dad is by this ethnic result once and for all sorted. He is my Georgio De Bello. Even there had come up a De Bello cousin match for him, this being to Leonora De Bella who was in her 70's and living in America, she being possibly a second or third cousin once or twice removed. I reacquaint with the results of my mothers own test results, through her there coming my Spainish and Italian, whereas through my father would come the Greek. 59.6% Celtic Irish and Scots - (the Welsh being from my father); 27.3% Viking Sheland; 7.1% English (I never inherited any of this, so neither did my children); 3.2% Iberian Spanish; 2.8% Italian And my Aunty Lolly, to represent my deceased father, who is her brother - although they would have had differing blends of their parents DNA:: 52.5% Celtic (Irish and Welsh); 25.5 Viking (not connected to my Shetland genes); 12% English; 9.1% North and West European, for example French, Dutch and German Really I have no way to know my fathers correct percentages as he died so long ago and I suspect his alotted amount was rather different to Lolly's, he being red haired and she so blonde.
I have cousins a little more distant who have done the Myheritage ethnic tests too, although their DNA will have the imput of people I have no connection at all too, but still its interesting to observe. They are both connected to me through my nanny Eileen, the mother of Lolly and my father. Firstly, Dee, descended from nanny Eileen's sister Molly. Dee's grandfather is Scottish and her father is a Londoner with the Welsh surname of Jones: 75.6% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 9.8% Baltic; 9.7 Viking Scandanavian; 2.7% West Asia; 1.4% Finnish; 0.8% Ashkenazi Jew Secondly, Dominic. He descends from a sister of my nanny Eileen's mother Florence who was half Irish. 39.2% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 35.6% English; 18.6 North West European; 4.9% Viking Scandanavian; 1.7% Ashkenazi Jew In cousin matches, there is a second or third cousin who I quickly see must be related to me through pop, my Welsh grandfather, this being because my aunt Lolly and I share her as a common relative, but not Dee nor Dominic. Jane Keep, and indeed she does appear to have Welsh, ancestry. 77.9% Celtic; 19.1% English; 3% Spanish Iberian So, Welsh for sure. Well, I got to looking at some of these proposed cousins to see how we may connect to one another, not just this Jane Keep, but two other matches. And though none had any obvious links, I got to researching their lineages and found them myself. Such is my zeal for researching. Jane Keep had only put that her grandparents were a Powell and a Bebb, and not even any other information at all, but regardless, I sussed her ancestry right back to Mary Thomas, who happened to be the daughter of two of my Welsh ancestors, Morgan Thomas and his wife Ann née Rosser. It was by checking all this out that I found a census I'd not seen before, for Ann when she was old and widowed living in Llanelli in 1891 with this aforementioned daughter Mary. And what was so amazing about this discovery was that languages spoken were listed and my Ann, despite everyone else in the household being English speakers, was herself a Welsh speaker. She didn't even speak English at all, only Welsh. Those who did speak both languages were clearly marked as doing so. And I worked out another Welsh cousin link, again which I had to research more to make sense of, this being to a Lionel Herbert Watkins. Thus I found that my connection to Lionel reached right back to the original George Harrison of Llanthony, Lionel descending from his daughter Sophia and me from his son William. The link to George Harrison was not a research even worked out at all by this distant cousin, but I'd sussed it. And I shall get to working out more and more of these proposed cousin connections I do suppose.
I got into looking at my aunty Lolly's ethnic DNA, which after all I had paid to get done on the Family Tree site. Apart from that which I had expected, British and Viking and some near European, there was a smaller amount of Greek which I do now know must come to me through my father. And, what was totally interesting, other than that, was a 3% Middle Eastern, 1% of this being from the east of the Middle East, that is from the Persian shores of the Caspian sea down to Mesopotamia, and the other 2% being from the west middle east, that is from Anatolia down through Lebanon and the Holy Land to the shores of the Red Sea. I was so excited by this that I couldn't sleep for ages that night, for I have long felt an emotional kind of connection to the Middle East, this being pre-Islamic, or at least non-Islamic, some connection to all the minority groups under threat in this fascinating part of the world. The next step for me is the free transferal of these results to other DNA platforms, Myheritage and Gedmatch. It was in then looking at my own DNA matches, that I spotted a new close one, quickly working out this was a third cousin descending from my Maxted line. And the tree he'd put online was so minimal that there was not even any mention of Maxteds, but as usual I had applied my detective skills. This cousin, Dominic, was just 20 years old, a scout volunteer working at the Holiday Inn and raised in Eastleigh. His mother, Jillian, then would be my second cousin, she being granddaughter to Lilian Norah Maxted, who was sister to my great grandmother, Florence Maxted. Chatting online with Aunty Lolly, about her ethnic DNA results, and sharing research I have done on the family, she talked of her grandmother (my great grandmother) Florence Maxted and of how she always took in lodgers, and had run a fruit and veg shop in Eastleigh on Desborough Road. It was far to visit, from Dovercourt in Essex to Eastleigh in Hampshire, but still the families would reunite twice a year. Lolly remembered Florence's sister, Lilian Norah, as being blind. As Jill, new found second cousin, would tell me later, Lilian Norah, who was her granny had suffered a stroke, due to an accident, at around the age of 40, hence why she was blind, for which she was also unable to talk properly. Aunty Lolly said even Florence's sight wasn't so good, for which she had as a child read aloud the horse listings for her, the family having been quite partial to a flutter. Florence always made a big bowl of soup every Saturday and everyone came round to make their bets and partake of her soup, always such times being such fun. Sometimes they would win, though the bets made were only ever small. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees ![]() I've been considering the x's, the passing on of the feminine, into both men and women, having been talking rather interestingly of this with my friend Liz at a ladies luncheon, interestingly on World Ladies Day. The subject relates to a realisation I've just had, on contemplating the strong connection I feel to my deceased nanny Eileen, even though she is not of my matriarchal line, like my granny Isabelle, rather being my fathers mother. So why do I feel her so present? My realisation is that it is down to the X. I have two x's, as science has shown us ladies, men having one X and one Y. One of my x's logically comes from my father, naturally having been passed to him by his mother, my nanny Eileen, as from his father had come only the Y. So my x from my father makes sense suddenly of how it is that I feel the strong presence of my nanny Eileen. And as for the X she had passed to my father, thereafter coming to me, this could have had one of three origins, so I ponder. She'd had two X's to select from, one being from the mystery unknown (as is my theory) father, which in turn comes his own mother, a mystery grandmother. The other X would be from Eileen's half Irish mother Florence Maxted, and that in itself would either have come from her own Irish mother Mary Dolan of Westmeath, or from her father William Maxted's mother, the maybe gypsy Sarah Green. Wow, what new world of contemplation does this now open up, the journeying of the X's. Like, what then are the sources of my own two X's? My own four children wouldn't necessarily get passed down the same one, they getting either the one passed from my nanny Eileen or the X from my own mother. This is suddenly fascinating, not something I'd considered before. Distant cousin DNA matches sometimes have an X marked by them, and what the hell was that about, my poor unmathematical brain so far dismissing even trying to understand that. But now I start to see. Matching to those distant cousin x's, theoretically, one can come to know the source of one's own. Like the X I've got from my mother, which may or may not be the same as my sister got, has to be again of one of three routes, either of my mothers paternal grandmother, Shetlander Helen Inkster, or of a direct matriarchal line from half Irish Mary Ann Seagrove, or from her patriarchal grandfather D'Auvergne's mother Hannah Bean (the latter also being a questionable potentially illegitimate lineage). A new angle for me then, and most interesting. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I at last connected with one of my Familytree listed cousins, Marie Celeste, born a man in New Zealand, now transformed into a woman. We both knew we had Shetland ancestors, and by some good researching further into his and my lines I managed to find the Inkster Burra Island link. Good stuff. And even he/she hadn't realised yet that there were Inksters in his/her family line. This was my quick research. Marie Celeste has an elderly mother who though in her 90's has just done a sky dive. So I now befriend my first trans-person on Facebook, my distant cousin. And, DNA does prove one thing, that whatever are those researched links, they are genuine, rather than there having been adoptions, infidelities and hidden family skeletons. Of course, with my having so much Viking DNA that was not a line to doubt. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. The response to my autosomal family finder upgrade is instantaneous. Of course, they have my DNA samples; there is no need to dilly dally. Raw data is now there to access, though I don't have a programme to unzip it. What I do get to see is a list of distant cousins and I look through them, but not one do I understand how I link to. How would I fit even one of them into my family tree, I cannot see. Satshanti, of far away California, says he will work on helping me to make sense of it all. And, meanwhile, I look more into this possible ancient Armenian connection. There is an Armenian specialist group that has on its list my rare DNA, so I wrote to the people hosting this. One of these fellows, Peter Hrechdakian, confirmed that N1b1a2a is of the Caucasus and Near East. He recommended that I upgrade with Familytree's mtDNA full sequence, so it can be compared in depth with other N1b1a2a's. Not that I haven't spent out on this already with the Genographic Project. The more angles the merrier, I do presume. Only by immersing myself will more pieces of the puzzle come together. The Genographic Project wasn't so informative really as I would have liked. Transferral is there to Familytree, but only in the basest form. So apart from learning I am minutely Neanderthal, I don't see really what advantage the Genographic Project has over the Familytree. Mitochondrial DNA, Peter Hrechdakian makes mention of, from an angle I'd never really examined, pointing out that it comes from an organism living in symbiosis in our cells. That's something to get the head around. So, genealogy and DNA, always a subject I shall come back to. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Being an enthusiastic genealogist, I was taking on just about all my friends family trees and having great fun with the detective work of it all, in just the same way as another would enjoy doing the Times crossword. And just the most surprising thing, as I was updating some genealogies of friends, which was that I discovered two of them, Ian Napp and Jeremy Kingsnorth, who suffered very little affection for one another, were distant cousins. They shared a great great great great grandfather, John Kingsnorth, who had lived in Bethersden in Kent. Their exact relationship was fifth cousins. Jeremy was descended from John's son, John junior, and Ian was descended from John's daughter, Betsy.
How crazy was that! This was like wow!!! It would explain how these friends, living in the very same obscure area of France as me somenehow got drawn together, even sharing an allotment, and yet would also squabble all the time. |
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