Tracing the Nottinghamshire birth of Mary, wife of James HADEN (1831-1901), has proved to be very difficult. It would have been easier had the new versions of the General Register Office birth indexes (which give the maiden name of the mother from 1837) been available to search earlier.
I noticed that a few genealogists were posting on social media some pedigree-style charts of their ancestors’ birthplaces, colour-coded to show the different counties. I knew that most of my direct ancestors were born in Staffordshire, but it wasn’t until I filled in the chart back to my 3x great-grandparents that I realised quite how many of them were from the county. Every one of my direct ancestors back to and including all 16 of my 2x great-grandparents were born…
Rootstech 2021 was an online event so, I must admit, I was wondering how the “Relatives at Rootstech” would work. I had experienced this at Rootstech London in 2019 – the first time I had knowingly been in the same room as a 9th cousin!
Finding myself in Oldswinford, Stourbridge, recently, I took the opportunity of having a look around St Mary’s Church, which I know has connections with my Yeadon/Haden ancestors. Luckily, I had already downloaded a copy of the Oldswinford parish registers and Monumental Inscriptions (MIs), published by the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry (BMSGH) without which there is no way I would have found the Yeadon gravestone, above. Even with the details and the sketch map from the MIs…
Receiving my AncestryDNA results prompted me to look again at family history research relating only to my direct ancestors. I had thought I was doing quite well – with one line going back ten generations to my 8x great-grandparents. However, because of the doubling of numbers at each generation, we all have mind-bogglingly large numbers of direct ancestors. Of my potential total of 2046 ancestors over ten generations, I know the names of only 119 of them, or just under six per cent. Twelve…
Results from AncestryDNA indicate my ethnic origins are 100 per cent European (52% England & Wales, 19% Western Europe, 19% Ireland, 9% Scandinavia and less than 1% Italy/Greece). No real surprises, apart from the 19 per cent Irish, as my research so far (117 direct ancestors over 11 generations) hasn’t brought up anyone born in Ireland, nor indeed anyone born outside England. I haven’t yet found the Welsh ancestry I was promised, although my Williams and Jones lines are back…