Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index
I have traced my paternal lineage (Y-DNA Haplogroup L-M20 > M22 > M317 > SK1412 > SK1414 > FGC51041 > FGC51088 > FGC51036) back to the Zagros and South Caucasus mountain ranges of South-west Asia, approximately 25,000 years ago. From there, I have followed its journey to southern England, proposing two primary hypotheses for its arrival: the Roman occupation or the Late Medieval period.
The line is represented in my great-grandparents' generation by John Henry Brooker. Born in Deptford, he was a professional gunner in the Royal Field Artillery; Act 11 focused on his life and military campaigns. However, as the vast majority of my recorded ancestry over the last 200 to 500 years is rooted in Norfolk, a question remains: how did the L-FGC51036 clade enter an East Anglian family? This Act explores that mystery.
Above image is a colourised and restored image of an original, that I'll attach in a posthaven gallery at the bottom of this page. The boy on the far left of the image, third row bar (red circled), was my late paternal grandfather, Reginald John Brooker in 1920 at East Dereham, Norfolk.
My paternal-line great-grandparents were John Henry Brooker (born 1884 at Deptford London), and Faith Eliza Brooker nee Baxter, born 1885 at East Dereham Norfolk. Here is an AI reconstruction based on the few photos of them both, that have survived:
But of course in real-life, Reginald's parents wouldn't have often been seen together like this! This is an AI reconstruction. Its not real. Because in life, I suspect that they were not very fond of each other. Perhaps I'm being a little cruel in putting them together in this artificial reconciliation. Allow me to explain the real story, as much as I have ascertained after years of research. After all, it is also the story of how Y-DNA L-FGC51036 enters Norfolk and an East Anglian family. Original photos and likeness references at the bottom of this post are enclosed in a gallery.
During the early 1900s, Faith was working as a Norfolk maid in London. At Christmas in 1905, she returned home to East Dereham, Norfolk, to give birth to a daughter named Gladys. As an unmarried mother in Edwardian England, her prospects were bleak. Yet, a few months later, a young Deptford-born gunner named John Henry Brooker took leave from the Royal Field Artillery and arrived in East Dereham to marry the young mother.
The marriage, however, was fraught. When John was posted to the barracks at Ballinrobe, Mayo in Ireland, Faith reportedly followed him there, but the reunion was short-lived. Following a swift falling-out, Faith returned alone to East Dereham, where my grandfather, Reginald John Brooker, was born on 18th August 1908.
Above, an AI reconstruction of young Reginald Brooker at Northall Green, East Dereham Norfolk. He is happily playing as his own grandfather, William Bennett Baxter sits in the foreground. Based on actual photos of them both.
For years, the physical distance and the sudden estrangement cast a shadow of doubt over Reginald's paternity. But where oral history faltered, modern genetic matching has provided irrefutable clarity. DNA analysis of Reginald’s descendants reveals undeniable connections not just to John Henry’s immediate line, but deeper still into his maternal ancestry and the Edney family tree. Because these families lived on the entirely opposite side of England, the presence of these shared centimorgans can mean only one thing: John Henry Brooker was, without doubt, Reginald's biological father.
This genetic truth breathes new life into old family memories. It explains why John quietly paid a maintenance allowance for his estranged son across the miles, and it gives profound meaning to his final gesture. Many years later, John passed his silver pocket watch down to Reginald—the ultimate, timeless token of recognition from a father to his son.
With Reginald’s lineage firmly vindicated, his birth marks the moment a remarkably distinct genetic line intertwined with Norfolk’s long-established ancestry. His patrilineage, Y-DNA L-FGC51036, possessed ancient roots in the Zagros and South Caucasus mountain valleys of South-West Asia. Over millennia, it migrated through Syria and into the Levant. From there, a rare "ghost" lineage managed to evade extinction across the centuries, embarking on a long journey to Southern England. It eventually settled in the Thames Valley before moving downstream into the bustling communities of East London. Through a soldier's brief journey to Norfolk, this ancient global nomad finally found a new home in East Anglia.
A few years after Faith left John, and Reginald was born, a national census reveals old family secrets.
The Next Movement: The Edwardian Triangle
In 1911, the official census ledger records that Faith had indeed returned to Northall Green Farm. Her parents, the Baxters, resided there as agricultural employees in a tied cottage. Faith had moved into the very next cottage, bringing with her her five-year-old daughter Gladys and her two-year-old son, my grandfather Reginald.
But this document contains far more than a simple record of residency. When combined with family lore and the cutting-edge reality of modern genetic matching, it exposes the high-stakes drama of an Edwardian love triangle.
The head of the household in that second cottage was Robert Hayes. Born in 1884 in Wigan, Lancashire, Robert had moved to Norfolk as a young child—a return for his parents to his mother’s native county and birth town. By 1911, the 27-year-old Robert was working as a labourer on the farm. Faith was right there under his roof, officially recorded under the convenient, respectable title of "Housekeeper" to satisfy the passing enumerator.
The domestic arrangement, however, was beautifully transparent. Living with them was an eight-month-old baby girl bearing the highly telling name of Winifred Hayes Brooker. While Robert was listed as single, Faith was recorded as married. Her legal husband, Gunner John Henry Brooker, was hundreds of miles away, stationed at his Royal Field Artillery barracks in County Mayo, Ireland.
For a long time, the genetic data presented a frustrating anomaly. I had noticed that a tested second cousin—descended from Faith’s eldest daughter, Gladys—shared a significantly weaker percentage of centimorgans with my sibling and me than standard inheritance charts predicted. In fact, it was about half of what we expected. At that time, before the links to John Henry’s broader tree were fully solidified, a dark worry crept in: Had my grandfather Reginald been fathered by someone else?
Then, the breakthrough arrived in the form of an incredible message from an entirely independent DNA tester—a descendant not of the Brookers, but of Robert Hayes’s family line:
"Hello Paul, I hope you don't mind me contacting you. I have an anomaly in my tree and I'm hoping you can help with it... I have a DNA match with someone whose great-grandmother is Faith E. Baxter. All the trees I have looked at, including your Norfolk tree, show that her daughter Gladys' father was J.H. Brooker. My great-grandmother's brother was Robert Hayes. Faith was shown as Robert's servant on the 1911 Census. The only way I can see that there is a DNA match is if Gladys' biological father was Robert Hayes!"
With those few sentences, the entire house of cards collapsed, giving way to a brilliant new truth. This revelation aligned perfectly with a growing number of genetic matches with the descendants of Henry and Elizabeth Rosina Brooker, firmly anchoring the lineage back into its Oxfordshire roots—connecting the branches of Brooker, Edney, Shawers, and Durran.
Gladys—born a few months before Faith’s hasty wedding to John Henry Brooker in 1906—had been fathered by Robert Hayes all along. The Deptford gunner’s "shotgun wedding" to the disgraced young maid wasn't the legitimization of his own child, but perhaps an act of profound chivalry?
Faith hadn’t simply drifted away from her soldier husband and returned to the safety of her parents' village. She had actively crossed the country to return to the arms of her original lover—the biological father of her firstborn child—and had promptly borne him a second daughter.
1921 Census of Northall Farm, Dereham, Norfolk.
What had life been like for two-year-old Reginald, living in that cottage as the child of John Henry Brooker, alongside the man who fathered his two siblings? Was there resentment? Was he well treated?
Family lore, as recounted to me by Gladys herself, reveals that Reggie was left at Northall Green to be brought up by his elderly grandparents, the Baxters. Gladys recalled fond memories of them and the farm, viewing Reggie as the fortunate one; she had remained with Faith, enduring what she described as a miserable childhood with her mother. She even confessed to feeling a pang of envy toward her half-brother. For his part, Reginald used to share fond childhood tales of the farm—including how he would dangle from the railway bridge, waiting for the steam engines to roar past beneath him.
Indeed, the 1921 census confirms this arrangement, recording a twelve-year-old Reginald living at the farm with his elderly grandparents. As for Robert Hayes. His relationship with Faith didn't last either. In 1924 he married another young woman in East Dereham. Faith headed east, to Norwich.
Reginald is pictured here with his wife, Doris, and their children on the steps of their council house in Dereham, Norfolk. Sitting between them is the little blonde boy with the distinct white collar—my father, Wesley Reginald Brooker. This image is an AI restoration and colourisation of the original 1939 photograph. It aligns perfectly with the accompanying page from the 1939 Register, which records the entire family at this exact residence on the eve of the Second World War.
During the Second World War, Reginald was excused from active duty on account of his very poor eyesight. Instead he was sent to work in ammunition and bomb factories at Enfield.
My Grandfather was employed for many years as a heavy labourer (despite his light frame) at a small Dereham iron foundry (I believe Hobbies Iron Foundry). There were a number of humorous stories attached to his time there. I've commissioned AI to reconstruct an image of him at work at a non-descript foundry:
A later AI restoration and colourisation of a genuine snapshot of my Grandfather, at the seaside front in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Characteristically with a cigarette in his mouth, and the Brooker strut:
Finally, an AI portrait, based on a photo of him in old age. Except that I never saw him looking so smart, but I recognise that familiar cheeky grin:
I should name it Pops, for that was the name his children knew him by. In later life, Reginald worked part-time at a girls' school in Dereham. He was an incredibly popular, charismatic man, well-liked by the pupils whose minor misdeeds he was always known to cover. He passed away in 1979, but I will always remember his broad smile and the tales of his bravado in the iron foundry.
He was a man of immense grit; we once visited him only to find he had tied a bad tooth to a door, ready to kick it shut. Another foundry legend went that he had once lain across a workbench while a workmate wrenched out a diseased tooth with ironwork pliers.
I hope the future will forgive my dreadful use of 2026 AI imagery—technology doesn't always tell an entirely true story. Because of this, I have preserved all the original photographs and reference documents in the Posthaven gallery below. Pops, Granddad, I remember you. I remember you well.
GO TO NEXT ACT - The Finale. Summary of this time travel across a timeline of a Y-DNA patrilineage.
Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index
