Just as with our own spirit of nomadism, by which I would travel so much more if opportunity was there, far back enough our ancestors would have done just that. Like, I've always been trying to pinpoint a matriarchal homeland, but its more likely that until political pressure limited free living, the peoples would have relocated according to the seasons and food abundance. When all is so hot it is better to be in the high Caucasus, when cold there, down one goes to the Armenian grasslands, or on and around the Black Sea, as is not to be forgotten that my mtDNA has also been found in the Ukraine, and when all is cold even in these parts, even further south one goes deeply into the Levant, to Syria and Palestine, the slopes of Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean. Mountains are places of refuge and safety, but it takes a lot to remain in them when when conditions turn brutal and food becomes sparse. Only when kingdoms arise and assert permanent territories does one have to find a long term place to wedge in oneself. By trading, travels even then can carry on, and in honouring the former sacred places by pilgrimages. But, like the vast confounded pathways the elephants habituated in the Indian jungles I have stayed in, so too the people would have got blocked, fenced in, driven out and attacked. Despite all this, we do know a group that has always travelled, the gypsies, refusing to be stuck forever in one place only. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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I got into looking once more at my friend Annette's genealogy, who knows she has gypsy ancestry on her fathers side, and yet even on her mothers side I find what appears to be some gypsy lineage. A description of one of her families sons, Percy Barrs, says he has dark skin, grey eyes and black hair and on Percy's marriage certificate his father is recorded as being a 'traveller'. There are newspaper reports about the exploits of gypsy Barrs, who further back were called Barres. The family held labourers jobs, one being a lamplighter, and another part time working in a card manufacturing shop, that latter being Mark Barrs, who, in a desperation to support his family, stole from his employers, and hence came a prison sentence. The Barrs were from Elstree, but moved into London, rented here and there, and there is no outward signs of a gypsy connection, until you start digging. Another day I spent on Annette's genealogy, this time her fathers so far mysterious side, the Dorset gypsies. And there's no sign at all, as yet, as far as I can see, that they even were gypsies, but what I do discover is that these Philips and Phelps (the names being interchangeable), of Broadwindsor, are also the ancestors of a famous personality, Kate WInslett. I haven't found the exact link, as such, by the end of the day, which I had been working so ardently to find, but it surely is there. My Netti Netti is related to Kate Winslett! AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I looked at the point where friends Jeremy's and Ian's families converged, and that still amazes me, that they are cousins and would never have known but for me, and they wish they so did not know. And it's amazing how intellectual and refined some of Ian's ancestors were, in comparison to his present poverty and own non pursuit of higher education. From Cambridge educated to trouble maker at a comprehensive. This merging of Jeremy and Ian's family histories is all in the area around Pluckley, which I loved to visit not so long back and would like to visit again, as that is where I too have ancestors. So, I'm still in the compulsive world of genealogy research. Jeremy's family have a story about one ancestress having been a gypsy baby who was sold on the door step. She was dark so it made sense. But, I'm not sure. The spacing of the children's births in that family she well fitted into. So I have another possible angle, that really there was already darker ancestry in that family which they wished to distance themselves from, but those darker genes had come back up in her, for which the story had been created. I began looking into this family, the Washford's, from which she came. Humble railway workers, living in a railway cottage... Researching more Jeremy's genealogy, looking at his Washford line and those other families marrying into them, they being a big Wesleyan bunch centered around Shadoxhurst village. A few Jeremiahs were in there, this being what I sometimes like to call Jeremy. One of the Jeremiah's, who was Jeremy's many times great uncles, was victim to a highway hold-up, robbed at gunpoint, for which his assailants were hung. It had been a violent attack, in which he'd been shot many times in the mouth by a group of men known as the Tenterden Gang who had been terrorising the area. As they met their fate, hanging from the gallows, local women who had tumours came to touch their hands, the belief of old being this would cure their ailment. And another find of interest, those Washford's were friends of a clergyman writer, Richard Harris Barham, who published a book of passed down old Kent stories, the Ingoldsby Legends, at one time widely popular in Britain. One of the stories was inspired by an ancestor of the Washford's, Joseph Washford, who was a humble good fellow, a gardener of Appeldore, close to Shadoxhurst, who gardened for a lawyer Jerry Jarvis. To cover Joseph's bald head Jerry gave him a wig which he no longer had use of. But the wig was evil and transformed Joseph into a baddy, first with him lying, then stealing, and ultimately murdering, his victim being none other than Jerry Jarvis, and for this he was hung. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I can't resist it, to get stuck into some genealogy researching. I'm curious to see if I can find any more clues to some gypsy heritage. There are hints, but no certainties. I did a read up about gypsies, both Irish and swarthy easterners, but I'm none the wiser. Maxteds were many in Kent, and one I can see was a farmer, very much a settled profession. One Maxted stole from a Kingsnorth in Pluckley, the Kingsnorth's being the family of my friends Jeremy and Ian, for which he was sentenced to transportation to Australia. One of my great Aunts, Selina Maxted, eloped to America with a cousin, being pregnant by him and having two daughters out there before returning. She never married. I want to find out more on this story, but fail to find records so far. Selina's brother was my ancestor George, the one who died falling off a haybale, being pierced by a stick into his entrails. If I was a superstar on Who Do You Think You Are, they'd whip out the whole story, no problem, and for sure tell me if there was or was not gypsy blood. It's interesting that I do have Mediterranean DNA, for so do gypsy descendants, their Indian traces being oft watered down and out. It's also interesting that I can feel so at home in these warmer foreign lands. I am not such a stranger to these places after all. Back to researching, I found out more about my many times great Aunt Selina. Her cousin Edward was a bricklayer who died when they were back in London, after their few years in New York, maybe after a bankruptcy, after which Selina put an advert in the papers looking for a position caring in homes or offices. As revealed by the next census, she and her remaining daughter, the first also having died in London, both found work as family nurses. So, Selina, yes, she does sound interesting somehow, a single mother who had a stint in New York. And I was looking at my ancestress, Elizabeth Mugway of Stalisfield, who got into the papers as an old widow. By marriage she was Elizabeth Roberts. It was her husband, Charles Roberts, who is said to have been of a gypsy family, the Otterden gypsy Roberts. Elizabeth was in the papers for having been neighbour to a murder victim, Hannah Giles, killed by a man, Samuel Seager, who obsessively stalked Hannah while her husband was out rat catching with his dogs and ferrets. Elizabeth was well acquainted with both Hannah and her killer Samuel. Rumour was that this fellows obsession was borne from an affair which she had no wish to continue. That very morning Samuel had visited Elizabeth and she'd told him he was a 'queer fellow'. He warmed himself by her fire, while spying through the window on Hannah's house to be sure the husband had gone out. He then called on Hannah with the excuse he wanted her to stitch him some trousers. He was a shoemaker and sometimes she would bind his shoes for him. Having heard the rumours, Hannah's husband, Stephen Giles, had confronted Samuel and told him he was no longer welcome in the family home. Hannah made her sons stay by her whenever Samuel was around, but he got her alone when that evening she was off along the country road to babysit the children of a nearby farmer. He mercilessly slit her throat with a razor, shot her in the thighs and set her on fire. Such are the potential deeds of a stalker who who finds himself attracted yet thwarted by a lone vulnerable woman. Elizabeth and other neighbouring women sobbed their eyes swollen from distress at the killing of their friend and they robed themselves in black. The bakehouse they shared was where Hannah's body was lain, naked and burnt, all the locals and even strangers coming to view her. In one paper a map was drawn showing who lived in what cottage and the spot where Hannah had been found dead. Elizabeths cottage is marked, being the first homestead through a shared gate and across the gardens of the families. Hannahs house was the end one of a row of three, the bakehouse they shared being on the other end. As Elizabeth had been a frequent caller to Hannah's, she must have been party to Hannah's fears. And yet all else in the village had thought Samuel such a harmless man. After the killing Samuel went on the run, later to be found in another county, hungry and looking for work on the railroad, using another name, saying that he was of the Roberts family. He was recognised by a description in the papers, confessed, and was sentenced to execution. They'd 'had words' was the reason he gave for her death. Looking again at Maxteds, I found that Charles Maxteds marriage to Sarah Green, and I'd never noticed this before, though one just had to switch to the next page to see, a double marriage, the same time as his sister Sarah married her own amour. Sarah, the sister of Charles, had already had two illegitimate children, one while she herself was but a young teenager, and for respect of the second child, she had been in church about to marry, the record having begun to be written, only for it not to go ahead, not till these years later with another child now on the way. It sounds Eastenderish, dumped at the altar! Oh, the stories of the past, if we but knew them. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. My mothers ethnic DNA results were in. And, well, I have to say that they quite took me by surprise, because despite already having discovered that my own matriarchal DNA is exotic, the small exotic ethnic DNA percentages I have are not actually through her, but rather they are given to me by my father. She does not have them. The Middle Eastern, Anatolian and African are not at all from her. Our ancestresses leaving the matriarchal homelands, then, was in no way a recent event. What also surprises me is not only does she have less British DNA than me, but also less Viking. This means some of my Viking DNA has to come from my father. Her own Shetland blood must not have been pure Viking after all, but mixed with Pictish types/original island dwellers. The Spanish DNA is not from her, so is of my father. The French DNA, which overlaps into Northern Italy, is from her and she has a huge amount of it, 46%, almost half, which is certainly confusing to me. I only inherited 13% of the French-Italian from her, rather than 23%, sure proof there that what one inherits can be uneven and random and even differ among siblings. So it is that I can now make more sense, or maybe not much sense, of the origin of my own DNA. Oh, and I almost omitted it, that Eastern European I myself have at 1%, well, it comes through her, she having it at 2%. Her British is 35%, and her Scandinavian-Viking is 17%; really, with her inbred Shetlanders I would have expected more like 50% but not so. Having made assumptions about the family origins in light of DNA before, I am lax to go making any more assumptions. But I have to attempt to do so anyway. The huge amount of French-Italian she has, though seemingly equivalent to one of her parents, could rather come through two grandparents, for instance, Mary Ann Seagrove's black haired mother Maria Harrison, could have been Italian, and this would leave D'Auvergne Bane potentially bringing in some French. Even he has the name of a French department! Now, unless his Bane's and Bean's were from an interbreeding of French Huguenot settlers, not much watered down at all, then he could, as I have speculated before, have been adopted or an illegitimacy of his 'big sister' Alma's, and if this was connected after all with the D'Auvergne Barnards, all could make sense, as these colonials of India had, possibly, originated from France and the Channel Islands. By deduction I can speculate the origins more of my own father. Eileen Spencer's, his mother's own paternity, has always been a question mark, and with his British imput being more than my mothers, this would account for my pop George Harrison's Welsh and Forest of Dean, combined with my fathers mothers part Irish. This leaves a bundle of Spanish with rarer exotica and his Scandinavian. I am going to suppose here, with nanny Eileen Spencer having been so freckly fair, that her mystery father was a Scandinavian seaman, her mother having worked in the port; entirely guess work, of course. And I have even more guesswork. The London Maxted-Green-Roberts who I have contemplated previously to have gypsy heritage, well, it seems even more likely now, which would be why Iberian DNA is showing up. Gypsies are associated with a distant Indian tribe, and yet in all their travels did they not mix with locals of the lands they inhabited, did not runaways and people expelled from their own communities join them? Spanish, Anatolian, Middle Eastern, and somehow that bit of African added too... And if not the Maxteds, who may have been Old English mixture with Viking rather than gypsy, at least the Greens and Roberts are surnames associated with gypsy people. And, again, who knows where other illegitimacies have been? So, these are all my first thoughts anyway in trying to make sense of the matter. Certainly these latest results so amaze and give me much food for thought. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Myheritage online is taking for no cost ethnic DNA from other sites and doing their own analysis. Similar results I have got, in doing this with them, and yet different. NO DNA from outside Europe has been picked up by their system, no African, or Middle Eastern, nor Anatolian. What they find of my British is that it is of Celtic type and is 64.3%, being of Ireland, Wales and Scotland; not the Shetland which would be accounted for by the Scandinavian DNA at 24.5%. And, most strangely, according to Myheritage, I have the addition of 1% Finnish. Moi, part Finlander! The Irish and Welsh part then, with my not having Scottish mainland ancestors, is a large amount. Where, I ask myself, is the Norfolk, Essex or even Kent DNA, which would be of the English type, as no English is detected. This puts a question mark not only on the Essex lot, which I had suspected to be illicit anyway, but also the Norfolk Bane's and Bean's and the Kent Maxteds. Although, if the Maxteds and Greens were of gypsy derivation, as I have considered, then that may be what is showing up as Iberian. The Spanish type is given for me, by Myheritage, as 3.5%, alongside which there is not French at all, but 2.7% Italian, and more than either of those, 4% Greek. The is interesting and yet when each company comes up with some vastly differing zones this throws one naturally into confusion. I do actually like to hear I have connections to Greece and Italy, and yet this had never come up with the Familytree system of testing. I now can take nothing as fact. I don't know if I waste my time with this far too immature science. DNA ethnic results become as uncertain as the reliance of a family tree study, where really, assumed parentage's can never be taken for granted. I don't know if this is a subject, despite my love and infatuation for it, that I can keep pursuing. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I had a new angle to explore in my genealogy, the possible gypsy origins of my Pluckley lot. But this is not an easy one to work out. I look to gypsy historical records and see that they have tended to be obvious nomads. At least there are very visible main families which have been recorded. It is harder to detect those who have over some hundreds of years compromised by adopting more general lifestyles. Some have wanted to cover their origins, much as I suppose did those Victorian colonials with their mixed bloods. As I look more into this Maxted line of Pluckley, hints of gypsy origins come up here and there, but nothing is certain. So she may be of gypsies and kings... I look more into the potential gypsy links, still not defining anything. Other than which, I have an idea that many Londoners have gypsy or other kind of traveller histories. On looking up any evidence to back up this theory I see there may be some truth to this. London was a multi-cultural crossroads anyway, drawing in French Huguenots and Jews, and many of the poorer people, not of such foreign groups, had traveller style more nomadic origins, arriving in London for stability, economic reasons and even simply because prejudices had made their former lifestyles more challenging to maintain. They were classed as vagrants and treated as such. Land enclosures were limiting more and more the places at which they could camp. Their valued roles as entertainers and rural traders were displaced. And at one time nobility, and even royalty, had liked their ethnic exoticism, their air of mysticism and their insights into peoples futures. Such interests diminished and they became untrustworthy nuisances. For such they were hiding their origins, many of them adapting to the mainstream. An Irish destitute influx was pouring over due to famine in Ireland. Such groups seemed to easily mix. And even before the gypsies came to Britain, there had been people tramping the land, not fitting into the parish systems. The boundaries between all these various types was becoming less discernible. And I see hints, I do, of something within my ancestors, but I can't pin it down. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I am turning my attention back to my own genealogy, rather than to that of others. I'd found some family census's which had previously evaded me, of Maxted's in the London of the Industrial Revolution, all confirming who was the old mother of the family, a widow in London, the one to have left rural Kent, living in poverty in Lambeth, on top of which she was blind, Elizabeth Maxted, originally a Roberts. Someone on line had stated that the Robert's from her neck of the woods were Romany gypsies, but on looking I found nothing to back that up. Although, on looking with some curiosity for anything about her departed husband, George Maxted of Pluckley, he is described as being a 'general dealer', a trade that has been sometimes associated with the gypsy people. I found nothing else to add to this. They were a family of fixed abode, not roaming here and there, the Maxted's for so long being in Pluckley, for which I have to conclude most likely then they were not gypsies. And so I drag myself away from the Maxted's and the Robert's and the Mugway's (Elizabeth's mothers family name). AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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