How Do We Find the Stories of Our Ancestors and their Family

 Every Story Matters

I have taken this title from the message of the opening keynote talk for the 2025 Guild of One Name Studies Conference.

The speaker Jen Baldwin spoke to the conference about British Home Children. Each child had their own story.

My grandmother and her siblings were orphaned in 1907. 

The extended family were unable to take the younger children, and the older ones were too young to look after them, she was the youngest. 

She ended up in the Mullers Home in Bristol.

Her brother Ernest Roy Compton was to go to the National Children's Home in Edgworth, Lancashire, England. He died from wounds he received whilst fighting in WW1.

Now I knew more about British Home Children. 

I believed he had stayed in England and had not been sent to Canada like many orphans. The Home he was in regularly sent children to Canada. 

I decided to update his WikiTree profile and make sure his Family Search profile had a link to his WikiTree profile. 

I went to add a link to his Find A Grave memorial. 

It is maintained by Home Children Canada.

This had led me to want to find out more.

I have found this information about the ship Dominion.

I have now discovered I had information about the ship on which he returned to England aged 17 in 1914.

Did he get to see his siblings before he enlisted? 

His sister was still in the Bristol Children's Home when he died in 1917, and, until I started my research, I was not aware of him or his brothers, one who died later that same year, and the other who died in 1918.

I now know that despite him only having a short life he had lived on 2 continents, was wounded fighting for his country and his family, and is known by the family he never knew.

Next year the Guild holds its conference in Hampshire and I am determined to visit the Hampshire Regimental Museum to see if they have anything more that they can add to his story.

How identifying DNA matches has helped me improve my family tree Part 2 Looking at every record

 Review Everything

My gt grandfather was born in Warminster Workhouse, his mother was unmarried and was born in Fisherton Delamere and living there in 1841, so she would have been expected to have her settlement as this parish, which would be part of the area covered by the Wilton Workhouse.

However we do not find her in Wiltshire in the 1851 census. She has moved to Sherborne, Dorset and is employed as a Silk Winder.

It is possible that before her son was born she had moved to Warminster for work as this town also had Silk Mills.

So who was his father?

DNA matches have proven to be helpful in confirming the research discovered in the records available.

I attended a zoom talk on 29th October and one of the tips was to organise your matches into groups by looking at shared matches.

I have 2 unknown fathers at 2xgt grandparent level in the maternal side of my tree. Once I had assigned those I had confirmed as descendents of known relatives I was left with a number of unknowns which I grouped together.

On 30th October I started looking at how some of them might be connected. I had a number of them who had the surname Jeffery or a variant in their tree. 

Were they connected? Could this be my missing link?

One in particular stood out. 

The Samuel Jeffery in this tree was living at Middle Mills Sherborne, Dorset in 1851 he was a widower and a Carpenter.

I did some investigating and added more sources to the Family Search tree before moving to add anything to Ancestry.

During this research I came across marriage banns in July and August 1854.

Having made this final discovery I added Samuel as a likely father.

I now have more DNA matches that are linked to this family.

William was not the son of Harriett Hunt his mother had died before he appeared on the census records.

 William Burden Jeffery's birth was registered in the Oct-Nov-Dec quarter of 1848 in the Sherborne district Mother's maiden name: Burden.''GRO Reference:'' 1848 Oct-Nov-Dec in Sherborne Volume 08 Page 91.

William had a brother Frederic who is in a tree of someone who is a match and he has the correct mother, 

his descendants are showing up as matches.

I have been slowly adding to this family but being careful to ensure I have the correct family.

One of the key things here was deciding whether it was likely that Samuel and Martha had met. The fact that they were working in the same industry, in the same town, at the same time, was crucial in taking that final step.

Why take a DNA test!

 This may require several posts but I will start by saying why I took my first DNA test which was with Living DNA.

The Living DNA test would give me a better idea of where my genetic origins lay in England. I was expecting it to be largely in the Southern counties where I knew my family had lived for a couple of centuries or longer.

Below is the current breakdown.

Great Britain and Ireland    94.9%

South Central England    50.6%

Southeast England    14.3%

South England    11.6%

Devon    8.5%

East Anglia    6%

South Wales    1.4%

Cornwall    1.3%

Orkney and Shetland Islands    1.1%

Europe (North and West)    2.8%

Northwest Germanic    2.8%

Europe (South)    2.3%

East Iberia    1.1%

Tuscany    1.1%

I have unknown fathers in my ancestry which might account for the smaller percentages outside of England.

When I took this test there was no way to connect with others who might share ancestors with me other than to upload to gedmatch. This allows you to compare with others who may have tested with a different company.

Before I went to RootsTech in 2018 there was an opportunity to get a free test, with My Heritage, which I took up, after which I started to get matches with others. 

Most of these matches were quite distant but some have since led me to look at my records again in an attempt to see where we might have shared ancestry.

I will explain more about what I have discovered in my next post.

Why did you take a test? If you haven't why not?

Have you made any discoveries after you took a test?

Are you glad you took a test?

Do you regret taking a test?

52 Ancestors Close To Home

How cool would it be to be able to meet up with a distant relation who lives close to you?

I added a gedcom to WikiTree in 2011 and at that time there were not many profiles (individuals) there who lived in England.

However, over the years more people have joined and added family.

One ancestor I added was John Gingell who was the end of the line for this branch of my tree.

Because I was interested in finding cousins I added siblings for his daughter Sarah who is my 2xgt grandmother. I even had the family of her brother John. 

When Lizzie joined she made contact with me and pointed out that I had missed her ancestor Kate from the family of Sarah's brother.

We gradually got to know one another realising that we had a cousin connection.

We are both active members of the England Project on WikiTree and decided that we needed to meet.

Our common ancestor lived in a village on the outskirts of Bristol in the South West of England. 

I now live in North Wales and Lizzie lives in North West England so we are relatively close to each other if not close to the home of our ancestor.

We decided to meet up at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden which is about midway between us.

The restaurant there does a lovely afternoon tea which we thoroughly enjoyed. I would share a photo but we both forgot to take one.

We have met up again since then in Birmingham at The Genealogy Show last June. Here we are with some of our other WikiTree friends.

52 Ancestors Long Line

This week I want to highlight my paternal grandmother's paternal line. 

Here is a photograph of her parents and a link to their profiles on WikiTree. I am in the process of updating these to provide links to free sources rather than the records I found on Ancestry. Their profiles were imported from my Ancestry tree in 2011 and now we have more free resources available I am slowly adding and updating.

Alfred William Wiltshire and Sarah Alice Tudgey

My great grandfather followed his father and became a shoemaker, when he was old enough he worked with him, and they would work on the boots and shoes of those living in their village.

He was following both his father and grandfather in what must have been the family business. It is possible that this occupation went back further than this, but as this was before the census recorded an occupation, and very few residents were recorded in a directory, I have yet to discover the occupation of any earlier generations.

He was recorded as working for the poor law guardians and must have been providing shoes for the inmates of the local workhouse.

However, times changed and Alfred was a hairdresser by the time he died. Maybe his customers started buying from shops or did not require him to repair their shoes as they bought new ones. 

Since Asthma is listed as a cause of death was he struggling with any chemicals he used or did he develop an allergy I doubt it as he would probably had contact with chemicals as a hairdresser.

Here are the profiles for George Wiltshire his father and William Wiltshire his grandfather.

52 Ancestors Favorite Photo

Do I have a Favourite?

It is difficult to choose just one photograph.

I want one that I have uploaded to WikiTree so I can share this post in their G2G forum. 

I have decided to go for this one which is the only photograph I have seen for this individual.

His name is Charles Henry Roberts.

If you want to learn more about him then take a look at his profile on WikiTree

52 Ancestors Fresh Start

As we start a New Year we often find ourselves looking at making changes and maybe a "fresh start ".

I have not been  blogging here for some time but as this year begins I know it will be a year full of changes and possibly some challenges. 

This year I am planning on doing all of the 52 ancestor posts and hope that you have the time to follow along with them.

I will be discussing the ancestors and other relatives of my son. These may also be your relatives so please comment if you have something more that you can add.

So where do I start today. As it is a New Year and the start of a decade I want to consider how our Ancestors will have looked upon the calendar. 

Before school attendance became compulsory the majority of the population may have had no need to refer to any calendar, they could not read or write, and their working lives were often closely related to the seasons. Even when education was made compulsory in many rural communities children would be absent from school at harvest time as they were expected to help their parents. Edward Rosling was one ancestor who fell foul of this law. I managed to find a piece in The Grantham Journal 11th May 1889 page 6 column 2. Although given the extent of the absenteeism I doubt that all can be attributed to helping his father. He could have been helping to sow crops rather than harvest them in agricultural Lincolnshire.

When England changed from using the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, apart from losing 11 days (the calendar was advanced by 11 days: Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September 1752), the beginning of the year changed from 25 March to 1 January. The year 1751 ended on 31 December and didn't include any dates from 1 January to 24 March. So the year started in the middle of winter rather than when spring arrived.

Our ancestors may not have been aware of such changes unless they were involved with clerical or legal activities requiring the recording of dates. We do, however, need to consider these changes when we look for records, particularly for those who were living during the year of change, if they were recorded in the parish registers at this time.

We can but wonder whether radically changing the calendar provided any real advantage at the time. With our 21st century global communication a common system is essential but would a village farming community notice the change.

Whilst we live by the laws of our country many changes may have little impact on our daily lives.

The introduction of the 1753 Marriage Act was likely to have more impact and most parishes started a new register when it came into force on 25 March 1754.

So if you are looking at records in the 1750s make sure you consider the changes that took place. Changes to the start of the year and the start of recording more information when couples married.