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.
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I took bread and kombucha as a gift to Mac and his son Elvis who were staying in a red van in the village parking. Mac told me one of his ancestors was a Red indian. Ah, a new genealogy project for me then. I did find the said ancestor, Mac's great grandfather Herbert Lee Thomas, of Barrington Passage in Canada. It did indeed say on his earliest census that he was adopted. Apparently Mac's mother and aunt had travelled to Canada to find out anything of this mysterious forebear. Not only did Mac busk Beatles songs, but he was a McCartney and my own son was a George Harrison. And yet, interestingly, from the first moment of working on Mac's genealogy I was not able to even find Mac's birth, let alone anyone else on his paternal line. The said Red Indian was on his mothers side, all standard enough to look into. This was rather strange, to put a known birth with location and name into a search engine and yet nothing coming up. This I resolved eventually by using only Mac's first names 'Derek Alan' minus a surname, but with the place, date and mothers maiden name 'Thomas' and what came up was not a McCartney at all but a Murphy! Mac, although not having confessed it to me, had at some point changed his surname, and I'd sussed this! As I saw his own father had died still a Murphy. This paternal side was Irish through and through, they being settlers in Cleator Moor's 'Little Ireland' in the Lake District, being refugees from the potato famine. So Mac was really a Derek Murphy! And he was so very Irish, regardless that he had a cultured English accent. There was one ancestor born in Bangalore in India, but into an Irish family, they having for long served in the British army. This particular ancestor, Robert Colclough, spoke fluent Hindustani and on settling in London became the keeper of the maze at Hampton Court. Roberts aunt, who had survived the Indian mutiny, was in London too, she being a member of staff in Queen Victoria's household. Robert Colclough had quite a reputation for his knowledge of Hindustani, he having conversed with ease with the Indian troops when they were stationed at Home Park during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and during the coronations of King Edward and King George. Roberts family had lent ten of it's members to the British army, spanning four generations and totalling a service of 167 years, the others being his grandfather, father, four brothers and three of his sons. One of the sons, James Colclough, was Mac's great grandfather, who was in Egypt as a drummer in the Dublin Fusiliers.
Me and Amanda had some interesting talk about gypsies, as maybe I was descended from them (maybe not), but as for Amanda it was said that her maternal grandfather, Thomas Shaw, had been a gypsy. He had sold newspapers on a street corner in Liverpool. When her granny, Ellen Spencer, had fallen for him she was forbidden to marry him, for which they had dated in secret for many years and on Ellen's fathers death they were at last able to marry. Amanda wanted that I would look more into this, but there were so many Thomas Shaw's in Liverpool at that time, for which I needed more clues. I did crack more of Amanda's vaster genealogy though, of her humble Scousers, one of whom had been a mariner from St John's Newfoundland, and there being generations of shoe makers and carters. The carters would generally have had a horse and cart by which to transfer produce from one location to another. I caught onto someone elses research from hereon, which led to a Welsh family, and yet I could see this shared information was incorrect. Although for sure there was Welsh blood and Irish too. Amanda, although it was not so clear to see, had red hair, which was from both sides of her family, her father having like mine been a redhead. Some days later I again looked to Amanda's genealogy, this time cracking her 'gypsy' Shaws. This was thanks to a phone call between Amanda and her mother which revealed the date of birth I'd needed to distinguish the one Shaw fellow from a host of others.
Thomas Shaw's mother, Gertrude, had not been favourably recalled for she had been a tough woman, all in black, who would threaten to set her dog on Amanda's mother when she'd been a little girl. So they were understood to be a bunch of gypsies, that family, although going back in time it could be seen that they were solid working class types. And further back there was an alderman and mayor of Chester. Amanda was relieved to at last find someone of success and repute. I was so getting into genealogy researach, and not even my own. Rather, as an intellectual challenge, a detective challenge, I was updating my friend' Jare's alias Nitai's tree, pushing back the boundaries. And this was well interesting, for its involvment if early immigration to Australia, of both convicts and free settlers. One of Nitai's ancestors was Jesse Froy, born illegtimate in Hitchin, Hartfordshire in 1819, son of his mother Martha Froy. He was at first a soldier in the 11th Regiment, sent to various barracks, in Devon, Northamptonshire and Kent, the latter place where he met his Irish sweetheart, Mary Malone. From Chatham in Kent the soldiers were sent to guard convicts in Van Diemans Land (Tasmania). Jesse made sure to return to Kent to marry Mary and then took her back to Australia, travelling there on the ship Ramilies, and they making a life together in Sydney, having many children, nearly all boys. Jesse took to drink, spending his evenings in the pub, and in time no more cared for his wife and children, so that he was even prosecuted for neglecting and abandoning them. For this he spent one month in prison, from the records of which we get a detailed description of him. He was a little over 5ft 10, could read and write, had dark brown hair and hazel eyes, sallow skin and a stout build. His trade was gardening, he was a protestant, and he had various tattoos, which included a flower and love hearts. In 1859, one of Jesse's drinking mates, his Irish former convict neighbour, Hugh Glenn, murdered his wife Ann, also an Irish immigrant former convict, in a drunken rage, whacking her hard with his homemade broomsticks. Jesse's wife, Mary, heard all this going on through the wall. Hugh's landlord's son, who'd been staying with the Glenn's while his parents were away, and who had seen the beginning of the attack, ran for refuge to Mary's house. Mary was too afraid to intervene. After killing his wife, Hugh came to Mary with blood on him; saying to come and see that he had found his wife dead, faking that he had just found her like that. But Mary knew well the truth. Instead of going straight with him to his house, she first went to the pub to alert her husband to what had happened, for which Jesse and others of the pub went to Hugh's house and saw that Ann truly was dead. Both Mary and the landlords son testified against Hugh and he was found guilty. It was a year after that incident, in 1860, that Jesse Froy was himself prosecuted for neglecting his family. He was apprehended in the Waverley Tea Gardens Hotel in the act of 'tossing off a pint of ale'. His children had been begging and sleeping rough, 'in the bush', one boy found sheltering in a 'delapidated fowl house', and at another time sleeping in a toilet. They would sleep in the bush, by the roadside and in outhouses. When Jesse was pulled up on this he declared that his wife Mary was as much to blame as himself and that he neither knew nor cared anything about the children. Mary was found to be at home with their latest baby, aged but 4 months. Of Jesses it was said 'he never seemed to have any business to attend to, continually loitering about the pubs' and that he was 'a worthless dissipated fellow'. His family were known to be in a wretched state, begging for food. Jesse and Mary's son George Froy married Jessie the daughter of a convict John Edwards. This John Edwards had arrived in Australia in 1814 from Liverpool on the ship Parmelia. His job in Liverpool was making ropes and he had been sentenced there, at the age of 18, to 14 years transportation for stealing 'silver plate'. Ad records do state, he had a ruddy freckled complexion and sandy red hair, grey eyes, could read and write, was a protestant, and he aldo had tattoos of a loveheart and darts and anchors and stars, as well as a blue ring tattooed on the middle ad fourth fingers of his left hand. He was held at the Australian penal settlement of Port Macquarie. In 1842 John sought permission, as a convict, to marry Agnes Thompson, who was a free immigrant, and three years later attained his certificate of freedom. Agnes was a Scots girl from Glasgow. She had travelled out to Australia, at the age of 22, in the care of an aunt and uncle, on the ship Trinidad. Back in Glasgow she had been a nursemaid, living in with a family while looking after their young children. She could read and write, her religion was 'independant' and she was in good health. Agnes and John married at Port Macquarie, known for its penal colony. This colony's distance from Sydney had made it ideal as a place of punishment for 'convicts of the worse character'. Wheever those convicts escaped into the bush, they were taken back by aboriginees in return for blankets and tobacco. Disabled convicts were also placed here, men with wooden legs, one armed or blind. Really the penal settlement had done its time when John arrived, only 'special's in small number being kept there, and free settlers like Agnes and her relatives were now interested to make a life there. On gaining freedom, John and Agnes lovde to Moruya and then to the McCleay River where they put down roots, John being a tenant farmer at Austral Eden on the Lower McCleay. The Edwards family saw much tragedy. John died of pneumonia at the age of 44 and Agnes drowned at the age of 45. As an orphan, Jessie, aged just ten years old, had to be raised by another family. It was Jessie and George Froy's daughter Agnes Lilian, who married John Edward Young, a plumber of Irish origin who had arrived with his parents, George Young and Jane Gilmore on the ship Pericles in 1878, they being farm labourers from the Bailieborough region of Cavan, Ireland, Wesleyan Methodists who had married in a Presbyterian church, so not your general catholic Irish.
John Young and Agnes Lilian's son, George Gilmore Young, married Mary Jane Barker, who had emigrated from Sunderland to Australia at the age of ten with her family. Her father, Christopher Barker, a boilermaker by trade, served in the first world war, getting mumps while on the ship journey from Australia back to England, and then while fighting in France suffered such bad gunshot wounds to his face that he needed plastic surgery. I worked on my genealogy website, looking at my nanny Eileen's quite vague Irish origins from Westmeath, and at her half Irish mother Florence whose school, which she'd attended in the poor streets of Lambeth, was so bad for bullying that one girl even died as a consequence, her head bashed on stone steps and upon a desk. Before that, and only briefly, Florences schooling was at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Sunderland, those same nuns infamous for their Magdalene laundries and rough treatment of single mothers. 1901 Florence started school at Lambeth in the Springfield School on her birthday 18th March. Information given: Florence Maxted, daughter of Willilam Maxted, boiler maker, address of 18 Springfield Place. Former school marked as none, then changed later to The Convent, Sunderland Violent School Children
While at Springfield School, South Lambeth, one day last August, Grace Smith, aged 8 years, was pushed down the steps at the school. She complained of pains in her head; but the mother did not find any mark of violence. On 20th October, however, she again complained, saying another child had struck her head on a desk. In more detail, another schoolgirl had 'pulled her hair until her head struck the desk'. Eventually she died in St Thomas's hospital, from pressure on the brain set up by an abscess, 'of delirium and hemorrhage', the abscess having formed behind her ear. At the inquest, the class teacher and one of the school managers, a curate of All Saints, South Lambeth, was called. The teacher said she did not hear anything about the pushing downstairs. The curate said he had been unable to obtain any trace of the children who pushed Grace or struck her head on the desk. He quite understood the possibility of pushing taking place on the stone steps, as there was only one exit for 500 children, and much crushing was inevitable. The jury found a verdict of death from misadventure. Ella May was so hoping I could find her a close Irish ancestor, through the man who had adopted her as a baby, who had the Irish surname of Quinn; but, as I did research there and then, there wasn't an authentic Irish birth in this male lineage until as far back as a great-great, this being John Quinn, a prison warden.
Not good enough for a get out of Brexit clause then. Much like my own Irish great-great, Mary Dolan of Westmeath; just a step too far. I am perusing more the story of my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue, a life that never stops fascinating me, regardless that it was so tragic. I am so near to completing a great write-up on him, and yet there is always more here and there to discover. When all is full and done then I can begin the book writing. But the Sugrue genealogical presentation naturally takes for ever, so it seems, as such things do. In gathering together workhouse records, I found one I'd not accessed before. This shows how important it is that we go back again and again, looking for any relevant records, and revising and updating accordingly. My Sugrue's had much association with the slum boarding houses of Deptford during their time of destitution. I had seen reference to them as being at 'Pesters', a boarding house run by William Pester, and now by this new record I saw that earlier on they were at 'Freaks', a lodging house run by Charles Freak, all being on Mill Lane. In between these two addresses they were at the Mitre, not the pub of Greenwich I realise, but another Mill Lane boarding house which doubled up as a place selling beer. The total poverty and destitute situation is what led Bartholomew Sugrue to spend most of the rest of his life, from the age of 57 upwards, in workhouses. He and his wife Catherine no longer rented their own home, but were in effect homeless, moving from one boarding house to another. Only the poorest of the poor would ever frequent such places. Despite working so much on expanding Bartholomew Sugrue's write-up, when I print it out, it still seems so lacking. More is needed. I see on Bartholomew's marriage certificates, and who he took in as as lodger, who were his friends, fellow Irish labourers, as is often the way with ex-pats, mixing with their own kind and not integrating with the traditional people. Those surnames of his friends, Reardon and McCarthy, there was much trouble in the community incited by men of such names. Maybe they were brothers of the friends, or cousins. Maybe they were Bartholomew's cousins, all related. These men were often in the papers for their drunken antics, when fights would break out and mobs of hundreds would surround them. This was the company Bartholomew kept, of the wild untamed Irish. He may not even always have been one to drink, but the people around him did that. And, even, with all the deaths from cholera abounding, alcohol was believed to offer protection against this, for which Bartholomew may have encouraged his wife, Catherine, to drink too. There are maybe three other sons they had, who had died when little, which needs checking out: Bartholomew junior and his twin Daniel, and maybe a Michael, being a twin of Edmund. When I feel the grief of losing my sister and how deep that is, then how must it have been for the ancestors who tended to lose at least one child. As such, grief is a normal human experience. For all such troubles, with the ancestors being so poor and but subsistence living, they had not the time nor space to contemplate and self heal from such pain and grief. Their quick solutions were, one, the church, and two, alcohol. Rents needed paying and hungry mouths feeding, for which one had to work, work, work. Parish relief could sometimes be called upon, maybe a medicine for ones ailments or shoes for children's bare feet. I find myself understanding more Bartholomew's years in the Poplar workhouse, as times were changing. When it is illegal to beg for ones needs, and naturally stealing is not an option, and yet there is no work available, one has to turn to parish aid. There were indeed times of sickness and lack of work when the Sugrue's resorted to asking for help, and not least when son Edmund was dying from pleuritis, in which instance the workhouse officials took a full day to get to the lad, despite it being an emergency, as I have now seen. And Edmund was in the care of the workhouse for the last four days of his life and still died. I wonder if there was that old equivalent to our concern that if you send vulnerable souls into a hospital or old peoples home they'll likely not come out again. Bartholomew was certainly quick to get his other children out of the workhouse, despite the struggles facing him as a lone father, as if they were safer with him than under such a regime. Well, fast forward, and the time had come when Bartholomew was so in need of parish relief, but no longer was there any out-help on offer, for there had arisen the Poplar experiment. Any money to help out the family now had to be earned at Poplar workhouse in a prison like situation, with hard labour, and a fare of only bread and water. However strong a constitution Bartholomew may have had, years of this wore him down, and close association with the sickest of society contaminated his health with tuberculosis. The Poplar experiment was a terrible one, a destroyer of families, a punishment for being poor. The new way was a response to greater and greater numbers of people needing assistance, for which those in need were not now individuals, but one mass of unruly poor. To weed out those taking advantage of potential freebies, the real destitute had to pay the consequences. I sense the unheard frustrations of my ancestors, due to their being misunderstood, accused and judged. Beneath all struggle and external perception, there was the heart of a family, who loved and cared about one another, their genuine humanity, their joy and playfulness, their innocence. I guess that's what I'd like to portray in a book, though I don't know if I am able. Maybe I should first try writing short stories or children's books, to kind of warm up to the big task. A compendium of ancestral tales could inspire children to find an interest in genealogy. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. 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. Absolutely, on this day, my mind was being blown by my supposed gypsy connections which more and more are revealed to be authentic, and not only that, the gypsies I am connecting with are helping me to understand more about my genetics. One fellow, Les Batt, was going out of his way to reveal the connections I have to his Romany compatriots. And not only that, for also he understands the tools which reveal specific populations and tribal groups which one is linked to. It is Les that is blowing my mind, and how lucky I am that he helps me to see what otherwise may have escaped me. Apart from the fact that I have tonnes of Viking Orcadian Scandinavian DNA and tonnes of Irish (I don't know where my Welsh pop fits into all this), I learnt that despite what MyHeritage had reported to the contrary I did have English DNA after all and it is of Cornwall (and how can I even understand how that fits in). And there is some Dutch and West German, which could be accounted for by my Norfolk ancestry, as Europeans were known to have brought the cloth trade there. This information was all so, so, and overall to be expected. What was mind blowing was other than that. Not only did Les give me lists of recent influences for the grandparents of both me and my mother, but he also presented totally exotic lists of secondary influences beyond that, and put his own time to preparing maps of the journeying of my ancestors out of India and into Central Asia - so the Genographic Project was correct about my central Asian link after all - and such a big influence he also showed me had come from the Caucasus mountains (I had been correct in focusing research here in the past too then); my ancestors had dwelt in Afghani-Pakistani border regions (no Pakistani separation back then mind you and this would have been known as part of India). One marker is to be found in Anatolia (where maybe the blending with Armenians had come in). One line travelled down through the Middle East into Egypt and across to Morocco, maybe that very gypsy journey into the south of Spain I'd recently been learning about. After Les showed to me that I had distant connections to him and other gypsies of the Romany group, he one by one presented to me more and more interesting details in relation to Gedmatch. A Utility K13 list, with its Oracle 4, shows the major imput from all four grandparents, which appears overwhelmingly Irish, with of course Orcadian, West Scottish, and the southern English (I wonder if this would tally with my Forest of Dean ancestry), as well as southern Dutch and west and north German. This was the first level of genetics I got and is of recent genetics. Totally I see that Irish is the strongest element. The next revelation Les came up with was the Oracle 4 in relation to my mothers own grandparents. This revealed, amongst all the expected Scandinavian Viking influence, which would account for Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Orcadian and nothern Dutch (although that last may still be to do with a Norfolk connection), an addition of Irish (which we've definitely known), and south-eastern English (Norfolk and London), but the real surprise in all this then came out, and it is Basque French. The French Basque is no minor element but is strongly present and is the second biggest influence beyond the Viking imput. Oh, could it be then that her grandmother Mary Ann's Greenwich mother Maria's appearance was really French Basque. Les pointed out that the Basques had not only remained in their Pyrenees enclave, but they had also made a home for themselves in Ireland, hence the black hair sometimes seen there. This presents then that Maria's Basque look, if that indeed is what it is, could have come to England via Ireland, rather than directly from France. Interestingly I read that the language of the Basques has similarity to tribal languages in the Caucasus, where my very mtDna has its origins. And Les Batt was revealing so much more to me. The Basque French is recent ancestry, beyond which there is so much more ethnic variety. I had asked Les if there was any way to know if one truly has Romany ancestry, pointing out that 11% of my DNA has been detected to be Mediterranean. Really for this one would have to detect a link to India itself, with the subsequent journeying towards Europe of these peoples. And Les found this for me, using the K13 Oracle, which specifically looks at markers shared with Asian peoples, along with usually looked at influences. For my mother, behind the primary source of Orcadian, British, Norwegian and Dutch, comes the secondary source, where are ones further back ancestors, and what shows up is not only French Basque in high proportions, but also a large amount of Iberian Spanish/Portuguese. As Les says, this even being what he had expected, this shows my mum's ancestors travelled widely in Spain. Not only have the old Irish been seen to have a link to both Spain and the Basque Pyrenees , but the gypsies had for so long dwelt in Spain, for which gypsies tend to have a big presence of Spanish DNA. There is so much of this Spanish influence in my mothers DNA, along with French, and interestingly, considering that I was drawn to spend a month exploring this island, some Sardinian. The Basque is not something in isolation then, but part of vaster exploration of the whole Iberian peninsular and beyond. And for sure this fits in with the autosomal results I was already told of by the general DNA testing companies. There's no defining, as such, as to whether this Iberian DNA is due to either Irish or gypsy influences, or both, although its pretty much accepted that genetic mixing has gone on between Irish travellers and European-Asian ones, and I think I can assume the same in my own case too. Now this is all fascinating enough, but my own K13 oracle is even more so. For beyond all my great influence of Irishness, which is of primary source, is the secondary aforementioned mass of Caucasus mountain tribes, central Afghani and Indian. This is as aspect of me, the ethnic colour of my being, whether it is through my mother or father, that not being clear as yet. It does look as if my more ethnic components aren't even through my mother, or at least they don't show up on her own oracle. And so has manifested a massive list of tribal peoples, by which an entire map of journeying across Asia can be plotted, with tribal names such as Ossetian, Balkar, Brahmi, Balochi, Kabardin, Georgian, Abhkasian, Makrani, Adygei, Afghan Tadjik, Kalash, Nogay, Chechen, Burusho, Afghan Pashtun, Kumyk, Sindhi and Tabassaran. Wow, in wishing to find ones exotic self how much more exotic can it get! Like we know Europeans came out of Africa via the Middle East. But this something totally different! An attraction I have had in my life to India, and the lands thereabout, reflects exactly where my ancestors have been. Les came up with three maps, one for the Asian journeying, one for the Iberian, and another of the total picture which includes every single discovered influence (which includes Greek, south east European, Cyprus as it looks to be (another place I'd like to go), Sicily, Egypt, the Levant and Morocco, all this being revealed by the Dodecad V3 test analysis. I am thrilled to bits with these maps. And of course by all the obscure tribes that have been listed. I looked up information on those tribal groups: Ossetia is of the Caucasus, the highest point in the landscape being Mount Kazbek and being part of the old Sillk Road. Other Caucasus groups are revealed, the Balkars, many of whom fled into Europe when the Mongols invaded, the Kabardin with their interesting belief that the soul of the ancestors watches over us, a soul which one is to perfect by honour and compassion, the Georgians, who had maintained their Christian identity even in the face of great pressure from neighbouring Moslem empires, Abkhasian whose land of the soul is on the shores of the Black Sea with its ideal mildly subtropical climate, a part of the ancient kingdom of Colchis, where is the worlds deepest cave (the Crows Cave), the Adygei Circassians, the Nogay who have been linked to the Golden Horde, who on settling in the Crimea became Crimean Tartars, still proud of their nomadic traditions which they consider to be superior to settled life, the Chechen who are fiercely independent and egalitarian, who had migrated to the mountains from the fertile crescent and are tall with all eye and hair colours, including red hair, and who are considered to be more European than Asian, with a strong connection to nature and love of freedom (their greeting 'marsha oylla' means 'enter in freedom', they are a happy and witty people, and it is they who, who with their diverse genetics, have this connection to the Basques, far more than they have to neighbouring east Europeans, the Kamyk of northern Dagestan, and the Tabassaran, also of Dagestan. And: On the edges of Afghanistan are the Brahuis, a relict people of Indian type, and the Balochi, a desert and mountain people living with the Pashtuns on the Persian plateau, though originally from the shores of the Caspian Sea (they are known to have plundered travellers in the desert and their singing and dancing women folk are known for their lullabies), the Makrani former mercenaries who to this day are found in the Gujarati princely states of Kathiawar, the Tadjik who are Persians who emigrated to central Asia, being former Zoroastrians with their fire temples, Aryans and Buddhists, the Kalash who are a unique aboriginal tribe practising animism, and whose women embroider their dresses with cowrie shells (elopements are part of the culture, even if with already married women), crows representing the ancestors (sadly this tribe has been targeted by local Muslims and militants), the Barusha who are the Hunza people, famed for living more than a hundred years, and being from north of the Himmalayas, their stunning scenic land associated in legend with the lost kingdom of Shangri La, the Afghani Pashtuns who are Pathans of unclear origin, originally being Buddhists, Hindu and Zoroastrian, worshippers of the sun and of Nana, and the Sindhi of what was West India, originally tribes of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with Mohenjo Daro being one of their larger settlements. Having looked at all that I don't see such a bold connection to southern India, as mapped by Les, although having said that, the Brahui were speakers of a Dravidian language and are thought to have come from Karnataka. I think, also, that with such nomadic travelling ancestors, one must consider that they not only would have travelled westwards but eastwards too, as along the Silk Road, forming colonies and cultural links to other groups, and in such explorations being isolated from their origins, absorbing at least partially into surrounding populations. Therefore myriad peoples are seemingly linked to, whereas the connections may rather have been later, and no one has ended up of one pure type of anything. Whatever was our African origin, this has diversified into so many exploratory tribes, chiselling such unique, differing identities, all who will re-emerge ultimately back into one vast people, like the expanding and then contracting universe. Along this multi dimensional journeying we experience such a blossoming of all that can be, while gathering a trillion personal stories, and I can't not but be fascinated. One thought that does come to me is that this mapping is not so much a road journey that one group of ancestors made. It is more like a river, into which flow not only springs, but also other complexities of rivers. It is not that every tribe was visited and a blending of peoples then enacted, all as part of the journeying of an edge of India people; but rather fewer people were met with, who already had long experiences of connecting to the various groups in their lands. As I can see, there is one big group of Afghan, old India, mountain tribal, and central Asian. And the other big group displays the huge variety of all the tribes of the Caucasus mountains. With emphasis being on the very edges of old India, it does not seem that any exodus came from what is modern India itself. Rather, since the exodus, tribes who remained have journeyed in quite the other direction, into India. Those met on travels westwards already had complex mixtures in their genealogies, again back to the symbolism of the river. Whatever may have been her complex Caucasus origins, a girl may have met others of my lineage nowhere near there, but in Anatolia or Greece, Italy or Spain, or Ireland. Also, though I do seek proof for gypsyness in my family, it has to be admitted that there still is nothing concrete. There could be other reasons why my people travelled across Asia, the Silk Road appearing to have quite some relevance; so that they may rather have been traders, missionaries, or explorers who set up distant colonies. My head has been so full on absorbed in all this, so that I have kind of reached overload with it and need to have a break and return with freshness later. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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