![]() I went to meet an old fellow, David Male, to interview him on his memories of my family. Meeting him was a delight. Now in his 80's, in a flat overlooking the sea, he had clear memories of my nanny Eileen Spencer's family, from when he was a young boy. And how beautifully he portrayed them, Eileen's mother Florence being so laid back, with children all over her house at play, feeding whoever was there, and father Percy, a ships chef, mostly to be found cooking pies and buns in the kitchen, an active family, full of laughter, games, benevolent and homely. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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On checking my emails, I saw that at last my Genographic results were through, oh my, how exciting. And so I found out that I was 1.2% Neanderthal, and just to know that was a joy, and my mtDNA type now had a more sophisticated classification, rather than just being a non-Jewish N1b. It was now an N1b1A2A, a haplogroup which remains a mystery and which being so rare is unresearched - no nearer to it being pinned down to a specific location then. As for my autosomal admixture I am found to be, in total of all components of my DNA, 48% British and Irish, 38% Viking Scandinavian, much of which will be owing to my Shetland Island ancestry, and this also being particularly more than general people of Britain and even Scotland have, 11% Southern European (Mediterranean), and 3% Central Asian. What?! OK, well, aligning this to my genealogy then may be a little confusing. For as far as I can understand the 11% equates to a great grandparent, which means that one of mine then is almost full Italian, Spanish or Greek, and yet according to what I know of my family how can that be. And as far as the 3% Central Asian, that would equate to one of my great great great grandparents. Now if, for instance, this had been where Maria Harrison got her black hair, alabaster complexion and twinkling eyes, then that would be because her mother was fully central Asian. And this is where I begin to wish the location information was more specific and that some raw data had been supplied, which I could over time analyse, but it had not. All was quite pretty but vague, and the zonal areas are so vast. Now, if Maria's mother, Eleanor Caroline Barton, was from west of the Caspian Sea in the classification zone, that would make some sense, in aligning with the Caucasus mountains, or even if south of there, as far down as Armenia. But the zone I'd been appointed was east of the Caspian Sea and north of Tibet, the area of the various 'S'tans', Kazakhstan, Turkestan, etc, historically being of the old Silk Route. Although confusing, this is also exciting and suitably exotic to appeal to me. All was much on my mind throughout the night. It doesn't seem to make sense unless I stray from the map I've so far laid down genealogically. Because I do have Eleanor Caroline Barton's genealogy going further back and all remains English sounding. So one wonders, had a foreign child been brought into the family and adopted as if their own. And as for the maybe Italian or other Mediterranean type great grandparent, I end up thinking of one other possibility, on account of my nanny Eileen's parents only having married when her mother Florence Maxted was nine months pregnant, and with her husband Percy's family having been very lax to accept her: could a Mediterranean seaman, sojourning at the seaport pub where Florence worked as a barmaid, have got her pregnant and then sailed away, never to return. Looking at this DNA result it does now seem quite a possibility. Really, I am stuck when it comes to find out more or being sure of anything. I did dream in the night that my mother was me and I asked her to take the Genographic test too, for then I could make more sense of all, by knowing which half of my autosomal DNA is from her and which from my father. But she had no interest in such things and would not do it. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. On having watched some Jeremy Kyle clips, revealing cheating partners, by DNA tests men finding out the children they'd fathered were not always their's, or in mistrusting the others infidelity finding they actually were the dads, this inclined me to contemplate that in all my genealogy research I may sometimes fruitlessly be pursuing lines that I'm not even really genetically connected to. As I had recently discovered from the gossip of older members of the family, my Uncle Clive was not really after all my Pop's son, but was the result of a wartime romance. And I can't even be sure my Nanny's father, Percy Spencer, is really her dad after all. Her mother, Florence Maxted, was a Southampton seaport barmaid and she only married Percy three weeks before my nanny Eileen was born, in a registry office. On taking her home to his Dovercourt family, they certainly didn't trust this lady who appeared as if from nowhere, a red haired mother with a red haired daughter. I have originally researched rather a lot the Dovercourt lineage, but don't know, more and more, if I should pay any heed to it. We so could have done with DNA tests long, long back. And I do wonder about my ancestor D'Auvergne Bane even, like, why was he given this name of D'Auvergne which I know was the surname of an Anglo-Indian family? Could he also have been the result of an illicit affair? Could this have been with the billiards hall proprietor of that family who had come to London from India? This is not at all a name from our own family. So one does have to wonder. I would happily embrace a connection to the land of India. How would I know? Here is some of my theorising about a link between these families anyway. For Richard Bane and Hannah Bean, D'Auvergne's parents, to have met in London in the first place a key person may have been Charlotte Empson, the partner of George Barnard, a billiards hall proprietor of the D'Auvergne lineage, and this I deduce because all were connected to the same places in Norfolk and must have known one another. Richard grew up next door to her in North Walsham and she and Hannah were from the same village, quite possibly being related. Both families, the Banes and D'Auvergne-Barnard's with their colonial and military connections, I am sure, would have been warm friends. Both families gave the name of Alma to one of their daughters. They chose such a name because it reflected their colonial British pride. I can imagine the men playing billiards together, and George Barnard entertaining everyone with his tales of India. Charlotte stayed with him, bearing his children, even though for years he dilly-dallied about marrying her. He must have had quite some charm, which maybe worked some of it's charm on Hannah too. Naturally, this is but speculation, but Hannah did have a son and he was called D'Auvergne, a name from George's own family. George already had a teenage son called D'Auvergne, a name to honour the ancestors. That is not an easy name for an English society. George's son, D'Auvergne Barnard, turned out to be a famous composer, though not as yet, so no reason to copy his name out of admiration for his music. Really, why choose a name that one has no connection to, which is why I consider the name could be token to an affair. I discovered a first world war military photo of the composer D'Auvergne Barnard's son, Eric D'Auvergne Barnard. It's in a group and is not very clear, but he has a slender almost pretty elegance, which does bear a likeness to the look of D'Auvergne Bane and his own son, Richard. Eric D'Auvergne Barnard, I discover, died while still young of yellow fever. The D'Auvergne-Barnard family, living for generations in India, could then account for my own soul connection to that land. I too have an interest in India's British Raj, the old clubhouses with animal heads upon the walls, the spicy foods, the horror at the mutiny and its slaughter of genteel women and their children, sadness for the many young British ladies who from exotic diseases lost their lives so young, and the grand veranda's. George Barnard was from Jubblepore (Jabalpur), not only the home of billiards and snooker, but also being the place where thuggee was tackled by the Brits, this being another subject that has interested me. Hill stations, tea gardens and servants. I'd like to have a real family connection. This is likely fanciable, wishful thinking, but is not an impossibility either. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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