Journals of a Time Traveller

By Rodney Burton [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

This line descends to me via my paternal grandmother, Doris Brooker nee Smith.  Her paternal grandmother was Ann Smith nee Peach. She lived during the 19th Century in Attleborough, Norfolk, but her origins baffled me for years before online genealogical research enabled me to crack it.

I published how I cracked it, and her father's story here.  In brief, her mother, Sarah, was born Sarah Riches near to Attleborough in Norfolk at Great Hockham in 1812.  Then ... somehow, she met a David Peach, from the East Midlands.  He was a shepherd and drover, and I'm best guessing that his vocation brought him into contact with a Norfolk bride.  He may have been droving livestock to Norfolk pastures or markets.  She returned to his home, in Etton.  Etton, is a village on East Midland county borders that has fluctuated in history between Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and the modern district of Peterborough.  It was this fuzziness that hid his roots from me for a little longer.  They married in Etton in 1835.  Their daughter, and my ancestor, Ann Peach, was born later that year at Etton.

In 1837, her father David Peach was convicted at Lincoln Assize Courts of stealing two cattle.  He was sentenced to Life Transportation to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).  He went on to be transferred to a particularly tough penal colony in Tasmania.  He was eventually pardoned, but not granted licence to return to England.  Meanwhile, his wife Sarah, and her young daughter, Ann, somehow managed to return to Norfolk, where she found refuge with her parents, now living in the market town of Attleborough.  For a while they went to live on as servants.  For years, Sarah remained in Attleborough, never remarrying, although she had at least two more children.  She worked to support herself and her children as a charwoman or washer woman, working a laundry.

But ... where were the roots of her East Midland Shepherd husband, David Peach?  I suspected that he was local to the Etton area.  Inquiries at various FHS stands at the 2016 Who do you think you are? event in Birmingham had lead me to this position.  Peach's seemed to be local, but the county boundaries kept changing.  I suspected the Stamford area.

Then a fresh search today.  I've recently taken out a month worth of subscription to Ancestry.co.uk.  They appear to have had a lot of Northamptonshire County Council archive records, indexes, and digitalised images added.  There, I found his family!

The ancestors via David Peach that I discovered today (see the above direct tree) were entirely from the parish next to Etton, the parish of Maxey.  This village today belongs to the District of Peterborough, and has been associated with Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire - but back then, fell within the County of Northampton.

The Peach family seem to have been shepherds and drovers for a few generations at Maxey.  David was baptised at Maxey in early 1807, the son of John and Ann Peach of that village.  His father had taken the name of an elder brother that had died as an infant, while their mother was carrying him.  The elder John had been the twin brother of Joseph Peach.  Joseph turns up as a witness at so many 18th Century Maxey weddings that I'm guessing that he had some sort of local office in the parish, or was a particularly popular man!  Our John (the 2nd), was relatively quiet on record, and unfortunately my search didn't reveal his marriage, nor the surname of his own wife Ann.  He did witness his elder brother's Joseph wedding alongside an Ann Mason.  Who knows?

Our ancestor John Peach's parents were a Maxey couple, that married there in 1762 - Peter Peach and Mary Rippon.  I can then trace Mary's baptism and parents in Maxey - she was baptised there in 1734.  Her father was Robert Rippon, a Maxey tailor.  He married our ancestor Alice Saunderson at Maxey in 1710.  Her parents in turn were Christopher and Alice Saunderson of Maxey.

And so ends today's family history lesson.  I now have 243 direct ancestors named in the tree.  I did add new siblings where I could find them by trawling the online digitalised images of the parish records and bishop's transcripts.

Photo of St Peter's Church, Maxey, Cambridgeshire under Creative Commons by Meg Nicol on Flickr

Updated direct Ancestry stats:

Generation 1 has 1 individual. (100.00%)

Generation 2 has 2 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 3 has 4 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 4 has 8 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 5 has 16 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 6 has 31 individuals. (96.88%)

Generation 7 has 57 individuals. (89.06%)

Generation 8 has 55 individuals. (42.97%)

Generation 9 has 46 individuals. (18.75%)

Generation 10 has 18 individuals. (3.91%)

Generation 11 has 6 individuals. (0.59%)

Total ancestors in generations 2 to 11 is 243. (12.07%)

The above photograph is of my great great grandfather, William Bennett Baxter, born at Gressenhall Workhouse, Norfolk, England, in 1846.

Well, I've finally updated my Gramps genealogical database for the first time for months.  It's grown!  It now includes details for over 1,600 ancestors and family relatives.  I have to admit, a lot of the swell is down to online genealogical research, using Findmypast.co.uk, Ancestry.co.uk, Norfolk FHS, BMD, FamilySearch.org, etc.  I DON'T ever resort to copying off other people's trees, although I do at times, when I'm stuck, check them to see how other's think, as the hints that they should be.  To be honest though, I often don't agree with their conclusions.  

I do use Search.  I do use transcriptions - but whenever the original image is available (as it increasingly is now), I do verify with it.  Quite often, transcribers get it wrong.  I do also enjoy browsing through digitalised images of parish records, looking for siblings and clues.

Two Fathers

With traditional documentary-based genealogical research, we of course cannot prove a biological line.  We can rarely identify NPEs (Non-Parental Events).  All that we can do, is do our very best to track names through family interviews, documents and records.  Wherever possible, we should verify connections, check and record sources, look for correlations.  This isn't however always possible.  The genealogist has to then decide whether they have enough evidence to connect an ancestor.

For quite some time, I was proud that I had recorded all of my ancestors up to and including great great grandparent level.  However, at great great great grandparent level (Generation 6), I had three missing direct ancestors.  All three of them were the unrecorded father's of three great great grandparents, born illegitimate in Norfolk during the 19th Century.  I had 29 out of 32 biological ancestors recorded for Generation 6.

Then recently, I cracked two of them!  At least I have one evidence for their names.  Two of my illegitimate born great great grandparents, William Bennett Baxter, and Harriet Barber, were actually a married couple.  They were both illegitimate, and had both been born in Gressenhall Union Workhouse close to East Dereham in Norfolk.  William was base-born there  to a pauper named Eliza Baxter.  That she gave him the middle name "Bennett", and there had been Bennetts in the area, always made me suspect that his biological father was believed to have belonged to a Bennett Family, but which?

Then some research online, and it was a back to basics research that cracked it.  I was sure that I had seen their 1866 marriage certificate or entry, at nearby Swanton Morley before, probably years ago.  But if I had seen it before, and I now suspect that I hadn't, then I missed the key.  They BOTH named their alleged biological fathers in their marriage register entry!  How could I have not seen this before?

William Bennett Baxter claimed that he was the son of a labourer, by the name of ... William Bennett.  Harriet Baxter (nee Barber), claimed that her father was a labourer by the name of William Barker.  It's only their word, on their marriage entry - to their knowledge, but I've accepted that testimony, and have added ancestors on those lines.  I haven't yet found much about William Bennett. But I did quickly find more on my 4 x great grandfather William Barker.  He was a shoe maker in East Dereham, the son of a master boot maker.  Perhaps his family didn't approve.  Two years later he married an Elizabeth Wales.

My Fan Chart of Direct Ancestry, updated. I now have 234 direct ancestors named.

Other New Ancestors

The majority (but not all) of my newly claimed ancestors have been Norfolk ancestors on my Father's paternal side, balancing things up rather nicely.  Some of the newly discovered branches include a substantial number of new ancestors recorded both in Dereham, Norfolk, and in the nearby village of Swanton Morley.  They were two very ancestral homes in my tree.  I've recently extended the Baxter of Dereham line back safely to the 1760's.  I've also traced more of my great grandmother Faith Brooker's (nee Baxter) tree, including her direct maternal line to a Rachael Bradfield of Dereham.  Her daughter Elizabeth was baptised there in 1745.  In 1767, Elizabeth Bradfield married our 7 x great grandfather Solomon Harris at Swanton Morley.

I've also extended the line going back from my paternal grandmother (Doris Brooker nee Smith).  I've found more of her ancestors in the South Norfolk village of Hedenham, stretching back to a James Goodram, the son of John and Lydia Goodrum.  James was baptised at Hedenham in 1780.

Finally, I've tidied a few dates on my mother's side, and even started to reassess the ancestry of my children's mother.

Here is a count of direct ancestors from a Gramps report:

Generation 1 has 1 individual. (100.00%)

Generation 2 has 2 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 3 has 4 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 4 has 8 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 5 has 16 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 6 has 31 individuals. (96.88%)

Generation 7 has 55 individuals. (85.94%)

Generation 8 has 53 individuals. (41.41%)

Generation 9 has 44 individuals. (17.97%)

Generation 10 has 16 individuals. (3.52%)

Generation 11 has 6 individuals. (0.59%)

Total ancestors in generations 2 to 11 is 235. (11.68%)

That's enough genealogy for a while!  Living DNA report next.  Sample was activated and returned.

The Parish Church of All Saints, in the South Oxfordshire village of Rotherfield Peppard.  Taken on my phone cam during a recent ancestor hunt in this area.  Rotherfield Peppard is the location of my earliest verified Brooker ancestors.

Background

Many years ago, perhaps nearly twenty years ago, I had traced my surname family line to a John & Elizabeth Brooker that lived in the South Oxfordshire village of Rotherfield Peppard during the 1841 census.  My trail came to a dead end with that John Brooker.  He was my G.G.G.G grandfather, and was born circa 1787.  John fathered another John, who fathered Henry, who fathered John Henry, who fathered Reginald John, who fathered my father.  My surname trail has been stuck there ever since.

Until perhaps very soon into the future.  I lost interest in genealogy around twelve years ago or so.  Really, my interest started to drift away perhaps soon after discovering the above dead end on my surname line.  Then an impulse buy of a 23andMe kit this January, and inspired by the new genetics side of the interest, I returned to genealogy a few months ago.  I discovered the advantages (and some of the downfalls) of 21st Century Internet Genealogy.  I've expanded my family tree in several directions using these new resources.  But that old surname, that continued to frustrate.

You see that 1841 census, it left me with a teaser.  Later censuses record the actual parish of birth, and actual age of each person in England & Wales.  The 1841 census however, merely asked people if they were born within the county of residence or not, and summarised their ages into five year round ups.  Elizabeth stated that yes, she was born in Oxfordshire.  John on the other hand said No!  He was born outside of Oxfordshire.  I remember the long drive home from the Oxfordshire County Record Office many years ago, and considering that answer.  I knew that the nearest other county was Berkshire, and that I kept seeing Brooker families in Berkshire.  I speculated that he most likely was from Berkshire.  It was a bit of a surprise, because my wife at that time, and the mother of my children had ancestors herself nearby in Berkshire.

The Y Factor

That 23andMe DNA test revealed a number of surprises.  One of them was that I had an incredibly rare Y-DNA haplogroup for North-West Europe.  As a Y haplogroup, "L" is mainly found in any percentages in South Asia, particularly in South India, and also around Pakistan.  My actual sub clade however, is rarer, and is mainly found south of the Caucasus in Western Asia, where Anatolia meets the Levant.  One ethnicity that it has been linked to are the Pontic Greeks that traditionally lived around the Black Sea.  I'm presently investigating it with a thorough ftDNA Y111 STR test, followed by an ftDNA Big Y test.  Yes, I've chucked too much money at it.

Okay, it's just a genetic signal, just a marker.  It doesn't have any value nor effect on who I am.  But it does link me to a part of the World in a kind of personal, measured way, that I never imagined.  I do want to know, so far as I can, how this Y haplogroup got into Europe, into North-West Europe, into Britain, and into my Brooker surname line.  Can I use it to link to any distant Y cousins, that live today or perhaps in the past (ancient DNA) in other ethnicities?  Will any Brookers directly descended from the same Oxfordshire cluster of Brookers, ever test, and record their haplogroup online?  If I don't test and record myself, then no, that will never happen.  I'm not expecting recent cousins.  I hope to merely find very distant cousins.  In a sense I already have.  I have many in India, Pakistan, Armenia, Syria, Chechnya, etc.  We all do.  However I know have a link that I can measure.

This has forced me to re-launch my investigation in my surname line.  Will I find any clues to how and when it entered the line?

"There aren't many Brookers around here"...

It should be easy right?  Even local genealogists have said to me "there aren't many Brookers around here".  Wrong. There are a lot in the Thames Valley, and they've been there quite some time.  Most researchers of the Brooker surname, end up in Kent/Sussex.  That is because Kent is the English county, with the highest density of the Brooker surname today in telephone directories etc.  At first, I thought that my Brooker line came out of Kent, because my great grandfather lived at Sidcup for many years.  However, I later discovered that his father actually originated in South Oxfordshire.  There are scatters of Brookers across England.  There's even one family established in Suffolk.  The Oxfordshire / Berkshire Brooker cluster however, is second only to the Kent/Sussex cluster.  They've been in the Thames Valley quite some time.

So, on returning to genealogy, I start to use the new Internet resources.  FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.com.  I search for John Brooker born circa 1787 anywhere, but particularly in Berkshire.  I narrowed it down to about three candidates, and then by a process of elimination down to one, my most likely candidate.  I check censuses to see if John Brooker of Berkshire disappears before my validated John Brooker of Oxfordshire emerges on the 1841 census, married to Elizabeth, with several kids.  Finally, I settled on my favourite.  He was born at Hurley, Berkshire.  Only four miles away from a major bridge over the Thames into Henley, Oxfordshire, and seven miles from Rotherfield Peppard.  I even travelled down to the area, to check it out.  It was all so plausible.  I'd cracked the puzzle after all of these years.  Noone else on Ancestry.com sharing my Brookers had come up with the same answer.  Most were stuck at 1841, or later.  One had a silly proposal to a highly improbable ancestor.  I had reached Hurley.

In Hurley, I took this new extension back to another John Brooker, before him a Richard Brooker, before that another Richard Brooker, as well as some of the maternal lines.  A cracking breakthrough.  I was back to G.G.G.G.G.G.G grandparents on my surname line.  I was chuffed, even announced it here and on Facebook.  Hurley was the ancient home of the Brookers.

And what a beautiful village!  The church at Hurley above.

But it was incorrect.  A nagging feeling that I really had not searched thoroughly enough, that this John Brooker of Hurley, totally disappeared before mine appeared in Rotherfield Peppard.  I want all of my genealogy to be well validated and properly sourced.  But particularly for my surname line.  I'm spending a lot of money on those Y chromosome tests.  I don't want to tag it to a bad, untrue ancestry.

So I took another look.  I found a doppelganger in the Hurley area.  He had children there, in the parish next to Hurley.  He fit the John Brooker born in Hurley during 1789 even better than my ancestor.  I had rushed, messed up.  I was too quick to accept the link.  I made another mistake.  It meant deleting a whole bunch of ancestors from my family tree.  But it had to be done.

So many Johns and Elizabeths

I kept looking online.  I kept seeing other John Brookers.  I even kept seeing more John and Elizabeth Brooker families!  Everything that I checked out on Ancestry.com and FindMyPast.com fails tests.  I need good evidence.  It was the free LDS service at FamilySearch.org though that provided the next candidate.  I see references to a number of children born to a John and Elizabeth Brooker at Sonning, Berkshire.  The children were all slightly older, and had different names to any of those later at Rotherfield.  I looked up Sonning.  Sonning Common was actually north of the Thames, right next to Rotherfield Peppard!  I even discover that my G.G.G grandfather John Brooker (Junior) was living there in 1841!  Eureka (again)!

I'm recording everything now.  I even buy some marriage and death certificates from the GRO, looking for any link whatsoever.  Any correlation.  Any new note or mention.  I also start to purchase CD-ROMS of transcripts of parish registers from the Oxfordshire FHS, and to consult them by email.  When I look closer, I can see that if this family really were mine, then the mother, Elizabeth, must have been incredibly young at marriage, around sixteen.  I'm starting to have doubts again.  A researcher from Oxfordshire FHS replied.  They explain the confusing situation with Sonning Common.  It belonged to a parish south of the river, in Berkshire.  They also doubted the connection.  The births just didn't fit.  My CD-ROMS start to arrive.  They didn't fit.

I'd chased the wrong connection again, for a second time.

If you don't succeed at first...

The latest attempts.  I'm not giving up yet.  Hurley was wrong.  Sonning was wrong.  I can still get this.  Then the other night, I played with some more online searches, and I see something on the 1861 census of Rotherfield Greys, that I hadn't spotted before!  There was an old couple living in another neighbouring parish by the name of John and Elizabeth Brooker.  Not only that, but the 1861 census recorded their parishes of birth.  This John Brooker was born at Long Wittenham, Berkshire.  Elizabeth was born at Drayton, Oxfordshire.  It fits.  Elizabeth Brooker born inside Oxfordshire, her husband John born outside of Oxfordshire!  And so close!  Have I done it this time?

There is a problem with the connection.  The ages are wrong.  According to the 1841 census, my ancestor John was born between 1787 and 1791.  The 1861 John was born 1781 - according to the enumerator.  Equally, in 1841 Elizabeth was recorded as being born between 1797 and 1801.  This 1861 Elizabeth was recorded as being born 1786.  They're too old.

However...  a search for a John Brooker baptised at Long Wittenham, produced two transcripts of a John, son of Edward and Elizabeth Brucker baptised 17th January 1789.  Wow, if this is the same guy at Rotherfield Grey in 1861, then his age is wildly out, and he fits into the age of my 1841 John after all.  It can happen.  They were old.  They could be deaf, or the person reporting to the enumerator could have had senile dementia.  A neighbour could have helped out, but got their ages wrong.  How many John & Elizabeth Brookers could be in the Rotherfield area?  I have yet another expensive Oxfordshire FHS parish register transcript CD-ROM on the way.  I feel increasingly pressured to spend a few days in the Oxfordshire and Berkshire record offices.  Long Wittenham has changed county.  It is near to Abingdon, on the south side of the Thames, and it was in Berkshire at that time.  It is now in Oxfordshire.  Drayton, is on the other side of the river, not far away.  The couple in must have met and married in that area of the Thames valley, and later, moved around twelve miles down river to the Rotherfield area.

Are they my 1841 couple though?  I have decided to add them to my tree - but subject to removal or verification, as I research them further.  If that baptism date pans out, with no earlier doppelganger being born in Long Wittenham, I'll start to feel happier.  If they do work out, then I have already found two new generations by the looks of it.  As I said above, this John, was the son of an Edward and Elizabeth Brucker.  He in turn, may have been the Edward Brooker baptised at Long Wittenham on 16th January 1757, to another earlier John and Mary Brooker.  It's taken me to a new and unexpected area of the Thames Valley.

Lessons to be learned

I doubt that anyone else ever reads these lengthy boring posts.  However should there be anyone out there, this is what I can pass to you:

• Internet Genealogy is hazardous.  Not just because of the forest of diseased, incorrect, badly researched, badly sourced trees out there, that Family History websites push into your face.  It is also hazardous because it is incomplete, but easy.  It is easy to believe that all paper records are online.  They are not by a long chalk.  Even the paper record is actually incomplete.  Many parish records have been damaged, lost, destroyed.  Some even evaded them.  Some have not been handed over to archives.  It is too easy with Internet Search to look for a Joe Bloggs, find a Joe Bloggs, any, and to grab them.  However, did you grab the right one?  Was it simply the only one on the Internet, in that particular database entered transcription?
• Don't be at a rush to grab your Joe Bloggs.  Take your time.  That is my weakness.
• Don't be afraid to have doubt.  Keep going back.  Check, verify, check again.

I don't have to give these two up. My great grandfather Fred Smith, holding the hand of his daughter and my late grandmother Doris Smith around about 100 years ago in Norwich.

Trimming the branches

I make mistakes.  Genealogy is rarely perfect.  A part of the fun of the pastime, is in validating, verifying, and proving descent.  Sometimes though, the desire to simply add branches and histories, overtakes the quality control.  I'm guilty of that.  I've recently made a number of mistakes in my genealogical research.  A very good researcher would not make those mistakes in the first place.  They would research methodically and carefully, recording every data, looking for correlations - before they accept descent.  I on the other hand, still have a lot to learn.  However, I am willing to sometimes go back, check, check again, and if I'm not happy, remove ancestors, remove branches, remove histories.

With my recent return to genealogy, and my baptism into internet genealogical resources, I've witnessed the pitfall of the new age of research.  Family History websites push other people's trees and research at you.  However, so, so many of those that I've looked at, are erroneous, poorly sourced, and copied around like a mutated gene.  I want to create an ancestral record and history that is better than that.  I have an awful lot of work to do.

My recent mistakes have been shameful.  I made the above mistake - allowing MyHeritage.com to add branches to a couple of lines.  On checking their sources, and researching for myself, I couldn't validate the connections.  I removed them.

I wrongly identified a service record as belonging to a great grandfather.  That one hurt.

I extended my paternal surname line with too much haste.  I grabbed at a probable ancestor.  Later checks revealed a doppelganger.  I've had to go back to the drawing board, removing three generations from that line.

I don't regret these mistakes.  I'm always checking for validity.  A good quality family tree is better than a massive, old, but incorrect record.  The fun is after all, in the research, and that seems to go on forever.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

The above map has been modified from an original copied from © OpenStreetMap contributors

I have plotted my ancestral places that are tagged in my Gramps genealogical GEDCOM database.  These Places represent events -births, baptisms, marriages, or residence, etc.  These Places  belong to my direct ancestors, although they may also include siblings of ancestors.  Overall, I have modified this map in order to illustrate the distribution of my East Anglian (almost entirely of the County of Norfolk, with a few over the border in Suffolk) ancestors over the past 350 years - as so far revealed by paper genealogical research.

The BLUE markers represent the places of my father's recorded ancestors.  The RED markers represent the places of my mother's recorded ancestors.  The more events recorded for any place, the larger the marker.  You can click on the image in order to see a full resolution image.

The RED markers include pretty much all events for my mother's ancestors, as presently recorded in my family history database.  She has no recorded ancestry from outside of Norfolk, for the past 350 years.  She has an incredibly strong Norfolk ancestry.  Particularly in the East of Norfolk.

The BLUE markers do not cover all of my father's recorded ancestors, as I have also detected ancestry for him in Oxfordshire, London, and possibly Lincolnshire.  These ancestors lived outside of the mapped area.

When my mother and father initially met each other in 1956, they believed that they came from quite different parts of Norfolk, from opposite sides of the City of Norwich, with my father moving from East Dereham to my mother's neighbourhood in the Hassingham area.  Yet this map suggests that over the past 350 years, some of their ancestors have lived much closer.  The chances of them both sharing common ancestry during the Medieval, or even more recently are good.

This might support the findings of the POBI (People of the British Isles) 2015 study, that not only emphasised the homogeneous nature of the English, but also suggested that the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms could still be detected as localised gene pools to today.

I have previously created the below map, using red dappling to mark out the main zone of my mother's ancestry, onto a map of East Norfolk, as it would have appeared during the 5th Century AD, before sea levels fell, and drainage works created the more recent Norfolk coast:

My hypothesis is that my mother's ancestors clustered in an area of East Anglia, that would most likely have experienced an influx of North Sea immigration between the 4th and 11th centuries AD from Frisia, and perhaps Angeln and Denmark.

I also modified the below map from Wikimedia Commons.  Attribution is: By Nilfanion [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.  This map, as the legend states, illustrates the distribution of my recorded direct ancestors (bother on my father's and mother's sides are in RED) across the wider area of England at a single generation level, based between 1756 to 1810.  It suggests a combined ancestry, concentrated in Norfolk, East Anglia, but with a few lineages in Wessex / Mercia.

My direct ancestry fan chart looked a little bit too uneven (the above chart is the improved chart, after the following research).  I had compiled no ancestry for one of my great grandparents - my father's maternal grandmother, Emily Smith (nee Barber).  All that I knew of her origin, was that although she married and settled with my great grandfather, in Norwich, that she was born in 1859 in the South Norfolk village of Hedenham.  For some reason, perhaps a lack of resources back then (I conducted most of my family history 20 - 15 years ago pre-Internet), I had never traced any further back on her line.  My Ancestry Fan Chart highlighted this Gap of data.

I haven't really got the time to travel over to Norfolk Record Office at the moment, but I did have the recent opportunity to spend several hours online.  Internet Genealogy can be a bit pricey though.  Someone has to gain access to records, digitalise them, index them.  This service is provided by a number of commercial website companies, but of course, they have paid subscriptions.  I guess that if I was to start genealogy afresh, that I might be tempted to invest in an annual subscription with one of those companies.  If I didn't live in the country of my ancestry, then even more so.  As it is, I'm lucky, as the vast majority of my ancestry over the past three or four hundred years appears to be quite local, so that I can easily visit local archives and church yards.

So how did I get on with my Free Internet Genealogy Experiment with great grandmother Emily Smith (nee Barber)?

Conclusion - the story that I uncovered

This is a story of three generations of rural working class families, in South Norfolk, and just over the border in NE Suffolk.

On the 16th September, 1794, John Ellis married Elizabeth Beckett at the parish of Tasburgh in South Norfolk.  They were G.G.G.G grandparents of myself.  Tasburgh is a small village that straddles an old Roman road.  The couple then settled in the neighbouring parish of Saxlingham-Nethergate.  Their first two children, John, and Elizabeth, were baptised there.

Sometime around 1796, they moved slightly to the south, to the parish of Hempnall, Norfolk.  They settled there for may years, and Elizabeth gave birth to a further nine children by 1818, at Hempnall.  One of those was my G.G.G grandfather, James Ellis, who was born on the 16th April 1812, and was baptised shortly after at the parish church of Hempnall. At least one of the baptisms recorded that the father, John Ellis, was employed as a labourer - as with most rural working class men, he was an agricultural labourer.

G.G.G grandfather James Ellis, grew up to marry a woman named Esther.  They eventually settled in Esther's parish of birth - a few miles to the east of Hempnall, in the village of Hedenham, Norfolk.  However, at first, they may have spent some time even further east, in the village of Ditchingham, Norfolk.  They first had two daughters, including my G.G grandmother, Maria Ellis, who was baptised at Hedenham on 29th September 1834.  But in 1838, they had a son named Benjamin, who was baptised at nearby Ditchingham.  All later children - six of them, between 1841 and 1850, were born at Hedenham again.  During both the 1841 and 1851 censuses, the Ellis family were recorded as living in Hedenham.  James was recorded as working as an agricultural labourer in 1851, as was his twelve year old son Benjamin.

Now let's just step away from the Ellis family for a moment, and look at another ancestral family, the Barbers, living at this time, just over the county border to the south, in a little hamlet of South Elmham, named St Michaels.

G.G.G grandparents Robert and Mary Ann Barber, were both born in the county of Suffolk sometime around 1794.  They were raising a family in St Michaels, Suffolk.  Between 1818, and 1841, I found records of at least eight of their children, all born in St Michaels, S.Elmham.  One of them was my G.G grandfather George Barber, who was born in 1830.  During the 1841 census, eleven year old George was living with his parents and siblings in St Michaels.

Then something went wrong.  Perhaps the father, Robert Barber, died.  Perhaps they fell into extreme poverty, or even an illness struck the family.  With very little welfare, such events were often a tragedy to 19th Century rural working class families.  After 1841, the family disappear.  I lose trace of Robert and Mary Ann Barber.  Instead, in 1851, I find my twenty year old G.G grandfather, George Barber, is humiliated as an inmate of Shipmeadow Workhouse - the Union workhouse of the Wangford Poor Law Union.  Meanwhile, his thirteen year old younger brother, and nine year old younger sister are recorded as lodging with the Wigg family household in St Michaels.

Back over with the Ellis's, also in 1851, my G.G grandmother Maria Ellis was recorded as working as a live in servant in a household of the Buck family in Hedenham, Norfolk.

Seven years later, in 1858, George Barber married Maria Ellis, somewhere in the Wangford district of Suffolk.

G.G Grandparents George and Maria Barber (nee Ellis) settled in the brides home parish of Hedenham, Norfolk, where between 1858 and 1868, they reared four daughters, including my great grandmother Emily Barber, who was born at Hedenham in 1859.  George's occupation was recorded again, as agricultural labourer.

During the 1861 census, the family are living at Old Gravel Pit, in Woodton, Norfolk - close to Hedenham.  Emily was aged one.

During the 1871 census, Emily, age now eleven, had a recorded occupation - Crow Keeper, which I understand to mean that she earned money for scaring birds from the fields.

However, by 1881, Emily had left her family, and had moved to the City.  She was now recorded as living at The Chantry, St Stephens, Norwich where she worked as a domestic servant for a John Rayner (a solicitor's clerk), and his family.  Emily most likely met my great grandfather Frederick Smith in Norwich, where they married sometime between 1881 and 1884, and proceeded to raise their own family, including my paternal grandmother, Doris Smith.

Methods

So how did I piece that together from free online research?  I added three generations to Emily's line, and extended that section of my ancestry fan chart without even leaving home, or paying a penny.  I made a story, I found probable tragedy, encountered some large families, identified their class, added new locations to my ancestry, such as Tasburgh - and even my first ever discovered ancestors from over the county border into Suffolk.  I found that my great grandmother (I'll borrow a photograph to scan later) Emily Smith, earned money as a girl, working as a Crow Keeper!

The main source was Family Search, the genealogical website hosted by the Church of the Latter Day Saints.  This is a cracking free website.  On it I could find and search a database of UK censuses from between 1841 and 1911.  This enabled me for example, to locate a few ancestors locations when otherwise they would have been missing.  The website also has an impressive database of transcribed parish registers and Bishops transcripts.  In some cases, the original documents were also available as digitilised images.  The search facility for all of their documents took a little getting use to, in order to get the best out of it, but what a free service!

Another useful website was FreeBMD.  This database was critical in tracing and confirming the marriage of George Barber to Maria Ellis in 1858. Although it only gives access to the indexes of state birth, marriages, and deaths, that along with correlations through the search facility of FamilySearch.org gave me enough information for that event.

Finally, in a search like this - you have to use Google Maps, in order to get a picture of where your ancestors lived, use Street View to see them, and the maps to see exactly where the parishes are in relation to each other.

Okay, I posted this photograph of Sarah Thacker below, but here is a fresh scan with a little bit of enhancement using open source software Gimp 2.2.

I visited the Norfolk Record Office yesterday, for the first time in many years.  Indeed, when it has moved a few times since I would haunt the basements of Norwich Central Library, and is now in a much larger complex on the edge of the City, at the County Hall.  I didn't have any need to access the original registers - everything they had for me is now on either microfilm or microfiche.  Staff were pleasant and helpful.

What did I learn?  Unfortunately, I didn't get any further back on my maternal line yesterday.  I did fill in some details and siblings.  I did go back another generation on Sarah's father, the Daynes of Brandon Parva, Norfolk.  I also discovered her parents, Rueben and Sarah Daynes (nee Quantrill), were not as I thought married in Wymondham, but nearby in Besthorpe.  I found the banns in a transcript, but however, the parish marriage registers for 1849 are missing.  Presumably still at the church.  I feel that I need to see their actual marriage next.  It should verify their ages, and give me the name of Sarah Quantrill's father.  That might help me locate Sarah's baptism and her mother.  It is her mother that I most want to find.  She would be the next generation around to donate that mtDNA.  Sarah was born circa 1827, I believe in Wymondham, or maybe again, in Besthorpe.

I left the record office, and visited my mother.  We then took a look at Besthorpe Church.  The church was locked, I tried to telephone the vicar, but no answer.  Many of the headstones had unfortunately been moved, but I did find one in memorial to a William Quantrell".  He was born a few years before my Sarah Quantrell, so it is quite possible that he was an older brother, if the family originated in Besthorpe.  A thought was, if he was indeed the brother, then his remains somewhere in that church yard would carry our mtDNA - from his mother.

I was playing with the idea of going back another day, to see if the vicar does have that missing marriage register.  However, with time and petrol, I've ordered a copy of the state document from the GRO (General Register Office) online.  Hopefully the certificate will arrive next week.  Then I'll have another go at seeing if I can trace Sarah Quantrill's mother.

The above photograph is believed to be of my maternal line great great grandmother Sarah Thacker (nee Daynes), who was born at Besthorpe, Norfolk in 1849.  One of my mtDNA donors?

While waiting for my 23andMe DNA results to process, I've returned to researching some of my genealogy, after a very long break from it.  I carried out most of my family tree research over twenty years ago, before Internet search facilities.

A few thoughts on commercial genetic profiling for ancestry

Let me just expand on my newcomer take on commercial genetic profiling.  Although I have finally subscribed to a genetic profiling service, I have been aware of the criticisms of such companies, particularly with regards to their claims to map ancestry.

Commercial genetic profiling companies, that offer services direct to the individual, all appear to have their markets in North America, particularly in the USA (where they all seem to be based) There are many millions of people in the New World, that feel disconnected from their heritage and family roots.  Grandpa said "we came from Poland", an Aunt said that "we had a Cherokee princess in the tree", a cousin claimed that great great grandma was Italian.  Of course, the traditional answer is to trace your ancestry on paper, using genealogical methods.  It is very time laborious, can take many years, and can incur an expense in order to access many documents and many different archives.  As a hobby, it never ends.  And then there are dead ends.  Genealogy is actually a little bit of a misnomer, as it traces records of descent rather than genes, and we don't know who really cheated, or what skeletons have been lost in the wardrobe.  People lie, or even make mistakes when they fill in paternity forms.

So it seems that for those interested in their roots, genetic profiling not only tells a truth that paper genealogy does not, but it is far easier, faster, and in the long term, cheaper.  Genetic profiling companies have done their market research, and can sniff a profit.  This is a big and growing market, as people become further distanced from their roots by the acceleration of globalism.  People want to know who their forbearers were!

However, and this is what concerns me - can these companies really, honestly, deliver ancestry? 

I'm new to it all, but I can see where some customers feel a bit robbed.  They want what they call Deep Ancestry, to know if they are descended from traditional historical groups such as the Celts or the Vikings.  They sometimes want to know exactly which European countries that their ancestors came from.  "Was it Serbia or Slovakia?".  Some of the customers at 23andMe on their forums get rather upset that the company doesn't provide this service, but when judging autosomal evidence, merely indicates which regions of Europe might be involved.  Britain is lumped in with Ireland for example.  They want to know more than that.  Some other companies do promise more definitive results, but are they really honest?  Some third parties will allow you to upload your data, then use some computer wizardry to give you your more precise results.

But is it all really good science?  My suspicions is that it is not.

There are two problems.

1. As I have raised with my recent posts on the Anglo-Saxon origins, there are many origin myths within traditional histories.  People such as the Celts were not ever even a biological population.  History is written by victors, and has frequently been corrupted in order to make  political points that are now lost on us.  For all too long, we have seen history as consisting of one biological population against or replacing another, when the truth that keeps emerging, is that of people taking on new cultural identities, and of genetic admixture.
2. Humans like to wander, and they like to have sex.  Human genes have been wandering all over Europe since prehistory.   They are mixed up through admixture.  Genes have a limited appreciation of the borders of nation-states - borders which are often modern political constructs. 

I'm saying that we Europeans are all mixed up.  There has been very little isolation, and a lot of immigration.  You cannot divide us up into neat little sub races.  It's a 19th/20th Century racist fantasy.

That is autosomal information.  Each generation back, we double our lines back.  I have four grandparent, eight great grandparents, sixteen g.g grandparents and so on.  It doesn't multiply forever of course, local genetic pooling kicks in, what some might call inbreeding.  I have a pair of ancestors on my mother's side, that are my g.g.g.g.g.g grandparents twice over.  Two of their great great grandchildren that were 3rd cousins to each other married.  This sort of event will increase as you go back into your ancestry, until we all trace our ancestry back to a small population of anatomically modern humans some 70,000 years ago - give or take the odd Neanderthal or two.

Autosomal evidence can be really hit and miss.  It's all of that general DNA from your mixed up ancestry.  Under the natural law of random selection, it's quite easy as I understand it, to lose any and every SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) from some quite recent ancestors.  Every reproduction randomly dumps half of your ancestor's combined DNA.  Please tell me if I misunderstand this, I am no expert.  I've seen claims on profiling forums that your recent ancestry up to between 300 and 500 years can safely be provenanced from your autosomal DNA.  I smell a fish.  I'm really not convinced.  If someone that knows better can convince me otherwise, please do so.

When I get my results, I'm not expecting no surprises.  I'm expecting autosomal ancestry of British/Irish, maybe some confusion with Scandinavia, and French/German, due to the general Western European blur.  If I do get a surprise though, well that would be interesting.

The two haplogroup markers that I am more interested in, than the general autosomal ancestry, are of course the mtDNA and the Y chromosome.  I'm blessed being male, women only get the mtDNA.  These two markers stand out of the general ancestral DNA.  The Y chromosome represents my strictly paternal lineage.  My mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) represents my strictly maternal lineage.  They both mutate very rarely, at known rates and therefore have been used to successfully map origins.  They have been used for example, to mark waves of movement across Eurasia, and original movements into Europe.  They have been used to date Y chromosome Adam, and Mitochondrial Eve.  Not that humans nor our hominin heritage have ever been reduced to a genetic bottleneck as severe as one couple, but the ancient populations where all present day human populations can trace shared their direct paternal / maternal lineage ancestry.  For Y chromosome Adam it is 300,000 to 200,000 years ago.  For Mitochondrial Eve it is 200,000 to 100,000 years ago.  No, they were not a couple, there was never a first couple.

Y chromosome and mtDNA are far more interesting than the general autosomal DNA, even if they represent only two narrow lines of descent.  As we increase our knowledge and data, so we can start to say that a particular haplogoup mutated from another, and passed most likely, through a certain route towards you.

My mtDNA and paper genealogy

I've finally reached the point of this post.  Yesterday, I thought that I'd give Internet genealogy a crack.  I've done very little genealogical research for many years.  I found out a few new details about my enigmatic paternal great grandfather.  In 1939, I now know the address in Kent, where he and his partner Mabel Tanner were living.  I also learned that at that time, he was employed as a clerk and a civil servant, apparently by the Post Office in their engineering departments.  I imagine a bit of a come down for a guy that served for years as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, including throughout WW 1.  I do now remember one late aunt saying that she recalled he was something to do with the Post Office.

I wanted, with my genetic profiling in mind, to see if I can learn anything new on my Y chromosome / mtDNA lines, or in paper genealogical terms, in my strictly paternal and maternal lines.

The paternal was frustrating.  I couldn't advance on it.  Still stuck on my g.g.g.g grandfather John Brooker.  He is recorded on the 1841 census as fathering seven children in the parish of Rotherfield Peppard in Oxfordshire between 1815 and 1836.  He simply recorded N for not born in Oxfordshire.  His age suggests a birth date of c.1791.  The Internet couldn't help much on that one.  I still need to return to the Oxfordshire Record Office, and maybe the Berkshire Record Office, if it does transpire that he came from there.  I need parish registers.  A bit of driving to do.  I need to find his marriage somewhere before (or maybe around) 1815 to his wife Elizabeth.  I do hope that it is in Rotherfield Peppard, but I fear that it is not.

The maternal however, was fruitful.  That I am pleased with, as the strictly maternal line is the safest and most reliable.  With any paternity, you never know for sure, who the father really was.  People lied.  But maternal - as reliable as paper genealogy can ever be.  This is great, because it aligns with my mtDNA route.  Surely the best lineage to research, although as marriage changes the surname most generations in European cultures, not the easiest to follow.  A new surname nearly every generation.  My previous research on the maternal line had only reached a c.1848 date to the ancestor allegedly in the photograph at the top of this post - Sarah Ann Thacker (nee Daines), who lived at Rackheath, Norfolk, but was actually born around twenty miles away at Besthorpe, Norfolk.  Thinking bout it Daines might suggest Scandinavian origins might it not?  Except of course that most English surnames originate long after the Danelaw.

Anyway, I started to find references to her on census, and a free online transcription of Besthorpe baptisms.  She was born in 1849 at Besthorpe.  Her parents had married the previous year nearby at the market town of Wymondham, Norfolk. Her father was Reuben Daynes, a labourer that had been born at Brandon, Norfolk.  This appears to be Brandon Parva, a Norfolk parish between Wymondham and Dereham.  I'll chase that one up later, but I'm for now concentrating on that maternal line.  Sarah's mother was a Sarah Daynes (nee Quantrell), who was born at Wymondham around c.1827.  I can't find her family on the census yet.  She was living in a household of Longs at one point.  Quantrell / Quantril appears to have been a well established English surname locally, with families of them at least at Wymondham, Norwich, and Bunwell going way back.

So, I've traced my maternal line back another generation, and to a new surname and town.  What really pleased me is that none of my mother's family had any knowledge of family in the Besthorpe / Wymondham area.  And yet my mother, a sister, and a niece all live in Wymondham today!  An earlier copy of their mtDNA had lived in that Norfolk market town 175 years ago, but we wouldn't have known that before the new research.  A census also revealed Sarah Thacker (nee Daynes), staying in Besthorpe with her parents and her young son George Thacker.  Confirmation that she is my great great grandmother, and that Sarah Daynes (nee Quantrell) is my great great great grandmother.

I now need to visit the Norfolk Record Office in Norwich, to further confirm my research, and to see if I can go back another generation in my mtDNA story.

The above photograph is of Wymondham Abbey.  Was my mtDNA here?  Is this where Reuben Daynes married my great great great grandmother Sarah Quantrell in 1848?  Taken on the Bronica SQ-A Zenzanon PS 80mm f/2.8 lens, loaded with Ilford HP5+ film, developed in Ilford ID11.